Below is the journal from my morning quiet time with God.
Look: “‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband”; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’” (Hosea 2:16)
Hosea was called to confront Judah and Israel for their prostitution, their idolatry, worshiping the baal idols rather than the one true God Who saved and nurtured them by His grace.
The baals were sticks of wood (Hosea 4:10) that the people--God’s people--called “master,” which is what baal means.
But God wants to have an entirely different relationship with His people. He wants to be their husband.
Listen: While Biblical faith never ceases to treat the God now ultimately revealed to everyone in Jesus with respect and awe, calling Him things like Lord, Master, and King, God also, throughout both testaments, calls people to an intimacy we could never have with an inanimate stick of wood.
Jesus tells those who seek to follow Him and do God’s will (disciples, ancient and modern): “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)
Unlike the ancient deities people worshiped that might take on human form in order to have sport with people or to use them sexually, the one true God revealed to Israel and then to the world in Jesus, cares about us. This is also true of all the deities we worship or may be tempted to worship today. (I like how Martin Luther explains idolatry to those of us who may think that it’s solely the behavior of superstitious ancient peoples who aren’t as smart as we moderns are: “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”)
John 3:16, of course, is one place where Jesus talks about how much God loves us: “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.”
This is stunning whenever I think about it. (And sadly, I don’t think about it enough!) God cares about me. God wants a personal relationship with me, not as opposed to a relationship with the rest of His people in the Church or with those who are outside the fellowship of the Church (with whom I’m called to share the good news of everlasting life with God that only comes through faith in Jesus), but as part of those other relationships!
God is no inanimate, implacable deity. God is the Creator of the universe Who seeks a relationship of love with His creatures, especially with those who are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). He aches for we human beings, weeps for us, loves us, gets angry with us, not for His sake or to satisfy any sick need for codependency, but simply because He wants what is best for us. God yearns for a relationship of intimate love between Himself and, in Lewis’ wonderful phrasing, “the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve.”
The God of the Bible, the God we see in Jesus, is a living God and He wants us to live with Him forever. This is what lay behind the New Testament imagery of Jesus as the bridegroom and the Church, the fellowship of believers in Jesus, the only earthly thing that will survive the end of this world, as His bride.
Respond: Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes keeping you at arm’s length, avoiding intimate, quiet moments with You in Your Word and in prayer. It’s so stupid too, when I avoid You because I don’t want to be confronted for my sins--my failure to love You or love others, because You already know everything about me, yet still love me and want a relationship with You!
Forgive me for hardening my heart to all those other people you love and who you free me to love in Your name.
Today, I cherish and worship You not just as my Lord, Master, and King, but also as my Savior and Friend, Who saves me from myself, from sin, and from death by Your grace through the faith in Christ You have fostered in me. Thank You, Lord. I love You. In Jesus’ name. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label Genesis 1:27. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genesis 1:27. Show all posts
Friday, July 20, 2018
Monday, October 23, 2017
Pay Your Taxes and Follow Jesus (and Don't Be Afraid)
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]
Matthew 22:15-22
Chapman University is a Christian college which, every October, conducts a poll among Americans about their fears. The pollsters list about seventy items and ask people if they’re afraid of them.
Items on the list this year included things like sharks (25.4% said they were either very afraid or somewhat afraid of them), heights (28.2%), and being unemployed (30.7%).
What’s interesting to me is how people’s fears shift from year to year.
For example, last year, 2016, the biggest fear was of government corruption at 60.6%; this year, 2017, the biggest fear also is of corruption, but the number’s 74.5%.
Last year, 35.5% of the people were afraid of Obamacare; this year, 55.3% say they’re afraid of Trumpcare.
Last year, 41% of the people said they were afraid of terrorist attacks; in 2017, a slightly smaller number, 38% said they were afraid of terrorist attacks.
Shifting fears are very common, I think. If I were to ask a random sampling from among the people here this morning what they were afraid of or worrying about five years ago, my guess is that most people, at the least, would have to spend some time thinking about the question.
Although we’re all prone to it, fear isn’t a useful emotion. Fear obscures the truth and paralyzes our good judgment. And fear, really, is the opposite of faith.
The reason, you know, that Jesus had enemies who wanted Him dead is that they were afraid.
Some were afraid of Him because He threatened their authority.
Others feared Him because they thought that His movement would incite the Roman conquerors under whose thumb first century Judea lived to come down hard on the people.
The Romans feared Jesus because they didn’t want the conquered Jews to give them trouble.
Today’s gospel lesson, like the lessons over the past several weeks, recounts an interaction involving Jesus and His opponents that took place on the Monday after the first Palm Sunday. Over these Sundays, we’ve listened as Jesus has told a series of pointed parables to the chief priests and the elders who had come to challenge Him. In them, Jesus indicted them for their failure to welcome and believe in the Messiah and Savior they claimed to have been waiting for, now standing before them.
By the time Jesus finished the last Holy Monday parable, which we considered last week, the chief priests' and elders' fear had melded with hatred (as it often does) and hardened into a firm resolve to kill the Savior of the world.
After the chief priests and the elders retreat from their dialog with Jesus in the temple’s Gentile courts, another group of people decide to “have a go” at Jesus.
By their questioning, this new group hopes to turn the bumpkins who had welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem as the Christ and Savior on Palm Sunday, against Jesus, giving a pretext for having Jesus executed.
Take a look at our gospel lesson, please, Matthew 22:15-22. Verse 15: “Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?’”
The Pharisees were Judaism’s strictest and most widespread sect. They advocated a kind of “salvation by good works” theology. The Pharisees thought of themselves as good, righteous, upright people. They were so confident in their goodness, righteousness, and uprightness before God, in fact, that they spent a lot of time telling their fellow Jews what they needed to do in order to be as good and righteous and upright as they were.
Pharisee underlings were sent to approach Jesus for this challenge, accompanied by unlikely allies: the Herodians. The Herodians were part of the puppet government of King Herod. That government worked hand-in-glove with the Romans. Ordinarily, the Pharisees and the Herodians would have nothing to do with each other. The Herodians would view the Pharisees as religious fanatics while the Pharisees would view the Herodians as unrighteous, unfaithful sellouts. (Fear and hatred sometimes make strange bedfellows.)
