Treasuring the Church ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 6)

[This message was prepared to be shared during worship on Sunday, September 30, 2018, with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I felt moved to share a different message. That other message will be shared too. But this scrapped sermon is the sixth installment of our series on the Biblical themes raised by the book, I Am a Church Member, by Thom Rainer.]

1 Corinthians 12:27
Revelation 21:2
John 3:29
Lucy Van Pelt, the creepy little kid in the old Peanuts comic strip who always pulled the football away just as Charlie Brown was about to kick it, said, “I love humanity. It’s the people I can’t stand.”

Some people in the Church have an equivalent attitude about all local congregations. “I love Christ’s Church,” they seem to say, “It’s the people in individual congregations that I have no use for.”

But, as Thom Rainer rightly points out in the sixth and final chapter of his book, I Am a Church Member, people who try to make such distinctions aren’t really paying attention to the witness of the New Testament. Rainer writes that “...the universal church and the local church are not mutually exclusive...The Bible is clear that we are to be connected to a specific church in a specific context.”

This insight comes from reading Paul’s letters to New Testament congregations. Each letter was written to individual, local congregations, each committed to living out their faith in partnership with and accountability to one another.

Essential to being a member of Christ’s church universal or church catholic then, is to be a member of a local church. The holy catholic Church is in every local congregation where Christ’s gospel is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments are rightly administered. And every member of every local congregation where those conditions are met is also part of the whole Church in heaven and on earth. We who make up local congregations like Living Water are part of Christ’s body, His eternal fellowship. This is why the apostle Paul says to we disciples of Jesus, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)

But church life can be difficult. Like families or workplaces, we can disagree, argue, and not see eye to eye. Why then does God give us the gift of salvation only through the life, ministry, and proclamation of Christ’s Church? And why does He consider the Church such a gift for its members anyway?

Members of my extended biological family experienced a major blow-up with their local church and its pastor. They tell me that they now have “church” at home, inviting companionable friends over for Bible studies that they lead.

Now, I’m an advocate of small groups. They are essential for our growth as disciples. But the problem with these family members’ approach to church, of course, is that people who treat a small group as their “church” are more likely to take a wrong turn in their faith.

When you’re only around the companionable people with whom you feel comfortable, you’re ripe for heresy that can pull you far away from God and the truth of His Word. It’s only when “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17), when we’re in a church in which we can disagree with Christ’s love, that we grow, that we really learn what it means to love each other as Christ loves us. The approach taken by my family members also leaves them at risk of forgetting all about the entire mission of Christ’s Church, to make disciples, instead, being satisfied to just read Scripture and pray with people who will never challenge them for self-satisfaction or spiritual smugness.

So, one reason that God considers the Church His gift to us is that it helps keep us faithful. I mentioned Hebrews 10:25 in the first installment of this series a few weeks ago. There, we’re told not to give up “meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” So, as the day of Christ’s return grows ever closer, we need the people of our local churches even more. We need to gather around the Word and Sacrament, we need to be challenged and afflicted by God’s Word, as well as comforted and empowered by it. That’s part of what Christ’s Church, part of what this church, does!

Another reason God says we should regard the Church as His gift is that it shows contempt for God to see it in any other way. In Revelation, chapters 18 to 22, we find an idea developed that comes from Jesus: The Church is the bride of Christ. This is rooted in the very language that Jesus used about Himself during His earthly ministry. In John 3:29, Jesus says, “The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom [the best man, John the Baptist] waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.”

Jesus here speaks of His joy of being one with His bride, the Church. The marriage of Christ and His Church is consummated in Holy Baptism and strengthened in Holy Communion. And one day, the groom will come to take His bride into His home for all eternity.

John saw this in one of the visions he had while on the island of Patmos, where he records, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2)

The Church then, including Living Water Lutheran Church, is a big deal, an eternal fellowship. That’s why Rainer writes, “Church membership is a gift. A gift must be treasured. It should not be taken for granted or considered lightly. Because it is a gift, we must always be thankful for it. And when we are thankful for something, we have less time and energy to be negative.”

