Hope and Comfort

[This was shared during the funeral of the father, father-in-law, grandfather, and great-grandfather of friends from Cincinnati earlier today.]

2 Corinthians 1:3-4
John 11:21-27

There’s a passage of Scripture I mentioned as we began today’s service. It comes from the first chapter of the New Testament book of 2 Corinthians and says: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort…”

I know something of how important Lee was to people, especially to his family. He was a strong presence in the life of that family, a man who loved his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And he was a vital presence in their lives almost to the end, as the video Dave shared on Facebook the other day, showing Lee teeing up on the golf course at the age of 90, demonstrates. All of you have been blessed to have Lee in your lives and you know it.

But now what?

People who haven’t been blessed as you have, strangers to Lee or to all of you, might not understand that it’s possible to grieve just as much, sometimes more, for an older person who has left this life as it is to grieve for someone younger. When someone has been the patriarch of a family for so long, it leaves a hole in many lives.

So, the first thing that I would say this morning is that you shouldn’t let anyone tell you that it’s time to snap out of it, time to stop feeling your loss.

As I read God’s Word, the Bible, it becomes clear to me that death was never meant to be part of the human experience. We were created in the “image of God,” Genesis says, and the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes tells us that God “has put eternity into [humanity’s] heart…” We have every right to feel offended by death, to resent its removal of loved ones from our lives. We weren’t made for death. It’s offensive and hurtful to us.

Listen: It’s offensive to God and hurts God too. He loves us. He wants more for us than death and grief. He wants to give us life and hope and peace.

That’s exactly why He took on human flesh in the person of Jesus, Who took the death sentence for sin each of us inherits at birth and then rose from the dead so that all who turn from their own sin and trust in Him have a life with God that cannot be taken from them.

When a friend of Jesus, a man named Lazarus, died, Jesus took His apostles with Him to the little village of Bethany. Some regarded this as a risky trip because, by that time, the forces of government and religion had decided that Jesus needed to be killed and Bethany was close to Jerusalem, where temple police or Roman soldiers could easily get their hands on Him. But Jesus went anyway.

Lazarus had two sisters, who also lived in Bethany. Martha was the first of them to see Jesus when He got to Bethany and she was none too pleased with Him. She and her sister had sent urgent pleas to Jesus to come and help their brother. They were sure that Jesus, Who already had a track record of miracle-working, could come and heal Lazarus. But, by the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus was dead four days.

And so, when Jesus arrives, Martha is reproachful. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother he would not have died,” she tells Him. “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” They exchange a few more words, then Jesus tells her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Jesus was offering to Martha at that moment the same thing that He offers you today: hope. Hope that when we dare to follow Christ, dare to turn away from sin, and turn to Him in trust, we have life with God. It’s a hope that God will be with us always and a hope that death need not have the last word over the lives of those who trust in Jesus.

To all people, Christ offers universally and unreservedly the chance to receive what, deep in our souls, we all know we were made for, eternal life with God. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus says elsewhere. “No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.” As we turn to Jesus each day, He brings God’s hope to us, even when we grieve.

But this same God can give something else to you today. I pray that you’ll take it as He offers it to you. It’s mentioned in that passage from 2 Corinthians I spoke of a few moments ago: Comfort. The passage calls God “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.”

If you seek God, the God made plain in Jesus, He can bring you comfort.

I remember being at a funeral visitation. One of the friends who stopped by to visit the grieving family was a man I’d met several times previously. We fell into conversation. He talked about how it had been when he lost his wife of fifty some years. They had been inseparable and he was devastated. He talked about how often at night he would fall to his knees in his bedroom and cry out, “God have mercy on me.” God’s Word, the Bible, promises that all who call on God will be saved. This man, as he called on God for help, was saved from facing His grief alone. “I don’t know how I would have survived without God’s help,” he told me.

And speaking personally, when I had a heart attack seven years ago and needed to be hospitalized, my son spent the night with me. As I lay in bed, I asked him to read some Scripture to me. I'll never forget the comfort I felt amid the noise in my soul when he read the words of Psalm 46:10: "Be still, and know that I am God."

The God Who has experienced death and grief Himself, wants to offer that same comfort to you today.

He wants you to know that you’re right to be hurt by the loss of your father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and friend.

He wants you to know that, for all who dare to trust in Christ, there is a hope for life with God in this world and a perfect life with God in the world to come, and there is comfort for those who run into the strong, compassionate arms of the God Who made you, loves you, died for you, rose for you.

Take the comfort and hope that only the God we meet in Jesus can offer.

And know that a lot of people, including Ann and me and our family, love you. God bless all of you. Amen

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

Truly Remarkable

[This was shared during a memorial service for Gertie this week. She was the mother of a high school classmate I have known since we were in the fourth grade. Gertie was also my Cub Scout den mother.]

Psalm 116:12-16
2 Timothy 4:6-8
John 11:21-27

On Thursday, Eric said something about his mother that stuck with me. “Her life was remarkable for being so unremarkable.”

