Two Great Promises for the Grieving

[This message was shared this afternoon at the funeral for Dorothy.]

Psalm 23

Romans 8:31-39

I only met Dorothy a few times at Baptisms. She was friendly and open. 

But last week, as I met with Loretta and Karen and some of the family, I learned of a warm and adventurous person who happily took on challenges–like making wedding gowns and bridal party dresses–and who dealt with life with good humor. 

She liked to mark holidays in a big way, putting up decorations and sending out cards with notes. She wrote Christmas letters and letters for special occasions. She did for others, including not just family members, but also neighbors and friends.

I loved hearing about how she and her family dealt with the inevitable conflicts that arise in any family. She spoke her mind and the other family member spoke theirs, then there would be peace between them. It reminds me of what God’s Word says: “If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day.” (Ephesians 4:26, Good News Translation) In other words, dust-ups between people who love each other are inevitable; but by God’s power, our call is to resolve our disagreements, forgive each other, and move on. Dorothy seemed to live this.

She was well-loved. I like what Mason wrote in one of his notes to me during my meeting with the family last week: “She always cared for us…She never been rude to us…She is loved.” That’s a great eulogy by an eight-year-old!

But in the midst of your sorrow today, God’s Word brings you all both comfort and hope. Both of the Bible passages the family has chosen for today bring these two gifts from God.

Psalm 23 is the most famous of the 150 hymns that make up the Old Testament book of Psalms. Its composer, King David, was a shepherd. So, not surprisingly, David saw God as the shepherd of people who put their trust in God. 

Sheep, it should be said, are stupid. They easily get lost, wandering off for the next enticing thatch of grass, heedless of danger. They’re defenseless against predators, just like you and I are subject to the dangers of sin, death, and temptation. Just as sheep need shepherds, we need God, our good shepherd, to lead us away from sin, death, darkness, and despair, to lead us to forgiveness, life, hope, and peace.

Jesus, God the Son, called Himself “the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.” But ten centuries before Jesus’ birth, David could see that God wanted nothing more than to shepherd, to lead, anyone who trusts in Him through the hard moments of this life into an eternity with God beyond all grief, tears, or goodbyes.

David writes in our psalm, which is a kind of love song to God: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing…Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:1-4) The God we know in Jesus doesn’t run away when we grieve or hurt. He stands with us. He walks with us. And because He's been through grief and death, He understands us when we go through the same things!

But He does more than that. Psalm 23 also says: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies [even the enemies of death and grief and the sin that alienate us from God and others]. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows…” (Psalm 23:5) Because, as our other lesson from Romans 8, reminds us, nothing can separate us from the love the good shepherd Jesus has for us, we can know, with King David that God’s “goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23:6)

You and I have an advantage over King David. He knew God through God’s Word and God’s promises, to be sure. He had experienced God’s love and God’s power and God’s forgiveness in the depths of grief and heartache, as well as his own sin. But today, you and I can see and experience the greatness of God’s love for us more certainly. In Jesus Christ, God the Son, God took on our human flesh and He became our servant, dying on a cross bearing our sin and our death in His sinless body. God absorbed all our sin and death and grief into Himself on the cross so that, when God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, He could open up life with God for all who repent and believe in Jesus. Jesus told the grief-stricken Martha, and He tells you today: “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…” (John 11:25-26)

In the crucified Jesus Christ, God promises to be with you in every situation that life in this fallen, imperfect, and sometimes hurtful world may bring. 

In the risen Jesus Christ, God promises that He will be our good shepherd even beyond the gates of death, leading us to an eternity where there is no more grief, no more tears, and where all who have died trusting in Christ will be with God. 

Friends, as you trust in Jesus as Dorothy trusted in Jesus, you can be sure that you will live in God’s house along with her forever.

Who knows? She may already be planning what cookies she’ll bake for your arrival. May God bless and comfort you all in the promise of Jesus’ resurrection! Amen

 

Jesus Prays for His Church

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

John 17:20-26

This morning’s gospel lesson, John 17:20-26, is part of what’s often called Jesus’ high priestly prayer. In it, just before His crucifixion and resurrection, God the Son pours His heart out to God the Father. Our lesson for today contains what may be the most remarkable part of the prayer. Here's why: Jesus prays for us, for you and me. He prays for those who have received with faith the Word about God so loving the world that He gave His only Son that all who believe in Him will have life with God. In today’s lesson, Jesus asks the Father for three things for us, His Church.