But because both groups were afraid of Jesus, they posed this trap of a question.
Why was it such a trap to ask Jesus if good Jews should pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
The imperial tax levied on Judea by Rome was hated. Their hatred for the tax went way beyond the usual human resentment of taxes.
Rome had conquered Judea, then charged Judeans annually for the privilege of being conquered.
About twenty years earlier, there had been a Jewish rebellion, which the Romans put down brutally, crucifying many people, their crucified bodies lining the roads to serve as examples to anybody who thought of rebelling against Rome.
Jesus’ fellow Jews had begrudgingly paid the tax ever since. They knew that anyone who spoke against it might get crucified themselves. On the other hand, if one of God’s people said anything remotely good about or accepting of the tax, the people would turn against that person. The Pharisees and Herodians thought they had Jesus squarely pinched between a rock and a hard place.
But Jesus refused to get sucked into a political debate.
His answer, though disarming, wasn’t meant to be clever or to avoid trouble.
After all, Jesus knew that, no matter what He said, in four days He would be crucified anyway.
Jesus gives the answer that He gives for two reasons. First, it’s the truth. Second, Jesus has little interest in politics. Jesus has no interest in getting involved with politics. He’s not a Roman, Herodian, Pharisee, Sadducee, Republican, Democrat, socialist, libertarian, or nativist. Jesus is the King and Savior of all creation Who plays for eternal stakes. As He would later tell Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
So what does Jesus say? Verse 18: “But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?”
The term hypocrites is definitely not a compliment. The word in English is a transliteration of the Greek word it translates, hypocrites. This is a compound word in the Greek which literally means to have different thoughts or judgments or to be a different person from the thoughts, judgments, or persons we portray to the world. It was also the word used for actors. Jesus knows that these guys are trying to play Him and they call Him out for it. He sees that they're trying to trap Him.
The word translated as trap here is a tense of the Greek verb peirazo. And that’s a really big deal because peirazo means not only trap, but test or tempt.
It’s the very word used to describe what the devil did to Jesus in the wilderness. The devil there tried to tempt Jesus away from His mission. Playing on the fear of death that every mortal human being has--and Jesus was true God AND true man, remember--the devil offered to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world without Jesus having to go to the cross. Had Jesus not gone to the cross, of course, there would be no way He could offer us life with God; He would have caved into fear--and sin--just like the rest of the human race.
Now, the hypocrites standing before Jesus are trying to tempt Him into saving His own skin by saying a few false words. It seems like such a little thing, a tiny compromise. But Jesus would have none of it. Jesus knew that even little compromises with sin and the will of God ruin everything, not just for Him and His mission in the world, but for us too. These supposedly "little compromises" and sins will eternally destroy us if we aren't diligent in following Christ and diligent in repenting and turning to Christ when we do fall for them.
Verse 19: “‘Show me the coin used for paying the tax.’ They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’”
A denarius, the amount of the Roman conqueror’s poll tax, was about what a laborer might earn in a day.
Each denarius or dinar bore an image and inscribed words. The image was of Caesar and the words about Caesar were: “Son of God.”
Any good Jew who believed in the God revealed to His people knew that to say that someone was “Son of God” was to say that they were God. In fact, people like the Pharisees and Herodians were filled with fear when Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God and when others had proclaimed that of Him. Yet here they were, a denarius with its blasphemy, in their pockets, the coin they evidently were using to make their purchases and pay their own taxes all the time. (They were hypocrites!)
Verse 21: “‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. Then he said to them, ‘So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’ When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.”
It’s Caesar’s image on the coin, Jesus is saying, so give Caesar his money.
But you know what?
Someone else’s image is imprinted on every human being, on you and me.
Genesis 1:27 says that, “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them…”
In this world, we may have to pay taxes to Caesar. But we’re to give our lives to the One Whose imprint is on us as human beings, the One Who made us, the One Who was enfleshed and died for us to give us life with God that never ends.
It’s those who surrender to and follow Jesus who are set free not just from sin and death, and everything that causes us to fear in this world.
Pay your taxes, Jesus is saying. Pay down your debts. Honor your spouse. Take care of your kids. Obey the speed limits. Help your neighbor.
And in the midst of it all, everywhere you go and in everything you do, follow Jesus.
We can do this with confidence and joy because the most this world can do to you and me is take away our earthly lives.
But we follow a crucified and risen Savior Who promises: “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)
Jesus' message for us this morning is this:
Don’t be afraid. Sure, give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s. But give to God what belongs to God: yourself, your whole self. Just like God gave His whole self to you on the cross.
Don’t be afraid. Follow Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Matthew 22:15-22
Chapman University is a Christian college which, every October, conducts a poll among Americans about their fears. The pollsters list about seventy items and ask people if they’re afraid of them.
Items on the list this year included things like sharks (25.4% said they were either very afraid or somewhat afraid of them), heights (28.2%), and being unemployed (30.7%).
What’s interesting to me is how people’s fears shift from year to year.
For example, last year, 2016, the biggest fear was of government corruption at 60.6%; this year, 2017, the biggest fear also is of corruption, but the number’s 74.5%.
Last year, 35.5% of the people were afraid of Obamacare; this year, 55.3% say they’re afraid of Trumpcare.
Last year, 41% of the people said they were afraid of terrorist attacks; in 2017, a slightly smaller number, 38% said they were afraid of terrorist attacks.
Shifting fears are very common, I think. If I were to ask a random sampling from among the people here this morning what they were afraid of or worrying about five years ago, my guess is that most people, at the least, would have to spend some time thinking about the question.
Although we’re all prone to it, fear isn’t a useful emotion. Fear obscures the truth and paralyzes our good judgment. And fear, really, is the opposite of faith.
The reason, you know, that Jesus had enemies who wanted Him dead is that they were afraid.
Some were afraid of Him because He threatened their authority.
Others feared Him because they thought that His movement would incite the Roman conquerors under whose thumb first century Judea lived to come down hard on the people.
The Romans feared Jesus because they didn’t want the conquered Jews to give them trouble.