By that he meant that Gertie’s long life, though not always easy, wasn’t marked by much in the way of tragedy. Born and raised in Jackson County, she and her husband Frank came to Columbus in search of greater opportunity for themselves and, eventually, for their sons, Jan and Eric, on the west side. They raised their children. Gertie doted on her grandchildren and loved her great-grandchildren. I understand what Eric meant by saying Gertie’s life was remarkable for being unremarkable.

But I can tell you this afternoon that from the perspective of heaven, Gertie’s was also a remarkable life! In Psalm 116, which we considered a few moments ago, we’re told: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his servants.”

Part of the problem with living in this world is that we’ve grown too accustomed to death. We look at the death of someone who has reached nearly ninety-eight years of age and say, “She lived a good life. She was healthy almost near the end.”

And that’s true in this world. But in judging things from the perspective of this world, we display a lower standard for our lives than God has for us.

The book of Genesis tells us that we were “made in the image of God” and in Ecclesiastes, we’re told that God has set eternity in human hearts.

God built us not for death, but for eternity. With Adam’s and Eve’s fall though, we have become inheritors of things like aging and disease and death, along with an inclination to rebel against God just as Adam and Eve did. We’ve become accustomed to death.

But God never has!

That’s why He sent His Son Jesus on the first Christmas to bear our sin and mortality on a cross, then raised Him from the dead so that all who believe in Him can have forgiveness for sin and life with God, life as it was meant to be. As Jesus put it to His friend Martha as she grieved the death of her brother, Lazarus: “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.”

God hates death!

And that’s why the psalm tells us that the death of one of His servants is precious to God.

And Gertie was a servant of God. Her servant heart could be seen in the three most important realms of her life: her church (the same church in which Eric and I were confirmed together), her family, and the west side.

My personal recollection of her is that she never, in a phrase I learned from my Jackson County mother-in-law, “put on the dog.” Over the years, my mother has remarked more than once that Gertie  was one of the few women in the Westgate Elementary PTA who didn’t spend most of the meeting time bragging on her kids.

Now, I’m sure that Jan and Eric did many things that she could have bragged about. But bragging isn’t what servants of God do.

They let their serving and their lives of steady commitment to God and to the important things in life do their talking for them. Like the apostle Paul in the New Testament, a servant’s attitude is “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness,” because it’s in the recognition of our weaknesses and vulnerability that we become more dependent on God and His power will shine through lives of service and love and good humor.

I know that in making these observations about Gertie, I’m preaching to the choir, so to speak. The people here at the apartment complex knew what kind of person she was.

Her family also know what kinds of people you have been for her: warm, caring, considerate friends with servant hearts.

The community you share, in fact, may be remarkable because it’s so unremarkable. No great drama. Just aging children of God living in the kind of fellowship, community, and mutual encouragement and support for which God made each and every one of us.

You have been Gertie’s cheerleaders and God wants us all to be cheerleaders to each other. You’ve exhibited the confidence in God’s grace and goodness that makes it possible to live life as the apostle Paul said believers should live. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” he writes. “Rather, in humility value others above yourselves…” Your love for Gertie has been a witness to her family!

A few moments ago, I said that we’ve grown too accustomed to death. That’s true in one way. But in another way, it’s not. If we were as accustomed to death as we often seem to be, family and friends wouldn’t grieve over the loss of a mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend. You will miss this woman who has been such a remarkable (and long-time) presence in your lives. It would be unnatural for you not to grieve!

But there is good news! God did send Jesus into the world to ensure that death need not be the end of our life stories. Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” For all who turn from sin and trust in Christ, that is a promise to latch onto today and for all eternity. We may endure all kinds of griefs and deaths in this world, but God has crashed into this world and destroyed the hold of griefs and death over us. He has set us free to be servants of God, who even as we face our own deaths, can say with the apostle Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The good fight to which Christ calls us, the good fight I believe that Gertie fought each day, was the fight to hold onto Christ. To trust in Jesus, to believe in Him.

To those willing to trust in Him, Jesus gives the power to believe, the power to hold on, the ability to be servants of God who don’t need to “put on the dog” because God has already proven their value on Christ’s cross, and the privilege of living with God forever.

Hold onto Christ today and always.

He will be your comfort, your strength.

He will dry your tears.

And one day, Jesus Christ will give you happy reunions with Gertie and with all the saints who have trusted in Him. God bless you. Amen

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

Shelter from the Storm (Understanding Revelation, Part 3)

Revelation 7:9-17
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is Shelter from the Storm. In it, Dylan's narrator remembers a friend or loved one from whom he has since been alienated. He recalls the shelter she once provided to him, from which he had once drawn hope. Dylan begins the song:

‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When darkness was a virtue, the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"Come in," she said
"I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.”

From the moment I first heard that song forty-one years ago, I resonated with its lyrics. Everyone of us, I believe, at one time or another, in one way or another, seeks shelter from the storm.

We long for that place and those relationships in which we are known and yet loved, imperfect and yet forgiven, broken and made whole.