The first thing that Jesus prays is that His Church will be united. Take a look at the lesson beginning at verse 20. Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Jesus prays that His Church will reflect the unity that the Father and the Son have. Jesus says that when His Church is united, it proves to the world that Jesus comes from God the Father and that the Father loves His Church with the same love He bears for Jesus.

This petition of Jesus’ prayer has often been misconstrued both inside and outside of Christ’s Church. 

Within the Church, it has been used by some as an excuse to enforce institutional uniformity among church members and pastors, often in support of false teaching and evil ends. 

For example, the Medieval Church had a system of church indulgences by which believers were told they needed to buy or work their way out of damnation. When Martin Luther challenged this as being unbiblical, pointing out that the Bible teaches that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and not by anything we do, he was accused of breaking the unity of the Church. 

And nearly five-hundred years later, Lutheran Christians who could not accept overthrowing God’s Word as the ultimate authority over the Church’s life, were accused of breaking the unity of the Church. 

But if our unity is rooted in anything other than the God we meet in Jesus and in His Word, the Bible, we don’t have unity or even the Church, only a collection of people who may or may not like each other. Unity apart from Jesus and His Word is not what Jesus is praying for here.

Outside the Church, Jesus prayer for unity is often used as an excuse for not being part of the Church at all. 

“All those denominations and all those arguments among Christians in churches,” some people say. “I don’t need it.” 

Actually, we do need the Church. The Church is the body of Christ, the family of God, the only entity charged by Jesus with proclaiming the good news of new life through faith in Jesus--the gospel--to the world. No Church: no Christians. No Church; no salvation. No Church; no eternal life. The Church alone carries the Word into the world. 

And nowhere in Scripture are we told that church members don’t or won’t or shouldn't argue. Imagine someone saying of a married couple, “So and so had an argument last week. They must not really be married.” People who care about each other do sometimes argue. And as I've said before, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or dead. 

“In your anger do not sin,” Ephesians 4:26 tells us. Anger and disagreement are not sins. They only become sins when we use our disagreements to dehumanize others.

Jesus’ prayer continues in verse 24 of our lesson: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” Jesus prays that you and I will be with Him so that we can see the glory He has had since before the universe came into being.

Back in Old Testament times, when God’s ancient people, the Israelites, were given God’s Law, they refused to come into God’s presence. They were afraid of God’s glory, His rightness, His perfect innocence. The people of God were sure that God’s holiness would break out and destroy them if they came near to Him. Jesus is the bridge Who allows sinners to see and come into the presence of the glory of God. “No one has ever seen God,” John writes early in his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18) When we see Jesus, in His Word, in the sacraments, in the worship and fellowship of the Church, we see the glory of God. That’s a privilege Christ grants to His Church!

Jesus next prays for us in verses 25 and 26: “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” Here, Jesus asks that as He continues to reveal Himself and the Father to His people, that the love of God would fill us.

This love of God isn’t like the counterfeit stuff the world calls love. 

A friend of mine caused his parents no end of grief in his teenage years. He got involved in alcohol and drugs. His parents, godly people, tried everything. Nothing changed, except that he got worse. One night, he ODed and was taken to a hospital ER. When he came to, he looked up to see a family friend, a doctor and also a believer standing over him. “Joe,” the man said, “your parents have asked me to bring you into my home. I’m going to do that. But you will have to do everything I tell you to do. You will have to do counseling. You will have to work. And you will have to stay clean. Otherwise, neither your parents nor anyone else you know who cares about you can do anything to help you.” 

To some those words may seem harsh. But they were words of love, love from God. They were matched by actions, commitment, and sacrifice by the doctor who took my friend in. Joe got clean, came to believe in Jesus, and for more than thirty years now, has been a faithful pastor. Jesus prays that God’s tough, committed love for them will be seen in us so that others too can believe in Jesus and have life with God!

Earlier, I mentioned two misuses of the first petition of this section of Jesus’ high priestly prayer. But there’s a big misuse to which the whole prayer gets subjected. Well-meaning Christians look at it and think, “I’ve got to work at being united with other believers. I’ve got to work at being in Jesus so that I can see His glory. I’ve to work at being filled with Jesus’ love.” 

If you come away from worship today thinking that Jesus’ words are a work plan or a set of homework assignments for Christians wanting to be better people, it will only prove that you haven’t been paying attention. 

Our lesson doesn’t present a plan for personal improvement. Our lesson lets us listen in on Jesus’ pray for us. 

