Christ's Assurance in Uncertain Times

Below you'll find, first, the entire online worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church of Centerville, Ohio. Then, the text of today's message. God bless you.



John 14:1-14

We're now some weeks into the need for sheltering-in-place and social distancing because of the coronavirus. Even as some businesses start to re-open, we know, especially those with children and those who, like me, are in multiple at-risk categories, that the new normal under which we've been living will continue for some time to come.

We may find that discouraging, even when we understand the wisdom my nephew posted on Facebook this past week, “For the record, the virus doesn’t just go away because you’re tired of being inside.” 

My Catechism students tell me when we gather each week on Zoom, “I miss my friends.” 

And people who fully understand why we can’t go about our lives as usual still wonder when there will be testing, contact tracing, and a vaccine, things that will allow them to go to work again. 

One pastor said this past week, “I’m tired of giving sermons into a computer camera.”

To all of us, Jesus says today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” (John 14:1) 

Now, if this is all that Jesus had to tell us, we might dismiss these as hollow words. But Jesus gives us substantial reasons for why our hearts need not be troubled, why we can believe in Him in any and all circumstances, even when we face death itself. In fact, in today’s gospel lesson, John 14:1-14, Jesus gives us four good reasons for why our discouragement should give way to hope and confidence that can only come to those who believe in Him.

Jesus’ words today come from His farewell discourse, spoken to His disciples--His followers--on the night before He was betrayed and arrested, the day before He would offer up His sinless life as the perfect sacrifice for human sin. 

Although Jesus knows with perfect foresight the suffering that awaits Him, His thoughts are not about Himself but about the disciples who will soon watch Him die. He wants to comfort them. 

He wants to comfort you today too. 

So, Jesus gives us here four assurances that will allow us to live with untroubled hearts as we believe in Him.

Jesus’ first assurance is in verses 2-3: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

The believer in Jesus lives with the daily assurance that no matter what, even beyond death itself, there is a place prepared for us. Whether it’s in the midst of a lethal pandemic here or in the perfect face-to-face fellowship with God that we will one day enjoy in eternity, Jesus has a place for us. Our place is with Him. 

He has a place for us now when we come to His table, when He speaks His life-giving Word to us, when we pray to the Father in His name. 

And Jesus will have a place for us when we die and, like Jesus before us, the Father raises us up to live with Him forever. Jesus has a place for us and it’s with Him. That’s His first assurance to us today.

Jesus’ second assurance for us today is in verses 4-6 of our lesson: “‘You know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

Here, Jesus assures us that if we know Him, we will always know the way to go, even when we feel lost or discouraged. We go to Jesus. 

That’s because Jesus is the way to God. Jesus is the way to a life filled with the forgiveness, love, and presence of the God Who made us and has the destiny of the universe in His hands. 

Life in this imperfect world presents its detours; Martin Luther talks about, “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins…” But when Jesus is our way, we have the way through sin, death, and darkness to God Himself. Jesus is the only way to the salvation, eternal life, and wholeness that God alone can give.

Jesus’ third assurance comes in verses 7-11: “‘If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.’”

Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” When you know Jesus, you know the true God Whose love for us destroys the power of sin, death, futility, doubt, and discouragement over our lives and lifts us up to life with God.

Jesus’ fourth assurance comes in verses 12-14: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

Jesus tells us that when we believe in Him, trust in Him, He will do His work through us. Because from His place at the right side of the Father, He can dispatch His Holy Spirit to work in all the billions of baptized Christians who seek to serve God and to serve others in His name, Jesus does greater things now than He did while He walked on earth. 

On top of that, every Christian can pray in Jesus’ name, meaning that we pray according to His will and His character, and see His divine love and power unleashed in the lives of those for whom we pray.

It’s amazing to witness what God can do when we trust in Christ. This past week, I’d just completed one of the midweek Facebook Live Bible studies. I was sure that it had gone horribly. I was sure it had been a total disaster. Then I read some of the comments people sent. “Tonight was a very comforting way to end my day!” one person wrote. “Thanks for tonight. Had a few hours of ‘woe is me’ today but feeling good now,” said another. “So reassuring,” wrote another. To the extent that those comments were true, it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the Lord Who promises to do great things through those who trust in Him.