In fact, I believe, seeking that shelter is the quest of our lives, whether we know it or not.

If we are wise though, we learn in the course of time, that no earthly place, person, elevated status, and no relationship can completely, fully shelter us from life’s storms, or assure us of our worthiness, or give us peace, or grant us life.

We learn that it’s too much to ask of any earthbound place, person, status, or relationship to give us these things.

We may be blessed with imperfect, temporary shelters from the storms around us and within us: marriages and friendships that last decades until death parts the partners; minds and bodies that serve us well until finally giving out. We should thank God for blessings like these.

But we hunger for more.

Why is that? Are we just inherently whiny, fussy, impatient, intent on having perfection as we define it? The short answer is, “Yes.” But there’s a deeper answer.

We were made for more.

And deep in our hearts, down in our guts, in every synapse of our brains, we know it! We were made for more.

The Bible says that you and I were created in the image of God. God’s imprint, His eternal nature, is written right into our DNA. God did not create us to sin, to hurt each other, to be hurt by each other, to age, to be limited by disease, to die. We’re right to feel that if the world was right, these things wouldn’t be part of our lives, that we would be sheltered from all storms.

We’re related to our Father in ways that no other creature is; He meant for us to share in His perfection, righteousness, love, and eternity. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He [God] has...set eternity in the human heart…” We know that we weren’t made to be exposed to the storms, the chaos, over which God’s Spirit first moved and by the force of His love carved out a perfect universe over which we were made to be the godly stewards.

But you know what happened. Adam and Eve, our great-ancestors, fell into sin, bringing all the sins (including our sins, yours and mine) and imperfections and storms that we know too well--into this world.

So, we look for the perfect shelter.

But unless we look for it in the God we meet in Jesus Christ, we will never find it!

As we continue our series, Understanding Revelation, today we encounter people who took shelter in Jesus Christ. And they found that despite the storms they encountered in this life, God sheltered them here in His grace, and when they passed from this life, they entered the eternal shelter for which all of us long and for which we were all made.

Revelation 7:9-17. Follow along with me, beginning at verse 7. “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”

John is, as was true in last Sunday's message, still in the throne room of God. The robes worn by a crowd from every nation of the earth are white, symbolic of purity. They carry palm leaves, symbolizing victory.

Verse 10: “And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’”

In the Old Testament and among Jewish teachers down to the time of Jesus and beyond, whenever you encounter a list with an odd-number of items, you look to the one that stands in the middle. That’s the most important item. What was this throng in white emphasizing? Their thanks to God for the gift of life, for the gift of Jesus, and for the eternal shelter He provides to those who put their trust in Him above all! They were filled with thanksgiving.

Verse 13: “Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?’” The elder asked this of John like a teacher using the interrogative method, helping his student own what it being taught.

But John initially only owns his ignorance. Verse 14: “I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation [That is, those who have lived faithfully in this world despite the obstacles, despite the difficulty of believing good news in a bad news world, despite shunning, dismissive disdain, or persecution.]; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…’”

John saw many things in the revelation Jesus gave to him at Patmos. He saw God on His throne. He saw the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus, the Lamb of God. He saw angels. All of that would have caused him--would cause us, were we to see it--to stand or fall on our faces in awe, hearts racing with the majesty and perfection of God.

But nothing John saw would have given him more assurance, more hope, more peace than seeing this throng of believers safely delivered into the perfect, eternal shelter of the God in Whom they put their trust.

John saw that the yearning we know from the moment we’re born--the yearning to live eternally, to live with purpose unencumbered by all the harsh realities of this world--is the yearning God wants to fulfill for us.

God wants to set us free from sin, death, futility, disease, discord, and separation from others.

God wants to set us free to live in loving relationship with Him, our families, our friends, the world.

God wants to banish sin’s power over our lives and actions and relationships for all eternity!

These blessings were meant to be the birthright of every child fashioned in God’s image. We sold off that birthright long ago when sin took us captive. But Jesus Christ has purchased us out of our slavery to sin and death and the devil with the expenditure of His blood.

It’s an inheritance that we can claim when we wash ourselves in the blood of the Lamb, committing ourselves to lives of turning from sin and trusting in Jesus Christ to be our Savior, our Lord, our King, our God, our shelter.

Like Jesus, we will die before we know this inheritance in full. (After all, we’re not better than Jesus and we shouldn’t expect to live or die better than Jesus! So, to each us, death will come.) But even now in this world, those who take shelter in Christ, find that though the storms of life buffet them, wound them, even take our lives, we have God’s peace. We live confident in God’s grace and provision and love.

When I had my heart attack and didn’t know whether they could salvage much of the 60% of my heart still functional, my son sat in the hospital room and read Psalm 46 to me: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…[And then] Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

The God revealed to all the world as Lord and Savior in Jesus was my shelter, not because I deserve His shelter (I know me very well and I know that I deserve no blessing God might give to me; I deserve only death and damnation.), but because God loves me and wants me now and for all eternity.

He wants you now and for all eternity too!