Jesus is praying that He will be seen in those who seek to follow Him.

Our call is to daily turn to Him in humility at the baptismal font, at the Communion table, and in His Word. As we turn to Jesus, it’s Jesus Who  goes to work, not us. 

He covers us in His grace and gives us faith in Him. 

He forgives our sins, gives us awe at His glory, fills us with His love and with Himself. 

God the Father has been answering this prayer from Jesus for believers for more than two-thousand years now. He’s answering it even now in you. 

You can trust in that. 

You can trust in Jesus. 

Amen  

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

Taming our tongues

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

James 3:1-12
The book of James, from which our second lesson for today comes, is a practical handbook for Christian living. Some might wonder why we need such a thing. We know that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ are saved from sin and death and have life with God that begins now and will be lived in perfection in eternity. Saved by grace, people might wonder, who needs a handbook?

Thank God, salvation, life with God, and the comfort and power of the Holy Spirit’s presence are all free gifts given to all with surrendering trust in Jesus Christ! 

But, according to the Bible, even after we’ve been baptized, affirmed our belief in Christ, and become part of God’s kingdom, we still live in this world until either Christ returns or we die and rise into eternity with God. 

And as long as we live here, the old Adam or the old Eve in us must, as Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism, “be drowned by daily sorrow for sin and repentance and be put to death.” 

It’s only then, Luther says, “that the new person [can] come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” 

Unless we stay open to God’s grace and guidance and remain submitted to the God we know in Jesus Christ as the final authority over our lives, the temptations to take God’s grace for granted and to take up any sin that pleases us can overrun us and steer us, bit by bit, away from an eternity with God to an eternity in hell.

James’ guidebook for Christians isn’t a “how to get salvation” book. It’s more like a mirror that we can hold up to our lives and, first, see our need of Christ’s forgiveness and, second, see our need of the Holy Spirit’s help us to live our lives in response to God's grace. 

The issue addressed by James in today’s second lesson, the issue of controlling our tongues, the words that we speak, may not seem like a big deal to us. But it is to God. 

Take a look our lesson, James 3:1-12, please. In verses 2 and 3, James says that little things--like small bits in the mouths of horses or tiny rudders on the backs of giant ships--can exercise great control over and have a huge impact on big things. Even the words we speak. 

Then, he says, starting in verse 5: “...the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell....” 

James goes on to say that we know how to tame wild animals, but no human being can tame the tongue or the damage it can do. 

In verses 9 and 10, he hands out his most severe indictment of the damage done by our mouths: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.”

Our words are powerful; even the ones we toss off casually. 

I think the reason for this is simple. We are the only ones of God’s creatures “made in the image” of the God Who spoke and brought the whole universe into being. 

It’s no coincidence then, that one of the first ways in which the Old Testament book of Genesis says that Adam, the first human being, expressed human dominion over creation was to give names--to speak descriptive words--over every other creature. 

This power--the power to give names or labels to people or things--reflects the image of God within every human being. 

But after the fall into sin, we sinners naturally began misusing this gift of speech. In fact, James says, because sin has filled us, our tongues have taken control of us to the point that sometimes we speak without thinking or speak on the basis of malicious thinking, bringing harm to others and to ourselves.

This is serious business! In Matthew 24:36-37, Jesus says:

“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” 

I don’t know about you, but those words of Jesus make me more than a wee bit uncomfortable.

The failure to control our mouths, then, is a sin issue. Careless words, whether spoken in judgment of others, to criticize others without loving them, or to pass along the latest gossip, are not harmless. Unrepented, careless words put our eternal relationship with God at risk. 

God has not rescinded the Eighth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” 

We “bear false witness” not just when we tell outright lies about others. 

Martin Luther writes of this commandment: “We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all that they do.”

But, there is good news. 

Our intemperate tongues (and all our other sins) don’t need to control us or our eternal destinies. 

We can live differently. 

We can move closer to God and stop driving a wedge between God and ourselves through our careless words.

In Mark 8:34, Jesus tells those who would follow Him into eternity: ““If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” 

The indispensable step in getting free of the sins of our mouths, along with all our other sins, is to own them, to own God’s rightful condemnation of them, then bring those sins to Jesus, confess them to God, admit that we have used our words to curse others, gossip about others and tear them down. 

Drawing on the covenant God has made with us in our baptism, we need to drown our old sinful selves and allow, through the grace God bears for all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, our new selves to “rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” 

Like God’s Old Testament people in Psalm 130:4, we can sing to our God: “...with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, fear you.” 

