Maundy Thursday: Filled with Meaning and Mystery

[This was shared tonight during Maundy Thursday with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Mark 14:12-26
Maundy Thursday is a day heavy with meaning and mystery.

But on this Maundy Thursday, we consider the most meaningful and mysterious thing about this day. I want to talk with you about the is-ness of this day.

Tonight, you see, we do more than remember Christ, His death, and His resurrection. He will be with us. He will relive the crucifixion and resurrection in us. And He will welcome us to the heavenly banquet He eternally shares with all who believe in Him. The gospel writer Mark tells us about this meaningful and mysterious meal you and I are about to have once again.

First, some background. The Old Testament shows us that the central saving event of Israel’s history was God’s deliverance of His people, Israel, the Hebrews, from their slavery in Egypt.

This event was not just celebrated by the Jews. It was reiterated, re-lived, re-experienced in the Passover festival each year.

In the Passover, Jews don’t just go back to the events the day celebrates, they participate in the first Passover all over again. There is a present-tense is-ness in the Passover.

Above all, as you know, Passover is annually re-lived in the Seder meal.

It was while commemorating the Passover meal with the twelve apostles that Jesus chose to institute the most meaningful and mysterious meal there is, the most meaningful and mysterious thing about Maundy Thursday.

In this meal, which Jesus first shared with the twelve on the night before He would be crucified, four days before God the Father would raise Him from the dead, Jesus anticipates and gives us the means to regularly relive the central saving event not just of Israel’s history, but of world history.

That central event, of course, is Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In this meal, Jesus makes us not spectators of what He does for the sinners of the world.

He doesn’t hand us a souvenir of His death and resurrection.

In Holy Communion, Jesus makes us part of what He has done and is doing.

He gives us the forgiveness of sins He bled to buy for us on the cross.

He gives us the new life that He gains when, as the perfect sinless lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, the Father raises Jesus from the dead.

Receiving Holy Communion for believers is a bit like this: While we’re watching a favorite movie, a character in the film turns to us and invites us to become part of the story, to come up onto the screen and to have a full share in the pains and the joys that they’re experiencing, to partake of their happy ending.

As we trust the words Jesus spoke on Maundy Thursday over the bread and wine, we receive His body and blood and become part of His story.

We go through the cross.

We rise from the tomb.

We reign with Jesus in the heavenlies.

The new life that only Jesus can give is taken into our very bodies.

Our focus tonight then, is on just the last few verses of our gospel lesson, beginning at verse 22: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take it; this is my body.’”

These words would have been as strange to the apostles as they are today for people with no connection to God are apt to find them. “I’m giving myself to you and I’m giving myself for you,” Jesus is saying. “This is my body, sacrificed for you.”

Jesus asks us to take Him, the crucified and risen One, into ourselves, so that we become one with Him.

I can’t explain how this works. The sacrament of Holy Communion is a mystery. I only have Jesus’ word for it that when His words of institution--”This is my body”--meet the bread, the bread becomes not just bread, but also Jesus’ body. The same is true when He says in verse 24: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” The wine is more than just wine; it’s also Christ’s blood.

But why? Why does Jesus want us to take His life into ours?

Let me suggest one of several partial, imperfect, human explanations: The ancient Jewish rabbis in the intertestamental period picked up on the prophecy of Isaiah and Ezekiel that once the Messiah had completed His work in the world, He would invite the faithful to a great banquet.

The rabbis said that the menu would include the leviathan. The leviathan represented the darkness of a life separated from God. This was the very separation into which Jesus entered when He cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1)

Conquered and eaten leviathan represented the final conquest of God over evil. Jesus subtly alludes to these teachings when, after His resurrection, He invites the apostles to enjoy the broiled fish (what my mentor, the New Testament scholar Bruce Schein called “miniature leviathans”) He had prepared for them.

When we receive Jesus’ body and blood then, we not only ingest His life, we also physically receive a share in His conquest of sin and death.

