The Fear That Leads to Joy

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Luke 4:16-30

How do we react to the Bible?

Most people in the world, even people who identify themselves as Christians, react to it with indifference. They see the Bible as a piece of compliant clay, an ancient document they can twist to suit their own desires or impulses. Or they see it as something they can ignore.
Others see the Bible as God’s Word--whether it's law or Gospel, the stuff they understand and the stuff they can’t, the things they like and the things they wish would go away. All of it is God’s Word for them.

These are the people who allow the God of the Bible to be bigger than themselves. They understand God to their Creator and their Savior and they're striving through repentance and faith to recover from their inborn desire to "be like God."

They agree with best-selling author Timothy Keller, when he says, “Only if God can say things that make you struggle will you know that you have met a real God & not a figment of your imagination.”

But each of these reactions have a common origin: fear.

People who attempt to mold the Bible or ignore the Bible fear that it’s telling the truth, fear that it really is God’s Word, fear that there really is a moral law which judges each of us as deserving of death from the moment we are conceived by parents from whom we inherit human sinfulness. They fear that the Bible is telling the truth that the only way for us to have peace with God, ourselves, or the world is for us to surrender to Jesus. And they don’t want to surrender to anyone.

Some though, see the witness to God’s love and compassion for every human being in the Bible, especially in its witness about Jesus, fear disappointing or hurting the God Who gave His Son so that we can live with Him.

When I was a teenager, I borrowed the family car to go out on a date. (I've often wondered what the mother of the girl I took out though when I showed up in a station wagon!) Just before I left the house, as he handed me the keys, my dad told me, "Remember, she's a human being too." I treated my date with respect not because I was afraid of my dad, but because I was afraid of hurting or disappointing this man who loved me so much.

That's the kind of fear that people who believe in God have as they read His Word. Knowing how much He loves them, they fear disappointing God. And when they do thing that they know will hurt God, they turn to Him in repentant faith to seek restoration of the relationship with God that they cherish.
In our first lesson and in the Gospel lesson today, we see two different reactions to God’s Word. Both are rooted in fear. But in one, fear gets the last word, a word that kills. In the other, God’s Word wins, fear is defeated, and God brings life.

The Gospel lesson, Luke 4:16-30, tells the familiar story from early in Jesus’ ministry when He goes back to the town in which He was raised, Nazareth, where He worships in the synagogue. Jesus has already been preaching, teaching, and working miracles. Now, Jesus is asked to read and talk about God’s Word.

He reads from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,  because he has anointed me  to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” These are verses which, hundreds of years before Jesus was born, God inspired the prophet to write of the coming Messiah, the Christ.

During a pause, the eyes of every person in the synagogue locked on Jesus, He says: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Can you imagine the impact of those words? Jesus was boldly claiming that He was the Messiah King prophesied by Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets!

At first, Luke says, “All spoke well of him, and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ they asked.”

Everyone there probably thought, “It’ll be great if he performs some miracles here. We could exploit that.” The people from the Chamber of Commerce thought, "We'll put up signs on the road leading into Nazareth that says, 'Nazareth, Home of the Messiah.'" Someone else may have been dreaming up a Messiah-related souvenir stand.

But then, Jesus does what teachers of God’s Word are called to do: He talks about what the Word means for them.

“I know you want me to do here what I did in other places,” Jesus tells them. “But people in those other places saw Me as coming from God. To you, I’m just a kid from the neighborhood, someone you can use.” (That’s a paraphrase, in case you didn’t notice.)

Then Jesus recalls two incidents from the Old Testament.

In Elijah’s day, He says, there were lots of widows among God’s people. But the prophet Elijah was sent by God to a foreign widow, who, unlike the people in Israel, welcomed God’s Word.

And, Jesus goes on, back during the prophet Elisha’s time, there were lots of lepers in Israel. Yet God used Elisha to bring healing to only one leper, a Syrian named Naaman, who dared to believe God’s Word.

Luke says that at this, “All the people in the synagogue were furious...” They tried to kill Jesus. But because it wasn’t yet Jesus’ time to die for the world’s sins--including yours and mine, He walked through the crowd and left.

What accounts for the reaction of Jesus’ neighbors? Fear.

They were afraid that God’s Word was saying that God cared as much about other people, as much as God cared about them.

They were afraid that they couldn’t rely on being members in good standing of the first-century version of Nazareth Lutheran Church to be saved.

They were afraid that they needed to admit their vulnerability and their need of God as much as a foreign widow or a foreign leper had in order to experience God’s favor.

These fears were all well founded.

