What God Thinks of You

[Below you'll find the text of the message shared during worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio today, as well as live stream videos of both services. Have a good week!]

Matthew 9:9-13

Years ago after worship at one of the churches I’ve served as pastor, a woman asked if she could speak with me briefly. She was a young woman, active in the church. I could tell she was uncomfortable, but trusted me and after a while, got to what she wanted to discuss. “Pastor,” she said, “I’m gay.”

I could see what her question was. She wondered what God thought of her.

I knew her to be a person of earnest faith who understood the will of God regarding sexual intimacy. She was troubled by her feelings. There was no way I was going to pour heaping coals on her. She needed the Gospel Word of Jesus. I touched her hand and, calling her by name, told her, “God loves you.”

I went on to remind her that Jesus died and rose for sinners, whatever sin they may be oriented to commit, and that He calls all of us to repent–to turn our backs on our sins–and believe in Him. I went on to assure her that God stands by those who struggle with their temptations and will always forgive the repentant.

We talked for about an hour. She continued to be an active member of our church and I prayed for her regularly. That conversation happened a long time ago. Since then, I’ve lost touch with that woman. So, I don’t know what’s going on in her life these days.

But, fellow sinners, this incident and our Gospel lesson for this morning bring to the fore an important question for us all: What does God think of us?

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is in Capernaum, a town on the Sea of Galilee. He’s just come from forgiving the sins, then healing, a paralytic man. He catches sight of a tax collector named Matthew. We know just a few things about Matthew. We know that he was also known as Levi, telling us that he was from the tribe of priests, the Levites, and because of this, that his life has apparently gone off the rails. We know that he was one of the two apostles–John being the other one–to write one of the Gospels that appear in our New Testament. And we know he was a tax collector.

You’ve heard me speak often about the tax collectors of that time. They purchased franchises for the privilege of collecting taxes and tolls in a given region from the Romans or the Romans’ agents. Tax collectors like Matthew routinely charged the people in their region way more than the Romans expected to be collected and the Romans ignored their extortion. Tax collectors were dishonest. They were hated. Unlike most of their fellow Jews, they were extremely wealthy. Usually, they were unafraid to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth.

Jesus tells Matthew, “‘Follow me,’...[and] Matthew got up and followed him.” (Matthew 9:9) Now, rather than bogging ourselves in questions about why Matthew immediately responded to Jesus and whether Matthew knew Jesus already, I think the more important question to ask is where Jesus led Matthew?

We might think that Jesus would lead Matthew off for a time of intense discipleship training. Instead, Jesus seems to lead Matthew to Matthew’s house, where Matthew is going to host a dinner for “many tax collectors and sinners.” (Mathew 9:10)   

You see, Jesus doesn’t walk away from sinners. He goes to them. That’s how Jesus is able to call them–it’s how He is able to call you and me–to turn from sin and turn in faith to Him for forgiveness and new life with God.

Jesus also doesn’t call His disciples, people like Matthew and you and me, away from sinners. He calls us to them.

That’s the only way we can be, in Saint Paul’s phrase, “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20), representatives of Jesus Christ in a world under the dominion of sin, death, and darkness.

And it’s the only way we can, as Saint Peter puts it, “give the reason for the hope that [we] have” because of Jesus Christ, (1 Peter 3:15)

The gospel–the good news–is that, “[w]hile we were still sinners, Christ died for us” and has done everything needed for we sinners to be, despite our sin, the saints of God Who will, on the day Jesus returns, be called from our graves so that we can live with and serve God “in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.” (Romans 5:8; The Small Catechism, Article II)

Not everyone is happy that Jesus is eating with notorious sinners, of course.

The Pharisees, the members of a prominent first-century Jewish sect, are offended. Now, the word pharisee comes to us from both the Hebrew and Aramaic languages and means “one who is separated.” The Pharisees separated themselves from others both because they thought their adherence to God’s Law was greater than that of others and to avoid getting polluted by others’s sins. The Pharisees are self-righteous. They’re also people Jesus called “whitewashed tombs” and “hypocrites.” “Why,” the Pharisees ask some of Jesus’ disciples, “does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matthew 9:11)

Jesus hears this question and answers: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Matthew 9:12)

Look, friends, if you think you’re righteous because you’re a good person, Jesus has nothing for you. He has nothing to say to you.

But if you know that you are, by nature, inclination, and action, sick with sin, filled with an inborn resistance to love for God or love for others, Jesus has everything for you: forgiveness, eternal life, the assurance of His constant presence by your side!

