Jesus' Sign of Power

John 11:1-53
A dictionary defines the word, sign, as “an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.” Signs never point to themselves, they always point us to something else.

The gospel of John is often called “The Book of Signs” because it’s built around seven signs performed by Jesus.* 

John tells us elsewhere in his gospel that “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.” But John chose to tell us about just these seven signs so that we could come to “believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31) (This includes the eighth and perfect sign: Jesus’ glorification, His death and resurrection.)

There are some Christians who claim that miracles should be happening every day of our lives. In one way, they’re right: Whenever a person comes to believe--trust in--Jesus, God grants them eternal life with Him. But if miracles happened every day, they wouldn’t be miracles at all, but, as one preacher says, “ordinaries.”

Jesus’ signs brought the miraculous in-breaking of God into this world, pinpricks of God’s light and sovereignty into our darkness, pointing to God, not themselves.

If people think that miracles--miracles like superabundant finances, never-failing health, conflict-free relationships, perfect fulfillment at work, being brought back from the dead--are the norms for Christian disciples, they misunderstand Jesus and His Gospel.

Today’s gospel lesson, John 11:1-53, recounts a spectacular sign performed by Jesus...the one which, according to John, solidified the intentions of the Jewish religious elite to see Jesus crucified by their Roman overlords.

As has been true over the past several weeks, John’s account of Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead, all that led up to it, and what resulted from it, is too long for us to examine verse-by-verse. We’ll go section by section.

In verses 1-16, we learn that Jesus’ friends, Martha and Mary, are facing a crisis. Their brother, Lazarus, is dying. Jesus knows this, but doesn’t tell the disciples.

Instead, Jesus waits for two days before saying or doing anything. Why? One Bible scholar suggests that Jesus felt the need to spend those two days in prayer, discerning what He should do.

I think there’s good reason to believe that’s true, as we’ll see later in the lesson. But just on first blush, there are several reasons why Jesus might have used these two days to pray.

First of all, Jesus loved His friend. But Jesus also never performed a miraculous sign for His own benefit. Jesus likely wanted to ensure that healing His friend was the Father’s will and not His own.

Another reason: Bethany was just two miles from Jerusalem. In just the previous chapter, we see that the last time He was in Jerusalem, there had been efforts to stone Him and to arrest Him. Of course, Jesus’ entire life was spent preparing for the time when He would go to Jerusalem to offer His life: ”the lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) But Jesus would not go to Jerusalem until it was His time, the time appointed by God the Father. (John 7:30) Jesus had to make sure that the Father wanted Him to go to Jerusalem and His cross at this time.

When you and I confront decisions or try to discern whether what we want conforms to the will of God, we need to spend time waiting and praying. If a thing is right, God will give us peace, permission, and prompting. If it isn’t the right thing, we won’t sense God giving us His green light.

Eventually, Jesus and the disciples learn that Lazarus is dead. The disciples are the voice of common sense when Jesus tells them that they need to go to Judea, where Bethany is located. If Lazarus is dead, there’s nothing Jesus can do, they reason, and besides, Jesus would be walking into a death trap.

But Jesus won’t be dissuaded. Thomas, his voice dripping in sarcasm, becomes the first person in our lesson to say more than understands: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16)

What Thomas didn't realize is that when we throw in with Jesus, it means death to our old selves, the willing crucifixion of our sinful, selfish ways of living, so that Jesus can raise us to new life.

In verses 17 to 37, Jesus goes to Bethany, where He encounters Lazarus’ grieving sisters and their grieving neighbors. Each are disappointed in Jesus.

• “Lord,” Martha [says in verse 21], “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
• In verse 32, Mary says: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
• And later, the townspeople ask each other: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:37)

The mystification and even, maybe, anger felt by the people in Bethany who had believed in Jesus doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their faith in Him. We see this in an interchanged between Jesus and Martha. Jesus assures Martha: “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. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) Martha responds with a confession of faith despite her grief and tears: ““Yes, Lord I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God,who is to come into the world.” (John 11:27)

You’ve heard me say it before: The only people who get mad at the God we know in Jesus are the ones who believe in Him; you don’t get mad at a God that you don’t believe is there. We may struggle in our faith, like Thomas, Martha, Mary, and the people of Bethany. But if we will wait and pray, God will give us peace and sustain us with the promise underwritten by Jesus’ death and resurrection: All who have the Son in their lives have life with God that cannot be taken from us.