Today’s gospel lesson, like the lessons over the past several weeks, recounts an interaction involving Jesus and His opponents that took place on the Monday after the first Palm Sunday. Over these Sundays, we’ve listened as Jesus has told a series of pointed parables to the chief priests and the elders who had come to challenge Him. In them, Jesus indicted them for their failure to welcome and believe in the Messiah and Savior they claimed to have been waiting for, now standing before them.
By the time Jesus finished the last Holy Monday parable, which we considered last week, the chief priests' and elders' fear had melded with hatred (as it often does) and hardened into a firm resolve to kill the Savior of the world.
After the chief priests and the elders retreat from their dialog with Jesus in the temple’s Gentile courts, another group of people decide to “have a go” at Jesus.
By their questioning, this new group hopes to turn the bumpkins who had welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem as the Christ and Savior on Palm Sunday, against Jesus, giving a pretext for having Jesus executed.
Take a look at our gospel lesson, please, Matthew 22:15-22. Verse 15: “Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?’”
The Pharisees were Judaism’s strictest and most widespread sect. They advocated a kind of “salvation by good works” theology. The Pharisees thought of themselves as good, righteous, upright people. They were so confident in their goodness, righteousness, and uprightness before God, in fact, that they spent a lot of time telling their fellow Jews what they needed to do in order to be as good and righteous and upright as they were.
Pharisee underlings were sent to approach Jesus for this challenge, accompanied by unlikely allies: the Herodians. The Herodians were part of the puppet government of King Herod. That government worked hand-in-glove with the Romans. Ordinarily, the Pharisees and the Herodians would have nothing to do with each other. The Herodians would view the Pharisees as religious fanatics while the Pharisees would view the Herodians as unrighteous, unfaithful sellouts. (Fear and hatred sometimes make strange bedfellows.)
But because both groups were afraid of Jesus, they posed this trap of a question.
Why was it such a trap to ask Jesus if good Jews should pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
The imperial tax levied on Judea by Rome was hated. Their hatred for the tax went way beyond the usual human resentment of taxes.
Rome had conquered Judea, then charged Judeans annually for the privilege of being conquered.
About twenty years earlier, there had been a Jewish rebellion, which the Romans put down brutally, crucifying many people, their crucified bodies lining the roads to serve as examples to anybody who thought of rebelling against Rome.
Jesus’ fellow Jews had begrudgingly paid the tax ever since. They knew that anyone who spoke against it might get crucified themselves. On the other hand, if one of God’s people said anything remotely good about or accepting of the tax, the people would turn against that person. The Pharisees and Herodians thought they had Jesus squarely pinched between a rock and a hard place.
But Jesus refused to get sucked into a political debate.
His answer, though disarming, wasn’t meant to be clever or to avoid trouble.
After all, Jesus knew that, no matter what He said, in four days He would be crucified anyway.
Jesus gives the answer that He gives for two reasons. First, it’s the truth. Second, Jesus has little interest in politics. Jesus has no interest in getting involved with politics. He’s not a Roman, Herodian, Pharisee, Sadducee, Republican, Democrat, socialist, libertarian, or nativist. Jesus is the King and Savior of all creation Who plays for eternal stakes. As He would later tell Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
So what does Jesus say? Verse 18: “But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?”
The term hypocrites is definitely not a compliment. The word in English is a transliteration of the Greek word it translates, hypocrites. This is a compound word in the Greek which literally means to have different thoughts or judgments or to be a different person from the thoughts, judgments, or persons we portray to the world. It was also the word used for actors. Jesus knows that these guys are trying to play Him and they call Him out for it. He sees that they're trying to trap Him.
The word translated as trap here is a tense of the Greek verb peirazo. And that’s a really big deal because peirazo means not only trap, but test or tempt.
It’s the very word used to describe what the devil did to Jesus in the wilderness. The devil there tried to tempt Jesus away from His mission. Playing on the fear of death that every mortal human being has--and Jesus was true God AND true man, remember--the devil offered to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world without Jesus having to go to the cross. Had Jesus not gone to the cross, of course, there would be no way He could offer us life with God; He would have caved into fear--and sin--just like the rest of the human race.
Now, the hypocrites standing before Jesus are trying to tempt Him into saving His own skin by saying a few false words. It seems like such a little thing, a tiny compromise. But Jesus would have none of it. Jesus knew that even little compromises with sin and the will of God ruin everything, not just for Him and His mission in the world, but for us too. These supposedly "little compromises" and sins will eternally destroy us if we aren't diligent in following Christ and diligent in repenting and turning to Christ when we do fall for them.
Verse 19: “‘Show me the coin used for paying the tax.’ They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’”
A denarius, the amount of the Roman conqueror’s poll tax, was about what a laborer might earn in a day.
Each denarius or dinar bore an image and inscribed words. The image was of Caesar and the words about Caesar were: “Son of God.”
Any good Jew who believed in the God revealed to His people knew that to say that someone was “Son of God” was to say that they were God. In fact, people like the Pharisees and Herodians were filled with fear when Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God and when others had proclaimed that of Him. Yet here they were, a denarius with its blasphemy, in their pockets, the coin they evidently were using to make their purchases and pay their own taxes all the time. (They were hypocrites!)
Verse 21: “‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. Then he said to them, ‘So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’ When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.”
It’s Caesar’s image on the coin, Jesus is saying, so give Caesar his money.
But you know what?
Someone else’s image is imprinted on every human being, on you and me.
Genesis 1:27 says that, “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them…”
In this world, we may have to pay taxes to Caesar. But we’re to give our lives to the One Whose imprint is on us as human beings, the One Who made us, the One Who was enfleshed and died for us to give us life with God that never ends.
It’s those who surrender to and follow Jesus who are set free not just from sin and death, and everything that causes us to fear in this world.
Pay your taxes, Jesus is saying. Pay down your debts. Honor your spouse. Take care of your kids. Obey the speed limits. Help your neighbor.
And in the midst of it all, everywhere you go and in everything you do, follow Jesus.
We can do this with confidence and joy because the most this world can do to you and me is take away our earthly lives.
But we follow a crucified and risen Savior Who promises: “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)
Jesus' message for us this morning is this:
Don’t be afraid. Sure, give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s. But give to God what belongs to God: yourself, your whole self. Just like God gave His whole self to you on the cross.