Go back to our lesson, starting at verse 14. The elder is still speaking to John about this multitude in white. “‘Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. [There’s the promise that will see us through every storm in this life. And there follows the promise of an eternal shelter through Christ.] ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’” What a promise! Eternal shelter!

In Dylan’s song, he says:
I’ve heard newborn babies wailin’ like a mournin’ dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn
"Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.”

Dylan's narrator voice is wrong to think that the ultimate shelter of his life could be found in another human being, though other human beings who trust in Christ can be the instruments by which we trust that Christ can shelter us here and in eternity. (That’s why the great commission--making disciples of all nations, is the central mission and purpose of every Christian disciple!)

But he's right in believing that all is not “hopeless and forlorn.” We have Jesus Christ. All who trust in Him will share in the eternal blessings John saw in his vision of heaven. If we will remain steadfast in trusting in Jesus Christ with our whole lives, we will be part of the multitude John saw, those who repent for sin, take shelter in Christ, and know that they will live with God for eternity.

With the psalmist, through Jesus we can say of God: “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Amen

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

Teach Us to Pray, Part 3

[This was shared last evening with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, during midweek Lenten worship.]

Isaiah 25:6-8
Psalm 37:4
Matthew 7:7-8
Ecclesiastes 3:11

"Give us this day our daily bread..."

In his book, The Journey of Desire, author John Eldredge addresses the ambivalence Christians feel about what we want, the things we desire. Because the ninth and tenth commandments tell us not to covet our neighbors’ property, spouses, servants, or possessions, some Christians seem to have the mistaken notion that it’s always wrong to want anything. But, Eldredge reminds us that desire isn’t bad in itself. To have desires is part of what it means to be human.

And we have enormous desires. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has...set eternity in the human heart…” In other words, we were made by God for wanting a lot more than stuff. Though we may try to fill our lives with the stuff of this world, the fact is that you and I have a craving for what only eternity with God can give to us.

So, what does all of this have to do with the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Martin Luther is right, I think, to say that, “daily bread includes everything needed for this life…” Luther included things like food, healthy family relationships, work, and so on.

But I also think that if these daily blessings are all God had in mind for us, Jesus would not have been born, wouldn’t have died for us, wouldn't have risen from the dead. Truth be told, we need more, much more, than all these things.

If the earlier petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are to be believed, God believes that we need these blessings now. We need God’s kingdom to come to us now, today. We need God’s will to be done in our lives as it is in heaven, now, today.

He also believes that we should, through the ministry of the Church, have a taste of the rich futures belonging to all who trust in Christ. God thinks that you and I need eternity! In Isaiah 25:6-8, God paints His promises for the eternal future of those who follow Him: He will feed us with the best meats and the finest of aged wines and death will be swallowed up forever and God will dry all our tears!

But there’s a problem. The condition of sin distorts our desires.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to eat food, for example, until sin turns hunger into gluttony.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the sexual intimacy that God engineered into our beings, unless we seek it outside the bounds of marriage between one man and one woman.

There’s nothing wrong with desiring to better ourselves unless the desire becomes covetousness or a drive to look down our noses on other people.

The human problem, from God’s perspective, isn’t that we want things. Many of the things we desire are good things, things created and given by God. But sin happens when we desire or take good things at the wrong times, in the wrong ways, for the wrong reasons. Food, sex, and success, along with orderly communities, good governments, and positive reputations are all legitimate things for us want, to ask God to grant to us...in the times He ordains, for the reasons He ordains.

This is important for us to remember when we pray because some people refuse to acknowledge their desires to God. A person once revealed to a group of us that she never asked God for anything. “I don’t feel that I can do that,” she told us. “God has already given me so much. I just don't want to bother him for more.” Thankfulness is a virtue, of course. But that individual underestimated God’s love for her.

When Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer as a model for our prayer lives, He didn’t mean for us to eliminate asking Him for the things we desire. He teaches us, in fact, to pray for them.

But He also put this petition--”Give us this day our daily bread”--in a larger context. Often, our praying is sporadic, episodic. We pray when we’re desperate for the needs we see in our own lives or in the lives of others we know and care about and then more or less shut down the prayer hotline. We risk turning God into a cosmic ATM.

In the Lord’s Prayer though, Jesus shows us that God wants to have an ongoing, eternal relationship with us. He teaches us to pray, Our Father, not Dear Sir. In intimate relationships, you don’t feel restrained in asking for things. Everything is on the table. So, Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop asking God for things. In fact, in Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus tells us: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The way I see it, Jesus doesn’t want us to reduce what we ask for, but to ask for everything with trusting hearts. He wants us to come to God with the same confidence that a child who is loved has when she comes to her mother or father, but also with the same submission, the same surrender. A trusting child will feel free to ask a loving parent for anything, but will, at least on reflection, also want to submit to her parent’s judgment, love, and will, when the answers are no, wait, or maybe.