But the people of Nazareth were too proud to repent or trust in Jesus to receive God’s grace and new life.

Now, let’s look at our first lesson. Time won’t allow us to go into much detail. But, by way of background, Nehemiah and Ezra were two men deputized by the king of Persia, the occupiers of ancient Israel sometime during the 5th or 4th-centuries BC, to rebuild Jerusalem’s temple and city walls.

Though Nehemiah and Ezra were great leaders inspired by God, the going wasn’t always easy. God will be with us in whatever He calls us to do--whether it’s in our marriages or work or parenting or going to school. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
The believer in God knows that when the going gets tough, that’s the time to lean more heavily on God.

As the progress continued on rebuilding Jerusalem, the people commissioned Ezra to bring the scroll of God--probably the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch or Torah--to a gathering place, then read it and explain it to them.

No doubt God’s people wanted to try to understand what God’s Word had to tell them about the adversities they’d experienced, things like exile and poverty and the splitting up of families and the loss of land God had promised to them. They wanted to know where they’d gone wrong and how they could go right.

For days, Ezra read and explained the Word of God.

It hit the people like a bombshell.

They heard how God had called Israel into being through their ancestor Abraham, an act of pure grace.

How God had freed His people from slavery into Egypt and gave them a land.

How they had repeatedly rebelled against God, hating their neighbor, perpetrating acts of idolatry and injustice.

They realized that many of their troubles had been self-inflicted, because they had not trusted in God. (So often when I read God’s Word, I realize that the same thing is true of my own life.) 

 
Nehemiah and Ezra saw that the crowd was afraid, fearful that they had permanently ruined their relationship with God, that they were lost to God forever. The people were weeping, thinking that all was lot.

Listen: The moment we allow the Word of God such access to our hearts that we know to regret our sins, not from fear of condemnation, but from fear of hurting God, the One Who loves us more than anyone else ever has or ever can, that is the time for rejoicing.

Fear like this is a holy fear that evidences faith and love for the God Who loved us first.

That’s why, at that moment of intense and godly fear and sadness felt and exhibited by the people, that Ezra and Nehemiah ordered that there be a party, a feast, a celebration!

The people had truly heard the Word of God.

They had truly repented.

They truly believed in God.

They were reconciled to God; it was time to celebrate!

Indifference to the Word of God is unwise. “For the word of God is alive and active,” Hebrews 4:12 says. “Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

And the apostle Paul tells the young pastor, Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

It turns out that God really wants to speak to us, bring us His grace and His power for living each day through His Word!

The only question for us as we read, listen to, and pray about the Word of God is how we will fear it.

Will we fear it as something to run away from, to avoid, or to put off until a more convenient time?

Or will we fear nothing so much as we fear disappointing or hurting God and turn instead in repentance and faith to the One Who loves us eternally and wants us for all eternity?

This is the choice which, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, God lets us make each day. Choose wisely. Choose to listen to and study God's Word. Choose the fear of the Lord. That’s the way of life. Amen

5 Tips for Reading the Bible in 2013

It's a brand new year and if you're like many people, amid all the hubbub and football games of January 1, you may already be one day behind in your new year's resolution to read the entire Bible in a year.

Averaging just over three chapters a day, it is possible for you to read all sixty-six books of the Scriptures by the end of 2013. So, if you didn't read your three chapters yesterday, don't give up!

There are many good reasons for reading the Bible.

We Lutheran Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God because it gives faithful witness to the foundational Word Who gave life in the beginning and Who gives new life to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe (surrender one's life trustingly) in Jesus Christ.

The book of John in the New Testament says of Jesus, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...All things came into being in Him." It goes on to say that, "the Word became flesh and lived among us...From His fullness we have received grace upon grace..." (John 1:1-18) The Bible then is God's Word about the Word of God!

The Bible is also the place to find the authoritative answers revealed by God about God, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and how to live our lives each day. As another place in the New Testament reminds us, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16).

So, reading this book is important. But how can you stick with it? Here are a few tips.

First: You might want to recruit some friends who will read the Bible over the course of the year, then meet weekly to discuss it.

In 2011, we decided to read the Bible together in a year's time at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor. Participants read at home, then joined in weekly discussion groups held on Wednesdays, one group meeting mornings and another in the evenings.

Reading the Bible together like this helps us to be accountable for doing the reading. It helps keep us "on task."

A group also affords us forgiveness and understanding when we, inevitably, fall behind from time to time.

And we learn a lot from others by reading and discussing God's Word together in this way.

Second: Find a translation with which you're comfortable.

