Which Do We Need: Fixer or High Priest?

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

Hebrews 5:5-10
In the movie, The Painted Veil, Naomi Watts plays a spoiled daughter of wealth who marries a scientist committed to doing good for others. She finds her husband a bore. One night in a remote Chinese village, she and her husband are at the home of an Englishman whose Chinese wife, unable to speak any English, clearly adores her husband. Why, Kitty Fane, Watts’ character, asks the English man, does his wife love him so? He translates Kitty’s question for his wife and the answer comes back, “She says because I am a good man.” Kitty nearly spits out her reaction: “As if a woman ever fell in love with a man for his virtues.”

We all know men and women like that who think that the only kind of person worth falling in love with is one who is self-centered, physically imposing, rude, or inclined to ignore or disrespect those less “gifted” than themselves.

But good women or men who fall for bad members of the opposite sex aren’t the only ones who throw in with people who sin with little sense of dishonor or shame.

Whole nations--like Nazi Germany--have been known to give their allegiance and even worship to people they knew to be evil but who “kept the trains running on time.”

Less dramatically, we ourselves have a tendency in our own culture to wink at evil-doers while labeling those who try to do the right things in life as “wimps.”

“Marketing” Jesus in a world like this, a world that loves sinful heroes who impose their wills on others, has always been a tough sell for Christians.

Our second lesson for today, Hebrews 5:5-10, says that Jesus is our “high priest.” The question, I suppose, is why would anyone want a high priest when what we really want is to wink at us as we “get away with murder,” to experience what we imagine being God, the master of the universe, must be like?

And what exactly is a high priest, anyway?

Please look at the verses just before our lesson, Hebrews 5:1-4 for an answer to that question.

Hebrews is describing the faithful descendants of Levi, one of Jacob’s sons, back in Old Testament times. Levi’s descendants were the priests of ancient Israel.

In verse one, we’re told that the high priests offered “both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” The priests made offerings to God as the people repented for their sins and trusted God to forgive them.

In verse 2, we’re told that a high priest “can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.” The high priest had what we call empathy. He knew what it was like to be human and understood how human beings can fall into sin.

Verse 3 says that the high priest so identified with the weaknesses of the people that he offered sacrifices for his own sins as well as those of the people. Faithful priests never held themselves up as being superior to others. They were servants. Jesus exhibited this very attitude when He went to the Jordan to baptized by John. John's baptism was a sign of the baptized person's repentance. Jesus was sinless and had no need to repent. That's why John objected to baptizing Jesus. Matthew's gospel says:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." (Matthew 3:14-15)

Like the high priests of the Old Testament period, Jesus identified with you and me and our needs for reconciliation and rightness with God.

Hebrews 5:4 then says that no one dared to take the honor of the priesthood for himself--something that was going on in the first century world in which Hebrews was written--but was called to it by God.

The high priest wasn’t a dictator who kept the trains running on time! He:

• prayed for those who fell into sin, 
• bore compassion for those subject to temptation, 
• identified with the people he served, and 
• didn’t do the job because he thought he was qualified or because he loved the honor or felt himself to be better than others. He served as high priest just because God had called him. 

Fine, we might think, the high priests were “nice” guys. But when we’re up against the calamities of life--job loss, relational discord, divorce, disobedience in children, irresponsibility in parents, violence, terrorism, fatal disease, death, grief--what good is a high priest?

What good is a virtuous servant of God when what we want is a “fixer” who can get us out of the fixes we’re in?

God evidently thinks that in the face of all our life’s enemies, including sin and death, a high priest is precisely what we need.

Look now at what Hebrews tells us about Jesus in our lesson, Hebrews 5:5-10.

Verse 5: “Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest...”

Don't be mistaken about what this means. Jesus was clear about proclaiming Who He was: God in human flesh. “I and My Father are one,” He says in John 10:30, for example.