In the context of a relationship with the Father we know through Jesus Christ, God’s and our perspectives begin to meld. We begin to see things as God sees things. We start wanting what God wants. We desire what God desires. Our laundry lists continue; but as we continue in a relationship with God, that relationship changes our lists.

When I was a young Christian, I struggled with the meaning of a verse in the Psalms. It’s Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I knew that my desires were infinite and not always pure. Did that mean that God would give me anything I wanted, even things that may seem good on the surface, but in the end would lead to my own undoing or to my separation from God?

Then I took a closer look at the verse. God will give us the desires of our hearts when we take delight in Him, when nothing and nobody is more important to us than God Himself…when our relationship with God is central to our lives. That’s why three petitions--“hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”--come before “Give us this day our daily bread.”

The more intimate we allow our relationship with our Father to become, the more similar God’s desires and our desires will become. And the more we realize that in telling us to pray for our daily bread, Jesus isn’t commanding that we ask for or to expect less. He’s commanding us to ask for every good and perfect blessing God has in mind for us every single day we live. Amen

Tough Faith in a Tough God

[This was shared during the funeral service for Irene, a member of our congregation.]

John 11:17-27
For me, there are two words that will always immediately spring to mind when I think of Irene. Those two words are humor and toughness.

There are other words that come to mind, too; words like cheerful, loving, strong-willed, and faithful. All of them are descriptive of Irene. But her humor and toughness, as a Christian, as a mother and a grandmother, and as a person, are what stand out to me.

She wore her good humor everywhere she went: in the greeting line after worship, in visits friends and family members had at her home, and even during her stays in the hospital. Irene could laugh even when things weren’t going well.

And she was tough! There were many weeks when I would call her, sometimes after she had gotten difficult news about her health or when she wasn't feeling particularly well, and she would tell me, “I’m planning on being in church on Sunday.” "OK, Irene," I would tell her, knowing that she would be as true as her word.

Irene wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of her being in worship on a Sunday morning! She knew that, as we gather to praise God and hear God’s Word in the company of other believers, God gives us the strength—you might even say, the toughness—to face all the good and the bad that life in this world brings.

She knew too that worship with our church family also recharges us with the hope that belongs to all with faith in Jesus Christ. This is one of the reasons God calls us to regular weekly worship and it’s why the Bible tells believers “not to [neglect meeting] together,” because in this habit we encourage one another.

Irene’s faith in Christ was evidenced in her humor and in her toughness and I, for one, was encouraged by her faith!

We meet another tough woman of faith in the Gospel lesson from John, chapter 11, which we read a few moments ago. Martha, along with her sister Mary and brother Lazarus, were friends of Jesus. As our lesson opens, Jesus arrives in His friends’ hometown of Bethany. Lazarus has died four days earlier. Many of the siblings’ other friends had come to comfort Martha and Mary, just as people have done for Irene’s family this morning.

Martha sees Jesus and calls out to Him. Martha’s words indicate anger and disappointment with Jesus. “Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

There is an impulse when we grieve to feel that God has abandoned us, to question God and His promises. Some time after the events recorded in John 11, even Jesus, God in the flesh, would feel that God the Father had abandoned Him. From the cross, as He neared His own death, Jesus cried out, “Father, why have You forsaken Me?”

Such feelings are normal. Deep in our bones, we know that what the Bible teaches is true; we weren’t made for death, we were made to live! Several translations of an Old Testament passage, Ecclesiastes 3:11, tell us that God has set eternity in human hearts. We know that death is a foreign intruder that exists in this imperfect world, but should not exist in the Kingdom of God that Jesus died and rose to bring to all who believe in Him. Martha experienced the same feelings all people experience when a loved one dies.

Her feelings are made more poignant by the fact that she, her sister, and her brother all believe in Jesus. Even in her anger and disappointment, Martha calls Jesus, “Lord,” a title the use of which indicates that Martha believes that Jesus is more than a carpenter who does some teaching. She sees Jesus as the Master of the universe, as the One Who brings sight to the blind, healing to the paralytic, and new life to the dying.

In our lesson, Martha underscores that, even in the midst of a situation she can’t understand or explain—the death of her brother—she still believes in Jesus. “Even now,” she tells Jesus, “I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.”

Later, Jesus tells Martha that He is the resurrection and the life and that all who believe in Him, even if they die in this world, will rise to newness of life. Jesus asks Martha if she believes Him and, in the midst of her grief, with no idea that a few short moments later Jesus will raise Lazarus from the grave, Martha says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world.”

Folks, this is resilient faith. This is tough faith. It’s the kind of faith that I saw in Irene. It’s the kind of faith I am sure that she wants you to take hold of today.

It’s a faith that acknowledges the realities of this present, imperfect, sinful world in which we live. But it's a faith that trusts that Jesus, the resurrected Lord, is bigger than all our sorrows and that He gives eternity to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

Today, in spite of sorrow, there is reason for us to be glad.

You see, God is tough too! He went all the way to a cross to bring you forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. It’s to you and me, as much as it was to the people who first heard Him in first-century Judea, that Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the good news.”