“For I have not come,” Jesus tells us today, “to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13)

Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through the prophet Isaiah what He would do for sinners who are reached by Him and His grace, in eternity. He announced His intention to host a feast that never ends:

“...the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines…he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.” (Isaiah 25:6-8)

During dinner at Matthew’s house, Jesus was giving the notorious sinners around Him a foretaste of the heavenly feast that awaits all who, by the power of His Gospel Word, turn from sin and trust in Him. It’s a foretaste of what He does on the cross to save us from sin, condemnation, and death.

He does this same thing when He gathers us repentant believers at His table each Sunday to give us His body and blood. Jesus does again what He did at Matthew’s house: He takes our sin into Himself and gives us His righteousness, He erases the power of sin and death over us and makes us whole and new in His grace.

So, what does God think of you?

For you, “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

That’s what God thinks of you and everyone else born sick with sin. He thinks you are worth the sacrifice of His sinless love to give you life with Him.

Friends, today receive, cherish, tastes and see, and hold onto this promise from Jesus, God the Son: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13)

And rejoice that He has called you. Amen

When you break a promise

"Due to circumstances beyond our control." That's the phrase that popped into my mind this morning during my quiet time when I read words of the apostle Paul addressed to the first-century Christian churches in Corinth and Achaia.

There, Paul is explaining why he'd been forced to break his promise to come visit them, not because he wasn't good for his word but because circumstances had changed. But, ever the preacher of Christ, even in the midst of this explanation, Paul couldn't keep from pointing out how reliable the God we know through Christ always is:

Confident of your welcome, I had originally planned two great visits with you—coming by on my way to Macedonia province, and then again on my return trip. Then we could have had a bon-voyage party as you sent me off to Judea. That was the plan.

Are you now going to accuse me of being flip with my promises because it didn’t work out? Do you think I talk out of both sides of my mouth—a glib yes one moment, a glib no the next? Well, you’re wrong. I try to be as true to my word as God is to his. Our word to you wasn’t a careless yes canceled by an indifferent no. How could it be? When Silas and Timothy and I proclaimed the Son of God among you, did you pick up on any yes-and-no, on-again, off-again waffling? Wasn’t it a clean, strong Yes? 

Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete. (2 Corinthians 1:15-22, The Message)

Though my team and I were incapable of making good on our yes, Paul seems to say, remember two things:

(1)We always proclaimed God's "yes" to repentant believers in Christ;
(2) Even when humans fail to keep their promises, when God says "yes" to a promise, you can bank your life on it.

God calls imperfect human beings--which includes every believer in Christ--to share the message of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and trustingly follow Jesus. But our faith is not in the imperfect disciples who strive and sometimes fail in their promise-keeping. Our faith is in the God Who, as seen in Christ, always keeps His promises.

I think that this has several implications for the way we live our lives if we confess Christ to be our God and Savior.

First, it means that we need to be judicious in our promise-making. We should only make those promises that we think we are going to be able to keep. When we're associated with Christ, identified by others as Christians, we must remember that we are "ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:20) and strive, as Jesus tells us to "Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil" (Matthew 5:37).

Second, we need to be charitable and understanding when circumstances beyond the control of those from whom we feel we have promises are unable to keep them. This is especially the case when they may be unable to keep their promise to us because of another promise they have made to God. This appears to be the explanation that Paul offers in these verses from 2 Corinthians 1. His extenuating circumstances aren't things like, "Oops! We overslept." Or, "We were having such a great time here, it seemed such a shame to go tearing off to Corinth."

No, Paul says, "I try to be as true to my word as God is to his." Especially when a person has a good track record for keeping promises, we should be understanding when they don't fulfill a promise. Especially when a promise to God may supersede their promise to us. As with Paul and his crew who faced persecution and the call of God to remain where they were rather than heading to see the Corinthians, we should be understanding of those who try to be as true to their word as God is to His Word.

That leads to a third implication in Paul's word to the Corinthians: God is the only One Who ever has kept or ever will keep all His promises. God's Word alone is completely reliable. Even the most well-meaning people flub up. God never flubs up! Isaiah 40:8, says: "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever." One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Psalm 118:8, which says: "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in humans."

And here's a fourth implication: Not only should we be judicious, careful, about making promises, we should repent both for careless promise-making and for godly promises broken. We should apologize both to God--because, as C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, whenever we sin (and carelessly breaking a promise is a sin, a violation of the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness"), we sin chiefly against God--and to the person to whom we've made our unfulfilled promise.