And yet, Jesus never forced anyone to acknowledge Him as God and Savior. Jesus never sought honors from the world. He only sought to do the will of the Father. Like the high priests of old, Jesus never glorified Himself or pushed Himself ahead of others. Jesus didn’t take the job of the great high priest of creation; it was conferred on Him by God the Father Who said, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well. Hear him!” (Matthew 17:5)

In Hebrews 5:6, the preacher says too, that the Father spoke the words of Psalm 110:4 to Jesus: “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”

What on earth is that about?

Melchizedek is mentioned in just two places in the Old Testament: in the Psalm quoted here in Hebrews and in Genesis 14:18-20.

There, we’re told that Abraham has just returned from a battle in which he saved his nephew Lot and Lot’s family and possessions from a coalition of five kingdoms that had kidnapped them. After the battle, Melchizedek comes from Salem, Shalom in Hebrew, a word that means Peace, among other things. Salem existed at the very site on which Jerusalem and the temple would be built hundreds of years later.

Now, think of this: Long before Abraham’s grandson Jacob had a son named Levi, who would become the ancestor of Israel’s high priests...long before there was a temple or a Jerusalem, God had a high priest bringing God's shalom, God's peace, and the availability of reconciliation with God to the human race.

Already, 2000 years before Jesus was born, crucified, or resurrected, God was laying the foundation for our salvation from sin and death through Jesus.

Priests, you see, are the conduits between heaven and earth of God’s law and promise.

They offer up prayers for sinful humanity and they convey the call of God to humanity to repent and believe in God. (The New Testament book of 1 Peter says, by the way, that every baptized believer in Jesus is a priest of God. That includes you and me. That though, is a topic for another sermon some day.)

Genesis says that Melchizedek was “the priest of God Most High” long before the ancestors of Israel’s high priests were even conceived. And unlike the descendants of Levi who inherited their priesthood, Melchizedek received his call, not by inheritance, but directly from God.

And Melchizedek wasn’t just a high priest. He was also the king of Salem.

That may not seem earth-shaking to us. But in those days, kings were kings and priests were priests and the twain rarely, if ever, met...usually with terrible results.

Even today, it would seem strange if a pastor were elected president, wouldn’t it? The two functions--priest and ruler--don’t seem to go together.

But Jesus, our second lesson tells us, is a priest in the order of Melchizedek. That means that like the Levitical priests, He never sought His priesthood. But unlike them, He didn’t inherit the priesthood from an earthly father. God the Father made Jesus a priest in the same way He had made a priest of Melchizedek. Hebrews 7:3 says of Melchizedek: “Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, [Melchizedek] remains a priest continually.”

Like Melchizedek, Jesus is a king. But unlike Melchizedek, He is the King of all kings, Who brings shalom, peace with God, to all who will turn from sin and believe in Him!

In the rest of our lesson from Hebrews, we see how Jesus the King of all kings, accepted human limitations in order to bring salvation to us. We’re told, starting with verse 7, that while on earth, Jesus offered up prayers and requests to God “with vehement cries and tears to Him Who was able to save Him from death...” And verse 8 says that Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered, meaning, above all, through His cross.

Jesus doesn’t sound much like those rogue heroes we love so much, does He? He sounds like He willingly accepted human weakness as He prayed to God, “not my will, but Your will be done.” (Matthew 26:39)

In the garden of Gethsemane on the night of His arrest, He told Peter to put away his sword when Peter tried to protect Jesus from the soldiers and the temple police who had come to arrest Him. Jesus asked Peter, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53).

Even at the point of His death, Jesus renounced the sword and all the other signs and symbols of human power. He accepted the weakness under which the old high priests had also lived and so, went to the cross.

“So, Jesus is our high priest?” you may be asking. “Can a high priest who accepts the same limitations and weaknesses we have, even our subjection to death, do us any good?”

Writer Louis Cassels wrote a story called, The Man Who Stayed Home.