Paul says that when Jesus died on the cross “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus, bearing our sins, when lifted up on the cross, became like the bronze serpent Moses lifted on a pole in the wilderness to bring healing to God’s people (Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21). So, in Holy Communion, Christ, as we trust in Him, graciously gives us a share in His conquest of evil.

With all that’s happening in Holy Communion, who can blame the apostles for being mystified on that first Maundy Thursday? Nobody can fully understand it.

But I have good news for you: We don’t need to fully understand it. We simply have to believe what Christ promises in this sacrament.

“This is my body.” “This is my blood.” Jesus gives us His body and His blood whenever we receive the sacrament. Jesus gives us His whole self when we gather at His table. Just as He gave His whole self on the cross on Good Friday. And it is this same whole self that rose again.

Listen: Every time we receive the sacrament, we live again Christ’s death and resurrection. We live it with Him. It happens to us and in us again. And we become beneficiaries again of what Christ has done for those who believe His words over the bread and wine, of God’s forgiveness and life with God.

Paul writes in Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Similarly, if we trust Jesus in telling us that the bread is His body and the wine is His blood, we have all that the meal brings. Christ lives in us.

So tonight as we prepare to remember Christ’s death and resurrection this weekend, let us once more be re-membered to Christ. Let us relive in our bodies, minds, and souls, the passion and resurrection that Christ has won for all who believe and so, be empowered by God again today and tomorrow, to live, to die, and to rise again with Christ. Amen

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

Turning to Jesus (AUDIO)

Here.

Turning to Jesus

[This was shared yesterday morning during both worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
When our kids were small, the one thing we didn’t abide as parents was whining. Whiners, whether they’re children or adults, are telling the world: “I want to be the most important person in this relationship, this family, this business, this world.” “I want life to go the way I want it to go.” Or, like Adam and Eve in the garden: “I want to be like God.”

Whining is especially galling when it comes from people who repeatedly go down destructive pathways in life, then complain that the rest of the world hasn’t been fair to them. A man I know has been married many times and complains that women are impossible to get along with, not once wondering whether the source of at least half of his marital problems might be found by looking in a mirror.

Today’s first Bible lesson recounts God’s reaction to the whining of His people Israel during their wilderness wanderings from Egypt. They had been slaves there. God miraculously freed them so that they could go to the land He had promised them. Throughout their forty year journey to the promised land, the people repeatedly caved into the common human temptation of wanting to do things their own way and to ignore the will of God.

In Numbers 21:4, we’re told: “They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way…” The Israelites are whining, “Are we there yet?”

Verse 5: “...they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?...’” Talk about gall! Here, in effect, the Israelites were saying, “God, why did you answer our prayers and set us free from slavery in Egypt? Why did you take us from a place where we did back-breaking labor for masters who whipped us, beat us, and owned us?” And they’re saying, “Moses, why did you lead us as God directed you to lead us?”

We Christians can be like this. “Yeah, God,” we seem to say, “I know that Jesus died on a cross because of my sins. I know that through baptism and my belief in Christ, You are saving me for eternity. I know that You’ve given me a new life and that nothing can separate me from Your love. But, really God, when are you going to let me call the shots?”

Even we who bear the Name of Jesus and have the free gift of new life through Him, can be world class whiners!

When we whine it’s because we tend to forget two things in our daily lives. First, we forget that we aren’t God. We didn’t invent this amazing thing called life. We aren’t in charge and never should be! The other thing we forget is that, like the Israelites, you and I haven’t yet reached our promised land. Today, we’re in the wilderness. 1 Peter 2:11, tells we Christians: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”

Christians are foreigners and exiles. We’re not “there,” not in our real home, yet. So, we shouldn't put too much stock in the things has to offer. Everything that we may want that is in this world has an expiration date.

Until we get to our real home, things won’t be perfect. The moment we are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are no longer citizens of this world. We're just passing through. We can expect to be attacked by the tests and temptations that come from, as Martin Luther puts in The Small Catechism, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.” This world isn't perfect and never will be.