The Church ultimately is the fellowship of believers in Jesus in which we learn that Christian faith is not about me, it’s about us as a community of believers submissive to Christ whose only mission is to invite and welcome “outsiders” into that same community so that, believing in Jesus, they too will have life with God.

That’s a truth that we cannot and will not learn apart from the fellowship of the Church Jesus established through His apostles and their successors.

The crucified and risen Jesus tells His Church, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16)

The Church then is a gift because through it, we learn and build our lives around the truth of the gospel that God gives new and everlasting life to all who daily turn from sin and daily follow Jesus...and then, by His Holy Spirit, empowers us to grow each day in the likeness of the Lord Who died and rose for sinners like us.

When you have the gift of Christ and the Church that can never be taken from those who believe, you then can keep giving those gifts away--Christ and the Church. And as that happens, not only will more people be given the chance to know Christ, follow Christ, and share Christ with others, those same people--new believers in Jesus--will join us in sharing our free gifts of life with Christ and His Church with others.

The apostle Peter was one of the first to be sent out to invite others to receive the gifts of Christ and Church. One day at the temple, Peter encountered a lame man begging for money and told the man, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6) Peter claimed that he could offer prayer and new life in Jesus’ name and Jesus underscored the validity of Peter’s words by also giving the man the ability to walk and jump once again. That was because Peter was part of Christ’s Church. And you can bet that that formerly lame man was anxious to hear all about Peter’s church after that.

Are we treasuring Christ’s Church enough to respect those with whom we disagree in our congregation?

Or, do we speak of them and treat them like the refuse that some politicians claim their opponents to be?

Are we Lucy Van Pelt Christians?

Or do we love our sisters and brothers in Christ in this church? Do we pray for them, speak well of them, encourage them?

Treasure your church; after all, if we’re saved by grace through faith in Christ, all of the people in every local church of which you may be a part, are people with whom you’re going to spend eternity! Better to learn to love them now than wait until Jesus returns.

And if we don’t learn to love them now, it may be too late to learn after Jesus comes back and time has run out for us to repent for our half-hearted discipleship. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Let’s live out that truth with gratitude and love for one another. Amen

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

Happy Beginnings

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, today.]

Mark 13:24-37
A confession: I’m a sucker for chick flicks. A friend recommended one of them, The Lake House, to me and so, this past week, when I saw that it was going to be on, I set my recorder and watched it the next night.

I don’t want to give it all away if you haven’t seen it. (I loved it, by the way.) But The Lake House revolves around two people, played by Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock who, having realized their love for each other, nonetheless face the impossible obstacle of living in two different time periods, able only to communicate, miraculously, by letters they place in the mailbox of a lake house.

It’s hard for two people to get together under those circumstances. And so, Bullock’s character, tired of the futility and the sense of defeat, tells Reeves’ character that while they had been involved in a beautiful fantasy, they should leave it behind and move on with their separate lives. But Reeves’ character responds with a simple message: “Don’t give up on me.” (I will tell you that there's a happy beginning at the end of the movie, but that's all.)

The plea of Reeves' character, “Don’t give up on me,” is really the message of Jesus to us on this first Sunday in Advent.

“I know that You can’t see Me right now,” Jesus, the groom, is telling us, the Church, His bride. “I know that our only communication is through the printed Words of the Bible, the water of Holy Baptism, the bread and wine of Holy Communion, the fellowship of people as imperfect and as needy as you are. There will be tough days when My love for you will seem to be making impossible promises and giving you seemingly impossible hopes. But it is going to work out. With God all things are possible.”

“We will be together one day,” Jesus is telling us. “There will be a happy beginning beyond the world's endings. Don’t give up on Me.” 

This, in fact, is truly the message of the entire Advent season. Don’t give up on Jesus.

Advent, of course, is just a human creation. But it’s a shrewd one. Think about it: Here we are preparing for the celebration of Christmas, the celebration of the birth of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. You may have noticed, though, that few of our preparations, whether as individuals, families, or nations, includes anything about Jesus.

One reason for that, I think, is that, in our minds, we tend to put Jesus in the past. He lived on this earth in the past. He died in the past. And we Christians believe He also rose in the past.