Of course, repentance means more than saying we're sorry for committing sin; it also means turning to God in the name of Jesus, receiving God's forgiveness, and allowing the Holy Spirit to this aspect of our lives to help us live more faithfully. In our Lutheran tradition, when we install people into positions of responsibility in our congregations, these people are asked to make a series of promises to God and the congregation. And with each promise, they pledge to seek to fulfill those promises by saying, "Yes, with the help of God."

And what do we do if we truly repent before God and truly apologize to people for our broken promises and people refuse to forgive us?

• For one thing, don't allow yourself to remain angry about it. Understand that your broken promise may have caused real hurt to the other person. This is especially so when you've had a track record of promise-keeping with them. When a person routinely breaks promises to us, we think, "That's them." But when someone has usually been reliable breaks a promise, the disappointment is great. Be understanding of how the person to whom we've made a broken promise feels. 
• Also, pray for reconciliation. Ask God to work in both of your lives to make it possible for your relationship to be restored. Ask also that God will banish bitterness from your thinking. Ask God also if there are any further steps you should take. Usually, there are no further steps to be taken; you must simply pray and wait.
• Finally, ask God to help you to be a more reliable promise-maker in the future.

As someone who has been known to make promises that I've gone on to break and sometimes, unlike Paul in these verse from 2 Corinthians, out of carelessness, I'm glad that there is One Whose promises can always be counted on.

When Jesus came into this world to die and to rise for the benefit of sinful human beings, He fulfilled the promises of God. And His death and resurrection are the guarantors of all the other promises He makes, from the promise to always be with those who follow Him in this world to the promise to prepare a place for His disciples in eternity.

So, I will ask God's help in being judicious and faithful in my promise-making and promise-keeping.

I will seek, with the help of God, to forgive others as God forgives me, when they seem to fail in keeping the promises they have made to me.

But, I will trust the God revealed in Jesus and in the promises He makes in His Word, the Bible, above all else.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Life and Welcoming Jesus and "the Least of These"

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 25:31-46
It’s always humbling to realize that there is so much more in the Bible, the Word of God, than we sometimes imagine and that the understanding of it that we sometimes take for granted isn’t entirely correct. Or even substantially incorrect.

That’s the experience I’ve had this week in studying today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 25:31-46.

I confess that I approached my study and the prospect of preaching on this text with something of a ho-hum attitude. Everyone could see, I thought, what these words of Jesus are about: Jesus the King is portraying the final judgment scene. Some will be welcomed into His eternal kingdom because their faith in Him has led them to serve those in need, while others, who have refused to trust in Christ and so have refused to serve their neighbor, are separated from God and sent to hell. Throughout my Christian life, I have believed that these words of Jesus were about how faith in Christ leads Christians to an ethic of love for the needy and a concern with justice for them.

Now clearly, when we know that we have been saved by grace through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, it will change how we live. Jesus’ life and heart will be planted within us and we will feel motivated, not be legalism, but by gratitude, to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” But, I’ve come to realize that that is not what the words in our Gospel lesson from Christ our King today are about. They’re about something altogether different.

Jesus' words for us today are not about how believers treat the needy of the world. They're about how the world treats His disciples who, because of their belief in Him, experience need.

To follow Jesus means to risk, in a sinful, disbelieving world, going without food, water, shelter. It means to risk being despised and imprisoned.

The world casts judgment on itself when it fails to welcome the children, the disciples, of Christ the King.

People receive salvation and eternal life when they welcome Christ and His messengers into their lives.

To set us on a course to more clearly understanding this, I’d like to ask you to look at three other passages of Scripture with me this morning.

First, please look at Isaiah 52:7 (page 511 in the sanctuary Bibles). It says: “‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’"

God cherishes those who proclaim His truth and the good news of new life through faith in Him. And the proclaimers God values aren't confined to the ranks of the ordained clergy. First Peter, for example, reminds us that every Christian is a proclaimer of God’s good news, telling and showing others how God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light and how He is willing to do that for anyone who repents and believes in the God we know in Jesus.

Now, look at Matthew 10:40 and 42 (page 682). Jesus is speaking to His disciples, ordinary followers of Him just like us. Jesus says in verse 40: “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Of course, the One Who sent Jesus is God the Father.) Slip down to verse 42, where Jesus goes on: “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”

These little ones are Jesus’ disciples. When people welcome Jesus’ disciples and their message of new life through Jesus, they too become disciples. It’s through Jesus’ little ones, followers of Jesus, that others come to know and believe in Jesus as their God and King.