We're blessed to live in a time in which there are many English translations of the Bible. Some are better than others, of course.

But if you find yourself tripping over the King James Version's thee's, thou's, and begats, consider reading the Bible in a translation that you can more readily understand.

Many translations can be found online, not costing you a penny.

Among my favorite translations are the New Revised Standard Version, the Good News Bible, the New International Version, and The Message. (One deficiency of The Message, by the way, is that it doesn't note the verses the way other translations and paraphrases of the Bible do.)

Third: Even if you do decide to use an online Bible over the course of the year, you should go to the expense of getting a basic commentary of the Bible.

Good commentaries will give you background information on the passages, explain the usage of certain words, and may even contain maps. The Eerdman's Companion to the Bible is one such book. The investment needed to buy this book will, if you use it as you read the Bible, be more than worth it!

Fourth: Consider getting a study Bible.

Such Bibles will contain some of the resources found in commentaries. You'll pay a bit more for a study Bible, but not have the expense of a commentary.

The Life Application Bibles, which exist in several different translations, are really great.

So too is The Student Bible with tremendous explanatory articles throughout by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford.

Another great study Bible is The Lutheran Study Bible, published by Concordia Publishing House. While I disagree with my Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod brothers and sisters on some points of theology, especially in their understanding of the role of women, who I believe Scripture teaches are equal to men, I nonetheless find this study Bible extremely helpful.

I cannot endorse the study Bible published by my own denominational publishing house.

Fifth: Remember Jesus came into the world to give forgiveness. So, forgive yourself when you miss a day of reading the Bible or when events intrude and you miss a bunch of days.

The best thing to do when someone learning to ride a horse, bicycle, or skateboard falls is get back up and have at it again. The same is true of reading the Bible. Either pick up where you left off in your reading or, if you're using a list of dated readings, start in again for the readings assigned for the day.

Remember: Reading the Bible isn't about putting a notch on your belt or proving that you're a Super-Christian.

It's about getting to know God better, the way you do a friend.

A friend won't beat you up if you're unable to make the lunches you planned to have together. Friends understand.

So does God. The intentions of our hearts count a lot with God.

Enjoy getting to know God as your best friend by reading the Bible in 2013!

Deciding How to Live

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

James 3:13-4:8
Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken, begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could. 

Anyone who has ever had to make a decision in life can identify with those lines. We all must make decisions.

Some decisions we make, of course, have more importance than others.

The career path we will follow.

Who we will marry.

How much effort we will choose to put into our relationships.

What to do in caring for elderly parents.

Life is filled with consequential decisions and, as we make them, we feel the need for wisdom.

In today’s second lesson, James, the earthly brother of Jesus and leader of the Christians in Jerusalem, says that there are two kinds of wisdom. And the consequences these two divergent forms of wisdom bring into our lives are dramatically different. Turn please to the lesson, James 3:13-4:8.

James begins with a question:

“Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him [or her] show by good conduct that his [or her] works are done in the meekness of wisdom.” 

Now, truth be told, we don’t like being told to be meek. We flinch when Jesus says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “the meek will inherit the earth.” But, we don’t want to inherit the earth. We want it now! We’re not into delayed gratification.

And if the rows of self-help books you find in most bookstores are any indication, our idea of wisdom has to do with being shrewd and bold about getting what we want when we want it, no matter who or what gets in the way.

James well describes the shrewd, plotting wisdom that the world usually recommends to us:

"But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly [from the world, not from God in heaven], sensual [it gratifies the parts of us slated for death], demonic [from hell, the place of everlasting punishment and condemnation for those who turn their backs on Jesus Christ]. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there." 

The problem with the wisdom generated by human beings is that it’s me-centered. Buy into the “wisdom” of this world and you may achieve things that the world considers great, but you will not be in alignment with God’s will that we love God and love others as we love ourselves. You will, as Jesus says, "gain the world and lose your life."

This sort of death-dealing wisdom even has been given place in the twenty-first century Church.

For example, some conservative denominations and Christian megachurches wrap Jesus in the American flag to justify everything about American traditions and values, to give them the sheen of holiness. In doing so, they subordinate Jesus to the United States, engaging in an idolatry that appeals to those who are certain that, even if God isn't a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or socialist, God is an American. This false wisdom may help churches get along with people who would rather not be confronted with the truth about the flaws of this nation we love, but it will leave the people who accept it far from the true God of the universe we know in Jesus.