A man believed that the idea of God becoming a human being was silly. One Christmas Eve, because He couldn’t accept Jesus being both God and human, he refused to attend the candlelight worship service. 

Shortly after his family left for the service, the snow began to fall and he was startled by a thud. Then another thud. Then another. He thought someone was throwing snowballs at his house.

But on looking outside, he found a flock of birds, some of them occasionally flying toward the light coming from his house, looking for shelter.

The man thought he should try to help them. So, he put on his coat and took a loaf of bread outdoors. He then created a trail of bread crumbs that would lead the freezing birds to a barn where his kids kept a pony.

But the birds weren’t interested in the bread. They wanted to get warm.

He tried catching the birds, shooing them, corralling them, walking around them, waving his arms. But nothing he did would get the birds to go into the warm barn.

He realized that they were afraid of him.

“If I were a bird,” he thought, “I guess that I could speak their language. I could tell them not to be afraid. I could promise to help them and lead them to safety. But I’d have to be one of them so that they could see and understand.”

At that moment, church bells rang in the distance and the man’s eyes filled with tears. He fell to his knees in the snow.

What good is a high priest...

• Who has become one of us? 
• Who has offered up desperate prayers when His throat was choked by fear and his face was streaked by tears? 
• Whose anxiety was so great that blood was secreted through the pores of His skin, along with His sweat? 
• What good is a Savior Who went to a cross and tells us that the way to life leads through Him?

All the good we need, that’s what good Jesus is! 

Only the high priest Jesus, Who understands us and has compassion for us, gives us forgiveness and life forever.

Only the high priest Jesus has the love to stick by us for eternity, no matter what.

Only the high priest Jesus is worth surrendering our whole lives to, because only Jesus can give us what nobody and nothing in this world has in their power to give: life with God.

You know, we can look for life and fulfillment and happiness in many places. (It's like the old country song, Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places. We do that.)

But only our great high priest can give us--can give you--all that God wants for you to have and enjoy for all eternity. Only the high priest Jesus can give you God and lead you to God.

Jesus is reaching out to you again this morning.

Don’t turn away.

Follow Jesus.

Fall in love with Him.

Take hold of Jesus and never let go and know that, for His part, our great high priest and king, will never, never let go of you!

Amen

Who Do You Put First?

[This was prepared for Ash Wednesday worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Matthew 6:16, 16-21

In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”

He goes on to give three concrete examples:

• When you give charity to the poor, don’t make a show of it. 
• When you pray in public, don’t pile phrases one on top of the other in order to wow the people around you. 
• And when you fast—that is, give up food for a time, don’t let your outward appearance call attention to your “sacrificial” religious devotion.

Spiritual disciplines are meant to draw us closer to Christ, deeper into His orbit, and to create habits of dependence on God within us.

When we give, we’re trusting God to keep providing for our needs even though we have less.

When we pray, whether publicly or privately, we’re acknowledging our complete dependence on God and not ourselves.

When we fast, we’re seeking freedom from what we want and asking God to give us only what we need, what Jesus calls “our daily bread.” (And that, above all, means Him.)

Spiritual disciplines aren’t meant to give us bragging rights, so that we can show the world how faithful we are.

All of that is easy enough to understand. It’s easy to understand too, when Jesus says that those who make shows of their acts of religious piety get the very shallow, meaningless rewards they seek: People notice them.

But the notice of people, the applause of the crowd, won’t get us what only Jesus, Who bled and died and rose again for us, gives.

To those who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Him, Jesus gives the only rewards that last after the cheering has stopped, after the crowds have turned away. Those rewards include forgiveness of sin, eternal life with God, and purposefulness for the living of these days.

Don’t forfeit the only reward worth having, Jesus is telling us in tonight’s Gospel lesson, by allowing your life with God to boil down to things you do for show.

The fact is that what people think of us doesn’t matter. Jesus commands us to play to an audience of One. The opinion Jesus Christ has of our beliefs and motives is the only opinion that will count on judgment day, when He will return to the world to judge, as we say in the Creed, "the living and the dead."