The sign Jesus performs next points to this reality. In John 11:38-44, Jesus goes to the tomb and orders the stone rolled away from its doorway. Martha protests. It’s been four days and the body will have begin to decompose and smell. But, remember that Jesus has already prayed about this. He deliberately waited until He was sure that Lazarus was dead so that Lazarus’ death, as He puts it, will happen “for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (John 11:4) Jesus will perform a sign that will allow all present to “see the glory of God,” so that they can believe. (John 11:40)

Just before Jesus raises Lazarus, He prays again, a prayer of thanksgiving that God had guided Him during those two days of prayer: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” (John 11:41-42) Jesus’ time of waiting and praying assured Him that He was doing His Father’s will.

Now consider: If Jesus, God the Son, God in the flesh, needed such an investment in waiting and praying before acting, how much more do we need to wait and pray each day?

After uttering this prayer, Jesus called Lazarus from the dead, out of the dark tomb into the light of day.



[A mostly accurate rendering of Jesus' raising of Lazarus from the dead as portrayed in Jesus of Nazareth. This film is my favorite portrayal of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The words spoken by the John character here are based on Jonah 2:6.]

All who saw this sign were bound to talk about it...and they did! And anyone who heard about it would have been amazed.

But not everyone is happy with it. The unhappy ones, the Jewish religious elite in Jerusalem, see Jesus as a provocateur, sure to incite the Romans to assault their people. The religious leaders in Jerusalem say: “If we let [Jesus] go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” (John 11:48) (They say this even though the Romans had taken away their nation long years ago!)

Instead of trusting in Jesus, Whose signs gave glory to God and not Himself, the religious leaders put their trust in the power of Roman swords.

It’s always a mistake to put more stock in or be daunted by the power of earthly rulers than we do in God.

Long after the last ruler of this world has died, Jesus, the King of kings, crucified, risen, and ascended will hold the field alone!

Psalm 118:9 says: “It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.”

Who do you put your trust in today, Jesus or earthly rulers? Jesus or the things of this world that will someday be reduced to ashes by the hand of God? Jesus and His grace or this world and your fears? This is a choice we must make each day.

As we come to the end of our lesson, Caiaphas, the high priest, becomes the second person in this incident to say more than he personally understands. He tells his fellow priests that instead of worrying about what impact Jesus might have on the Romans, they needed a simple solution. They should kill Jesus off, he said, and save the nation. “...it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” (John 11:50)

Caiaphas thinks that if they get Jesus executed, that will be the end of things. The nation will be spared the Roman sword and life can go on as it had before this Disturber from Galilee arrived.

In plotting to send Jesus to a cross, Caiaphas is actually playing right into God’s plans.

Jesus came into the world to do exactly what Caiaphas proposes: to die on behalf of sinners so that they might not perish.

“I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” Jesus says in Luke 12:50.

Jesus had performed a seventh sign with the goal of showing His identity and, as a result of the world's rejection of Him that resulted, to go to the cross for you and me.

From a worldly perspective, Jesus’ fate is sealed when He raises Lazarus from the dead.

From the perspective of God, this sign is the final confirmation that the One Who performs it is “the Word made flesh,” the Messiah Who came to die and to rise and to give new life to all who trust in Him.

We human beings sometimes presume that we are and ought to be in control.

But the universe, life, death, and resurrection are in the hands of the God we meet in Jesus alone.

That’s important to remember because life in this world can sometimes go wrong. But if you follow Jesus, no matter what the sarcastic or the cynical or the powerful of the world may say, you will never be wrong.

Amen

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

*Seven Signs Performed by Jesus in John’s Gospel:
1. Changing water into wine (John 2:1-11)
2. Healing the royal official’s son in Capernaum (John 4:46-54)
3. Healing the paralytic at Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
4. Feeding the 5000 (John 6:5-14)
5. Walking on the water (John 6:16-24)
6. Healing the man born blind (John 9:1-7)
7. Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-45)

What's Christian Unity? And What It's For?

John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ. Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them [that is, the first century disciples who were following Him back then] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message [that’s you and me], that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...”

Jesus prays for unity among Christians. But what exactly does it mean for Christians to live in unity with each other? It's easier, in some ways, to talk about what Christian unity isn't, allowing that to help us form an answer to that question.