Finally, let’s look at Matthew 18:6 (page 688). Jesus says: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

What do we learn from these three passages and the rest of Scripture?

First, we learn that God transmits the message of new life in Christ through ordinary, humble people, not people the world might call superstars.

Second, we learn that when people receive the message and the messengers of the Gospel, they have new lives. And those who reject them and their message, are condemned.

Third, we learn that Christ cherishes the faithfulness of His little ones, the humble “least of these” of the world who trust in Him as their only God, King, and Lord.

So now, let’s look at our Gospel lesson, Matthew 25:31-46 (page 695). It begins: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him...”

As in other lessons we’ve been looking at over the past few weeks, Jesus is talking about the end of earth’s history, when judgment will come to humanity. The Old Testament has several passages that speak of this final judgment by God. God is portrayed as being on the throne. Here, Jesus makes clear Who He is by claiming that He, “God in flesh appearing,” as we sing at Christmastime, will be humanity’s judge. All the nations--the very nations to which He commands His Church to go with the message of new and everlasting through faith in Him--will stand before the King.

Jesus goes on, “...and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.” I’ve read that even in the Middle East of today, shepherds pasture their sheep and goats together during the day. At night, the shepherds separate sheep from goats. Like the wheat and the weeds in Jesus’ parable in which He says He will allow the righteous and unrighteous to live side by side until the day of judgment, Jesus says that He won’t separate His sheep from the goats until the night of this world comes, when no one can work.

Verse 34: “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”

Salvation and eternal life come to those who receive the message about Jesus through the humble servants of Jesus. They’re the messengers that the world underestimates.

The world would never guess that for me, the great-grandmother who mentored me in Christ and prayed for my salvation is a more important person than all the kings and rulers this world has produced in my lifetime, because it was she who, even when I couldn’t see it, set my course for eternity.

The world would never guess that welcoming unassuming saints with their good news of new life through faith in Christ, like Martha Schneider, my mentor in the faith when I was in my twenties of whom I’ve spoken before...or a simple housepainter named Charlie, who shared his faith in Christ with me on the day of his beloved wife's funeral...or Betty, a woman whose life was hard, yet who openly proclaimed her love for Jesus...or dozens of other messengers from Jesus who have crossed my path in life...were and are more important to me and are more important in the eyes of God and the Kingdom of God than all the VIPs, prime ministers, presidents, kings, and potentates that have ever occupied this planet taken together.

To welcome Jesus' disciples, even when their needs make them weak in the eyes of this world that values the strong and powerful and self-sufficient and beautiful, is to welcome the King of the universe.

To let these disciples' King become our King is to experience life with God and everlasting salvation...the only way to experience these things.

In their humble, unassuming ways, Jesus' children reflect the presence of Jesus within them.

In the eyes of the world, one of the great scandals of the Christian faith is that we claim that the God Who created the whole universe has come down deep into our lives.

He hasn’t overpowered us with His infinite strength.

He hasn’t used His power to force us to believe.

Instead, He became one of us and chooses, by His Holy Spirit and His Gospel, to woo us with His love.

He suffered as we suffer.

He died on a cross.

It was only after He experienced the worst that any and every human being will suffer in this world that He destroyed the power of suffering, death, and sin over us by rising from the dead.

Today, by His Holy Spirit unleashed within them, Christ the King works in the lives of ordinary people who experience the full gamut of hardships and challenges that come to human beings, making them His ambassadors to neighbors, friends, relatives, and strangers who, just like us, need Jesus.

We who believe in Jesus bring Jesus to this world.

It’s as true today as it was when John the apostle wrote in the prologue to His Gospel: “...to all who did receive [Jesus], to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become the children of God [the little ones, huh?] born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

You know what happens with the goats in our Gospel lesson. They’ve lived alongside the sheep all their earthly lives. When they’ve met the King’s sheep, they haven’t welcomed them. When they’ve heard the sheep’s message, they’ve rejected it. To them, Jesus says in verses 45 and 46: “‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

At the end of history, at the ends of our lives, Christ’s judgment over us won’t be about the service we render, though if we believe in Christ we will render service to God and to others.

Instead, Christ will judge us over whether we have received Him through the witness of believers in Him, no matter how inferior they may seem--no matter that they are “the least of these.”

We will be judged on whether we have believed the Gospel message of Jesus, the Servant King.

The words of Jesus this morning have, I think, special meaning for us at Living Water.

Throughout the just completed series of Getting to Know You dinners, the most commonly mentioned aspiration for the congregation is that we would grow.