The apostle Paul knew all of this. The first century church of Corinth that he founded, after a time, became a dysfunctional mess requiring him to send at least two letters of correction, both of which the Holy Spirit has inspired the Church to include in the New Testament portion of the Bible. One dispute among many that existed in the Corinthian church was between those who liked the teaching of Paul and those who preferred that of a preacher who came along after Paul left Corinth, named Apollos. Paul wrote to say that such arguments were silly. Paul hadn’t died for their sins and Apollos hadn’t risen from the dead for them. Only Jesus could save them, Paul reminded them.

In the midst of this conflict, some of the Corinthian Christians who aligned themselves with Apollos said nasty things about Paul. Paul couldn’t have cared less. He wrote, “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you…I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord Who judges me.”

Paul knew well what Jesus is getting at in this evening’s Gospel lesson:

• Don’t worry about showing others what a good Christian you are; just be a Christian. 
• Don’t call attention to your acts of Christian devotion; just be devoted to Christ.

We could end the sermon right there, I suppose. But, as Lutherans, we believe that we can’t just take pieces of Scripture and leave them as isolated proof texts for the hobbyhorse of the day. Martin Luther said that we should let Scripture interpret Scripture. In other words, a single verse of Scripture, without consideration of the witness of the whole Bible, can be used or misused to say anything. Do that enough with single passages of scripture and you distort the whole Bible and the entire Christian faith.

The distortion to which Jesus’ words for us this evening often get subjected seems especially popular among we Lutheran Christians. Historically, Lutheranism has its roots among the people of northern Europe: Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians. These aren’t folks known for being talkative or demonstrative. So, Lutherans have often taken Jesus’ admonition to not make a show of religious piety to mean that we're to never talk about our faith, never tell a friend what Jesus means to us, never invite others to come and see what God is doing in our church family. This is why Lutherans are sometimes called “the frozen chosen.”

But in what Jesus says to us tonight, He isn’t telling us not to live our faith in Him out in the open where the whole world can see it. Pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 553, please. Take a look at a passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which we discussed a few weeks ago, Matthew 5:14-16. Jesus says: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Now, turn to page 557 in the pew Bibles and look at Matthew 10:32-33. Jesus says: “Therefore whoever confesses Me before [people], him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before [people], him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”

Then, turn to page 572, and find Matthew 28:19-20. There, the resurrected Jesus, about to ascend to heaven, gives the Great Commission to all who believe in Him. The Great Commission is of equal importance for us as the Great Commandment, which Jesus gives in Matthew 22:34-40, to love God and love others. In the Great Commission, Jesus says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

We are to live our faith out loud. We are to share Christ with others. We are to seek to make disciples of our neighbors, friends, and family members. Jesus commands us to do these things. But what He says to us this evening is a simple admonition: “Watch your motivation. If you’re out to glorify yourself and not Me, Your religious observances are meaningless.”

These are great words for us to remember as we begin the season of Lent. I knew a guy who gave up all sweets during Lent. He seemed to tell everybody he knew that he had given up sweets for Lent. “Want a cookie?” someone would ask him. “No,” he’d say, “I gave up sweets for Lent.” “Want a piece of cake?” Same answer. “Want a can of pop?” Same answer. The first twenty or so times he said, “No, I gave up sweets for Lent,” the response was predictable. People applauded him for his discipline and self-sacrifice and altogether upright behavior. He basked in their compliments. But after a time, people quit asking him if he’d like a cookie, a piece of cake or candy, or a can of pop. Without these offers and the opportunities they gave him to brag about his Lenten discipline, he found it harder and harder to stay away from sweets.

This fellow's desire for compliments isn't unique. Just yesterday, I read about a study conducted by scholars at Ohio State who determined that receiving boosts to their self-esteem was the thing that college students loved more than anything. The compliments of others can be addictive.