So, first of all, it’s not unity with each other apart from unity with Christ. In a denomination to which many of us once belonged, we were accused of breaking the unity of Christ’s Church when we left. But when a group of people calling itself the Church breaks with Christ, it’s no longer united with Christ. We left that old denomination in order to have unity with Christ and with His true Church. Those who repudiate the authority of God’s Word over the life of the Church and the life of Christians are the ones who break the Church’s unity. Unity with other people without Christ is not unity.

Secondly, Christian unity isn’t coerced uniformity. I knew a man who bragged about his marriage: “I’m so proud that we’ve been married more than fifty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor for years because her husband was a thoughtless dictator. He was happy; she was a wreck. Unity is not coerced uniformity, whether in a marriage or in a church.

Thirdly, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict and disagreement are to be expected. Only spiritually immature people think that good churches don’t have disagreements! As someone has said, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or maybe dead.

Consider the Biblical record of Jesus when it comes to conflict.

• Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Sadducees for valuing their religion instead of a personal, saving relationship with God.
• Jesus also condemned those among His fellow Jews who refused to believe in Him, despite Jesus being the clear fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah King God would send to save His people from their sins.
• Jesus called His own disciple, Peter, a satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.

Was Jesus breaking the unity of believers when He said these things? Absolutely not! Sometimes, in the Church, as in our marriages and friendships, it’s only through the clash of ideas (and the clash of wills) that those who have taken a wrong turn--often both parties--can be brought to the right path and truth becomes clearer. But such clashes need not bring disunity.

Fourthly, the unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations. As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth. The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, one of Lutheranism’s basic statements of faith, “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”

As much as I appreciate the North American Lutheran Church, of which Living Water is a part, it is only the Church to the extent that it remains faithful to that Biblically-rooted understanding of the Church.

The same is true of Living Water Church.

Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy.

Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”

Love allows for disagreements, and even a little neurosis. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.

Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. What would be the point of that?

It turns out that Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity as His Church. Look at verse 23 of our Gospel lesson. Jesus prays, “...Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”

The unity for which Jesus prays has one overriding purpose: to empower the disciples of His Church--you and me--in fulfilling our one and only mission of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That’s it!

I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other--and how comfortable and united they felt with each other--that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. They would brag about how friendly their church was, but when visitors came to worship, Bible studies, or church activities, they were only friendly to each other, not the visitors. (That’s a contrast to Living Water, where visitors have to negotiate a gauntlet of unofficial greeters as they make their way to the sanctuary!)

A church united in Christ loves nothing more than making disciples, seeking out and welcoming others so that they can know Christ as their God, Lord, and Friend.

Disciples from united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”

They love taking the time to help others to know and grow in a saving relationship with Christ!

We do this in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends through saved, repentant sinners like us, disciples of Christ who bet our whole lives on Jesus Christ!

In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Like the apostle John, a Church united with Jesus Christ wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God. A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!

As someone has famously put it: “The Church is the only organization that does not exist for itself, but for those who live outside of it.”

Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.

Disciples of Christ and His Church believe that Jesus meant it when He said in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

If Christians live in unity for any other purpose than helping people follow Jesus, they may be nice people; but they are not a church. 



One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of resolving to be united. Unity in Christ is God’s gift to people who are focused, not on themselves or their preferences or obsessions, but on Jesus Christ alone.

Sometimes, I have Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and tell them to pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus. Here’s the deal: As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.

As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. Jesus prays that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.

As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves.

Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I think that I may have misunderstood what you were saying, could you explain it to me again? How can I share Christ with others? How can I invite others to know and follow Christ?” will be spoken among us.

More and more disciples in our midst will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus so that they can be part of His priesthood of all believers, each of us having ministries to the Church and to the world.

As we live each day as part of this community of Christian faith, Living Water, may we turn always to Christ in repentance and renewal and pray that, as we do so, Christ will unite us in doing the very thing that we all were saved by Jesus Christ to do: Turn this dying world upside down by living and dying for Christ alone and by making disciples; reaching up, reaching in, reaching out. Amen

I Don't Need All the Answers

Today, Sundries, over on Facebook, shared this:

Being faithful to the Bible very often means admitting that there is no clear answer.

I like this.