If, as you’ve listened to James’ word to us today, God has brought to mind ways in which you have misused the gift of speech, you can pray, “God, for the sake of Jesus, forgive me for using my words to bring pain to others or dishonor to You.” 

Whenever we confess our sins to God in the Name of Jesus, there is forgiveness in God! We can count on that. 

But what then? What do we do next? How do we let God’s Holy Spirit guide us so that we don’t engage in careless or harmful talk? 

Here are few suggestions.

First: We surrender our brains and our mouths to God, along with the rest of our lives. A good prayer to offer each day might be the one in Psalm 19:14: “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”

Second: Before we open our mouths to share something critical of another human being, we should ask ourselves, “Does this help anything?” Ephesians 4:29 says: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Note: Some critical words are helpful and are loving. If they are offered in that way, God has our backs! Elsewhere in Ephesians, we're told to "speak the truth in love" and "in your anger do not sin."

Third: We ask ourselves another question, "Would we say these words if we were in the physical presence of Jesus Christ?" The fact is that everything we say is said in the presence of Christ, whether we realize it or not. Jesus says in Luke 12:2: “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” Do we really think that Jesus wants to hear every word we decide to say?

Fourth: If our words have harmed another person, it can be appropriate to apologize to them. They may not forgive you. But at least, you will have the satisfaction of making an effort.

Finally: Whether in conversation with others or in conversation with God, try silence. Proverbs 17:28 says: “Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.”

But it isn’t just to impress others that we should keep silence, of course. James 1:19 says that we Christians should be “should be quick to listen, slow to speak...” God, as someone has said, gave us two ears and one mouth and our communication probably ought to be in that proportion. When we remain silent and truly listen to others, we come to understand them more and judge them less.

As some of you know, one of my most frequent prayer requests to God is: “Give me the right words and the right silences.” That's a prayer I offer particularly urgently any time I'm called to an emergency situation. I want to honor the God Who gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him may have life forever. I don’t want my mouth to get in the way of God’s grace. 

When, in challenging situations, I remember to pray that prayer, it’s been amazing to me to see how God has answered it. 

There are times, of course, when we must raise our voices in witness to what Christ has done for us and can do for others. There are times to use our mouths to praise God. There are times when we must use words to work out our difference with others or express our love for them. 

But sometimes our greatest witness for Christ comes when we curb our tongues, refrain from the judgment or gossip or the unnecessary gibberish we’re tempted to impart, and just keep silence. 

May we all seek God’s help in guiding and guarding the things we say and so, be able to honor Him with our whole lives. Amen

9 Thoughts on the Angry Pastor and the Restaurant Server Who Went Viral

My buddy, Steve Sjogren, first alerted me to the image of a receipt on which a pastor refused to leave a tip because she already gave 10% to God. He suggested I might want to blog on the story.

Since then, I've learned more of the details:

A Friday night meal at Applebee’s resulted in more than either the customer or a waitress working that night bargained for after a pastor’s refusal to pay a tip was shared online.

Though the embarrassed patron has apologized for her actions, the old adage of the customer always being right may have some truth to it, as the waitress who posted photo evidence of the tip snub lost her job for doing so.

The trouble began last Friday, when Pastor Alois Bell went to the local chain restaurant with several others following a service at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries.

When the bill came, she did not include a tip on the signed copy of her receipt. She did, however, include the reason why.

“I give God 10 [percent],” the note on the receipt read. “Why do you get 18?”

The waitress, who has been identified only as Chelsea by The Consumerist, posted a picture of the note on the popular user-powered news site Reddit, along with the caption, “My mistake sir, I’m sure Jesus will pay for my rent and groceries.”

“I originally posted the note as a lighthearted joke,” she told The Consumerist. “I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical. I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it entertaining.”

Her post instantly got the attention of other users, and eventually the news media. The popular story also got back to its source – Bell – on Wednesday, though she was less amused than others who had seen it before her. She called the Applebee’s where she had eaten to voice her frustration over the sharing of the image, which includes her signature.

Chelsea was fired by managers at the restaurant following the call, despite reportedly being a model employee before this incident...


In an interview with The Smoking Gun, Bell apologized for her actions, which she described as “lapse in [her] character and judgment,” adding that she did leave a $6 cash tip on the table for the waitress who served them that night – who was not Chelsea.