That good news is what, even in her sorrow, Martha believed and what, even in her trials and suffering, Irene believed: “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Trust that God’s love is tough enough to love you wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, however weak and unworthy you may sometimes feel.

God endured the cross just because His love for you is resilient, tough, and uncompromising.

Let Him be your Lord today and in all the days of your life. He will give you the faith—and the humor and the toughness—you need to live each day.

And if you let Him, He will give you exactly what Irene is enjoying at this very moment: new life, life as it was meant to be, life forever in the presence of God! Amen

Understanding Revelation, Part 4 (Revelation 21:1-6)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church earlier today.]

Revelation 21:1-6
Have you ever noticed how much we like new things? We buy a car and for the first few weeks after we drive it off the lot, we savor that “new car smell.” We pick the first strawberries of the season and can’t wait to clean them, layer on the sugar, and put them on top of freshly-baked shortcake. And when friends share our enthusiasms, we might invite them to drop by to see our new flat screen TV, our new computer, our new game system. 

Advertisers know all about our love for new things. TV commercials are often filled with phrases like, “new and improved.” They know that will get our attention. And politicians know how much we love new things, too: Woodrow Wilson campaigned to bring what he called the New Freedom; Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal; John Kennedy had the New Frontier; Richard Nixon touted the New Federalism; and Bill Clinton talked about the New Covenant.

I think that one of the reasons we so love new things is that, after a time, we become aware of the flaws of the old things. New things grow old. Fuel pumps and transmissions go out on the new car or it gets dinged on the grocery store parking lot and the car isn’t new anymore. We pick the last strawberries of the season, forget all about them, and they go bad before we even think about eating them; we’ve grown tired of them. Presidents’ new programs go well until they run into things like Congress, interest groups, unforeseen circumstances, and sometimes, their own faults.

The result is that after awhile, as much as we want things to be new, we grow skeptical, even cynical about claims that anything can truly be new or improved. That’s why the Who sang, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” It’s why Paul Simon sang, “Everything put together, sooner or later, falls apart.”

Maybe the biggest reason we like new things so much is that, deep in our hearts, we know that this world is not as it was meant to be. We know that we ourselves don’t live as we were meant to live. When we’re honest, I think, we even grow frustrated with ourselves, we tire of our old resentments, our old unfairness to others, our old failure to love—maybe even to love God--as we want to. We want to be “new and improved” people.

That yearning on our part is understandable. We were made in the image of God. Death, decay, our sin, growing old: None of these things were part of God’s original plan for you and me. God made us for an everlasting fellowship with Him. God made us to stand upright in His presence, with no need to hide from God, as the first human beings tried to do, after they had disobeyed God the first time. God made us to walk in what the Bible calls “newness of life.” The Bible says that God “has put eternity in [our] hearts.” But, you and I are born into a world alienated from God, all of us born with a predisposition to go our own ways, to sin. It’s our inheritance and we start spending that inheritance the moment we’re born; no one is more self-centered than a baby and if their parents don’t “hop to” at the first cry, a lot more crying is apt to follow! Even newborns need to be made new.

As our lives go on, we become more and more aware of our desire for what the Bible calls “a new thing.” But because we, as we grow older, are as self-driven as babies—though maybe a little more polite about it—we go "lookin’ for love [newness, life, hope, a sense of wholeness, happiness] in all the wrong places.”

Marriages hit snags and instead of recommitting themselves to doing the hard work of loving one another till death parts them, husbands and wives give up or take up with someone else or a string of someone elses.

People become frustrated with their lives or become bored by lives that seem to offer them little opportunity and, anxious for something new, dive deeply into things like alcohol, food, personal pleasure, money heroin, or oxycontin.

Preachers aren’t immune from looking for newness and eternity in bogus places, either. I once heard about a respected older pastor who told a bunch of younger ones who were wrestling with discouragement, “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be made right with a new suit and a new book.” I like books, but there’s only one book that can make us new!

Look! There is something is wrong in our lives, something that evidences itself in the lives of every one of us. We long for the newness of life that can only come from the perfect, sinless creator of the world, from God. The holes in our souls can only be filled by God, not by the junk with which we try to fill them. We can only be made new by God!

That’s why the words in our lesson from Revelation for this morning are worth our attention. Listen to them again:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

The lesson presents a vision revealed to a man called John the Evangelist, literally, John the Sharer of Good News. John, at this point, some time between 81 and 96AD, was living in an exile imposed on him by the Roman Empire. John had gotten into trouble because of his beliefs.

• He believed that God had come to the earth and that His Name was Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth.
• John believed that because of God’s desire to give us new lives, Jesus died on a cross, willingly taking the punishment for sin that we deserve, a perfect sacrifice made for all of us. 
• John also believed Jesus, not the Roman emperor of his day, was the ultimate authority and Lord of the world. 
• John believed that all who turn away from their sin and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ have eternal newness of life. 
• And John believed that Jesus rose from the dead as a sign that His promises to those who believe in Him are on solid ground. 

In those days, John's beliefs were seen as unpatriotic, threatening, and seditious.