Don’t be afraid. Follow Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
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.]
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.]
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
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.]
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.]
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Kristallnacht: May we never forget
Antisemitism and other forms of bigotry are a blight on the human race. We must remember the horrors unleashed when people pick groups to marginalize, menace, and kill. It is always wrong, more dehumanizing to perpetrators as well as victims.
Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, should remind us of these grim and important truths.
Each of us is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
Each of us has been carefully crafted in our mothers' wombs (Psalm 139:13-14).
And God took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ in order to accept our rightful punishment for sin, death, so that in rising, He could give life to all who turn from sin and trust in Him (John 1:14; Romans 5:7-9; Romans 4:25-5:1; 2 Timothy 2:11-13).
In other words, every human life is precious to God and every other human being is our kin, created by God.
And every human being is someone for whom Jesus, God in the flesh, died and rose, able to receive freedom from sin, death, and darkness through faith in Jesus Christ (John 8:36; Acts 2:36-39).
Bigotry and the violence it incites are abominations to God and stains on the human race. Kristallnacht happens again every time the humanity of others is disdained simply because they don't look or believe "like us."
There is a horrible irony when it comes to antisemitism, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust. The whole human race, in fact, owes the Jews a special debt of gratitude. And Christians, saved by their faith in Jesus, God, Who came into the world a Jew and a rabbi, owe the Jews their eternal lives!
As imperfect and fitful in faith as all of us when it comes to following God and obeying His command to love Him and love others, the Jews nonetheless returned again and again to God, recorded and maintained God's Word of promise, and family into which God in the flesh was born and nurtured in His humanity. The first Christians, the first to share the Good News (Gospel) of new life for all who believe in Jesus--Paul, Peter, John, Luke, Mark, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Nazareth, Stephen, James, Philip the Evangelist, and others--were all Jews who understood that in Christ, God was giving Jews and Gentiles a new covenant predicated and built on the old one that God made through Abraham and Moses.
Kristallnacht was an early indicator of what Hitler and the Nazis were about to unleash on the Jews and the world. Today, bigotry and the discrimination, persecution, and violence they spawn still exist. May we learn the awful lessons of Kristallnacht and the Holocaust and let God reign over us through King Jesus so that we learn to truly love God and love others.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, should remind us of these grim and important truths.
Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht... And thus also the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism. pic.twitter.com/BTASSHGJuk— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) November 9, 2016
Each of us is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
Each of us has been carefully crafted in our mothers' wombs (Psalm 139:13-14).
And God took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ in order to accept our rightful punishment for sin, death, so that in rising, He could give life to all who turn from sin and trust in Him (John 1:14; Romans 5:7-9; Romans 4:25-5:1; 2 Timothy 2:11-13).
In other words, every human life is precious to God and every other human being is our kin, created by God.
And every human being is someone for whom Jesus, God in the flesh, died and rose, able to receive freedom from sin, death, and darkness through faith in Jesus Christ (John 8:36; Acts 2:36-39).
Bigotry and the violence it incites are abominations to God and stains on the human race. Kristallnacht happens again every time the humanity of others is disdained simply because they don't look or believe "like us."
There is a horrible irony when it comes to antisemitism, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust. The whole human race, in fact, owes the Jews a special debt of gratitude. And Christians, saved by their faith in Jesus, God, Who came into the world a Jew and a rabbi, owe the Jews their eternal lives!
As imperfect and fitful in faith as all of us when it comes to following God and obeying His command to love Him and love others, the Jews nonetheless returned again and again to God, recorded and maintained God's Word of promise, and family into which God in the flesh was born and nurtured in His humanity. The first Christians, the first to share the Good News (Gospel) of new life for all who believe in Jesus--Paul, Peter, John, Luke, Mark, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Nazareth, Stephen, James, Philip the Evangelist, and others--were all Jews who understood that in Christ, God was giving Jews and Gentiles a new covenant predicated and built on the old one that God made through Abraham and Moses.
Kristallnacht was an early indicator of what Hitler and the Nazis were about to unleash on the Jews and the world. Today, bigotry and the discrimination, persecution, and violence they spawn still exist. May we learn the awful lessons of Kristallnacht and the Holocaust and let God reign over us through King Jesus so that we learn to truly love God and love others.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Tuesday, February 09, 2016
The Doritos Ad and How To Disagree With Each Other
The reaction of the National Abortion Rights League (NARAL) to the Doritos Super Bowl ad in which two expectant parents see their child by sonogram was strange. They lamented how the ad "humanized" fetuses.
In a post on his blog, Russell Moore argues that it isn't parents who humanize the children they observe in a mother's womb, but God.
Then, Russell gives a warning against self-righteousness by those who consider themselves "pro-life":
But the furor should also cause all of us, as Moore suggests, to be circumspect about how we view those who disagree with us as evil. Sometimes the people with whom we disagree are simply people with whom we disagree.
We are all sinners and none of us has any hope of anything like moral clarity apart from our submission to the loving Lordship of Jesus Christ. That realization should incite all of us to treat others with the love and consideration I believe is owed to babies in their mothers' wombs and to all people, no matter who they are.
For Jews and Christians, the obligation to love our neighbor is part of God's greatest commandments.
And for Christians, the ability to love others despite our differences is the litmus test of whether Christ really lives in us. When that happens, we can humbly listen to others' points of view, even when we disagree, and say with the apostle John, "We love because [Christ] loved us" (1 John 4:19).[Thanks to my son for posting a link to the Moore article over on Facebook. Please read Moore's really good piece.]
Here's the "controversial" ad.
In a post on his blog, Russell Moore argues that it isn't parents who humanize the children they observe in a mother's womb, but God.