Thankfully. our ultimate destination is not in this wilderness. Our destination as believers in Jesus is what the New Testament book of Hebrews calls “a better country,” the eternal kingdom of God. This fallen world, wonderful though it can be, is a faint hint of the perfect, sinless, eternal new creation God is preparing for us. I often think of (and quote) Jesus’ words in John 16:33: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Now, go back to Numbers 21:5. The people are still whining: “...There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’”

The “miserable food” they’re talking about is the manna that God had been giving them virtually every day of the forty years they were in the wilderness.

To get the manna, they never had to plant a single seed, water a single sprout, or remove a single weed.

Like every blessing that God gives to us and that we take for granted--from breathing all the way to everlasting life for those who trust in Christ--the manna was simply there for the taking. It was a gift of grace.

The Israelites wanted more! In itself, there’s nothing wrong with wanting more good in our lives. But in our wilderness, in this life, God wants to teach us to not let our desires supplant God in our priorities. God wants to show us that nothing this world may offer us can match the gifts God wants to give to those willing to receive them by faith in Him.

God wasn’t happy to hear His people whining yet again. It was a sign of faithlessness and sin. Numbers 21:6-7: “Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you...’”

The people had broken God’s commandments. I can think of at least three: They failed to honor God as God (first commandment). They had used His Name for whining, rather than for its intended use in prayer, praise, or thanksgiving (second commandment). They had borne false witness against both God and Moses (eighth commandment). And they had broken these and other of God’s commands repeatedly. That's why God allowed the serpents in the desert to be so deadly to the Israelites.

But the people were awakened by God’s action. In verse 7 says that the people asked Moses to pray for them. Moses did. Now, look at verse 8: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’”

What a weird prescription!

Why was this God’s fix?

In the hymn Amazing Grace, we sing, “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.”

Before we’re ready to receive the undeserved grace of God and the forgiveness of our sins, we have to be aware that we have sin that needs to be forgiven.

Before we can have our relationship with God restored, we need to know that we’re separated from God.

As you've heard me say before, God doesn’t force forgiveness and new life on us. We must receive it by faith. When the Israelites turned to the bronze serpent, they were reminded that their sin was what triggered their situation. Forgiveness, healing, and life could only come to them when they acknowledged their sin and trusted in God.

Now look, please, at John 3:14-15, from today's Gospel lesson. Some 1500 years after the incident in our first lesson, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

In the wilderness, the bronze serpent became the repository, the scapegoat, for the rebellion and sin of God’s people and through their honest repentance, the means God uses to turn their attention and allegiance back to Him so that they could be restored.

In our own wilderness, it’s easy for us to wander away from God, to get caught up in our own agendas, to think that God has wandered from us. It’s easy for Christians to say, “I know what God says about sexuality, or covetousness, or loving others, or trusting alone, but I just don’t agree with Him.” (As though anyone can disagree with God!)

That’s where the Savior on a cross comes in. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says of Jesus: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus volunteered to be the repository, the scapegoat, for our sin.

He calls us to turn our eyes away from the wilderness and turn instead to Him.

Every time we picture Jesus on the cross and remember again that He had no sin, but that our sin--your sin and my sin--put Him there, we’re forced to acknowledge our need of Him.

We confess our sin and we put our trust in Him alone. When that happens, our faith in Him is renewed and the life and forgiveness that only Jesus can give floods us once again!

The wilderness in which you and I live each day can be hard. But God lets us decide whether he or our sin have the last word over our lives. Look at Jesus‘ words to Nicodemus in John 3:16 to 18:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

While we’re here in the wilderness we will never have all of life’s answers. But it’s clear to me that life without Jesus leaves us with nothing to hope for, while life with Jesus is filled with God’s presence now and with hope for eternity with God.

A man rode a unicycle on a taut rope above Niagara Falls. “I couldn’t have done it,” a friend told him. “Every time I pedaled, I’d see 167-feet of churning water below me.”