“My heart is really broken,” she was quoted as saying. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”

Is billing customers 18% for tips a good policy? Probably not and probably not smart either. While many restaurant patrons are no doubt cheap, inconsiderate of the hard work done by servers and other restaurant personnel, a customer alienated because of a set charge for tips is not likely to return, meaning no business and no tips.

Was Applebee's right in firing the server? Probably. Whether it was in the company manual or not, she seems to have willfully violated the privacy of another person for what she characterizes as a lighthearted prank. It hardly seems that.

Was the pastor wrong to refuse to pay the tip and to do so invoking both God and her calling as a pastor? I feel so. I also think that she was right to apologize.

Here's a look at the receipt and Pastor Bell's note.

The entire incident evokes all sorts of thoughts and feelings from me.

1. Let's start with the anger seen in the question, "I give God 10%, why do you get 18" and in the scratches through the levied tip amount.

Anger in itself is not a sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, got angry. (More on that later.) And Ephesians 4:26 tells Christians: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger."

The takeaway from that passage? If you're angry, don't use it as an excuse to assault another person, verbally or otherwise.

Instead, seek out the person with whom you're angry and, with the idea that you could be wrong, in part or in full, explain your grievance. Seek to get things resolved. (If that sounds like the way Jesus tells Christians to resolve disputes among themselves in Matthew 18:15-20, it should.)

Bell's angry note resolved nothing. In fact, it caused all kinds of problems, for her and for her server.

2. Scripture says that God loves cheerful givers who give "not reluctantly or under compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7). Pastor Bell's note made her seem like something other than a cheerful giver! The note comes across as saying that her offerings to God aren't given in grateful response to God for Jesus' death and resurrection, but an obligation she has to keep. "God coerces me to give 10% of my income to Him," she seems to be saying, "You can't coerce an even bigger percentage out of me."

I have to ask myself, "Do I ever unwittingly begrudge God the things I should want to give to Him simply because I know He loves me and I want to love Him back?" I hope not.

3. I feel that Bell mentioned being a pastor in order to give credence to her anger. The message seems to be, "As a pastor, I speak for God. Therefore it isn't just me who's mad at me, it's God too."

That might have carried weight with some people. It clearly didn't with Bell's server.

And here's a news flash for all pastors: Most people in today's society don't respect pastors. They don't regard pastors as authority figures. And most people think that the main thing churches and pastors want from them is money. Your being a pastor does not legitimize your anger! In fact, it should curb it. Not all anger is illegitimate, but its expression by pastors should be rare and thought-through.

If Pastor Bell's server wasn't a Christian, this was the lesson she took away from the pastor's scrawl: We Christians and we pastors are just as self-righteous, angry, and money-grubbing as many people say we are. From Pastor Bell's contrite response to the situation, I doubt that's the impression she wanted to leave with her server.

And I guarantee if you were a spiritually disconnected restaurant server who got dumped on like this by a customer identifying herself as a pastor, you wouldn't be very likely to wake up on Sunday morning and say to yourself, "I want the joy that pastor has. I think I'll go to church today!"

4. I'm not piling onto Pastor Bell here. She has apologized and I believe her apology. But there is a larger lesson here: If Christians or pastors want credibility for the faith we confess, we won't get it by coming across as bullies.

The gospel of Matthew says that the crowds who heard Jesus "were astounded at His teaching, for he taught them as one having authority" (Matthew 6:29). But what Jesus taught wasn't new. Or exotic. And He didn't usually push His "heft" around. Jesus was a servant. He wasn't even too proud to wash the feet of His disciples while telling all who follow Him to be servants, too (John 13:1-16). If God in the flesh served us, even dying on a cross for us, how much more should those of who bear His Name--Christians, we're called--be servants of others.

It's only in being servants, whether we're pastors or plumbers or presidents, that we Christians have any authority.

And, like Jesus, we're to only use our authority (read: the influence we earn through our servanthood) in ways that build people up, even the people we may have to criticize and to whom we may need to speak unwanted truths in love (Ephesians 4:15).

5. Is there ever a time when church leaders should get mad? If Jesus is any example to us, then we must conclude that there are times when anger and setting people straight is warranted. Like when believers who should know better turn their backs on the will of God, or treat each other hatefully, or otherwise sin unrepentantly.

But Jesus never "went off" on prostitutes or extortionist tax collectors. He never blew up on those who were known to have no relationship with God. Jesus always used kindness to lead the spiritually-disconnected to repentance and faith in Him.