So, you and I as baptized believers can live each day with confidence, hope, and assurance because of the crucified and risen Jesus. Because of Him, as we turn from sin and turn to Him in trust we know that we have a place with Him, that He is the Way to the Father, that He is the Truth on Whom our lives can be built, and that He gives us a life with the Father that reflects the glory of God Himself. That includes times like these of a pandemic, sheltering in place, and social distancing. Jesus tells us today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” 

This week, may He help us live with untroubled hearts as we trust in Him: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Study of the Gospel of John, Chapter 20

'Easter, 2020,' An Extraordinary New Poem from Malcolm Guite

Called to Be Gentle and Respectful...and Never Squeamish (AUDIO)

HERE is the audio of yesterday's message from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.

Called to Be Gentle, Respectful...and Never Squeamish

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

John 20:19-31
This Good Friday, after we had confessed our sins to God in Jesus’ name, I did something that always makes me feel a bit squeamish. I turned to the congregation and declared, “I forgive you.”

A voice inside of me asks who am I, a sinner who daily violates God’s will as I mindlessly follow the lead of my corrupt human nature, to tell you (or anyone else), “I forgive you”?

And what about the Church as a whole? “What right does the Church have to tell me what’s right and wrong?” more than one person has asked through the centuries.

We all have known self-righteous legalists who, in the name of Jesus, make telling others how bad they are their hobby. They’ll tell people that if they dance or play cards or drink beer, they’re going to hell. 

Some so-called Christians say that if you’re even tempted by sin, you’re going to hell. (They say this even though Jesus, the sinless Son of God, was tempted by sin.) 

These legalists say that even an orientation to sin, whether your sin orientation is to gluttony, taking God’s name in vain, covetousness, idolatry,  engaging in sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage, bearing false witness against others (a favorite sin among church members, by the way), or whatever violation of God’s moral law might most appeal to us, if we are tempted by these or any other sin, these self-righteous Christians tell us, it means we are damned by God.

So, it’s probably good for us to be just a little bit squeamish about telling people, “In Jesus' name, I forgive you” or, “In Jesus' name, I don’t forgive you.” 

But listen: Just because some Christians are self-righteous legalists--and others are equally unfaithful to God by being “anything goes libertarians” when it comes to sin--just because there are those kinds of people calling themselves Christians, doesn’t mean that we should avoid fulfilling the responsibility Christ has given to us as the Church, to pronounce forgiveness to the repentant and condemnation to the unrepentant. 

As the Church, the body of Christ in the world, we have both the right and the responsibility to do just that.

This all comes into focus in today’s gospel lesson, John 20:19-31. It begins on the first day of the new creation, Easter Sunday, when Israel’s calling to be God’s light to the world was fulfilled in the risen Jesus and when believers in Jesus, filled with Him and His love, were given this same call. 

To see what this means, we’re going to look at just the first five verses of the lesson, verses 19 to 23.

Verse 19: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”

The disciples’ Easter morning skepticism about Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead is blown away when Jesus, alive and breathing, shows up in the midst of the locked room in which they’d been quaking in fear. Jesus met their fear with His peace. We have that same peace as we trust in Jesus.

Verse 21: “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Genesis 2 tells us that “...the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being…” (Genesis 2:7). 

On the first Easter, Jesus, the risen Son of God, creates again, a new humanity, one that shares in Jesus’ death, daily submitting to the crucifixion of their sins and daily rising to newness in Him by daily repenting and daily receiving forgiveness through Jesus. He does this by breathing the Holy Spirit into the first disciples. 

When you and I are baptized, we receive the Holy Spirit, the breath of the new life that Jesus died and rose to give to all who belong to Him. “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

As stewards of this old creation, human beings were charged by God back in the garden of Eden, to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:7) Human beings were to reproduce children of God and to rule over this creation while trusting in God. God wanted to human beings to join Him in multiplying the blessings of His love with an ever-growing human family.

Of course, you know what happened. Humanity fell into sin, ushering death, darkness, and futility into God’s good creation. But even as God banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, He put the serpent on notice that He was going to bring a new creation into being through a Savior. He told the serpent that a Son would be born to the human race Who “will crush your head.” (Genesis 3:15) Jesus is that Son, God in human flesh, Who can breathe new life into dead bones.

That’s what He did the first Easter in that locked room. “...he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” 

But Jesus doesn’t give new life or make us part of His new creation just so we can sit back and be pleased with ourselves. Whenever the God we know in Jesus gives new life, gives us a mission. 