“If that’s what I’d looked at, I couldn’t have made it across, either,” the unicyclist said. “But I was focused on the solid ground ahead.”*

Keep your focus on Jesus, our solid rock.

He will forgive your sin.

He will stand by your side.

He will lift you up.

And He will give you life, here, now, in the wilderness...and beyond. Amen

[This sculpture, conflating the bronze serpent on a pole about which we read in Numbers 21, with Jesus' crucifixion, is a memorial to Moses on Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is the place in the last book of Deuteronomy from which Gods allowed Moses to see the promised land before he died.]

*This story is fictional, although several people have walked or taken wheelbarrows on tightropes above Niagara Falls and others have ridden unicycles on ropes strung between skyscrapers. The words of the fictional unicyclist are consistent with what such daredevils often say.

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

Whining in the Wilderness

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

Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
Ann and I wouldn't point to ourselves as parenting superstars, by any means. But one of the rules we had for our kids as they were growing up was, “no whining.”

We banned whining because whiners do more than just make unpleasant sounds. Whiners, whether they’re children or adults, are really saying: “I want to be the most important person in this relationship, this family, this business, this church, this country, this world.” “I want life to go the way I want it to go.” Or, like Adam and Eve in the garden: “I want to be like God.”

Whining is especially galling when it comes from people who repeatedly go down destructive pathways in life, then complain that the rest of the world hasn’t been fair to them. A man I know has been married multiple times and complains that women are impossible to get along with, not once seeming to consider that the source of at least half of his marital problems can be found by looking in a mirror.

Today’s first Bible lesson recounts God’s reaction to the whining of His people Israel during their wilderness wanderings from Egypt.

They had been slaves there.

God miraculously freed them so that they could go to the land He had promised them.

The trip should have taken eleven days. But it took the Israelites forty years.

That’s because, in spite of God’s grace and blessings, the people repeatedly caved into the common human temptation to do things their own way and to ignore the will of God.

Please look at Numbers 21: 4. We’re told: “Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom and the soul of the people became discouraged on the way.” The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible says that the people “became impatient on the way.”

Now, if you adults have ever settled in behind the wheel to take a long trip and five minutes into it heard a voice ask, impatiently, from the back seat, "Are we there yet?," you know exactly what the Israelites are doing here.

They were whining!

Now look at what they had to say in verse 5: “And the people spoke against God and against Moses ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?...”

Talk about gall!

Here, in effect, the Israelites were saying, “God, why did you answer our prayers and set us free from slavery in Egypt? Why did you take us from a place where we did back-breaking labor for masters who whipped us, beat us, and owned us?”

We Christians can be like this. “Yeah, God,” we seem to say, “I know that Jesus died on a cross because of my sins. I know that through baptism and my belief in Christ, You are saving me for eternity. I know that You’ve given me a new life and that nothing can separate me from Your love. But, really God, when are you going to let me call the shots?”

Even we who bear the Name of Jesus and have the free gift of new life through Him, can be world class whiners!

There are two things we tend to forget in our daily lives.

First, we forget that we aren’t God. We didn’t invent this amazing thing called life. We didn’t create the universe. We aren’t in charge and never will be!

The other thing we forget is that, like the Israelites, you and I haven’t yet reached our promised land. We’re in the wilderness.

Turn to 1 Peter 2:11. Peter says: “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts [he’s talking about all desires that are contrary to the will of God; in other words, “Don’t get hung up on the things we crave in this world...”] which war against the soul...”

Sojourners and pilgrims. The NRSV renders those words as “aliens and strangers.”

The moment we are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are no longer citizens of this world. We're just passing through.

We can expect to be attacked by the tests and temptations that come from, as Martin Luther puts in The Small Catechism, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.” This world isn't perfect and never will be.

But, thankfully. our ultimate destination is not in this wilderness.

Our destination as believers in Jesus is what the New Testament book of Hebrews calls “a better country,” the eternal kingdom of God.

This fallen world, wonderful though it can be, is a faint hint of the perfect, sinless, eternal new creation God is preparing for us.