Taking on a discipline for Lent (or at any other time of the year) can be a fine thing. But, Jesus says, if it’s all about getting compliments, we’ve got it wrong.

The other night, Ann and I saw an interview on TV with an educated, middle clas Libyan man who had never before held a gun in his hand and, despite having so much to lose, had enlisted in the fight to bring down the dictator Moammar Gadhafi in his country. He said that, for him, it boiled down to a simple sentiment: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” We who confess Jesus as our God and Savior belong to the Kingdom of God. Tonight, Jesus challenges us to set our egos aside, to ask not what our acts of religious devotion can do for us, but how our acts of religious devotion can make us more submissive to the will of God and how they can help us to tell the whole world the story of the God Who loves all so desperately that He became one of us, died for us, rose for us, and gives everlasting life to those who dare to put Him first in their lives.

That’s the dare Christ lays before us this Lenten season, the dare He lays before us every day we live: Put Him first just as He did when He went to a cross for you two thousand years ago. Jesus characterizes His call to us in this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Don’t ask what’s in it for you; just follow the God revealed in Jesus, whether anybody else notices it or likes it or not.

May seeking God’s kingdom and the righteousness that belongs to followers of Jesus be our chief motivation this Lenten season…and our whole lives. Amen!

Learning to Pray (Fifth Midweek Lenten Devotion)

[This was shared during the final Wednesday Midweek devotional worship for Lent at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier this evening.]
James 1:12-16
Luke 4:1-2a
Tonight, we’re focusing on the sixth and seventh petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.”

Someone has said that the easiest thing to empirically prove about the witness of Scripture and Christian belief is the reality of sin and evil. The Bible asks us to accept as matters of faith, among other things, the existence of God, Jesus' birth to a virgin, the divinity of Jesus, Jesus’ resurrection, the true presence of Christ's body and blood "in, with, and under" the bread and wine of Holy Communion, and eternity as a reality that will be experienced by all who repent and believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord.

But it requires no leap of faith for us to believe that each of us is a born sinner or that, except for the God-man Jesus, sin is indemic to the human experience. Each of us can testify to the reality of sin and evil from what we see in the headlines, in our homes, and in our own hearts.

Ann’s and my home pastor used to tell us, “If you doubt the existence of original sin, put two 2-years olds in a locked room with a single toy.”

Our natural impulse is to be completely wrapped up in ourselves, to love ourselves but not God, and certainly not neighbor.

Our inborn desire to be in control of the universe, to “be like God” as the serpent put it to Eve in the garden of Eden, is something we all share, no matter how hard we may try to conceal it from others...or ourselves.

But after the Christian has prayed that

• God’s Name will be hallowed,
• God’s kingdom will come,
• God’s will is done,
• God will provide our daily bread and
• God will forgive us our sins as we forgive others,

Jesus encourages us to pray for what may be the biggest miracles of all!

Jesus teaches us to ask our Father to “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” or as a modern translation of the prayer puts it, “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.”

Think about that: Jesus is teaching us to militate against our inborn impulse to do be our own gods and ask God for the power to not do every selfish, willful, destructive, hurtful thing which, inside of us, we want to do! That the Holy Spirit would actually move us to even pray for such things is a miracle, let alone give us the power to mean the requests and actually contemplate living them!

Of the sixth petition, "Lead us not into temptation," in The Small Catechism, Martin Luther makes the same point as Jesus’ brother James makes in the words I read from the New Testament a few moments ago. Luther writes, “God tempts no one to sin, but we ask in this prayer that God would watch over us and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final victory.” Here, Luther underscores the fact that, in this petition, we ask God for a miracle.

But that’s OK; God is in the miracle business!

On the First Sunday in Lent each year, we remember that Jesus, though sinless, shared the very human experience of being tempted to sin. As an often-quoted passage of Hebrews reminds us, in Jesus, our high priest, “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”

Jesus’ successful resistance of temptation in the wilderness--along with His life-long avoidance of sin--was a miracle, in its way.