I want that to happen too, especially spiritually. It would be nice for it to happen numerically too, although it’s important to remember that Living Water is already bigger than 75% of the churches in North America and that the church growth experts would classify this, not as a small church, but as mid-sized one.

And maybe some day, God will bring the millions of dollars we would need to build a facility that allows us to do as much ministry to our community and our world as we’re able to do from this building with which we’ve been blessed.

But whatever God’s plans for our congregation may be, our Gospel lesson tells us that our call will always be the same:

First, to welcome the messengers of Christ and their message about Christ, irrespective of how humble or powerless or worthless those messengers may seem to be.

AND second, to be disciples who point the world around us not to our power, or our class, or our building, or out programs, or to ourselves at all, but always and only to our King, Jesus Christ. Amen

Seeing and Serving the "Invisible" People

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

James 2:1-17
Through the centuries, the New Testament book of James, from which our second Bible lesson for today is drawn, hasn’t enjoyed much appreciation by we Lutheran Christians. Martin Luther himself called it an “epistle of straw,” worthy of being burned.

Yet Luther also said that this New Testament letter had important wisdom for those who already believe in the gospel.

And that’s why I believe the book of James is, as much as any other book of the Bible, the Word of God: It’s a word from God about how to live as though Jesus Christ really is the Savior and God we confess Him to be.

The Church, as I’ve said before, is Christ’s hospital for recovering hypocrites. It’s in the fellowship of the Church that we are confronted by the reality of our sin and hypocrisy, face the reality that death is sin’s natural consequence, and that only those who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus are set free  from sin and death.

But it’s also in the fellowship of the Church, gathered around God’s Word in Jesus’ Name, that God affects those mid-course corrections that we imperfect hypocrites need as we travel through life toward the moment we meet Christ face to face.

In today’s lesson, James addresses one of the most common ways we can go off course in our faith: Showing partiality to some people over others.

Please turn to the lesson, James 2:1-17. James begins:

My brethren [sisters, too], do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?’

The churches to which James wrote were themselves largely composed of poor people. Yet, James says, they fell all over themselves in welcoming rich people to their worship gatherings.

This may have been something they did out of habit; the poor of ancient cultures were taught to be completely subservient to the rich and were also taught that wealth was a sign of God’s favor.

On the other hand, they may have treated poor visitors to their worship the way they did either because it made them feel good to be superior to somebody else for once or because they had been taught that poverty was God’s curse for sin.

Whatever the reasons for their partiality, James was saying it was always wrong! It still is.

And you know what? Partiality of any kind is always wrong.

In a sermon on this passage from James, Pastor Maxie Dunham tells the true story of a woman, Dr. Ridenour, who, in her mid-forties, suffered from a stroke that rendered her partially paralyzed for some time.

“The paralysis,” Dunnam writes, “was an embarrassment, creating a kind of vulnerability and nakedness, a sadness, and an infinite kind of loneliness.” People didn’t know how to relate to her and so, hung up on their own discomfort, they ignored Jesus’ command to love others as we love ourselves and ignored Dr. Ridenour. She became invisible.

Who do we avoid--who do we render invisible--by ignoring them?

“Did you meet the visitors in worship last Sunday?” I’ve routinely asked the members of the three congregations I’ve served as pastor over the years. Inevitably, it seems, someone will say, “No. I didn’t meet them because I never met them before.”

Isn’t that answer a way of saying, “I didn’t meet them because I don’t want to meet them”?

It’s really a handy way to foil God’s purpose for our lives. And what are God's purposes for us?

Take a look, please, at 2 Corinthians 5:20. It says:

“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For [God] made [Christ] Who knew no sin to be sin for us [Christ, though sinless, bore our sin on the cross], that we might become the righteousness of God in [Christ].” 

Through our faith in Christ, God has made us right with God [that’s a big part of what righteousness means for us, being right with God] and we in turn are to be ambassadors for Christ and His kingdom to other people.

But, if we make other people invisible, we won’t have to be ambassadors. We won't see anybody who needs the gospel.

 “I didn’t see that visitor to worship,” we say.

“I didn’t know there were hungry people in Hocking County."

"I didn’t know that my neighbor was unemployed or having health issues."

"I didn’t know about their grief.”

This is no different from those Jesus condemns in His parable of the last judgment. Take a look at Matthew 25:44-45. “Lord,” the condemned ask plaintively, “when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” You can’t see people you’ve willfully made invisible, of no account, unworthy of your consideration, concern, or even a simple greeting.