Now, go to Numbers 21:5. The people are still whining: “...There is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.”

The “worthless bread” they’re talking about is the manna that God had been giving them virtually every day of the forty years they were in the wilderness.

To get the manna, they never had to plant a single seed, water a single sprout, or remove a single weed.

Like every blessing that God gives to us and that we take for granted--from breathing to everlasting life for those who trust in Christ, the manna was simply there for the taking. It was a gift of grace.

But the Israelites wanted more!

Someone has said that the key to contentment is to want what you already have. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have dreams or ambitions. But in the wilderness, God wants to teach us to not let our dreams--our desires--supplant God in our priorities. God wants to show us that nothing this world may offer us can match the gifts God wants to give those willing to receive them by faith in Him.

God wasn’t happy to hear His people whining yet again. It was a sign of faithlessness, selfishness, and sin.

Look at verses 6 and 7 back in our first lesson: “So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people and many of the people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you...”

The people had broken God’s commandments. I can name three: They had failed to honor God as God (first commandment). They had used His Name for something other than prayer, praise, and thanksgiving (second commandment). They had borne false witness against both God and Moses (eighth commandment). That's why God allowed the serpents in the desert to be so deadly to the Israelites.

The rebelliousness of the first generation to be freed from Egypt already knew that God wasn't going to let them get into the promised land. That didn't mean that God loved them any less. It simply meant that their sins had blocked the blessing of living in the promised land from their lives. But now, in the seventh rebellion against God in the wilderness recorded in the book of Numbers, God was trying to bring His people to their senses. Whenever we replace God's judgment about what's right and wrong, wise and foolish, or good and bad with our own judgment, we're on a collision course with hell. God sent the serpents to wake His people to the deadliness of sin.

Apparently, the people were awakened because verse 7 says that the people asked Moses to pray for them. Moses did.

Now, look at verse 8: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery [or burnished bronze] serpent, and set it on a pole, and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.”

What a weird prescription!

Why was this God’s fix?

In the hymn Amazing Grace, we sing, “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.”

Before the undeserved grace of God can bring us forgiveness of sins, we have to be aware that we have sin that needs to be forgiven.

Before we can have our relationship with God restored, we need to know that we’re separated from God.

God doesn’t force forgiveness and new life on us. We must receive it by faith.

When the Israelites turned to the bronze serpent, they were reminded that their sin was what triggered their situation. Forgiveness, healing, and life could only come to them when they acknowledged their sin and trusted in God.

Now look at John 3:14 and 15, from today's Gospel lesson.

Some 1500 years after the incident in our first lesson, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

In the wilderness, the bronze serpent became the repository, the scapegoat, for the rebellion and sin of God’s people and through their honest repentance, the means by which their lives were restored.

In our own wilderness, it’s easy for us to wander away from God, to get caught up in our own agendas, to think that God has wandered from us.

That’s where the Savior on a cross comes in.

The New Testament tells us that God made Jesus “to be sin who knew no sin.”

Jesus volunteered to be the repository, the scapegoat, for our sin.

He calls us to turn our eyes away from the wilderness and turn instead to Him.

Every time we picture Jesus on the cross and remember again that He had no sin, but that our sin--your sin and my sin--put Him there, we’re forced to acknowledge our need of Him. We confess our sin.

Our faith in Him is renewed and the life and forgiveness that only Jesus can give floods us once again!

The wilderness in which you and I live each day is hard.

But God lets us decide whether he or our sin has the last word over our lives.

Look at Jesus‘ words to Nicodemus in John 3:16 to 18:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He [or she] who believes in Him is not condemned; but he [or she] who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Christians who observe friends and acquaintances who aren’t believers going through difficult times, knowing that I was once an atheist, will often ask me, “How do they get through it, pastor? How can they face a life without hope?”

Good questions.

The bottom line is that, while we’re here in the wilderness we will never have all of life’s answers. But it’s clear to me that life without Jesus is a hell of hopelessness and futility, while life with Jesus is filled with God’s purpose and strength.