Jesus didn’t take the easy way out.

He didn’t take the selfish way out.

He endured in His faithful obedience to the will of God and because Jesus endured, He can help us to endure faithfully in the face of temptation and evil.

But we can do more than endure. The God Who has shared our life experiences has also conquered our temptations, our sins, and death itself through Christ’s cross and empty tomb!

Whenever we ask God to “deliver us from evil,” we express our conviction that no matter what temptations bedevil us and whatever sins we need to confess in Jesus’ Name, those who entrust themselves to Jesus can be raised above all evils.

During our lives on this earth, God will minister to those who truly seek to walk with Him, just as God sent His angels to serve Jesus in His wilderness of temptation.

To pray, “Deliver us from evil” is to pray for more than the power to resist evil in this life. In Matthew 24, Jesus talks about what this world will be like as its life draws to a close. There will be an “increase of lawlessness,” Jesus says, and “the love of many will grow cold.” “But,” He goes on, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

It was no doubt with passages like this in mind that Luther wrote of the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Deliver us from evil”: “We ask in this inclusive prayer that our heavenly Father would save us from every evil to body and soul, and at the last hour would mercifully take us from the troubles of this world to Himself in heaven.”

In teaching us the sixth and seventh petitions, as is true of all the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus invites us to trustingly live in the glory of two transcending Christian realities: Surrender and Triumph!

When by faith, we surrender to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit makes it possible not only for us to confess our faith in Jesus’ Lordship, but also to be empowered to relate to God as “our Father,” our intimate and loving parent. We can speak honestly to God about our desires, our hopes, our troubles and temptations, our requests.

Last Sunday, I mentioned that I've been reading John Ortberg's new book, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You. Today--after I thought I had finished this sermon yesterday--I got to a chapter where Ortberg talks about this whole business of surrender to God. To the world, he points out, surrender is equated with defeat. But for the Christian, surrender is the first step to life.

In fact, when a movement among Christians called the Oxford Group birthed Alcoholics Anonymous, it presented twelve practical steps to freedom from addiction, all of which are rooted in the Bible and Christian belief. The first step to freedom for the addict is admitting that they have a problem too big for them to control or overcome.

That is the first step to freedom from sin and the freedom to truly live for all of us. Surrender is a hard pill to swallow for us, especially for we men, who are seem to liberally imbibe the myth that if we're not in control, we're less than human.

But as Ortberg points out, when we play God, when we think that we must have things under control, we walk down the road of disappointment and unhappiness. That's because, my fellow recovering control freaks, when we presume to be in control of our worlds, we take responsibility for something over which we have zero control: the outcomes of life.

When we surrender our lives to God, God gives us the freedom to live day by day, working, loving, and living faithfully and leaving the outcomes in the hands of God.

That's a relief and that's liberating!

The child who surrenders to the Father in faith also shares in Jesus’ triumph over temptation, sin, evil, and death.

The person who asks their Father to deliver them from evil is claiming their share in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Surrender to Jesus Christ brings triumph as God sets us free to be our true selves, our best selves!

We usually end our prayers, of course, with the word, Amen. Amen is more than a religious way of saying, “Over and out.” Let Luther have the last word tonight:

Amen means Yes, it shall be so. We say Amen because we are certain that such petitions are pleasing to our Father in heaven and are heard by Him. For He Himself has commanded us to pray in this way and has promised to hear us.

When we say, "Amen" in our prayers, we take Jesus up on His offer of new life to those who surrender to Him and walk in the triumph of new life for all who repent and believe in Him!

Lord Jesus: Teach us to pray as You have taught us and live our lives in surrender and triumph in Your Name. Amen

Lives That Say, "Thank You"

[This was shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 12:1-8
Years ago, a nearly full-sized replica of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall toured the country. During its Chicago stop, a TV reporter asked one man who had gone to see the wall why he was there. “Because,” the man replied, running his fingers across one particular name, “when I was in Vietnam, this man saved my life.”