Sadly, many embrace other forms of false and worldly wisdom in the so-called "liberal" denominations, like our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

An official web site of our ELCA, called Living Lutheran, recently published a sermon by Pastor Delmer Chilton, an assistant to the bishop of the ELCA’s Southeastern Synod. His text was Mark 7:24-37, a passage of the Bible that we looked at a few weeks ago. It deals with Jesus’ encounter with a Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile, a non-Jew, whose daughter had a demon.

Jesus, you’ll remember, at first appears to refuse the woman her request. “Let the children [by which Jesus means the children of Israel] be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” “Dogs” was the put-down term Jews used about Gentiles, who they believed could never be saved from sin and death nor be right with God. But we know that Jesus came to die and rise for all people, giving eternal life to all who turn from sin and believe in Him alone as God and authority over their lives.

We also know that Jesus is God the Son: all-knowing, all-powerful. “The Father and I are one,” Jesus tells us [John 10:30].

So, we are momentarily mystified by Jesus’ seeming refusal of this woman’s request.

But as we pointed out a few weeks ago, the word that Jesus uses for dogs is the word for puppies. The Syrophoenician woman immediately picks up on Jesus’ playful phrasing, understanding not only that Jesus is going to grant her request, but that He is using this incident as a memorable sign that His grace can reach and change the life of any person, whatever their nationality or former religious persuasion. As Jesus will put it elsewhere in Mark’s gospel, “The one who believes in Me and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe in Me will be condemned.”

In his ELCA official web site sermon, Delmer Chilton ignores all that Jesus claims about Himself throughout the rest of the gospels and says that Jesus really was going to turn the Syrophoenician woman down until she taught Jesus what it means to be God and Savior of the world. Chilton claims that after this encounter, “Jesus stands corrected...the woman has helped Jesus understand a difficult part of Scripture and a difficult part of his call.”

Folks, this is the cunning, shrewd, self-serving wisdom of the world dressed up as Christianity. It’s the same kind of sin the devil has been enticing proud people into embracing since the garden of Eden.

You see, if you whittle God down to your size, then you, not God, can call the shots. You can tell God how to be God. You can decide what truths in God’s Word you’ll accept as authoritative over your life and what ones you’ll ignore or denigrate. It allows you to remake Christian truth in ways that are more palatable to you.

Operating from the same mindset, the pastor of an ELCA congregation in Santa Fe, New Mexico told another newspaper a few weeks ago that Bible “is not a talking book” [a surprise to anyone who’s been taught that the Bible is the Word of God in which God speaks to us] and then, he asserted, the Bible “doesn’t tell me what to do.”

Turn please, to 2 Timothy 3:16. It says:

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof [that means censuring or rebuking for wandering away from God’s will], for correction, for instruction in righteousness...” 

There are things we may not understand in the Bible, but it is the living Word of God, the place we go to find hope, salvation, truth, and God's will for our lives. It records God's definitive disclosure of Himself, first to ancient Israel and ultimately to all the world, through Jesus Christ. This is the God Who will give us wisdom for every decision we may face in life, if will will only ask for it in Jesus' Name. James 1:5 reminds us: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him [or her] ask God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given...”

The kind of wisdom that we need isn’t the wisdom of the world, or of the devil, or even from within ourselves. James describes it in James 3:17: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”

Life is too big for us to figure it out on our own.

We need the wisdom God gives to those who humbly surrender their lives to Jesus Christ. Look again at our text, at James 4:7-8:

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

In my own life, whether before I turned from atheism to faith in Christ or in the years since I fell in love with Jesus, I have always gotten into spiritual danger, relational danger, and the danger of forgetting who God made me to be and who Christ, by His cross and resurrection, freed me to be in when I do three different things.

I've gotten into trouble when I have followed my own thoughtful analysis of circumstances, instead of following Jesus. God gave us our brains. So, we are to use them. But if my brain isn't subordinated to the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ, I will inevitably make unwise choices. As Proverbs 14:12 reminds us: “There is a way that seems right to [human beings], but its end is the way of death.”

I've also gotten myself into trouble when I have followed my heart instead of following Jesus. God gave us our emotions and they can bless our lives. But if my heart isn't subordinated to Jesus Christ, I make unwise decisions. Jeremiah 17:9 says that the human heart "is devious above all else; it is perverse..."

I've also gotten myself into trouble when I've followed the crowd or some individual I respect or like, instead of following Christ. Proverbs 11:14 tells us, "Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in abundance of counselors there is safety." It's good to get the advice of other people. But if those other people aren't following Jesus, their advice is, at best, suspect.

I've gotten myself into trouble in life then, when I haven't followed the wisdom of God.