Then, Russell gives a warning against self-righteousness by those who consider themselves "pro-life":
...it would be easy for those of us who are pro-life to see this as merely more evidence of how abortion advocacy sears the conscience and blunts even common-sense moral intuitions. But our response here should not be self-congratulation. This small window into the way moral reasoning works ought to serve as a warning to us.He continues:
We cannot “humanize” what is already human, but we can certainly dehumanize the humanity around, or within, us. The abortion lobby wants the “fetus” to be thought of only in clinical language, as though he or she were merely an “it,” tissue to be disposed of. Those who oppress the poor want them to be thought of merely in economic categories, as drains on the “system,” not as image-bearers of God. Those who want to “consume” pornography want to think of those on the screen as images, not as people with stories and hurts and families. We too often want to think of our enemies—whether on the geopolitical stage or in our office coffee-room conflicts—as exemplars of total evil, not as each one a representation of God’s creation wisdom. We want to be justified in our actions, by reassuring ourselves that there’s no judgment to come.
When those we dehumanize are seen, despite our best efforts, as human, we either repent or we become angered. That’s why Jesus’ hometown was enraged when he pointed to the truth that God, through his prophets, went outside the bounds of Israel to minister to a Syrian soldier (Lk. 4:27-28). I fear that some of us would have a similarly angry response to a sermon about ministry to a Syrian refugee.
In our sin, we want to keep our illusions–whatever they are–that enable us to silence the conscience within us. We want to, in short, walk in darkness. But Jesus is the “light of the world,” the light from Galilee that illumines the nations and ultimately the entire cosmos.Abortion is a serious issue. And while there are times when it may be seen as, in the words of a statement from a Lutheran body that no longer exists, "a tragic option"--such as in the cases of rape, incest, or when a mother's life is in danger--it's sad and sinful when it's used as nothing but a belated form of birth control. A fetus is formed in the womb by the hands of God. And like all human beings, every fetus is made in the image of God. So, I think it's right to be horrified by the inhumane response of NARAL to the Super Bowl ad.
But the furor should also cause all of us, as Moore suggests, to be circumspect about how we view those who disagree with us as evil. Sometimes the people with whom we disagree are simply people with whom we disagree.
We are all sinners and none of us has any hope of anything like moral clarity apart from our submission to the loving Lordship of Jesus Christ. That realization should incite all of us to treat others with the love and consideration I believe is owed to babies in their mothers' wombs and to all people, no matter who they are.
For Jews and Christians, the obligation to love our neighbor is part of God's greatest commandments.
And for Christians, the ability to love others despite our differences is the litmus test of whether Christ really lives in us. When that happens, we can humbly listen to others' points of view, even when we disagree, and say with the apostle John, "We love because [Christ] loved us" (1 John 4:19).[Thanks to my son for posting a link to the Moore article over on Facebook. Please read Moore's really good piece.]
Here's the "controversial" ad.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Misogyny, Murder, and Accountability
Our small town has been shocked and saddened by the kidnapping and murder of a young woman, the mother of three small children. Charges of kidnapping have been lodged against her estranged husband, William Inman, Jr., and his parents, William, Sr. and Sandra. Since Sandra was the one who told authorities where the young woman's body could be found, it's widely expected that murder charges will be brought against at least the two men. Sandra, it's expected, will face a lesser charge as part of a plea bargain.
The body of Summer Inman, who was kidnapped on March 22 outside of a local bank where she worked as a janitor, was found little more than a week later in the septic tank of the church building where her husband's parents were married in 2004. She had been strangled.
Evil is real.
The evil that led to Summer Inman's murder was of a particular kind and it grew for a particular reason.
A story from WBNS TV in Columbus presented these facts about the family with which Summer had lived before moving out and filing for divorce:
Two particular forms of evil seem to have caused the years of hellish living and horrible end to which Summer Inman was subjected.
First, there is the evil represented by the presumption of anyone announcing on they have a call from God. This is what William (Bill) Inman did.
Nobody is authorized to hang up a holy shingle on their own initiative. An individual can swear up and down that she or he has a call from God to pastoral ministry, or any other ministry, but swearing won't make it so.
Recently, the members of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, have begun a venture of reading the Bible in the course of a year. We have daily readings and once a week, folks get together to discuss the readings. During the week after the discovery of Summer Inman's body, we read portions of the Old Testament book of Exodus in which God calls Moses to act as intermediary between God and the people and then, the people call Moses to act to this same role. The will of God about Moses' role was confirmed by believing people. The will of God as to whether a person is to be a leader among His people will always be reflected among His people.
Lutherans have always believed in this "dual nature" of the call. A potential pastor's sense of call must be affirmed by the Church. Otherwise, it's just a feeling on the part of a would-be pastor and feelings are never a sufficient basis for Christian decision-making.
There's a lot of authority associated with being a pastor. It's not like the authority of a political or military leader or a business executive. It's the authority associated with God's Word and God's Sacraments and no one should dare to enter this ministry unless the call from God is confirmed by the Church. That never happened with Bill Inman. He simply took what wasn't his to take.
That in itself is a flashing light signaling possible trouble. If someone is that presumptuous with God, it's hardly a stretch to think that he will be at least that presumptuous in claiming authority over people that is not theirs.
The second evil in this case is the utterly un-Biblical and un-Christian male domination practiced by the two Inman men.
From the beginning, Scripture makes clear the utter equality of women and men. When Genesis recounts the creation of humanity, it says:
Later, in the New Testament, Paul, often wrongly accused himself of being a sexist, says plainly that, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28).
When Paul first came to faith in Christ, a woman was among those who "catechized" him in the faith. Where the culture allowed it, women served as leaders in churches founded by Paul.
Even passages in the New Testament sometimes trotted out by those who try use Christianity to justify sexism backfire in their faces. For example, Ephesians 5:21-33, which some claim commands husbands to be lords over their wives, actually, on a close reading, can be seen to command husbands and wives to live in mutual submission. Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, which, is a clear call for the husband to give himself utterly and sacrificially to their wives. After all, Christ went to a cross for His Church.
People who fail to maintain their connection to Christ's Church, who are accountable to nobody, can rationalize anything: misogyny and kidnapping and, if the hints and allegations prove true, even murder.
It's evil and you can be sure that, barring some uncharacteristic repentance (and, at the prompting of God's Holy Spirit, such miracles can happen), there will be a horrible reckoning because the God revealed first to ancient Israel and ultimately, in Jesus Christ, is a consuming fire.* To trifle with Him, to claim His authority without His permission, is a fearful thing.
*See here.
The body of Summer Inman, who was kidnapped on March 22 outside of a local bank where she worked as a janitor, was found little more than a week later in the septic tank of the church building where her husband's parents were married in 2004. She had been strangled.