Today, I suppose, most people would see such beliefs as unexceptional. Or silly. Or meaningless. Or, because he insisted as Jesus taught, that Jesus is the only way to God, even bigoted. But for those of us who agree with all that John believed and have experienced the living love and power of Jesus Christ, the beliefs John confessed are the most important truths that any of us can ever know. God offers us, as a free gift, the newness of life for which we all yearn. But God doesn’t force it on us. God respects our capacity to say no to Him. Yet with every fiber of God’s infinite being, God wants us to say yes to Jesus, yes to newness of life.

The vision that the risen Jesus gave to John was of a new heaven and a new earth, a place inhabited for all eternity by believers in Jesus, drawn from all the peoples of the old earth.

But God even gives tastes of the newness that comes to those who turn from sin and believe in Him in this world. He comes and frees us from our sins so that we can experience newness of life here and now.

Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of a couple who came up to him after worship at his New York City church. They were moved by worship and asked him to bless their relationship. Before he did that, he said, he wanted to know a bit more about them. They explained that they had been seeing each other for two years. Cymbala asked, “Are you living together?” The woman blinked hard and the man stepped back. “Yes,” she said. “You’re putting me in a bind,” Cymbala explained to them. “You’re asking me to bless what God has expressed a strong opinion about.”

Sexual intimacy, God says, is for marriage alone. Those who have sexual relations outside of marriage are stealing a gift that God intended as a sign and seal of love between husbands and wives who have committed themselves, before God and the world, to one another.

Cymbala suggested that the man move to another place in order to avoid temptation. The couple reluctantly agreed. Over the period of the next several months, they received counseling. They learned more about God and God’s will for their lives. They wanted their relationship to be blessed by God. They repented for their sins and committed themselves to living in the newness of life that comes from Jesus.

Several months later, at the end of a midweek worship, Cymbala told the large congregation that something special was coming. The organist began the opening notes of the wedding march and this couple, committed now to coming to Jesus in total submission to Him, confident that he gives new hope and fresh starts to those who seek to do things God’s way, was married. Cymbala says that their occasional sobs of joy could be heard by all in that cavernous sanctuary.

The only bumper sticker I think that I would ever put on my car says simply, “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven.” And as long as we live amid the old heaven and the old earth, we’ll need to come to God in the Name of Jesus to seek forgiveness. I do it every day, many times a day. I call my frequent prayers of confession, “midcourse corrections.” And I need them because the old sinful Mark is still around causing trouble, prone to throwing me off course all the time!

But, no matter how many times we fall, God is willing to pick us up again. In Jesus Christ, we are made new, forever new, forever with God, forever living more of the life for which God made us.

If that’s a gift you want, it’s a very simple thing to claim. Tell God that you want to turn from all the false trails to newness, that you want to repudiate all your sins, that you want to be made truly new, and then let the outreached arms of Jesus save you to live a better life today and a life with God for eternity.

Surrender to Jesus and He will make you forever new! Amen!

[Thanks to Pastor Brian Stoffregen for suggesting this general approach to the text, to Pastor Heath Pukallus for his inspiring sermon, and to all those who prayed for me yesterday when I felt that my first go at the text this week was inadequate.]

Learning to Pray (Third Midweek Lenten Devotion)

[This was shared during midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this evening. We're looking at the Lord's Prayer as a model for our prayer lives. Tonight, the focus was on the fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread."]

Isaiah 25:6-8
Psalm 37:4
Matthew 7:7-8
Ecclesiastes 3:11
In his book, The Journey of Desire, author John Eldredge addresses the ambivalence Christians feel about what we want, the things we desire. Because the ninth and tenth commandments tell us not to covet our neighbors’ property, spouses, servants, or possessions, some Christians seem to have the mistaken notion that it’s always wrong to want anything. But, Eldredge reminds us that desire isn’t bad in itself. To have desires is part of what it means to be human.

And we have enormous desires. Ecclesiastes 3:11, in the Old Testament, says, “[God[ has…set eternity in [our] hearts…” In other words, we were made by God for wanting a lot more than new cars or the latest video game system: We have eternal appetites. Our desires are built right into our DNA by our Maker.

So, what does all of this have to do with the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer? Be patient with me, for a moment; I'll get to that.

Martin Luther is right, I think, to say that, “Daily bread includes everything needed for this life…” But there is something much more to daily bread than what we need for daily living, I think. God has a much more expansive view of “our daily bread” than we do! God believes that you and I need more than just "food and clothing, home and property, work and income, a devoted family, an orderly community, good government, favorable weather, peace and health, a good name, and true friends and neighbors.” If these daily blessings—important and wonderful as they are—are all God had in mind for us, Jesus would not have been born, He wouldn’t have died for us, He wouldn't have risen from the dead. Truth be told, we need more, much more, than all these things. God thinks that you and I need eternity and all its blessings! And, if the earlier petitions are to be believed, God believes that we need these blessings now.