One of the things that won this one-time atheist over to faith in Christ was the Bible's clear-eyed realism about humanity and the limits of our capacity to fully understand life's deepest mysteries. In John 20:30-31, John says that there was much more that Jesus did that he didn't include in his book, but that what he did write was meant to lead us to faith in Christ and so that, having that faith, we might have with God through Him.

The Bible is not a book of science. It doesn't claim to answer all the questions of this life, only those about our relationship with God and the way to life with Him, not inconsequential questions. In fact, life's most important questions. 

But those who pit the Bible and science against each other understand neither. The Bible encourages us to unravel scientific mysteries (and others), but it gives no formulas to do so.

It tells us about the awesome, just, gracious God of the universe, enough for us to have faith, to know to repent and believe in Him, and to live in the assurance that He is with us in this imperfect world and will give us life as it was meant to be beyond the gates of death. The Bible tears the curtain between God and us, ushering us into a relationship with Him, into the blessed assurance that all who repent and believe in Christ have the free gift of life with God forever.

From the certainty of this relationship, God gives us the freedom to be all for which He made us.

I can't know everything about God or His purposes. If I could, either He wouldn't be God or I would be. And since I know that I am emphatically not God, I am enabled by the Holy Spirit to believe in the God to whom the Bible, the apostles, and all the saints of every time and place have given witness.

One day, the Bible assures, we will know perfectly, even as God has perfectly known us. For now, this imperfect person strives by God's grace to see through a glass darkly and remain content in the knowledge that the God of all creation took on human flesh, bore the burden of my sin on the cross, and then rose from the dead for me. (1 Corinthians 13)

It's overwhelming. It's staggering. But by the grace of God, I believe. And, while there are times when I definitely would like more of the answers, in the end, knowing what I do of the gracious God revealed in Jesus Christ is more than enough for me.

Unity for a Purpose

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

John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ and unity among those who confess that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “I do not pray for these alone [meaning the disciples who were with Him in first century Judea], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word [Jesus is praying for us here; we have come to believe in Him through the apostles’ word about Jesus.]; that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us...”

What is the unity among Christians for which Jesus prays?

Well, first of all, let's remember one thing it is not. It is not coerced uniformity. I knew a man who made this brag about his marriage: “One of the things I’m proudest of is that we’ve been married more than thirty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” He really was proud of that. But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and seeing a counselor for years. He was happy; she was a wreck. That husband and wife didn’t seem to be “one” to me. Unity is not coerced uniformity.

Also, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict is to be expected.

Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Saducees for valuing their religion over having a personal relationship with God.

He upbraided His fellow Jews for refusing to believe in Him, though He had come into the world because God loved the world and then died and rose so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him can have eternal life with God.

He called His own disciple, Peter, a Satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.

Paul and Barnabas, as well as Paul and Peter, had raging arguments.

Sometimes, in the Church, as in our marriages and friendships, it’s only through the clash of ideas that the truth becomes clearer. But that need not threaten unity.

The unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations.

As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth.

In Luther’s Two Kingdoms understanding of how God rules--you remember, the kingdoms of the earth that are ruled through laws, rules, and coercion and the kingdom of God which is ruled by grace among those who believe in Jesus Christ--the institutional Church is not part of the kingdom of God. It’s one of the kingdoms of the earth.

The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession “is to remain forever.” Notice, it's not our buildings, candlesticks, robes, organs, hymnbooks, fellowship halls, office equipment, parsonages, parking lots, and so on that will remain forever. All of those things will one day be destroyed to make way for a new heaven and a new earth, but the Church will remain forever. Article 7 goes on to say that the Church “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”

When agreement about the Gospel of new life through Jesus and agreement about the administration of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion exist, along with the commitment to sharing Christ with the world that flows from that agreement, then we begin to experience the unity for which Jesus prays.

I enjoy getting together with Christians of other denominations and heritage. That’s been part of my faith journey. I was baptized in an evangelical Friends Church and was confirmed in a Methodist Church. A Roman Catholic priest preached at my ordination service. He and a Nazarene pastor joined my own Lutheran pastor in laying on hands when I was ordained. I’ve participated in and led prayer and study groups with Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals. I served on or chaired five committees for the Billy Graham Mission in Cincinnati back in 2002, working with folks from every Christian faith tradition. Since coming to Logan, I’ve participated in a number of multi-denominational prayer services, including one just a few weeks ago.