Evil is real.
The evil that led to Summer Inman's murder was of a particular kind and it grew for a particular reason.
A story from WBNS TV in Columbus presented these facts about the family with which Summer had lived before moving out and filing for divorce:
Neighbors said Sandra and Summer Inman were rarely seen outside of the home, and when they were, they were both dressed entirely in black.It appears that the older William Inman had set himself up as a religious dictator overseeing his own misogynist kingdom.
A close friend said it became clear to her "that the men had taken over the women" in the family.
Those who knew them said William A. Inman considered himself a religious leader and conducted church services in an outbuilding at their home.
Neighbors said he would often go door-to-door, soliciting donations for what he called "Mercy Ranch," a plan to turn his home into a place for the wayward and homeless.
Two particular forms of evil seem to have caused the years of hellish living and horrible end to which Summer Inman was subjected.
First, there is the evil represented by the presumption of anyone announcing on they have a call from God. This is what William (Bill) Inman did.
Nobody is authorized to hang up a holy shingle on their own initiative. An individual can swear up and down that she or he has a call from God to pastoral ministry, or any other ministry, but swearing won't make it so.
Recently, the members of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, have begun a venture of reading the Bible in the course of a year. We have daily readings and once a week, folks get together to discuss the readings. During the week after the discovery of Summer Inman's body, we read portions of the Old Testament book of Exodus in which God calls Moses to act as intermediary between God and the people and then, the people call Moses to act to this same role. The will of God about Moses' role was confirmed by believing people. The will of God as to whether a person is to be a leader among His people will always be reflected among His people.
Lutherans have always believed in this "dual nature" of the call. A potential pastor's sense of call must be affirmed by the Church. Otherwise, it's just a feeling on the part of a would-be pastor and feelings are never a sufficient basis for Christian decision-making.
There's a lot of authority associated with being a pastor. It's not like the authority of a political or military leader or a business executive. It's the authority associated with God's Word and God's Sacraments and no one should dare to enter this ministry unless the call from God is confirmed by the Church. That never happened with Bill Inman. He simply took what wasn't his to take.
That in itself is a flashing light signaling possible trouble. If someone is that presumptuous with God, it's hardly a stretch to think that he will be at least that presumptuous in claiming authority over people that is not theirs.
The second evil in this case is the utterly un-Biblical and un-Christian male domination practiced by the two Inman men.
From the beginning, Scripture makes clear the utter equality of women and men. When Genesis recounts the creation of humanity, it says:
So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)Both the man and the woman were created in God's image, each in equal relationship with their Creator.
Later, in the New Testament, Paul, often wrongly accused himself of being a sexist, says plainly that, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28).
When Paul first came to faith in Christ, a woman was among those who "catechized" him in the faith. Where the culture allowed it, women served as leaders in churches founded by Paul.
Even passages in the New Testament sometimes trotted out by those who try use Christianity to justify sexism backfire in their faces. For example, Ephesians 5:21-33, which some claim commands husbands to be lords over their wives, actually, on a close reading, can be seen to command husbands and wives to live in mutual submission. Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, which, is a clear call for the husband to give himself utterly and sacrificially to their wives. After all, Christ went to a cross for His Church.
People who fail to maintain their connection to Christ's Church, who are accountable to nobody, can rationalize anything: misogyny and kidnapping and, if the hints and allegations prove true, even murder.
It's evil and you can be sure that, barring some uncharacteristic repentance (and, at the prompting of God's Holy Spirit, such miracles can happen), there will be a horrible reckoning because the God revealed first to ancient Israel and ultimately, in Jesus Christ, is a consuming fire.* To trifle with Him, to claim His authority without His permission, is a fearful thing.
*See here.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Who is the Word of God? Why Should You Read His Book?
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church during worship this morning.]
John 1:1-3, 14
2 Timothy 3:16-17*
As you know, on Ash Wednesday, March 9, we begin a yearlong emphasis at Saint Matthew: Read the Bible in a Year.
The response to the announcement that we were going to read the Bible together in a year’s time has been gratifying! Some of our overachievers have already started reading the Bible. Several people have gotten or are looking at new Bibles, in translations that are more accessible. And I hope that those who, because of the current conditions of their eyes, find reading difficult will be able get an audio edition of the Bible, either through a vendor or at the library. (If you'd like help finding an audio Bible to purchase, let me know, and I'll try to help you with your selection.)
With Read the Bible in a Year coming in so short a time, I’m departing from my usual practice of preaching on the appointed lessons and instead today, focusing on two important passages of Scripture. I hope that they’ll help motivate and inspire you to join in reading the Bible this year. My aim is to do that by talking about two important questions:
That’s why John says of the Word of God, “He was in the beginning with God” and “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made” and “We have beheld His glory.”
I’m not emphasizing the maleness of those pronouns. What I am emphasizing is that the Word of God is a Being with passions and preferences and a personality.
It’s this Personality that the Old Testament book of Genesis tells us spoke to chaos and brought the universe into being: “’Let there be light’ and there was light.” It was the Word of God that made the light and you and me and everything else.
The New Testament book of Colossians says of the One John refers to as the Word of God: “In Him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…all things have been created through Him and for Him.” And it says that in Him “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”
This Word of God, the One Who created the universe, took on flesh and, as John’s Prologue says, “dwelt, lived” among us.
The Bible confesses that Jesus is the Word of God.
God, it turns out, is the Great Communicator. He used His Word to communicate all that was needed to bring the universe into being.
And from the very beginning, He has communicated with His personal favorites, the apples of His eye, the pinnacles of creation, the only beings made in His image: the human race.
We human beings have often turned a deaf ear to the Word of God, of course. But God has never tired of communicating with us.
The Word of God ultimately came to us when He took on flesh, became one of us, bore our sin on the cross, and rose from the dead so His Word of forgiveness and new life could come to all who repent and believe in Jesus.
When we Lutheran Christians speak of the Word of God, we mean first and foremost, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, Who sits on the right side—the power side—of God the Father. The Word of God is, above all, God the Son.
Some people claim to see a different God in the Old Testament than they see in Jesus in the New Testament. Lutherans never have seen such a difference.