Turn to Jesus each day.

Acknowledge your sin. Seek His forgiveness.

Affirm Him as the only way to life with God.

And He will stand by your side.

He will lift you up.

And He will give you life, here, now, in the wilderness...and beyond.

Amen

What is Confession, Anyway?

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

John 3:14-21
Years ago, I fell for an April Fool’s Day joke that paraded as a news story. It was about a guy who had been indicting for making millions of dollars getting illegal inside information on companies, enabling him to buy and sell at just the right times. “There’s no way he could have acquired all that money in so short a time without insiders helping him,” declared an SEC official in the fake news story. The story went on to say that in order to avoid prosecution and imprisonment, the charged man told a judge that he was a time traveler from the twenty-second century and, incidentally, that he knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. This is what made this fake news story so convincing to me: The alleged criminal was more willing to be labeled insane than to confess his wrongs.

Confession is tough, for the follower of Jesus Christ no less than anyone else. It can be embarrassing and humiliating to confess our wrongs, whether we confess them to God, to others, or to ourselves. But followers of Jesus also know that confession is an essential component for healthy living. In confession—owning up to our faults and sins, coming clean—we clear away anything and everything that obstructs our relationship with God or keeps us from living life fully.

In our Gospel lesson for this morning, a man named Nicodemus visits Jesus. Nicodemus was a respected religious authority. But in Jesus, Nicodemus was beginning to understand that all his religious training, all the authority he enjoyed in the society of his time was meaningless. Still, Nicodemus was too concerned for his “place” in society, too worried about what the neighbors might think, and so, instead of owning up to the suspicion he had that Jesus was the Savior of the world, he sneaked to a meeting with Jesus under cover of darkness. He wanted to warn Jesus that powerful men—Jewish religious figures and Roman government functionaries—saw Jesus as an enemy to be killed. But in our lesson, which picks things up in the middle of their conversation, we find Jesus deflecting Nicodemus’ concern; Jesus tells Nicodemus that He has come into the world for the express purpose of dying. It’s by His death on a cross, Jesus says, that He will absorb all the horrors of human sin into His body, killing off its power over us forever. Jesus then turns the focus back on Nicodemus and his spineless nighttime visit when He says:

"..those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

When we are truthful with God, we can come into His blazingly true light, see our faults up close, seek God’s forgiveness, and know that God will light our way to better living. We can engage in confession.

As you’ve already heard me point out countless times, Martin Luther was fond of saying that the follower of Jesus Christ is called to live “in daily repentance and renewal.” We need to constantly re-focus our lives on Jesus, never being afraid to “come clean” about our faults and our need of God’s forgiveness and help. Confession needs to be a daily discipline for us. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about confession?

There are three elements that go into genuine confession. First: There is a genuine examination of one’s conscience. In shorthand, that means honesty before God. Richard Foster is a Quaker theologian and writer whose most famous work is a book called Celebration of Discipline. There, he tells a story from early in his ministry as a young pastor. His work was going well. But he felt the need for more of God’s power in his life in order to meet the almost crushing demand of human need that he confronted each day in his work. He prayed to God, “Lord, is there more You want to bring into my life? I want to be conquered and ruled by You. If there is anything blocking the flow of Your power, reveal it to me.”

Over a period of several days during his prayer time, Foster sat in silence, asking God to reveal things to him. At the end of three days’ time, he had filled three sheets of paper with sins and unresolved conflicts from three different phases of his life. He took those with him one day as he met with a trusted Christian friend. He went through each one and was putting the stack into a briefcase when his friend reached across the table, took the sheets in hand, and tore them into hundreds of little pieces. Echoing words that appear in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Foster says that he knew then that his sins “were as far away as the east is from the west.” It was shortly after engaging in that exercise in confession that Foster began to develop a closer relationship with God.