On the other hand, Jesus often let some people have it, people like self-righteous Pharisees and temple money-changers who knew God's Word by heart, yet ignored it. His anger then, was aimed at the same purpose as His kindness, to call believers to repentance and faith in Him. For Jesus, anger was a tool expressing God's will and even God's love, not a display of self-indulgence.

Pastors and all Christians are better off to assume that most of the people they meet know nothing about the God revealed in Christ and do all they can to extend to them the same grace, patience, and kindness that Christ shows Christians every single day.


6. Let's assume for just a second that the 18% tip charge came at Pastor Bell out of nowhere. Was it right to just go off on the server?

The better path might have been to ask to speak to the manager about the restaurant's automatic tip policy (and still have left the server with some sort of tip).

Pastor Bell says that she did leave a $6.00 cash tip on the table after writing her note. That amounts to a 17.6% tip, almost the amount that the receipt had charged her in the first place. This tells me that she may have been trying to make a point that she didn't mind leaving tips, only having a particular amount put on her charge account.

I'm glad she left the server a tip. After all, "the laborer deserves to be paid" (1 Timothy 5:18) and most restaurant servers accept lower wages in order to be able to accept patrons' tips. It's not fair to hold a restaurant's policy you find unacceptable against a server who didn't set the policy.

7. In the Internet era, anything we say or do has the potential for going viral. In fact, our deeds can "go viral" even without the Internet, in the swirling cesspool of gossip. This is one more reason I often pray, "God, give me the right words and the right silences. Grant that everything I say, do, and am will bring you glory."

I can't tell you (and won't tell you for fear of it going viral) how often I've gotten in the way of God answering that prayer, not because God couldn't answer it, but because of my words, deeds, and thoughts, I refused to let Him answer it. In the Name of Jesus Christ, I repent for that.

8. Our actions can have unintended consequences for others. Chelsea, the Applebee's server, was, in my judgment, wrong to publish Pastor Bell's signed receipt on the Internet. But her getting fired was in part caused by Bell's ill-advised note. The server still bears responsibility for her action; no one made her send the image of the receipt out onto the Internet. But no note, no appearance on the web, no kerfluffle, no irate call from a violated customer, no firing.

If the server was going to publicize this incident, she would have done better just to post about it on Twitter without Bell's name. I know that the image of the receipt was more powerful than a tweet would have been. But the server would still have her job, while maybe sensitizing some who saw her post on Twitter to be considerate in tipping serving personnel.

9. A final thought: This receipt makes me wonder, "What are the ways in which I indulge my own anger or general sinfulness rather than stopping and asking God to control my thoughts, words, and actions?" How can I be more faithful to Christ while interacting with people in my everyday life?

Those are haunting questions, ones worth praying about.

Holy Anger: The Conrtolled Burn That Can Change the World

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

John 2:13-22
Once, back when our daughter was a teenager, a headline on the front cover of one of her magazines caught my eye: “Chill Out! Take Our Anger Quiz.” I flipped to page 122 and found eight multiple choice questions. I’m going to try a couple of them on you. If you’re not a teenage girl, pretend that you are for just a second and consider how you might answer:

(1) Your dad won’t let you go [to a] concert. When you ask why, the answer is, “Because I said so.” You: a. scowl and request a better explanation. b. hurl the TV remote at his head and stomp upstairs. c. shrug.

(8) A really bad cold has your brother laid up in bed for two days. You happen to walk by his room, and he demands in a pompous tone that you get him a glass of orange juice. You: a. tell him that saying please doesn’t hurt, and then head to the kitchen. b. immediately walk to the garage and slash both of the tires on his bike. c. rush to see if there’s any fresh-squeezed in the fridge.

At the end of this quiz, you were supposed to know whether your anger was too tepid, medium hot, or boiling over. We can quibble with the accuracy of a magazine quiz. But it is based on a reality about us as human beings. It’s this: the capacity for anger is something God has built into us and there are times when it’s right and times when it’s wrong to be angry!

Someone has said that, “Anger is an emotional reaction to your interpretation of a life experience in which your expectations are not met or are violated.” A wife comes home from work expecting a quiet evening alone with her husband and kids only to learn that her husband has invited buddies over to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. An employee gets good reviews for three years in a row and is promised a promotion, but the promotion never comes. Our lives are filled with a hundred potential flash points each day. Anger happens. We need to learn to manage it, harness it, and use it creatively.