As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I can readily understand that man’s emotions. You and I are privileged to know Someone Who sacrificed His life to save ours. Jesus Christ, true God and true sinless human being, died on a cross for us, accepting our punishment for sin, so that all who repent and believe in Him live with God forever.

Jesus’ death on the cross should engender endless gratitude in those of us who have been baptized and who believe. But that true story from Chicago compels me to ask myself: Do I have as much gratitude to Jesus for saving my life as that veteran had for the man whose name he reverently touched on the Vietnam War Memorial?

Our Gospel lesson from John causes me to ask the same question about my gratitude and belief in the God we know through Jesus.

The lesson records an almost bizarre incident that happened just six days before the Passover Feast that would see Jesus’ arrest and subsequent execution. At the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, his friends in Bethany, Jesus is having dinner. In the midst of it all, Mary walks over to Jesus, falls before Jesus, and pours a costly ointment, imported from India, onto Jesus’ feet. She dabs the liquid with her hair.

If this scene is strange to us, it would have been downright offensive to the people of first-century Judea where Jesus lived. For one thing, washing or anointing feet was slave’s work. For another, a woman was never to let her hair down except in the presence of her husband. And of course, the cost of the ointment, the equivalent of about one year’s wages, would have made her gesture almost incomprehensibly extravagant to some.

And though, in a short time, Judas will betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver—roughly one-tenth the value of the ointment Mary uses on Jesus’ feet, Judas says the money that selling the ointment could have raised, rather than "wasting" it, could have been given to the poor.

Jesus upbraids Judas. Mary, Jesus knows, is grateful for what Jesus has done for her family: in the preceding chapter of John's Gospel you can read about Jesus bringing Mary’s brother, Lazarus, back to life. She knows that is but a preview of coming attractions for all who believe in Jesus, because it was to Mary that Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; those who believe in Me, though they die, will live!”

I’d like to talk about four valuable lessons this incident teaches us. In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to:

• do whatever good we can do,
• whenever we can do it,
• for whomever we can do it.
• And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about the limitations of our abilities.

Let’s consider each one of those thoughts in turn.

First, in response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can. In his new book, The Me I Want to Be, John Ortberg, talks about how we pastors can sometimes crush the spirits of our congregations without intending to do so. He writes,

A mother with three preschool-age children hears her pastor talk about [the fact that he loves] God so much that he is up very early every morning to spend an hour of quiet time, but her children simply will not cooperate. What she takes away is that she ought to be doing the same thing and so she does spirituality by comparison, living under a cloud of guilt. It never occurs to her that the love she expresses to her children might ‘count’ as a spiritual activity. It never occurs to her that perhaps she is serving God more faithfully than the very pastor who may be neglecting his wife and children in the morning so he can have that hour of quiet.

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do what we can do and not compare ourselves to others.

We know that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were people of modest means. There were no servants helping with this dinner they were serving. Yet they had this expensive ointment, something for which they’d probably scrimped and saved for years. Putting it on Jesus’ feet was an extravagant, unnecessary, and altogether loving thing for Mary to do. She did what she could do. That’s our call too: to do what we can to thank and praise Jesus.

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good whenever we can do it. Bishop Thomas Clary tells the story of a conversation that happened after the meeting of a board on which he served. People were telling stories about their most embarrassing moments. One man, Frank, talked about his dad, a fisherman who loved the sea and was devoted to his entire extended family. As the Bishop tells it:

[Frank said,] "When the weather was bad [my Dad] would drive me to school. He had this old truck that he used in his fishing business...[It made lots of noise, announcing its presence wherever it went.]...As [Dad] would drive toward the school, I would shrink down into the seat hoping to disappear...[so I wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of my schoolmates]...[Dad] would drive right up in front [of the school], and it seemed like everybody would be standing around and watching. Then [Dad] would lean over and give me a big kiss on the cheek and tell me to be a good boy. It was so embarrassing...Here I was twelve years old, and my dad would lean over and kiss me goodbye! I remember the day I decided I was too old for a goodbye kiss. When we got to school and came to a stop, he had his usual big smile. He started to lean toward me, but I put my hand up and said, "No, Dad." [Frank explained that he was too old to be kissed by his father. His dad’s eyes teared up.] He turned and looked out the windshield. "You’re right...You are a big boy, a man. I won’t kiss you any more."