In Matthew 5:46, Jesus says that, at the final judgment, he will say to those who have condemned themselves by ignoring Him and others, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

Now, don’t get confused!

You will not be saved from sin and death and purposeless living by doing good works.

In Jesus Christ, God has already done all the work needed to save us so that we can live this life with purpose and look forward to living with God for eternity.

Jesus didn’t lead a sinless life, die on a cross, and rise from the dead just to turn you into a neurotic who thinks you have to work hard at doing enough good things to earn God’s love or grace!

God already loves you. That’s why He sent God the Son to die and rise for you.

Turn please to Ephesians 2:8-9. It says:

“For by grace [that is, God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves [you didn’t earn your salvation]; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” 

We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Period.

For God’s “amazing grace,” we should give glory to God every single day!

But faith in Jesus Christ is more than the acceptance of an intellectual proposition. James puts it this way back in our lesson, at James 2:17: “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Faith is a trust in Jesus that will so free us from concern about ourselves that, if we let it, God will open our eyes to see others.

We’ll see the visitor to worship, the hungry, the jobless, the grieving.

The still small voice of God will tell our spirits, “Now that you have eternity with Me, what have you got to lose from reaching out to others? Not even death itself can separate you from Me. So, go for it!”

A man I know, a Christian, hesitated to call on a friend whose wife had just left him. He didn’t want to butt in and he was sure others were reaching out to his friend.

Besides, the very idea of calling his friend made him feel uncomfortable.

What would he say?

How could he handle those awkward silences?

But when he told a wise friend about his hesitation, the friend told him, as gently as he could, “Get over yourself. Your discomfort is not the issue at hand. The issue is that, right now, is that your friend feels alone, isolated from others and from God. You need to call your friend.”

He did and you know what? He learned that he was the first person to have called that hurting man in weeks. He was so glad he’d taken his friend’s advice!

First Corinthians 12:27 says that we Christians, members of Christ’s eternal Church, are part of the “body of Christ.” That means that we are Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, for one thing, it means that no one should be invisible to us. Jesus, God the Son, could have stayed safely enthroned in heaven, listening to the praises of the angels, acting as though you and I didn’t exist, ignoring the fact that without His intervention, we would live this life without His help, die in our sins, and spend eternity in hell.

But the God of love was unwilling to give up on us so easily. We weren’t invisible to God!

That’s why we’re told that Jesus “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And when Jesus walked on this earth, He reached out to and loved all sorts of people: the rich, the poor, the religious, the unrepentant sinners, the blind, the lame, the grieving, the in-crowd, and the forgotten.

Jesus could do that because He operated in the certainty that, as He trusted in God the Father, nothing could separate Jesus from Him: not the hatred of the crowds, not the condemnation of religious or government authorities, not the torture or execution or death on the cross He would undergo.

As believers in Jesus, we can live in the same assurance.

So, this week, I want to ask you to go to God in prayer and make a simple request.

“God,” we can pray, “this week let me put my faith into action. Reveal to me one person who would otherwise be invisible to me. It might be someone I have tried to forget or it may be a stranger I’ve never met. Help me to see them as you see them, as children in need of Your grace and help me to reach out to them in Your love in some way.”

I’m going to be offering the same prayer myself.

May God help us to put away partiality.

May God help us to love as He has loved us.

Faith without works is dead. May our faith in Christ be alive every day!

Kindness Should Be the Christian's MO

My wife and I ate at a place called Jimmy's Pizza in Litchfield, Minnesota the other day. One server was working the dining room, taking incoming phone calls for delivery orders, and checking customers out at the register. The place wasn't packed, but it was a Friday and, judging by the numbers of times new phone calls came in, business was steady.

Our server was amazing, though! She kept up with everything and did so with a smile, an occasional kind comment, and efficiency.

Toward the end of our visit, after we'd told her that we would take our check any time she could get to it, I said to her, "It would be great to bottle up your energy and good attitude and sell them!" She smiled, then moved to clear away the dishes of a party that had just left. With what seemed like a single motion, she put the dishes in one hand, swept the tip from the table, and wiped the table clean.

But then, she whirled around, fixed me with a smile, and said, "Just for the record, that may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!"

It's amazing the impact a simple expression of kindness and appreciation can have on people!

My friend Steve Sjogren likes to riff off an observation once made by Mother Teresa. Steve says, "Small things done with great love will change the world."

The Bible says that it's the kindness of God that leads people to repentance. (Repentance is changing our minds about God, His Son Jesus Christ, our sins and exchanging our selfish views for God's views about what's right and wrong, useful and useless.)