We can and should affirm that Christians of other traditions have Jesus and have eternal life. We can pray with them. We can praise God with them. We can join them in serving our community, as we do through the CHAP emergency food bank and will likely increasingly do through the Inspire shelter for the homeless.

We must avoid the sin of denominationalism, thinking that we have an exclusive claim to God’s truth.

But there is a place for our denominations. As Lutherans, we want the Church to be united. But we have disagreements on fundamental aspects of the Christian faith with our sisters and brothers in Christ in other traditions.

So, we continue to proclaim the good news of new life by God’s grace through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus as we understand it and pray for that day when unity goes beyond institutional affiliations or legalistic checklists of cooperative ventures.

We pray for that day when the whole Church on earth will be united in the pure Gospel and the right use of the Sacraments. And like Martin Luther before us, we will offer to gladly admit our errors and any straying from God's Word if it can be shown to us.

Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy. Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”

Love allows for a little neurosis in those we love and in ourselves. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.

Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity.

Look at verse 23. There, Jesus prays, “...that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

The unity for which Jesus prays has one purpose then: to empower us and lend us the credibility with the world to tell others about Jesus Christ.

I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. Listen: A truly united church loves nothing more than making disciples. Members of united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”

The Church is the fellowship of the saved, reaching out to those who are still lost. We reach out in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends when repentant sinners believe in Jesus Christ!

In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

A truly united church, like John, wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God.

A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!

Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.

If Christians live in unity for any other purpose, they may be nice people; but they are not a church. 



One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of making a resolution to be united.

Sometimes, I have our Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus.

You know what happens? As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.

As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. We see them as imperfect AND loved people, just like us, all of us in need of daily repentance and of the grace of God given in Christ that can daily make us new again.

Jesus has to pray that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.

As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves. Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong,” will be spoken among us. And more people will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus to be part of His priesthood of all believers, each with ministries to the Church and to the world.

All of which leads us to May 19.

I cannot tell you how to vote on the question of joining the North American Lutheran Church and leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America next Sunday.

You must decide for yourself as you pray and study God’s Word.

But I do know that a humanly-created unity based on never having differences of opinion is not the unity Jesus wants us to have.

Nor is Christian unity necessarily about affiliation with a particular humanly-created denominational structure (be it the NALC or the ELCA) or with a particular humanly-created congregational corporation.

True Christian unity is rooted in a common belief in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, in a common belief that it is only by grace through a faith in Christ that includes repentance and surrender to Jesus. True Christian unity is also rooted in a common belief that in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, God acts (we don't act, God acts) in our lives to bring grace, forgiveness, and life. And true Christian unity is also rooted in a common commitment to sharing these things with fellow sinners who will be eternally separated from God unless Christians care enough to share the truth of both God’s law and of God’s promise of new life in Christ.

Let the unity that Jesus prays for guide you in your decision on how to vote. Put your decision in Christ’s hands and know that, whatever you decide, God loves you and that I too truly love every member of this congregation. Amen

We Need Never Be Afraid

[This was prepared to be shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 6:1-21
Did you notice anything strange in the gospel lesson from John?

The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over! It’s an incredible miracle, a sign of His authority over the elements of the world, of His compassion for people, of Jesus being more than just a good man.

The last six verses recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. And it’s here that something that may seem strange to us happens. Or, more accurately, something that, after reading the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we might expect to happen, but isn’t mentioned.

Turn please to John 6:16-21. We’re told: “...when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum...it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.” (Just imagine being in a boat out on Lake Erie facing a wind like some of those we’ve been experiencing around here lately.) “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat and they were afraid. But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.”

Neither John nor Mark, in their gospels, mention that after Jesus identified Himself, Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really You, call to me and let me walk on the water to you.” Matthew tells us about this and about how, having taken a few steps, Peter looked at the wind and the waves and lost his faith in Jesus to do the impossible and began to sink into the waters.

Now, these differences in detail shouldn’t rock our worlds! Each of the gospel writers tells us about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in his own way, touching on particular themes. John even tells us that he leaves out some details. Turn to John 20:30-31. These words come toward the end of the gospel and they constitute John’s “mission statement,” his reason for writing his gospel. He says: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples; but these [that is, the one John recounts in his gospel] are written than you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

Keep those two verses tucked in your mind as we look at another detail surrounding Jesus walking on the water that John doesn’t include, but which both Matthew and Mark mention.