[Then, Bishop Clary says that as he remembered his embarrassing moment,] Frank got a funny look on his face and the tears began to well up in his eyes as he spoke. "It wasn’t long after that when my dad went to sea and never came back. It was a day when most of the fleet stayed in, but not Dad. He had a big family to feed. They found his boat adrift with its nets half in and half out..."

[There was a pause.] Frank spoke again, "Guys, you don’t know what I’d give to have my Dad give me just one more kiss on the cheek, to feel his rough old face, to smell the ocean in him, to feel his arm around my neck. I wish I had been a man then. If I had been a man, I would never have told my Dad I was too old for a goodbye kiss."

In response to Jesus’ love, like Mary, we’re to do good whenever we can. That includes giving and receiving genuine love even among the people to whom we seem prone to subject our worst behavior, our families.

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good for whomever we can do good. Max Lucado tells the story of a friend’s visit to Walt Disney World. This friend had been at Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom. There, he was part of a huge crowd where, in one corner, a beautiful girl was playing the part of Cinderella. In an opposite corner of the castle was a boy of about seven, holding onto the hand of his older brother. The younger boy was small for his age, his face terribly deformed. He watched as “Cinderella” showered attention on all the other children around her.

But then something wonderful happened! Cinderella saw this little boy just standing there watching wistfully. She politely but resolutely walked through the crowd of adoring children right up to the little boy. She knelt down next to him with a smile on her face and then leaned forward and kissed him. The joy that overtook that little guy bespoke his gratitude.

When we do good even for those the world deems unlovely, the joy of heaven enters our world. It enters us!

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we shouldn’t worry about the cost. Mary didn’t worry about the cost when she poured that expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet! ! When we truly value Jesus and what He has done for us, no cost is too great. Whatever it costs us in time, effort, money is worth it in order to tell Jesus Christ thank You for the gift of eternity!

And we shouldn’t allow our limited abilities to prevent us from thanking Jesus either. An old joke goes this way: A man happened to walk by a building that was on fire before firefighters arrived. A woman on the second floor called out to him and asked, “Will you save me?” The man said that he would and proceeded to walk away. “Where are you going?” the woman asked hysterically. “I’m going to get life-saving training. I’ll be back as soon as I graduate.”

Many Christians are like that man. They feel that they’re unable to be good Christians—they haven’t read the Bible enough, or they don’t pray enough, or whatever. But just as you don’t need a college degree to show your spouse, or child, or friend, or parent that you love them, you can show your gratitude to Jesus without having special training.

Mary, in our Bible lesson today, apparently wasn’t much of a cook; Martha was the one in the kitchen…again. (And who knows what Lazarus was doing, if anything!) But, grateful for Jesus’ love, Mary soothed Jesus’ aching feet at dinner. She anointed Him for burial.

There’s no reason for us to worry about the things we can’t do. God doesn’t hold us responsible for the things we’re incapable of doing. God only holds us accountable for what we can do.

The most important ability that Jesus is seeking in us is availability. Just make yourself available to Jesus because He loves you and because you love Him back.

As people grateful for what Jesus has done for us, our call is clear. We’re to do whatever good we can do, whenever we can do it, for whomever we can do it. And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about our abilities.

If we truly want to tell Jesus thanks for the cross and the empty tomb, then we, like Mary who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet, will find our own ways each day to tell Him, “Thank You!” And as we do, we will be truly alive. Amen!