Psalm 139 in the Old Testament says: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Confession begins with honesty, asking God to help us fearlessly face His inventory of our sin. It’s only when we’re honest with God about our sins that He can purge them from our systems.

The second element in genuine confession is sorrow. Sorrow, as it relates to confession, isn’t necessarily an emotion. I was talking with someone about his teenage years once. He told me, “As much as it may make me sound like a goody-two-shoes, I have to tell you that back then, I never did anything my parents didn’t want me to do. If they wanted me to be home by midnight, I was usually home by ten till. If they told me not to hang out with particular people, I didn’t do it.” I asked him, “Were you that afraid of your parents?” “I was never afraid of my parents,” he told me. “I just knew how much they loved me and I never wanted to hurt their feelings.” Sorrow over sin is animated by the same impulse that guy expressed about his parents. The cross of Jesus shows us how deeply and desperately God loves us. Sorrow over sin is a sense of deep regret and revulsion at the whole notion of having done anything to offend the heart of our Father God.

The third element in genuine confession is a determination to avoid future sin. When we confess our sin to God, we ask Him to change our hearts so that we want to avoid future sin. We ask God to change our wills and make us recoil and turn away from the very idea of violating any of God’s ten commandments, the thrust of which Jesus once summed up as to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves.

Writer John Ortberg tells about a mauve sofa that he and his wife bought. It was the first new piece of furniture they had ever owned. After the sofa was delivered, a new rule was instituted in their household, which included several small children. “Don’t sit on the mauve sofa. Don’t touch it, don’t play around it, don’t eat on it, don’t breathe on it, don’t even look at that mauve sofa.” But one day, a terrible thing happened. A red jelly stain appeared on the mauve sofa. Ortberg’s wife loved the sofa and was devastated. She lined up the three kids and told them the stain would stay in the sofa “forever” and asked the kids if they knew how long “forever” was. She then told the kids that they would remain standing forever until one of them came clean, owning up to eating and spilling jelly on the mauve sofa. But the kids didn’t say a thing.

Ortberg knew the kids wouldn’t say anything for three reasons. First, because they’d never seen their mom that mad. Second, because they didn’t want to spend forever in the time-out chair. And finally, because John Ortberg knew that it was he, not his kids, who had caused the red jelly stain on the mauve sofa. He knew that he had to come clean. He might not be able to remove the jelly stain from the sofa, but he could get his kids off the hook and try to start fresh with his wife.

When we confess our sins, exposing our faults in God’s bright light, we remove the walls between God and us, between other people and us, between us and our best selves.

I can't close today without saying a word to those of you who, like me, may be a little obsessive compulsive or even a bit neurotic. If we're in either of these categories, you and I are in good company. Clearly, Martin Luther was a bit obsessive, a bit neurotic, at least as it relates to this issue of confession.

When Luther was a young monk, he would spend hours confessing his sins with his confessor, a man named von Staupitz. Luther would no more than walk a few steps from the confessional when he would recall more sins he hadn't catalogued. Von Staupitz got so fed up with Luther's incessant confessing that he finally told Luther, "Quit coming to me with your puppy sins!"

Von Staupitz wasn't saying that some sins are greater or lesser violations of God's holiness. What he was saying is that confession isn't a religious hoop that you jump through by remembering every sin you've ever committed.

Who could possibly remember their every sin? I myself am often so oblivious to my sins that it isn't until years after I've committed them that I realize the wrong I've done.

You're a human being. God knows that. Your memory is imperfect. God knows that. Your salvation doesn't hang in the balance because of your faulty memory or your faulty sensitivity to sin.

When we confess our sins, known and unknown, we show God our intentions. Through Jesus Christ, we already know God's intentions: God wants us to be with Him for eternity. When we confess, we say, "Yes!" to the "Yes!" God already said to us when Jesus died and rose for us.

Confession is hard. But it’s the indispensable way to experiencing all that God intends for us as His children. Amen!

[The message was inspired greatly by a sermon by Pastor Dan Anderson, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Burnsville, Minnesota.]