But, how can we operate from God’s wisdom, rather than the wisdom of the world?

For me, one passage of Scripture seems to best summarize God’s counsel and command for those who want to live in the wisdom of God every day of their lives.

Please turn to Romans 12:1-2.

It says:

“I beseech you therefore, [brothers and sisters], by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Wisdom--as well as life, hope, and joy--comes to those who give their all to the God Who gave His all to us in Jesus Christ. Wisdom comes to those who surrender to Christ! 

Jesus says, “...wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction [that is, to hell and separation from God], and there are many who [take this route]...[But] narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

We all have decisions to make in life. Surrender to Jesus Christ and God will guide you to make wise choices.

Sometimes those choices will lead you through pain and growth and maturity you’d just as soon not acquire.

But when you choose to follow Jesus Christ, you will always be living wisely.

You will always be on the way that leads to life. Amen

Why Resist Evil?

[This is the sermon prepared for delivery at this morning's 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. You are invited to worship with us any time.]


Mark 6:14-29
With its account of John the Baptist’s execution, our gospel lesson from Mark for today is so laced with evil that it’s disturbing. I’d rather just close the Bible on this passage today and move on to Holy Communion.

But that’s no way to treat the Bible, God’s revealed Word. Second Timothy 3:16, in the New Testament, says that, “all scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” That’s true even of the disturbing parts.

And when I think of it, what I see in today’s Gospel lesson is a lot like what I see in life on Monday through Saturday. As wonderful as this life can be, there are things I would rather not face. These are the evils—like the inhumane things that human beings sometimes do to one another—that, when you learn of them, make you wonder, “How could this have happened? How can people be so cruel or sadistic?”

And I’m not talking just about murders or holocausts. I’m thinking also of the everyday evils, the cutting, harsh ways in which we all can diverge from the clear will of God to love God and love neighbor:

The husband or wife who ignores the spouse.

The parent who discourages a child.

The child who is disrespectful to the parent.

The customer who berates the clerk at the store.

None of us wants to be mistreated. Yet, often we can find ourselves subjecting others to the very disrespect or callous disregard that we hate to receive!

We all are sinners, of course. That’s the burden that the sinless Jesus came to take from us, the weight He took on His own shoulders on the cross so that all who repent for sin and trust in Him will have life with God forever.

As Christians, we’re called to do daily battle with our sin, which, if ignored, acts as a wall between God and us, between life and death.

We’re called to keep grabbing the strong, outstretched hand of Jesus Christ so that the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed by God’s powerful grace and deathless love.

That isn’t always as easy to do as it seems it should be.

You’ve heard me speak before about the frog in the kettle. A frog haplessly plopped himself into a kettle full of water that set on a stove top. Shortly after he got there, someone turned on the burner underneath the kettle. The frog, being a cold-blooded animal, adaptable to the world around him, didn’t realize he was being boiled to death.

Only insane people set out to be evil. Yet, like the frog in the kettle, sometimes people who should know better, are capable of evil, of cruelty to others. We allow our kettles--our environments, the world and the people around us--to dictate how we will act and react in everyday life. We adapt ourselves so well to the world around us that we boil ourselves in our own sin.

Herod Antipas was a man who should have known better than to fall into evil. He had been schooled in God’s will through a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. On top of that, Herod had good political reasons for avoiding evil: Though his family had no legitimate claim on the honor, they had for generations held themselves to be Israel’s royal family. It was so important to Herod Antipas to be seen as the “king of the Jews” that he had undertaken to build a new temple on Mount Zion, the same spot in Jerusalem where, a thousand years before, King Solomon had built the first temple. Both spiritual training and political common sense should have kept Herod from evil.

But our Gospel lesson for today tells us that Herod perpetrated a horrible evil: Ordering the execution of John the Baptizer, whose crime was speaking the Word of God.

How that happened, a story you know well, comprises most of the lesson. Please turn to it, Mark 6:14 to 29. The stotry comes in what the moviemakers would call a flashback. Herod gets reports about the miracle-working ministry of Jesus and is convinced that John, whose beheading he had ordered, has come back from the dead. The memory of his evil clearly haunted Herod.

We’re then told about the night Herod threw a birthday party for himself, how the daughter of his wife—the wife he had stolen from his brother--had danced for him, pleasing Herod a lot, how—probably a little more than drunk—Herod had promised the girl anything in exchange for the dance, how she had asked her mother what to ask for and was given the chilling reply (in verse 24), “The head of John the Baptist,” and how, in spite of what Herod knew to be right, he complied with the girl’s wish.