And for good reason. When Jesus walked on this earth, He said that He and the Father were one. He quoted Old Testament Scripture and He said that He came not to abolish God’s Old Testament law, but to fulfill it. Everything He did and said was consistent with the Personality of God revealed in Old Testament times. The New Testament writers show how the law and the grace that Jesus communicated for all the world, Jews and Gentiles, was precisely the same law and grace God communicated to His people Israel in the Old Testament. The preacher of the New Testament book of Hebrews says of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh: “[He] is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
As Lutheran Christians, we believe that God speaks and has spoken to people with the same simple message through the centuries, one composed of two parts: Law and Promise.
The Law is the moral law as embodied in the Ten Commandments, which God has never rescinded, revoked, or amended.
The Promise is God’s promise of forgiveness and new life to all who will repent and believe in Him.
God has personalized that promise for the whole human race in Jesus. This is why Jesus has given us the great commission to make disciples of all the world.
It was in response to Jesus' great commission and to help people know the Word of God personally and so, have the chance to repent and believe in Jesus, that John wrote his Gospel. “Jesus did many other things in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book,” John writes near the end of his Gospel. “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His Name.”
Jesus is the Word of God and the Bible is the Word of God because, through the Holy Spirit, the Church has learned that the Bible perfectly reflects the message the Word of God has been communicating since Adam and Eve: Turn from sin, trust in Me, and live. The Bible is God speaking law and promise to us: the law to drive us to Him, the promise to reconcile us to Him for eternity.
So, if the Bible’s message can be summarized in a few minutes, why spend a year reading it?
It’s simple, really. The crush of life—what The Small Catechism calls, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves”—can turn us into amnesiacs. We can forget all about Jesus, the Word of God, hurtling through our lives without a clue of how to live or what to do.
But in the Bible, God helps us to remember. God knows we need reminding.
That’s why Luther said that the born-again Christians of his day weren’t born-again enough. They thought of repentance and faith in Christ as a one-and-done deal. But Luther said, rightly I think, that if we don’t keep coming back to God each day to repent and be renewed in His forgiveness and love, we can drift away from God and from eternity with Him.
Reading the Bible regularly can help correct our courses through life.
That leads to a second passage of Scripture I’d like to ask you to look up in the New Testament, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. It’s on page 690 in the pew Bibles. It says:
True story. Monique Govender grew up in a Hindu home in Durban, South Africa. Her family regularly worshiped numerous idols.
Then, in the space of twenty days, two of her siblings died. Monique’s mother became fearful and, maybe just to cover all her bases, began going to a church to secretly pray to the One the Christians said was the one and only God of the universe revealed in Jesus.
Monique’s father, an alcoholic and a physical abuser of his family, hated Christians. Maybe he’d met the kinds of counterfeit Christians who give Christianity a bad name. However it happened, he misunderstood Christian teachings.
Over the course of her childhood though, Monique encountered the Word of God at different times, each time having an impact on her. Once, at age four, she attended “a memorable church activity.” At seven, buying booze for her dad, she saw street performers do two skits: one about Jesus’ parable of the ten wise and foolish virgins and the other about Joseph, the son of Jacob from Old Testament times. Most influential of all was when she learned that her grandparents, lifelong Hindus, had come to faith in Jesus Christ and joined a local church.
At age 15, Monique herself came to faith in Christ. Then, her brother, after reading a Bible he had been given, came to believe in Jesus.
At first, Monique’s father was angry at his two children and refused to let his daughter worship at church. But, trusting in Jesus, the Word of God, Monique began to pray for her family, asking God to let her worship with other Christians and to help her father recover from his alcoholism and to stop being an abuser. “Eventually, she was allowed to go to church, and [amazingly] in time both her parents came to know Christ as well.”
Monique reflects on the goodness of God. “I am not sure of what God’s thoughts were for me, but in looking back, it seems like He’s been thinking about me. And it’s [amazing] to think that I was just an unknown girl…[But] God knew me, and even as a little child, I could feel that God was there with me.”
Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is His book, written so that, no matter how “unknown” or alone or adrift or overwhelmed you may sometimes feel, God loves you.
God wants to be in relationship with you.
He wants to give you an abundant life here and in eternity.
He wants to guide you with His wisdom and love.
Read the Bible every day and let Jesus, the Word of God, speak His grace and truth into your life all the days of your life!
*The renderings of these two passages, as linked here, are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible. The Bibles in the pew racks of the Saint Matthew sanctuary are the New King James Version (NKJV).
John 1:1-3, 14
2 Timothy 3:16-17*
As you know, on Ash Wednesday, March 9, we begin a yearlong emphasis at Saint Matthew: Read the Bible in a Year.
The response to the announcement that we were going to read the Bible together in a year’s time has been gratifying! Some of our overachievers have already started reading the Bible. Several people have gotten or are looking at new Bibles, in translations that are more accessible. And I hope that those who, because of the current conditions of their eyes, find reading difficult will be able get an audio edition of the Bible, either through a vendor or at the library. (If you'd like help finding an audio Bible to purchase, let me know, and I'll try to help you with your selection.)
With Read the Bible in a Year coming in so short a time, I’m departing from my usual practice of preaching on the appointed lessons and instead today, focusing on two important passages of Scripture. I hope that they’ll help motivate and inspire you to join in reading the Bible this year. My aim is to do that by talking about two important questions:
- First, what do we Lutheran Christians mean when we speak of “the Word of God”?
- And second, why should we bother reading the Bible?
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” [Now, slide down to verse 14.] “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”Long before the universe was created, there was the Word of God. This Word of God is not an “it.” Unlike an impersonal force, the Word of God can be known in the same way you know your family or your friends or your neighbors.
That’s why John says of the Word of God, “He was in the beginning with God” and “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made” and “We have beheld His glory.”
I’m not emphasizing the maleness of those pronouns. What I am emphasizing is that the Word of God is a Being with passions and preferences and a personality.
It’s this Personality that the Old Testament book of Genesis tells us spoke to chaos and brought the universe into being: “’Let there be light’ and there was light.” It was the Word of God that made the light and you and me and everything else.