When people repent, they're open to trusting in Christ, the one Who came into the world to bring new, everlasting life to those who dare to trust in Him.

Jesus says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16). 

God has been incredibly kind to me, granting me forgiveness and new life I don't deserve. He's also commissioned me and every person who believes in Him to help others believe in Him. That's why there may be no more important things for Christians, as ambassadors for Christ, representatives of the One revealed to be God in the flesh, to do than to be kind to others.

UPDATE (6/7/2012): See here.

Nevertheless Blessed

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 5:1-12
It was Lent and the congregation I then served was holding joint midweek worship services with another Lutheran congregation. We were spending forty days talking about why bad things happen to faithful people and how we, as followers of Jesus, cope with that reality. I preached at the first service. But I looked at the pastor of the other congregation and didn’t feel good about our topic.

You see, he had already gone through so much: the untimely deaths of his mother, a daughter, and his wife, amid other sorrows.

“I don’t feel qualified to even talk about this subject,” I said, “because, compared to many of you, I have had little pain or adversity in my life.” The next week, my colleague responded to my confession in his sermon by saying, “Don’t worry. You will.”

Those were wise words. The reality that none of us is exempted from pain and adversity causes many people to give up on trusting in God. What does Jesus say to that?

Our Gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 5:1-12 contains the opening words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, including the few verses we call the Beatitudes. It’s a bit dangerous to preach on this text. Most Christians are so familiar with these words that they may think they have no need of hearing any more about them and so, are apt to mentally check out before the preacher even starts.

But there’s another danger in looking at the Beatitudes. That’s deciding just exactly what Jesus’ intent was in giving them. Martin Luther said that in these verses, Jesus is laying down a law so formidable that none of us can keep its provisions and so, we will be driven to Jesus in repentance and so receive new life. Some have said that these are ideals for which we’re called to strive as Christians. Others say that these are the principles that Christians must manifest when taking over the reins of political power, striving to bring the kingdom of heaven into the world by the force of our wills. And there are other interpretations of Jesus' intent. Who’s right?

In spite of the danger, let’s take a look at this passage together. Please pull our your Celebrate inserts and turn to Matthew 5:1-12. Now, to get something from an individual passage of Scripture, before we look at its content, we have to look at its context: What happens in the Biblical book before the passage in question appears? And how are some of the key words in the passage usually used?

In Matthew, chapter 4, preceding the verses of our lesson, Jesus begins His ministry, John the Baptizer is arrested, and from that time, Matthew says, “Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” There are two words Jesus uses in that line that can help us make sense of the Beatitudes: Repent and Heaven.

Some people hear the word “repent” and automatically think that they’re being knocked down or judged. The call to repent is a call to all of us to examine ourselves and confess our sins to God, of course. But to repent also means to simply turn to Jesus, away from whatever might be distracting us from Him. When Jesus calls us to repent, He is calling us to turn to Him for the grace and new life only He can give.

Jesus also says that the “kingdom of heaven has come near.” We’re inclined to think of heaven as a place up in the sky where we’ll live in the sweet by-and-by. But that’s not how Jesus or most of the Bible used the word, “heaven.” In the Bible, heaven is the place where God is and God can be with us anywhere, anytime. In Jesus, heaven has invaded our world and He invades our world whenever we call His Name.

Later in Matthew, chapter 4, Jesus calls the first disciples from their fishing nets and then, to show them what the kingdom of heaven looks like, Jesus proclaims the good news and heals people.

Always a great teacher, Jesus begins by showing His students—His disciples—what His kingdom looks like. When we reach chapter 5, where this morning’s lesson is found, Jesus is ready to describe it to them, to help them to better understand not only what they have seen, but also the way of life to which they’ve now been called.

Look at verse 1 of our lesson, please. It says that Jesus went up the mountain and His disciples came to Him. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai to give Moses the Ten Commandments, the substance of the covenant God was making with His people. The people of Israel didn’t ascend the mountain. Moses was an intermediary between God and His people. But Jesus is the bringer of a new covenant from God. He invites those who want to be in a new and everlasting relationship with God to come to Him. The disciples take Jesus up on His invitation.

Jesus then gives a series of statements about who is “blessed.”