We seem to live in separate times, the notion of connection between us an impossible, beautiful fantasy. And so, we move on with our lives as though Jesus weren’t even there.

Advent is a gauntlet thrown down before a disbelieving world and an often disbelieving Church and, calling our attention to God’s Word, the Bible, tells us, “The same Jesus Who was born at Christmas, died on Good Friday, and rose on Easter, is coming back and when He does, He will bring a new heaven and a new earth and an end to this world. What good will all your frenzied materialism be then?"

Advent says: “Do not make the mistake of giving up on Jesus. Trust in Him."

We see that message in today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 13:24-37. You’ll find it on page 710 of our sanctuary Bibles.

Now, in this passage, we find Jesus speaking, I think, simultaneously about two different times and events, compressing them into a single narrative.

On the one hand, He’s talking about the invasion of Roman armies and their desecration of the temple in Jerusalem, an event that would happen about forty years after Jesus spoke these words. That event, Jesus asserts, will be the result of God’s chosen people’s failure to reach out with His love and grace to the whole world.

The Temple, the Old Testament teaches, was meant to be a house of prayer and worship for people of all nations, Jews and Gentiles. Empowered by regular encounters with God in the temple, Israel was to be God’s messenger into all the world, teaching people to repent and believe in the God of Israel in order to have new life with God. As God told the people of Israel through the prophet Isaiah: "“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

Instead, Israel largely chose either to ignore or horde God. But faith in God, just like the manna with which God fed His people Israel in the wilderness, will go bad if it’s horded. It must be given away or it will rot, die, or disappear. Whenever Israel forgot God and its mission to the world, it always led to problems. And in His words today, Jesus is saying, it would ultimately lead to its destruction as it did in 70 AD.

Now, Jesus says elsewhere, that He is the temple that cannot be destroyed and today He sends all who believe in Him into the world to make disciples.



But in today's lesson, Jesus also speaks more generally of the end times, when this world will come to an end and He will establish His eternal kingdom.

Verse 24: “But in those days, [Jesus says] following that distress [times of persecution and hardship He has been talking about in earlier verses], the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light;  the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ [Here Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.] At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

The first time Jesus came into our world, He did so on a silent night in an obscure village of which the world would not have heard. God sent His angels to announce the birth only to shepherds, people on the bottom end of the economic and religious food chain. Jesus lived and died and rose again in a backwater country that had spent most of its history under the thumbs of foreign powers.

But when Jesus returns, there will be nothing obscure or silent about it.

The whole world will know at once, “in the twinkling of an eye.” And, He will send His angels out to gather together His elect--those chosen for salvation not by fiat, but because they have believed in Jesus Christ. They are elect because God has saved them by His grace through their faith in Jesus.

Interestingly, that word that we translate as elect is, in the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally written, eklektos. It literally means "called out from." But it's transliterated into the English as eclectic, a word that can mean, diverse.

The elect the angels will gather on the day of Jesus' return from this world will be diverse, eclectic. They will come from "every nation, tribe, people and language," formed by the Holy Spirit into a single family through their faith in Christ.

The elect are the people who refuse to give up on Jesus.

They face tragedy; but they don’t give up.

They face death; but they don’t give up.

They face opposition for their faith but keep believing.

They wrestle with the will of God, but keep holding onto Jesus.

They’re the people who believe that it’s always too soon to give up on Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death.

They trust the promise of Jesus in Matthew 24:12-13: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”



Verse 28: [Jesus goes on] “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

Two messages come to us from Jesus here, I think:

(1) Most obviously, be ready for His return;

(2) And you never can tell when His return may happen because every condition necessary for His return has already happened while Jesus was still on the earth.

It’s such a silly waste to look for “the signs of the times.” The world was already full up on those signs, full up on sin and death even before Jesus went to the cross. It was ready for the end even then.

So, our focus shouldn't be on speculation. It should be on being ready for Jesus to return.

And how we do that is to keep repenting for sin and to keep trusting Jesus, the Way and the truth and the life, to cover our sins with God’s forgiveness and to fill us with life eternal.