The New Testament book of Colossians says of the One John refers to as the Word of God: “In Him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…all things have been created through Him and for Him.” And it says that in Him “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”
This Word of God, the One Who created the universe, took on flesh and, as John’s Prologue says, “dwelt, lived” among us.
The Bible confesses that Jesus is the Word of God.
God, it turns out, is the Great Communicator. He used His Word to communicate all that was needed to bring the universe into being.
And from the very beginning, He has communicated with His personal favorites, the apples of His eye, the pinnacles of creation, the only beings made in His image: the human race.
We human beings have often turned a deaf ear to the Word of God, of course. But God has never tired of communicating with us.
The Word of God ultimately came to us when He took on flesh, became one of us, bore our sin on the cross, and rose from the dead so His Word of forgiveness and new life could come to all who repent and believe in Jesus.
When we Lutheran Christians speak of the Word of God, we mean first and foremost, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, Who sits on the right side—the power side—of God the Father. The Word of God is, above all, God the Son.
Some people claim to see a different God in the Old Testament than they see in Jesus in the New Testament. Lutherans never have seen such a difference.
And for good reason. When Jesus walked on this earth, He said that He and the Father were one. He quoted Old Testament Scripture and He said that He came not to abolish God’s Old Testament law, but to fulfill it. Everything He did and said was consistent with the Personality of God revealed in Old Testament times. The New Testament writers show how the law and the grace that Jesus communicated for all the world, Jews and Gentiles, was precisely the same law and grace God communicated to His people Israel in the Old Testament. The preacher of the New Testament book of Hebrews says of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh: “[He] is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
As Lutheran Christians, we believe that God speaks and has spoken to people with the same simple message through the centuries, one composed of two parts: Law and Promise.
The Law is the moral law as embodied in the Ten Commandments, which God has never rescinded, revoked, or amended.
The Promise is God’s promise of forgiveness and new life to all who will repent and believe in Him.
God has personalized that promise for the whole human race in Jesus. This is why Jesus has given us the great commission to make disciples of all the world.
It was in response to Jesus' great commission and to help people know the Word of God personally and so, have the chance to repent and believe in Jesus, that John wrote his Gospel. “Jesus did many other things in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book,” John writes near the end of his Gospel. “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His Name.”
Jesus is the Word of God and the Bible is the Word of God because, through the Holy Spirit, the Church has learned that the Bible perfectly reflects the message the Word of God has been communicating since Adam and Eve: Turn from sin, trust in Me, and live. The Bible is God speaking law and promise to us: the law to drive us to Him, the promise to reconcile us to Him for eternity.
So, if the Bible’s message can be summarized in a few minutes, why spend a year reading it?
It’s simple, really. The crush of life—what The Small Catechism calls, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves”—can turn us into amnesiacs. We can forget all about Jesus, the Word of God, hurtling through our lives without a clue of how to live or what to do.
But in the Bible, God helps us to remember. God knows we need reminding.
That’s why Luther said that the born-again Christians of his day weren’t born-again enough. They thought of repentance and faith in Christ as a one-and-done deal. But Luther said, rightly I think, that if we don’t keep coming back to God each day to repent and be renewed in His forgiveness and love, we can drift away from God and from eternity with Him.
Reading the Bible regularly can help correct our courses through life.
That leads to a second passage of Scripture I’d like to ask you to look up in the New Testament, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. It’s on page 690 in the pew Bibles. It says:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God [literally, it says all scripture is God-breathed; God invests His very life into the pages of this book!] and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the [person] of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.In the Bible, the Word of God—Jesus—gives us a treasury of tools by which God empowers us to live with faithfulness and to share God’s Word of law and promise that can bring eternity to all who believe in Jesus.
True story. Monique Govender grew up in a Hindu home in Durban, South Africa. Her family regularly worshiped numerous idols.
Then, in the space of twenty days, two of her siblings died. Monique’s mother became fearful and, maybe just to cover all her bases, began going to a church to secretly pray to the One the Christians said was the one and only God of the universe revealed in Jesus.
Monique’s father, an alcoholic and a physical abuser of his family, hated Christians. Maybe he’d met the kinds of counterfeit Christians who give Christianity a bad name. However it happened, he misunderstood Christian teachings.
Over the course of her childhood though, Monique encountered the Word of God at different times, each time having an impact on her. Once, at age four, she attended “a memorable church activity.” At seven, buying booze for her dad, she saw street performers do two skits: one about Jesus’ parable of the ten wise and foolish virgins and the other about Joseph, the son of Jacob from Old Testament times. Most influential of all was when she learned that her grandparents, lifelong Hindus, had come to faith in Jesus Christ and joined a local church.
At age 15, Monique herself came to faith in Christ. Then, her brother, after reading a Bible he had been given, came to believe in Jesus.
At first, Monique’s father was angry at his two children and refused to let his daughter worship at church. But, trusting in Jesus, the Word of God, Monique began to pray for her family, asking God to let her worship with other Christians and to help her father recover from his alcoholism and to stop being an abuser. “Eventually, she was allowed to go to church, and [amazingly] in time both her parents came to know Christ as well.”
Monique reflects on the goodness of God. “I am not sure of what God’s thoughts were for me, but in looking back, it seems like He’s been thinking about me. And it’s [amazing] to think that I was just an unknown girl…[But] God knew me, and even as a little child, I could feel that God was there with me.”
Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is His book, written so that, no matter how “unknown” or alone or adrift or overwhelmed you may sometimes feel, God loves you.
God wants to be in relationship with you.
He wants to give you an abundant life here and in eternity.
He wants to guide you with His wisdom and love.
Read the Bible every day and let Jesus, the Word of God, speak His grace and truth into your life all the days of your life!
*The renderings of these two passages, as linked here, are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible. The Bibles in the pew racks of the Saint Matthew sanctuary are the New King James Version (NKJV).
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Faith Tidbit #45
Contrary to a common misconception, the Bible doesn't teach that angels are human beings who have died and gone to heaven. Angels are a separate order of God's creation. The word angel means messenger. When you look at the accounts that include angels in both the Old and New Testaments, you notice that they are message-bringers. Angels are important, but only human beings were created in the image of God, making them the highest and most significant of all God's creation.
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