The Institute for Mental Health Initiatives has developed a method for coping or controlling our anger built on the acronym RETHINK:

• Recognize when you’re angry and what’s causing it;
• Empathize, trying to see the other person’s point of view;
• Think of other ways you might be able to interpret the situation making you angry;
• Hear what the other person is saying;
• Integrate love and respect into the way you deal with your anger;
• Notice your body’s reaction to anger and find ways to calm down;
• Keep your attention focused on the present and don’t bring up past offenses.

In the Bible, God doesn’t condemn anger itself. In the New Testament, for example, the apostle Paul advises, “Be angry, but do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.” In other words, it’s okay for us to get mad as long as we don’t let our anger turn into spitefulness or hate. And by all means, if we’re angry with someone, we should try to resolve our disputes right away. Unresolved disputes inevitably cause us to sin.

I must confess that anger doesn’t come easily to me. I would probably lean toward the tepid end of that quiz’s reckoning. It takes a lot for me to get angry. There may be others here today who tilt toward the boiling over end of the spectrum. Either place is probably unhealthy. But if we can find a way to use our anger, putting it under the discipline of God, it can become a force for good.

Our Gospel lesson for this morning recounts a famous incident in which Jesus, visiting the temple in Jerusalem, gave full vent to holy anger. In those days, people would go to the temple to offer sacrifices to God. Wealthy folks could afford to sacrifice cattle and sheep. Poorer people sacrificed doves or even grain. In the outer court, the place where non-Jews were allowed to be, the temple featured a kind of shopping mall. At the temple, you could only use temple money to buy the animals that were used for sacrificing. But out on the streets of Jerusalem, Roman money was used. If you came to the temple to offer a sacrifice then, the first thing you had to do was exchange your Roman coins for temple coins. You did this with a person called a moneychanger. These moneychangers were notorious gougers. They didn’t care what the exchange rate was. They were the only game in town, so to speak. So they got away with charging the worshipers exorbitant service charges. The same gouging was practiced by those who sold the animals to be sacrificed. Jesus was enraged by all of this!

That was when Jesus had His famous temple tantrum, throwing the moneychangers out of the place, upsetting their tables, freeing the animals from their cages, and generally setting loose what forest firefighters might call a “controlled burn.”

As followers of Jesus, the only legitimate kind of anger is Jesus’ brand of holy anger. But what is holy anger?

Holy anger, first of all, has to do with zeal for God. After Jesus’ anger, they remembered words from the Old Testament’s Psalm 69:9: “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” Jesus was zealous for the things that make God the Father zealous.

We see similar zeal in people who follow God.

• Mother Teresa was zealous for loving and cherishing life.
• Martin Luther was zealous for tearing down the walls the Church of his day had erected between Jesus Christ and the world for which He died and rose.

As Lutheran Pastor Dan Anderson puts it, “Holy anger is righteous indignation that leads to action.”

Holy anger is also about love for others. Jesus didn’t give vent to rage because somebody had cut him off in traffic or because somebody took the last scoop of black walnut crunch ice cream that He’d wanted. Jesus was upset that the merchants at the Temple Mall had put a price tag on God’s love and forgiveness. You and I know that these are gifts that God offers to all through Jesus Christ. When we see others being hurt, our call is clear. Holy love demands that we get angry for our neighbor’s sake.

Holy anger is productive and useful. Martin Luther knew this. “When I am angry,” Luther said. “I can write, pray, and preach well, for my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.” Luther’s holy anger compelled him to do the right thing as he sought to give all people personal access to the God we know through Jesus Christ.

Anger is an inevitable element of our humanity. But God calls us to harness our anger for His purposes. In 1979, on a Maryland street, the car in which five-and-a-half month old Laura Lamb and her mother, Cindi were riding was hit head-on by a drunk driver traveling at 120 miles per hour. Laura became the world’s youngest quadriplegic. In California less than a year later, thirteen year old Cari Lightner was killed by a drunk driver. Just two days earlier, he had been released on bail for a hit-and-run drunk driving crash and already had two drunk driving convictions behind him. Cari’s mother Candace formed an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and soon linked her efforts with those of Cindi Lamb, who had already undertaken similar efforts in Maryland. Twenty-three years later, MADD is still a controlled burn, translating the anger and rage of parents who have seen the pain inflicted by drunk drivers into positive actions. MADD has heightened our awareness of the dangers of driving while under the influence of alcohol and of the need for designated drivers. They’ve gotten laws passed that get drunks off of our roads and highways and make all of us safer.

What holy anger do you have today?

Maybe you’re angry over child abuse.

It may be the increasing evidence of drug addiction here in Logan or the crying needs of the unemployed.