We get ready for Jesus’ return by following Him now and into eternity even when the world wants to tie Him down to the ancient past.

That’s why the words with which Jesus closes in today's lesson, found in verses 32 to 37, boils down to one word alone: “Watch.”

The One we try to tie to the past is actually our future and through the eyes of faith, we need to keep focused on Him.

One Bible scholar has observed that, “Modern Christians often think, ‘Since the time [of Jesus’ return] is unknown, it could be hundred, or thousands, or millions of years from now…[But Christ’s words for us this morning should cause us to think]...’since the timing is unknown, it could be today! Maybe this evening, or at midnight, or when dawn breaks.’”

The scholar goes on to ask: “But does anyone actually think that way? Does anyone go through every day, wondering at morning, noon, and night if now is the time that someone long gone might return?"

"Yes," he says. "People who are in love do that.”

Are we in love with Jesus enough to take Him at His word that one day He will return and make all things right?

Because of the love God has shown us in Christ, because of the cross and empty tomb, because the Holy Spirit has given us faith in Christ, we know that we are loved and we know that it’s safe to love Him in return. We're on solid ground in loving Him back. Christ’s love is one that will never let us down.

And so we wait for His return.

We wait with eager anticipation.

We ready ourselves while we wait by attending to His Word, worshiping with His people, receiving His body and blood, sharing His love and His message with others.

This Advent season, may Christ teach us to look forward to a lot more than Christmas day.

May He teach us to live lives spent in active attentiveness to Him.

May we learn to watch for Him and, in the watching, be ready for anything in this life or in the one to come.

When we watch for Jesus and trust in Him to return, to dry our tears and to make things right, we can be assured that beyond all the endings--beyond the end of this world, beyond the ends of our own lives, He will bring us a happy beginning that never ends. Amen

No Leftovers for God

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

Mark 12:38-44
Here’s a bit of trivia: I love vegetable soup. Love it. I especially love it a few days after Ann makes a big pot of it. Two days on, after being cooked and then refrigerated and set on the stove to simmer for a time, vegetable soup hits its stride as a taste treat. Sometimes, leftovers are the very best thing you can set before another person!


But leftovers--the leftovers of our time, our talents, and our treasures--are the worst things we can set before God. Why is that?

One reason is that unless we give God first place in our lives, He’s likely to have no place in our lives.

“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,” God tells us in the Old Testament.

What? Is God jealous like a lover, demanding exclusivity? Yes, that’s exactly what God is like.

In fact, in the Old Testament, God is portrayed as a husband to His people, Israel. When they chase after other gods, their idolatry is seen as a kind of adultery. And when they ignore His will, they’re seen as turning their back on their relationship with Him.*

In the New Testament, the Church is sometimes pictured as “the Bride of Christ” with Jesus as its husband.

It also calls the Church, “the body of Christ,” denoting an almost organic connection to the One Who died and rose to give us everlasting life.

Whatever picture of God in relation to you and me that we like best, it’s clear that God means to have a close, intimate relationship with those who follow Him.

Leftovers can sometimes be a great way to express our love for those we care about. But they’re not the best way for us to express love and gratitude to the God Who, in Jesus, gave Himself on the cross for us.

We were designed to put God and His purposes first, not because God is an egomaniac, but because God made us for a relationship with Him. We are only complete--what our English translations of the Bible unfortunately call perfect--when the holes in all of our souls are filled by God.

Only we can give God permission to do that by putting Him first in our lives.

And it’s only when we let God have first place in our priorities, decisions, relationships, and plans that our lives can reflect His loving design for our lives.

When we do put God first in our lives, it will be clearly seen not only in how we use our time and our abilities, but also in our checkbook registers.

Most of us remember that the first murder in human history happened when one son of Adam and Eve, Cain, killed the other, Abel. What’s less remembered is why Cain killed his brother.

It turns out that Abel had offered the first offspring of his flocks to God. Cain gave God his leftovers.


Their offerings may have been of equal value, but God obviously enjoyed Abel’s offering more. When Abel gave God the very first bit of his wealth, the first ten percent of his income, he was expressing gratitude to God. He was also expressing faith that God would sustain him even if he only had 90% of his wealth left.