In an imperfect world where bad things happen, we have an appetite for eternity. We need God’s kingdom to come to us, now, today. We need God’s will to be done in our lives as it is in heaven, now, today.

But there is a problem. The condition of sin distorts our desires. Let me explain.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to eat food, until sin turns hunger into gluttony. (Or, in the sad desire to control one’s body or one’s hungers, a person becomes anorexic.)

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the sexual intimacy that God engineered into our beings, unless we seek it outside the bounds of marriage. (Or, in the desire to claim moral superiority, we deny the power of our sexuality and become insufferable, judgmental prudes.)

There’s nothing wrong with desiring to better ourselves unless the desire becomes covetousness or a drive to look down our noses on other people. (Or, as I’ve seen happen with some people, they’re so anxious to prove that they’re not covetous that they give way more than God’s proscribed tithe of 10% or spend so many hours volunteering in the community that they destroy their families, their marriages, or their own health.)

The human problem, form God’s perspective, isn’t that we want things—that we desire things. Many of the things we desire are good things, things created and given by God, including the whole list Luther gives as examples of "daily bread" in The Small Catechism.

Sin happens when we desire or take good things at the wrong times, in the wrong ways, for the wrong reasons. But food, sex, and success, along with orderly communities, good governments, and positive reputations are all legitimate things for us want, or, as the fourth petition reminds us, to ask God to grant to us! This is important for us to remember when we pray, I think.

This is often difficult for us to remember. A person with whom I was discussing a book revealed our group that she never asked God for anything. “I don’t feel that I can do that,” she told us. “God has already given me so much.”

That individual underestimated God’s love for us, I think. When Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer as a model for our prayer lives, He didn’t mean for us to eliminate the laundry lists that often fill our prayers. He teaches us, in fact, to pray for those things for which we hunger, the things we desire.

But He also put this petition in a larger context. For many of us, much of the time, our praying is sporadic, episodic. We pray when we’re desperate for the needs we see in our own lives or in the lives of others we know and care about. We risk turning God into a cosmic ATM.

In the Lord’s Prayer though, Jesus shows us that God wants to have an ongoing, eternal relationship with us. God wants to be “our Father.”

So, Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop asking God for things. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew records that shortly after teaching the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus went on to urge us to pray. “Ask,” Jesus says, “and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” I don’t see Jesus telling those who believe in Him, “You can only pray for this and nothing more.” So, Jesus seems to tell us in this petition, “Bring Your laundry list of desires to the throne of your Father.”

The way I see it, Jesus doesn’t want us to so much change the content of our praying, but its context. He wants us to come to God with the same confidence that a child who is loved has when she comes to her mother or father, but also with the same submission, the same surrender. A trusting child will feel free to ask a loving parent for anything, but will also want to submit to her parent’s judgment, love, and will.

In the context of a relationship with the Father we know through Jesus Christ, God’s and our perspectives begin to meld. We see things as God sees things. We want God wants. We desire what God desires. Our laundry lists continue; but as we continue in a relationship with God, our lists change. As our trust in God grows, our reactions change when God’s answers to our requests are not just Yes, but also: Maybe, Wait, or No.

The person who truly prays, “Give us this day our daily bread” not only trusts God for the daily needs of life, but also believes that God is going to spend all eternity showering us with blessings beyond what any of us could ask or imagine. We believe that we will enjoy that eternal feast described by Isaiah seven-hundred years before Jesus' birth. Through the daily submission of prayer, our lists change and our goals change. We seek, above all, that God’s Name will be hallowed on earth as it is in heaven, that His kingdom—His reign of grace and love--will come to us and the world around us, and that His will be done, in our lives and everywhere.

When I was a young Christian, I struggled with the meaning of a verse in the Psalms. It’s Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I knew that my desires were infinite and not always pure. Did that mean that God would give me anything I wanted, even things that may seem good on the surface, but in the end would lead to my own undoing or to my separation from God?

Then I took a closer look at the verse. God will give us the desires of our hearts when we take delight in Him, when nothing and nobody is more important to us than God Himself…when the chief object of our lives is to glorify God—hallowing His Name, seeking His kingdom and His will.

The more intimate we allow our relationship with our Father to become, the more similar God’s desires and our desires will become.

This transformation will hardly be noticeable to us or to anyone else. But it will happen in the lives of those who truly pray.

A good analogy to the transformation to God's perspectives might be marriage. When Ann and I married 36 years ago, we came from very different backgrounds. My family is mushy and gossipy. Ann’s family was more stoic, its humor of the towel-snapping variety. But as Ann and I have lived together and committed ourselves to our relationship every day, our outlooks, our ways of doing things, have blended and melded. Most days, there’s little difference between us on what we want or how we’ll live.

Something like that, but infinitely more wonderful, can happen as we lay ourselves before our Father each day in prayer. More and more, we delight in the Lord, we desire the same things, and we grow in the certainty that for all eternity, God intends to give us much more than morsels of bread each day. He wants to give us Himself forever.

And that's only a fraction of what God invites to ask for when He teaches us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."

Amen