It was an act of evil equal to anything you might hear about tonight on the Eleven O’Clock News. But I believe that our gospel lesson can help us to avoid falling into evil ourselves.

It does this by helping us to see that evil happens, first of all, when we want what we want more than we want what God wants. Herod wanted his wife’s daughter. He let himself be led by his lust and not by God.

That sort of thing can happen to us, too.

It may not be lust that leads us.

It might be materialism or acceptance or even a competitive spirit grown out of right proportions.

A woman, upset with herself, once told me, “I don’t know what happens to me at work. It’s like I’m a different person. I say and do things to get by or get what I want that, a few years ago, I could never have imagined myself doing.”

This woman was a frog in a kettle and she didn’t know how to get out! She was being led by things other than God.

Evil also happens when we’re more concerned with how we appear than we are with who we are. Herod kept his vow to his wife's daughter because he didn’t want to seem like a welcher to his guests. He didn't want to seem incapable of or unwilling to keep his word. He let the opinions of others lead him into evil.

Years ago, a pastor I know taught me a valuable lesson. One week, he made a mistake, one that the congregation needn’t have known about, not a sin, but a failure to make a deadline which cost the church some money. The first thing that pastor did the following Sunday morning during the announcements was stand up and apologize. If he had worried about appearances, he wouldn’t have said a word. But he was willing to admit his imperfections and gained credibility for it.

Evil also happens when we ignore the Word of God. Herod, in spite of the judgment against his actions he could hear in John’s preaching, liked to listen to John. He knew that John’s words were from God. Yet, at his birthday party, Herod turned a deaf ear to God’s Word and he ordered the execution of a man whose crime had been clearly speaking God’s Word.

It’s clear that to avoid evil, we need to:

• keep God’s will foremost in our priorities, 
• be focused on our character than our status, and 
• remain attentive to God’s Word. 

It’s by these means that the God we know in Jesus Christ can free us from the push to selfishness and evil that exists within us and around us.

But that still leaves us with a question: What’s in it for us? At the end of our Gospel lesson, after all, Herod was still alive, still on his throne, and John’s body was taken away by his disciples for burial. Herod had caved into evil. John had remained faithful to God. So, does it really pay off for us to resist evil?

Of course, there’s the obvious answer to that question: Those who faithfully seek to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ will, in spite of our sins and failings, spend eternity with God. Jesus promises: “the one who endures to the end will be saved” from sin, death, and separation from God.

But there are more immediate rewards for those who commit themselves to keeping hold of Christ’s hand and resisting the temptation to sin. They’re mentioned in our lesson from Ephesians for today. We’re given, we’re told “every spiritual blessing.” Herod went to bed on the night he killed John the Baptizer knowing that he had done evil and that barring a renewal of his relationship with God, on a collision course with hell.

Unlike Herod Antipas, John the Baptist lived and died with the certainty that, even in the midst of things he couldn’t and didn’t fully understand, in resisting evil, in seeking to follow God faithfully, he had a Lord, a Friend, and an Advocate Who would never desert him, not even at the gates of death. Who, do you suppose, died a happier man: Herod Antipas or John the Baptist?

Sometimes, people ask me, “Where is God?” The simple truth is that God is present for all who want God around. God is present for all who call on the Name of Jesus Christ. If you want Jesus in your life, you can find Him in the Word of God, in prayers in Jesus’ Name, in the fellowship of the Church, in the Sacraments, in the neighbor you’re called to serve and share the gospel with each day.

And having Jesus Christ at the center of our lives makes all the difference in this life and in the one to come. And, finally, gloriously, eternally, joyfully, having Jesus Christ at the center of your life makes resisting evil worth all the trouble it can bring to our lives. Amen

What is a Lutheran?

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

John 8:31-36
It happened more than twenty-five years ago in New England, where Lutherans are about as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth. In his office, the pastor of a newly developing congregation received a telephone call. The caller had a simple question. “What is a Lutheranian?” she asked.

Overlooking that mispronunciation, the caller’s question is still a good and important one. Answering it isn’t some esoteric, theological head trip. After all, we are a Lutheran congregation, people who believe the Lutheran Confessions' understanding of Christian faith. If we can’t answer the question, “What is a Lutheran?” how Lutheran are we really?

On this Reformation Sunday, 2009, I want to talk with you about what a Lutheran is. For the historical background on Lutheranism and the Reformation, please take the red insert home with you today.*

But to answer our question, “What is a Lutheran?” I ask you to take a look at the bulletin cover. There, in addition to pictures of the Bible, of Martin Luther, and of Luther’s personal seal, you’ll also find three words printed over a single larger word. These convey what Lutherans see as the three foundational truths of Christian faith:

• Grace alone,
• Faith alone, and
• Scripture alone (or Word alone).