Look first at Matthew 14:32. It says: “And when they [Jesus and Peter] got into the boat, the wind ceased.”

Now, please go to Mark 6:51: “Then He [Jesus] went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.”

Matthew and Mark both say that the moment Jesus got into the boat, the wind stopped. That’s a pretty amazing occurrence, isn’t it, another sign that Jesus is Lord and God of the universe? Wouldn’t you think that John, who shows us signs of Jesus’ identity so that we can believe in Him and have the forgiveness of sins and new life only Jesus can give, would mention it?

But John doesn’t mention it. All He says is that the disciples rode the waves through the storm, saw Jesus walking on the water, and that their boat landed safely on the other side after Jesus climbed into the boat.

So, why doesn’t John tell us about the calm that came to the Sea of Galilee?

Maybe because it isn’t really important. In fact, my guess is that John deliberately left out the detail about the becalmed wind to make a point. What do I mean?

You know, if I dared to let you listen in when I have my time of personal prayer each day, one minute would not have passed before I would begin to blush in embarrassment. That’s because, on reflection I realize that, more often than I like, my prayers can be so childish, immature. I run into a problem here, a challenge there, and instead of asking God for guidance, or courage, or wisdom, or faith, I ask God to just take away the problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong: God is so compassionate, He’s even willing to hear us when we pray the most childish, even selfish, things. For God, the fact that we pray to Him is a lot more important than what we pray. The God we know in Jesus Christ is a great artist: Our imperfect prayer petitions are like ill-formed messes of clay offered up to God, which God can turn into masterpieces of His design. But when we’re going through storms in our lives, as unpleasant and hard and sad as the storms that may afflict us can be, our ultimate concern shouldn’t be whether Jesus takes the storms away or not, but whether we’re riding the storm out while following Jesus.

I’ve known some people whose lives were mostly spent in pleasant circumstances whose faith in Christ was destroyed by the smallest hint of adversity. But I’ve also known people who have endured more tragedy than most of us can imagine. The storms were fierce in their lives. Yet their faith in Jesus, their belief in His presence with them now and in His promise of eternity to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, actually was strengthened during their storms.

Nobody wants to experience adversity or pain in their lives. But God can use life’s storms to strengthen our faith in Christ.

In fact, if we pay attention to the experiences of believers like Job in the Old Testament or Paul in the New Testament, we see that, while Satan is the ultimate author of all evil in the world, sometimes God allows adverse experiences to befall us in order to teach us to rely more deeply on Him and less so on ourselves.

There’s a story told a goldsmith. He was explaining what it takes to refine a piece of gold to turn it into something beautiful and useful. It all has to be done at a precise temperature, he explained. And the timing has to be just so. “How,” someone asked, “do you know when the gold has reached perfection?” “That’s easy,” he said, “when I can see my reflection in it.”

In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a compassionate miracle worker. Each of us can name experiences either in our own lives or in the lives of others where we know that Christ has intervened  to give healing, strength, encouragement, or new starts in our personal lives, our jobs, our relationships.

But sometimes the winds still blow against us.

Sometimes things happen that we will not be able to understand or explain until, after our own deaths and resurrections, we see Jesus face to face.

In the meantime, God allows the circumstances of our lives to re-form our characters so that, one day, in eternity, when He looks at us, He will see Himself--His love, His perfection--reflected in us.

This is what John, the author of our gospel lesson, means when he writes to believers in Christ in another book of the New Testament: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus] is revealed [when we see Jesus on the Day of the Lord], we will be like Him...” 

One of the biggest misconceptions into which Christians can fall is the notion that being part of the Church is like being a member of a civic club. You know: You join, throw some money into the till, and get goods and services for which you pay. “Membership has its privileges.”

That’s not what being a member of Christ’s eternal fellowship, the Church, is about!

You see, Jesus Christ has already paid our membership dues for the Kingdom of God. He did that when He died on a cross, taking our punishment for sins, and rising from the dead to give life to those who turn from sin as the ultimate authority over their lives and instead, entrust their lives to Jesus as their only God, King, and Savior.

The privilege of being part of Christ’s Church is the privilege of being remade in the image of Christ as we daily surrender our lives and wills to Him.

The privilege of being a Christian is knowing that the God Who, out of His amazing grace, saves from sin and death those who believe in Jesus, isn’t in the business of just getting us out of the pain we encounter in this life. He's playing for much higher stakes! He’s reshaping our characters for eternity!