The apostle Paul says that just as Adam was entrusted with the stewardship of the old creation, you and I are to be “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1, ESV). 

The apostle Peter says, “But you are the chosen race, the King's priests, the holy nation, God's own people, chosen [What? To sit around and think how wonderful we are or to tell others how bad they are? No!] to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) 

Jesus says that we are to reproduce ourselves by sharing His gospel and His truth with others: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20) 

If we’ve been saved by Christ, we have a purpose, exactly as Jesus said on the first Easter evening: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Quite simply, our call is to be God’s new creation, people pulsing with the new life God gives to those who trust in the risen Jesus. 

And we’re to use every part of the lives God gives to us--our brains, our brawn, our lives, our money--to help others know and see Jesus. 

That means getting out of Jesus’ way, letting Him be he burning center of our lives so that the whole world can know not just what’s a sin and what’s not, but so that they can, through us and the ministries of which we are a part, meet the One Who has conquered our sin, Who can keep conquering our sin as we live in daily repentance and renewal.

In honesty, I can say that I am a sinner and that I daily, often many times a day, feel the need to confess my sins to God and seek forgiveness through Christ. 

But in Christian love and filled with the Holy Spirit as a child of God’s new creation, I can also declare God’s forgiveness to the repentant and His condemnation to the unrepentant. 

Peter says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15).

I believe that if you and I speak God’s truth--His sometimes hard truth--in love, with gentleness and respect, that even when people reject the Savior we represent, they won’t have a legitimate reason to think that we’ve been unloving toward them. 

“I’m gay,” a man who loved the Lord told me one Sunday after worship in a previous parish. He was afraid this meant that God wouldn’t have anything to do with him. “Being gay isn’t the question between you and God,” I told him. “I have sins that tempt me too. The question is what we do with our temptations.” And then I told him honestly, “God loves you and I love you too.”

Listen: The responsibility of proclaiming forgiveness or condemnation for sin, what Jesus elsewhere calls “the keys to the kingdom,” is neither a license to kill with condemnation nor a permit to paper sin over with cheap grace. It’s our responsibility and our joy to speak the truth about Jesus so that, coming face to face with Jesus through us, He will make new disciples and growing disciples...so that, new generations will be able to say as Thomas did one week after the first Easter when he came face to face with Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) 

May we never be too squeamish to share Jesus, the truth of God, so that, just like us, others can repent and believe in Him and be saved by grace through faith in the crucified and risen Savior of the world. Amen


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Surprise! (AUDIO)

See here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Surprise!

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

Mark 16:1-8
When my wife Ann turned forty, I threw a surprise birthday party for her. Friends from Columbus, our first parish in northwest Ohio, and our then-current parish in Cincinnati packed the place. When Ann and I walked in and people shouted, “Surprise!” she was truly shocked! Our friends, our kids, and I had done such a good job of keeping the thing secret that Ann turned to me and asked, “Did you know about this?”

I love surprises! The first Easter came as a complete surprise to Jesus’ first disciples, although it shouldn’t have. Jesus had “let the cat out of the bag,” so to speak, many times.

For example, in Mark 8:31, we’re told: “[Jesus] then began to teach [the disciples] that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.”

In Mark 9:31, we read: “He said to them, ‘The Son of Man [Jesus’ characteristic way of referring to Himself, based on passages from the Old Testament book of Daniel. The Son of Man] is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

In Mark 10:33-34, we see: “[Jesus] said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.’”

And if all that wasn’t clear enough, in Mark 14:28, Jesus even had told them where He was going to meet them after He had risen. Back home in Galilee. “But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

Jesus’ first followers had no trouble imagining that Jesus could be killed. Like most of us, they had experienced death. 

They had also seen the savage ways in which others were treated by the puppet king Herod, his overlords, the Romans, and even the Jewish religious authorities. The entire Roman Empire, including their conquered homeland, was riddled with the crosses on which all manner of people, innocent and guilty, had been executed. 

But it seems that every time Jesus mentioned that He would rise again, it didn’t register with the disciples. They couldn’t get past death.

People still have the same incapacitated imaginations, unable to conceive that the God Who made this amazing if fallen universe, could start life all over again in the Person of the sinless God and man, Jesus. 

Truth be told, we who confess Christ sometimes doubt. It seems impossible that a cross, or an electric chair, a lethal injection, a fatal heart attack, a terminal disease, can lead anywhere but to a grave. That’s why Easter is always a surprise!