Lutherans are people who, first and foremost, believe in grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. But, what does this mean?

When the thirty-three year old German monk and priest, Martin Luther accidentally began the Reformation movement, he found himself addressing both a religious elite that no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own supposed wisdom, and Christian masses whose allegiance was to the Church as an institution, a habit, rather than a personal fellowship with the living God.

No wonder that the elites hated Luther.

No wonder that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose confederation of states supposedly bound together by their allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that any one was authorized to kill Luther on sight.

Luther’s faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Bible undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other Lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them comfort, control, or power.

But the experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. If you take time to read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time. Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a little tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God.

Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they had a good time.

Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities, maybe ensconcing wealth as a sign of God’s favor and love.

It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to God.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John. Just before our lesson, Jesus once more foretells His crucifixion and resurrection. Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism. "Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,” our lesson begins, “’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Lutheran Confessions hold up certain truths which, often it seems, the world would rather forget.

Lutheran Christians believe that we are free from sin, death, and futility in our daily lives, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus didn’t come to us and say, “Perform these religious acts and I will set you free from sin, death, and futile living.” Jesus came to us and offered new and everlasting life as a free gift, an act of charity from God.

Paul writes in the New Testament book of Romans, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s all of us apart from a relationship with Christ]…God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The Greek New Testament word that is translated in our Bibles as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity, a gift we cannot earn. We are saved by God’s grace alone.

The apostle John gets at this same reality in his first epistle, where he says, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

For the Christian, we believe, all depends on God's grace. Not our works. Nor our feelings. Not our thoughts. Only on God's grace. A friend of mine has the perfect response for those who ask Lutherans, “When were you saved?” “That’s easy,” my friend says, “on a hill outside Jerusalem two-thousand years ago.” What is a Lutheran? First of all, someone who believes that their salvation has nothing to do with them, but is a result of God’s grace, given in Christ, alone.

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they persisted in trusting in Him.

Throughout the Gospel of John, we see Jesus described as the foundational Truth of the universe, God-in-the-flesh Who spoke creation into being. Life outside of a relationship with the God made known in Christ is a lie, disconnected from the only One Who can give us life.

That’s why, just a few verses after our Gospel lesson in John, Jesus will tell the same people that because they are unwilling to accept His Lordship and authority, His call to turn from sin and follow Him, they are really following a different father, “…[Y]ou cannot accept my word…” Jesus says, “[because] you are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in Him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

But faith, the gift God gives to those willing to receive it, can overcome what Martin Luther marked as our enemies—the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.

That’s why Jesus says elsewhere, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…”

And to Martha, the sister of His friend Lazarus, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.”

What is a Lutheran? It’s someone who believes that God’s grace is taken in hand by those who dare to trust—to have faith in--Jesus Christ alone.

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone. Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus, and also through the definitive, authoritative, inspired Word of God, the Bible, a library of books inspired by God the Holy Spirit.

In Luther’s day, the Church added to and ignored the witness of God about Jesus and the will of God found in the Scriptures. Luther said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.

Luther believed Paul’s words to the young pastor Timothy found in the New Testament, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…”

We may want to know much more, but everything you and I need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about who can be trusted, is found within the covers of the Bible. Knowing this truth will set us free.

That’s why the Lutheran Confessions say, “We believe, teach, and confess that the…writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged…”**

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. People ignore how unique and different the Bible is from all the other books of other religions.

The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism.

The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work or claw our way to heaven or a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions.

The Bible is a spiritually consistent revelation given by God to many people inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, God saves us, God loves us, and how God wants to be reconciled to us.

And thousands of years of living with the Bible’s revelations of God, of Christ, and of the will of God have shown repeatedly that the Bible is more than just a collection of sixty-six ancient books.

It’s a book whose words from God have the power to change the lives of those who stand under their authority.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit…able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

John ends the twentieth chapter of his Gospel by underscoring the life-giving power of the Bible, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone.

It was true in 33AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all time.

What is a Lutheran?

At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their lives on those truths.

And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to [reject dependence on Scripture]…God help me.”

And may God help us. Amen

*You can read that here.

**This is from Part One of the Formula of Concord, one of the foundational confessional documents of Lutheranism.

Christian Faith: The Basics, Part 39

Yesterday, we said that two of the tools the Holy Spirit uses in sanctifying believers in Christ is "the holy catholic Church" and "the communion of saints."