We still have storms in this life. The adverse, painful winds still rage in this fallen world. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, face persecution for their loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God.

But there are two other things that the last six verses of our gospel lesson should teach us.

The first is this: When they received Jesus into the boat, they landed safely on the shore. When we take Jesus into every experience of our lives, whatever adversities we face, we can know that He is with us. Nothing can separate us from Him.

And finally this: The translations of John 6:20 in most English versions of the Bible aren’t good. Our translation says that Jesus told the frightened disciples: “It is I; do not be afraid.” That rendering really misses the point of Jesus’ words. In the Greek in which John wrote, he quotes Jesus as saying, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am." It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The name was "Yahweh," the Hebrew for I AM.

When storms hit in life, as they inevitably do, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, as the other gospel writers affirm, but the only One Who can give us strength during the storm and life beyond the storm: God, the great I AM, Who took on flesh and died and rose to give new life to all who believe in Him, Jesus Christ!

We need never be afraid.

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:

• First, what do we Lutheran Christians mean when we speak of “the Word of God”? 
• And second, why should we bother reading the Bible?

So, let’s get to it. Please pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 611. There, you’ll find what’s known as the Prologue to John’s Gospel, John 1:1-18. We’ll consider just a few passages of the Prologue, verses 1 to 3 and verse 14. Read along with me silently, please.

“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). 

What is a Lutheran?

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

John 8:31-36
It happened more than twenty-five years ago in New England, where Lutherans are about as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth. In his office, the pastor of a newly developing congregation received a telephone call. The caller had a simple question. “What is a Lutheranian?” she asked.

Overlooking that mispronunciation, the caller’s question is still a good and important one. Answering it isn’t some esoteric, theological head trip. After all, we are a Lutheran congregation, people who believe the Lutheran Confessions' understanding of Christian faith. If we can’t answer the question, “What is a Lutheran?” how Lutheran are we really?

On this Reformation Sunday, 2009, I want to talk with you about what a Lutheran is. For the historical background on Lutheranism and the Reformation, please take the red insert home with you today.*

But to answer our question, “What is a Lutheran?” I ask you to take a look at the bulletin cover. There, in addition to pictures of the Bible, of Martin Luther, and of Luther’s personal seal, you’ll also find three words printed over a single larger word. These convey what Lutherans see as the three foundational truths of Christian faith:

• Grace alone,
• Faith alone, and
• Scripture alone (or Word alone).

Lutherans are people who, first and foremost, believe in grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone. But, what does this mean?

When the thirty-three year old German monk and priest, Martin Luther accidentally began the Reformation movement, he found himself addressing both a religious elite that no longer cared about the Word of God, choosing to replace it with their own supposed wisdom, and Christian masses whose allegiance was to the Church as an institution, a habit, rather than a personal fellowship with the living God.

No wonder that the elites hated Luther.

No wonder that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a loose confederation of states supposedly bound together by their allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, put Luther under an imperial ban, meaning that any one was authorized to kill Luther on sight.

Luther’s faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to the authority of the Bible undermined those who wanted to replace Jesus with other Lords and the authority of the Bible with traditions and customs that brought them comfort, control, or power.

But the experience of Luther and the other church reformers was nothing new. If you take time to read the Old Testament, you see a recurring pattern in the life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites or Jews. God would call them to repent, trust in Him for life, and follow Him, and the people, feeling weak or vulnerable or afraid, would do so. For a time. Then, once they got a little food in their bellies, a little tract of land to farm, a bit of wealth or power, they would mostly forget God.

Or, they would make God over into an indulgent Santa Claus who didn’t care if they repented, believed, or followed, so long as they had a good time.

Or, they would tinker with their faith, adding their own rules, intermingling the worship of other deities, maybe ensconcing wealth as a sign of God’s favor and love.

It was to God’s people in these latter circumstances that God would send prophets to call people back to God.

We see this rejection of God and of God’s Word in the people Jesus confronts in today’s Gospel lesson from John. Just before our lesson, Jesus once more foretells His crucifixion and resurrection. Then Jesus lifts up those three distinctives of Biblical faith, three distinctives that would become the three cornerstone principles of Lutheranism. "Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him,” our lesson begins, “’If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Lutherans don't claim to have a corner on the truth market. But the Lutheran Confessions hold up certain truths which, often it seems, the world would rather forget.