It could be the way in which Satan and the evil of the world fogs people’s minds and wills, turning them from the better and eternal life offered by Jesus Christ.

I get angry sometimes with the Church at large and at times, myself in particular, for failing to invite others to know and experience life with God or hiding God behind a lot of churchy language.

Today, commit yourself to harnessing your holy anger—the anger that comes not from selfishness, but from the love and passion of God for people in need around you--and using it in positive, productive, proactive ways.

Burn for God and let the world see the glow of Jesus’ love in you.

Q-and-A: Is It Wrong for Christians to Become Angry?

[This is the first part of an ongoing series of posts I intend to present, based on questions I get in my everyday life as a pastor.]

Q: Is it wrong for Christians to become angry?

A: For some people, anger is a way of life. Filled with a sense of personal inadequacy, unable to cope with life, they lash out at others, usually spouses or children. Through outbursts of anger, they think that they can control their lives.

But anger isn't always bad. This may come as a surprise to some people, Christian as well as non-Christian.

If you are a Christian, you may have had the experience of becoming angry with a family member or co-worker and then hearing them indignantly say, "And you call yourself a Christian?"

The Christian may feel ashamed, thinking that they've given a bad witness of their faith because they lost their cool.

But they may have no reason for shame. An interesting passage in the New Testament tells us, "Be angry but do not sin." The very phrasing of that admonition should tell us that there's nothing inherently wrong or sinful about getting angry. It's possible to be angry without engaging in sin.

One clearly legitimate reason for being angry is when we see an injustice.

Once, Jesus entered the temple in Jerusalem. It was the center of Judah's worship life, the place where Jesus and His fellow Jews said that the presence of God lived in a place called "the holy of holies." One of the ongoing activities of the place was the sacrificing of animals or, in the case of extremely poor believers, cereals, on the altar. Most people came to the temple without sheep, doves, or cereals to be used as sacrifices. Those would have been purchased at the temple. But those purchases could only have been made with special temple currency. Set up in the temple then, were various "money changers," who would exchange whatever currency worshipers might have for the temple money, apparently at exorbitant rates. After securing the temple money, the faithful would then have to purchase the objects of sacrifice, again for exorbitant sums of money.

The entire business was unjust. Playing on the piety of sincere worshipers of God, the temple merchants made a killing. This enraged Jesus! No wonder He upset the tables where the business was done and set the animals there to be sacrificed loose.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus was both God and human and that our salvation depends on Him having led sinless life above reproach. Only a sinless Savior could be the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

If anger were always a sin, Jesus' ability to work forgiveness of sin in our lives would be forever negated. But anger can lead us to sin.

We can also be angered when a person treats us inconsiderately. Is that wrong? Not, apparently, if we use our anger as an occasion to work things out with the other person. "Be angry, but do not sin." Anger can lead to sin when we nurse it, feed it, and allow it to cause us to be sanctimonious or to be disrespectful of the person with whom we're angry. It's a sin to be self-righteous or hateful.

The same New Testament verse that advises, "Be angry but do not sin," says that when we do get angry we shouldn't let "the sun set on [our] anger." In other words, resolve your differences.

Jesus, in fact, gives a process by which conflicts can be resolved among believing people, one which I think contains principles for resolving differences among all people. In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus says that we should first go to the person we feel has treated us unjustly, confronting them directly rather than gossiping about them. If no satisfactory resolution results from that confrontation, a disinterested third party, another believer, should be asked to, in effect, mediate, offering a solution. If the confronted party still refuses to deal with matters, an authoritative group within the Church should be brought in to mediate.

If this process looks cumbersome and not worth the trouble, that may mean that the situation that has made you so angry may not be a big enough deal to warrant such treatment. If that's the case, then you should simply ask God to help you forgive and then go on. The last thing you want to do is to continue harboring anger.

It's this harbored anger, I believe, that Jesus has in mind when He says, "“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry [some of the ancient manuscripts insist that Jesus adds here, "without just cause"] with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire" (Matthew 5:20-22).

Much of our anger is unjustified. And it could be avoided if we would remember Paul's admonition in the New Testament book of Philippians: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:4). Chances are, 95% of our anger would go away if we followed this advice.

Anger isn't always wrong. Some people say that we should count to ten before expressing anger. That's not bad advice, especially if during that ten-second interval we ask, "Lord, am I justified in feeling anger? Let me know one way or another and then, whatever may be true, tell me how to deal with it."