But how does this communion, the Church, come into being? Very simply, through the Word of God.

Before you skip ahead, thinking you know what I mean in talking about the Word of God, hold on.

When you saw that phrase, Word of God, you probably immediately thought of the Bible. And, of course, Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God. My own Lutheran tradition says that the Bible is the "authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice." The Church dares make no claims about the will of God that aren't supported by what is revealed about God's will in the Bible.

But the authority of the Bible, its "Word-ness," isn't self-referring. The Bible can be claimed to be the Word of God only because it faithfully and unerringly presents The Word of God, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity.

Employing language that would have been familiar to both his Jewish audience steeped in the Torah and to his Gentile audience knowledgeable of Greek philosophy, John wrote in the overture to his Gospel about Jesus Christ, the Word of God:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, ³through him. And without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. ⁴In him was life');" onmouseout="return nd();" and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, to his own home');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, the Father’s only Son');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* full of grace and truth. ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,It is an only Son, God, or It is the only Son');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* who is close to the Father’s heart, bosom');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* who has made him known. [John 1:1-5, 10-14, 16-18]

The entire Bible is the Word of God because, it displays the Word of God: God the Son, Who was a the Second Person of the Trinity when God created the universe and Who entered the world to give new life to all who believe in Him.

Paul, obviously writing about the Old Testament, the Bible he knew in the first century, said that, "all scripture is inspired by God [breathed or Spirit-ed by God] and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" [2 Timothy 3:16]. Inspired by the same God Who inspired the Old Testament writers, the Church has come to see what we call the New Testament as on a par with the writings to which Paul referred.

That phrase, inspired by God, is key to understanding the uniqueness of the Bible. Without the inspiration of God, the Bible wouldn't be the Word of God. It would just be writings on a par with a Sue Grafton mystery, the latest issue of People magazine, or a report on pork bellies.

To describe anything as being inspired by God is to say that it's God-breathed. It's infused with the Spirit of God.

In the Old Testament Hebrew, the word translated as spirit, which can also mean wind or breath, is ruach. In the first of two creation accounts found at the beginning of Genesis, God's ruach--breath, mighty wind, Spirit--moves over a primordial chaos and life comes into being. In the second creation account, God breathes His ruach--Spirit, breath--into stuff and human life comes into being.

The Greek New Testament word, pneuma, has the same multiple meanings as ruach. Before His crucifixion, Jesus promised that He would not leave His followers orphaned; He would send the Holy Spirit. This Spirit breathes new life--the life of God--into believers. The Holy Spirit is the One Who imparts faith and the power to live to Christ's followers even today. Christians today live the truth of what Jesus talked to Nicodemus about:

...⁵Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. same Greek word means both wind and spirit');" onmouseout="return nd();">^{* 7}Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You Greek word for you here is plural');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* must be born from above.” anew');" onmouseout="return nd();">^{* 8}The wind same Greek word means both wind and spirit');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ [John 3:3-5]

Fine, you may say, but what does all of this have to do with the Church? Sometimes, sadly, it seems very little. When you consider all of the strange and even sinful things that the institution we call "the Church" and indivduals who identify themselves as Christians do in the world, you can't help wondering if anyone is paying attention to the Word of God, be it Jesus or the Bible, at all.

But if you've read the Bible, the reality of sinning, erring Christians won't surprise you. Yesterday, remember, we said that one definition for saints is forgiven sinners. The Church, as I've said elsewhere, is a fellowship of recovering sinners, people learning to give up their addictions to self or to the things they can see, hold, control, or manipulate, a gathering of people learning to rely totally on Christ. But we Christians are only learning these things. Sometimes even the most well-intentioned of believers forget. They sin. Or they err even while making good-faith efforts to follow Christ.

There are even, Jesus warns us, pseudo-Christians who hang out with the Church folk, but who are really far from God. That's a point of Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds. Out of kindness, in the hope that true faith in Christ will take hold in all people, inside and outside the Church, Christ lets the weeds grow beside the wheat. But there will be a reckoning.

In the meantime, old believers are sustained and new believers are created by the powerful Word of God, the good news about Jesus presented by words and actions. Paul writes:

...faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of [or the word about] Christ. [Romans 10:17]

The Church, not a building or an organization, but a living organism, is brought into being by the living, Holy Spirit-sustained Word of God. The Church happens wherever Jesus Christ is truly proclaimed. The Church happens wherever the Spirit blows and brings refreshment to those desperate enough to receive the Word of God.