• Blessed are the poor (or humble) in spirit. 
• Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. 
• Blessed are the meek (that is, those who repudiate the world’s power trips and instead boldly follow Jesus); they will inherit this earth. 
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (that is, for a right relationship with God); they will be filled with good things in a feast of love and plenty that Jesus will serve His followers for all eternity. 
• Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, those who bring the reconciliation of God available to all through Jesus Christ—the peacemakers, for they will be in Jesus’ kingdom. 
• Blessed are you when you are spurned, rejected, rebuffed for your faith in Christ. 

The word in the original Greek of our text that’s translated as “blessed” can also be translated as fortunate or the recipients of wonderful news. But not everything Jesus talks about here seems blessed, fortunate, or wonderful.

Who wants to be poor in spirit, to mourn, or to experience the world turning against us for our faithfulness to Christ?

And do we have to attain certain heavenly levels of mercifulness, purity, and disciplemaking to get into Jesus’ kingdom?

I have some bad news and some good news for you this morning, what Luther and the Lutheran Confessions might call some law and some gospel.

The bad news is that, yes, these words do have the force of God’s law. God expects us to be merciful, pure in heart, and people intent on enacting reconciliation between God and others. We’re to be God’s middlewomen and middlemen, what the New Testament calls “ambassadors for Christ.” That’s not always a comfortable position. But God wants us to occupy it.

Compounding the bad news is something all of us, in the waning days of January, our New Year’s resolutions likely already a shambles, should be able to understand: We cannot muster enough will power to be the kinds of people Jesus says are the ones who occupy the kingdom of heaven.

But, here’s the good news. Jesus isn’t telling us to shape up and act right. One author asserts that: “[Jesus’] sermon is not a list of requirements, but…a description of the life of people gathered by and around Jesus…”

People who are living the life Jesus describes in the Beatitudes are often the last to know it. I’ve mentioned before my friend, Sig, who passed away some years ago now. Sig was an engineer at Cincinnati Milacron. So was a man who was part of the church in the Cincinnati area that I served for seventeen years, Bill. Their paths crossed just a few times because they worked at different plants, on different projects. But when Sig learned that Bill had joined the congregation I pastored, Sig told me, “He had a major influence on my faith years ago.” When I told Bill, he said, “I have no idea what I might have done.”

I wasn’t surprised by that. In another part of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about the final judgment of humanity. He pictures Himself telling one group of people that they made their choices in this lifetime; when they ignored the needs of others, they were ignoring Jesus. They would live with their choices for eternity. Jesus says He will look at another group of people and say, “When you fed the most overlooked of the world, or clothed the naked, or visited the imprisoned, or gave water to the thirsty, you were serving me. You were paying attention to Me.” This group—the righteous—Jesus says, will be baffled. They won’t remember doing any of the good things Jesus extols.*

Through Jesus, the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us and we hardly know that as we keep returning to Jesus day in and day out, in

• prayer, 
• worship, 
• the reading of Scripture, 
• receiving the Sacraments, and 
• serving and witnessing in Jesus’ Name,

we are being changed from the inside out.

When the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us, we’re not conscious of our mercy, purity, or faithfulness. We’re not making lists. We're not tracking our good deeds.

This fact is hidden in plain sight at the very beginning of our Gospel lesson, verse 1. Look at it again: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.” You might want to underline the last five words of that verse: His disciples came to Him.

The kingdom of heaven enters us,

• we are changed from the inside out, 
• we are fitted for eternity with God, 
• we enter the process of transformation to become the people God made us to be, 
• we are able to face anything this life brings, 
• we are blessed forever by one simple thing: 

By coming to Jesus, the Savior Who comes to us.

We all fall short of the glory of God; nevertheless, those who turn to Jesus Christ and who keep turning to Jesus Christ in spite of humiliations, grief, and adversity, are filled with God’s glory, now and in eternity.

A few mornings ago, Sarah told us about an acquaintance, a capable and caring manager, who was downsized out of his job in a large corporation. This was after other major setbacks in his life. Sarah asked if Ann and I would join her in prayer for this man. So there, in her bedroom, huddled together, we did just that. I don’t know how God is going to answer that prayer. But I do know that when we draw close to Jesus, the kingdom of heaven comes to us!

Here's a secret none of you probably know: Life in this world is not fair. Jesus acknowledges as much in the Beatitudes.

But when we keep turning to Jesus, we will be blessed!

And, no matter what happens in your life, you can always believe that!

*The two groups will experience very different ends, too. In Matthew 25:46, Jesus says that those who ignored others and so, ignored Him, "will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." This shouldn't surprise us. In Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, "Everyone who acknowledges Me before others, I also will acknowledge before My Father in heaven; but whoever denies Me before others, I will also deny before My Father in heaven."