Lutheran Christians believe that we are free from sin, death, and futility in our daily lives, first of all, through God’s grace alone. Jesus didn’t come to us and say, “Perform these religious acts and I will set you free from sin, death, and futile living.” Jesus came to us and offered new and everlasting life as a free gift, an act of charity from God.

Paul writes in the New Testament book of Romans, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s all of us apart from a relationship with Christ]…God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The Greek New Testament word that is translated in our Bibles as grace is charitas, from which we get our English word, charity, a gift we cannot earn. We are saved by God’s grace alone.

The apostle John gets at this same reality in his first epistle, where he says, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

For the Christian, we believe, all depends on God's grace. Not our works. Nor our feelings. Not our thoughts. Only on God's grace. A friend of mine has the perfect response for those who ask Lutherans, “When were you saved?” “That’s easy,” my friend says, “on a hill outside Jerusalem two-thousand years ago.” What is a Lutheran? First of all, someone who believes that their salvation has nothing to do with them, but is a result of God’s grace, given in Christ, alone.

Lutheran Christians also believe we are saved through faith alone. Jesus told His fellow Jews that they would only be free to be the people of God if they persisted in trusting in Him.

Throughout the Gospel of John, we see Jesus described as the foundational Truth of the universe, God-in-the-flesh Who spoke creation into being. Life outside of a relationship with the God made known in Christ is a lie, disconnected from the only One Who can give us life.

That’s why, just a few verses after our Gospel lesson in John, Jesus will tell the same people that because they are unwilling to accept His Lordship and authority, His call to turn from sin and follow Him, they are really following a different father, “…[Y]ou cannot accept my word…” Jesus says, “[because] you are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in Him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

But faith, the gift God gives to those willing to receive it, can overcome what Martin Luther marked as our enemies—the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.

That’s why Jesus says elsewhere, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…”

And to Martha, the sister of His friend Lazarus, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will live forever.”

What is a Lutheran? It’s someone who believes that God’s grace is taken in hand by those who dare to trust—to have faith in--Jesus Christ alone.

Finally, Lutherans believe that we come to know God through the Word alone. Above all, we know God through “the Word made flesh,” Jesus, and also through the definitive, authoritative, inspired Word of God, the Bible, a library of books inspired by God the Holy Spirit.

In Luther’s day, the Church added to and ignored the witness of God about Jesus and the will of God found in the Scriptures. Luther said that the Church dared not do or say anything contrary to the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.

Luther believed Paul’s words to the young pastor Timothy found in the New Testament, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…”

We may want to know much more, but everything you and I need to know about God, about ourselves, about how to live, and about who can be trusted, is found within the covers of the Bible. Knowing this truth will set us free.

That’s why the Lutheran Confessions say, “We believe, teach, and confess that the…writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged…”**

We live in an era in which the Bible is routinely snubbed, dismissed, or misused. People ignore how unique and different the Bible is from all the other books of other religions.

The Bible isn’t the writing of just one person claiming a hotline to God, as is true of the books of Islam or Mormonism.

The Bible doesn’t claim to give us a means by which we can work or claw our way to heaven or a state of spiritual enlightenment, as is the case with eastern religions.

The Bible is a spiritually consistent revelation given by God to many people inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is a library of books that tell us how God reaches out to us, God saves us, God loves us, and how God wants to be reconciled to us.

And thousands of years of living with the Bible’s revelations of God, of Christ, and of the will of God have shown repeatedly that the Bible is more than just a collection of sixty-six ancient books.

It’s a book whose words from God have the power to change the lives of those who stand under their authority.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit…able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

John ends the twentieth chapter of his Gospel by underscoring the life-giving power of the Bible, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 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.”

God saves through grace alone, faith alone, and Word alone.

It was true in 33AD, true in 1517, true today, and true for all time.

What is a Lutheran?

At the least, Lutherans are people who stake their lives on those truths.

And when the world rejects or demeans or tries to tell us to reject the Bible's witness to these three essential truths, we must say with Luther, “"Unless I am convinced by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason…I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience has been taken captive by the Word of God…I am neither able nor willing to [reject dependence on Scripture]…God help me.”

And may God help us. Amen

*You can read that here.

**This is from Part One of the Formula of Concord, one of the foundational confessional documents of Lutheranism.