Let’s look at at the gospel writer Mark’s account of that first Easter Sunday, beginning at Mark 16:1: “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”

Jewish days started and ended at sundown. After Jesus drew His last breath on the cross, it was nearly sundown, almost the start of a new day, in this case the start of the Sabbath, a Saturday. To have handled Jesus’ body on the Sabbath would have made the pious Jews who made up the original band of Christian disciples unclean, and so unable to participate in the Passover. So, Jesus had been put into a burial tomb before sunset.

The usual practice was for the bodies of the dead to be anointed with spices, then washed, before being wrapped in burial cloths and placed in a tomb. Anointing was an important precaution. In the heat of the Middle East, bodies decomposed and stank quickly. And since the tombs were reopened frequently for the entombing of others, the spices lessened the odor as the bodies decomposed. (By the way, in these tombs, bodies would be allowed to decompose and, after a year, the bones placed in small boxes called ossuaries.) So, the women who went to the tomb shortly after sunrise did so not just to honor Jesus, but also to perform a practical task.

Verses 2 and 3: “Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’” 

The stones that covered the entrances to tombs were large disks that rolled through channels. To roll them away would usually have required the efforts of more than a few strong men. 

The women probably hoped that the Roman soldiers who had been placed at the tomb to prevent Jesus’ body from being robbed would move the stone for them. After all, they might have reasoned, how threatening could a dead Jewish Messiah be to them, or to anyone? 

It’s always been interesting to me that, despite the impediment of the stone, the women went to the tomb anyway, a lesson in faith we all need to learn: Because the God we know in Jesus is always dependable, we can trust that He will always make a way for us to do what He calls us to do, even when it seems impossible.

Verses 4 and 5: “But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.”

Angels, God’s messengers, almost always appear to human beings as young men dressed in white. 

In the original Greek, Mark doesn’t say that the women were “alarmed”; the Greek word is exethambēthēsan, meaning that they were amazed, astonished, awestruck, terrified. This was no ordinary man in white and the women seemed to know it immediately.

Verses 6 and 7: “‘Don’t be alarmed [Don’t be amazed],’ [the angel] said. ‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’’”

The angel’s message to the women? “Surprise!” The risen Jesus was going to meet His disciples in Galilee just as He had promised. 

Death was not the end of God the Son. 

Death could not contain a sinless Savior Who died on behalf of sinners like you and me. 

And death cannot--and will not-- contain any who, at the prompting of God’s Holy Spirit, in response to the witness of God’s Word, dare to turn from their sin and to entrust their whole lives to Jesus, to believe in Him. 

As Jesus told the sister of a friend He would raise from the dead: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” And then He asks her the same question this Easter Sunday morning calls you and me to answer today and each day of our lives on earth, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) 

Do you believe that no matter what your sins, no matter what your inadequacies, no matter what your flaws. no matter what your doubts, you can believe that Jesus is capable of surprising you daily with new power for living, new integrity, new hope, new peace? 

Do you believe that even after the last clump of dirt has been thrown on top of your casket because you believe in Jesus, you will live again with God eternally?

Verse 8: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” 

There is debate among New Testament scholars, liberal, conservative, and otherwise, as to whether verse 8 is how Mark originally ended his gospel.

If it is, it would indicate that Mark wanted his readers, including you and me, to experience the same awe, astonishment, and fear that enveloped the women as they fled the tomb. And to help us confront the same decision the women had to deal with as they fled the tomb: Is it true? Is Jesus risen from the dead?

Soon, like the women as they left the tomb, you and I will leave here. Some will collect Easter flowers and head home. Some will go out for Easter dinner with family or friends. 

But will we trust the Easter message or trust in the Savior the Easter message is about? 

And, like the women after meeting the angel, will we weigh whether we should do what the angel told them to do, what Jesus Himself would later tell all who know about Easter’s greatest surprise are to do?

Later in Mark’s gospel, we learn that Jesus told the disciples: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:15-16) 

Easter is a surprise that our Lord wants us to share! 

And, as the women on that first Easter were to learn, the blessings of Jesus’ resurrection surprise are only fully ours when we dare to tell others about it and how the risen Jesus is changing our lives. The Gospel is the only thing in the world that, the more we give it away, the more we have of it. Easter proves that you can never reach the end of God's grace given through Christ! 

Jesus is risen! And it's a great surprise to share!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]