Cain was so resentful of the pleasure God took in Abel’s faith that he killed Abel. The first murder occurred because one child of God thought so little of God that he offered God his leftovers. At least for the moment he took to kill his brother, Cain gave no place to God in his life. Unless we give God first place in our lives, He is likely to have no place in our lives.

There’s a second reason it’s dangerous to only give our leftovers to God’s purposes in the world.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus lashes out at a group of supposedly holy people, the scribes. The term for a scribe in the original Greek of the New Testament is grammateus, a word from which we get the word, grammar in our English language. Literally, it means someone with the ability to write. Over time, the term came to be used of a person who was expert in both religious and civil law.

Jesus says that many of the scribes in first-century Judea “like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!” And then an even worse indictment: “They devour widows’ houses...”

Some suggest that Jesus was accusing the scribes, experts in Biblical law, of figuring out how to get their greedy hands on the meager estates of widows, who usually had no money. Widows who, in that deeply patriarchal society, by some strange happenstance, had an estate or income were deemed incapable of managing on their own. Scribes were appointed to act as their financial managers and often, lined their own pockets with the widows' money while leaving the widows with nothing.

But, at a deeper level, I think that Jesus meant to say that the scribes were perfectly content to let the poor--people like widows--give everything of their small resources to the support of the Temple and priests while they gave their leftovers.

And they did this while courting reputations of religious faithfulness and piety, giving a tiny fraction of their fat wallets, of their more than ample free time, and of their abilities to the purposes of God.

I’m sure you’ve heard or read about the Pareto Principle. It “states that for many events, roughly 80% of the events come from 20% of the causes...” In most businesses, for example, 20% of the people will make 80% of the payroll. And 20% of the people will do 80% of the work and 80% of the people will do 20% of the work.

As Jesus watches the scribes and then the widow in our lesson today, He really is lamenting the injustice which results when a fraction of believers—in this case, the scribes--demand that those with less time and treasure give their all while they give their leftovers.


That’s why Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

It's interesting to note that the Greek New Testament word that's translated as "all she had to live on" in our lesson is the word, bios, which means life. (We get words like biology and biosphere from this word.) Jesus says that in spite of the ingratitude of selfish people, the widow gave her life to God. She foreshadows what Jesus Himself will do on the cross, giving His life for the sake of all of us.

The widow gave everything she had to God. In this, she also foreshadows the early believers. One of the characteristics of the early Christian Church, the Church that began after Jesus rose from the dead and went back to heaven was how it violated the Pareto Principle: 100% of its members did 100% of the work, contributed to the work of the Church and helped one another out. One passage in the New Testament book of Acts, which tells the history of the early Church, says: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

What would happen if something of the spirit of the early Church infected the Church today?

What if it infected Saint Matthew Lutheran Church?

What would happen in the lives of those Jesus describes as "the poor in spirit," people who have no connection to Christ or the Church, if we in the Church were more like that widow and less like the scribes, giving ourselves, our efforts, and our treasures to Christ and His purposes in the world?

I tell you what would happen: Thousands of lives, first ours and then, our neighbors’ lives would be eternally changed for the better!

Our trust in Jesus would deepen and the fire and the passion of our faith would lend power to our invitations to others to come and follow Jesus with us!

In two weeks, we will have our Consecration Sunday. When you receive your time and talent survey and estimate of giving card by mail, please pray about how you will respond to the Savior Who gave His life for you and how you will be part of what God wants to do at Saint Matthew.

Speaking specifically to finances, let me tell you that I know that for many of you, this has been a hard year.

I also understand--and more importantly, God understands--how your time for Saint Matthew's ministries can be limited.

Whether it's our time or our talents or our money, God doesn't ask us to give anything more than we have.

God also knows that Saint Matthew isn't the only place where you can serve God's purposes in the world. There are lots of worthy ways to serve God and neighbor and to glorify Jesus Christ that have nothing to do with the formal ministries of Saint Matthew.

But I urge you, as you approach Consecration Sunday, to ask God, whatever your ability or limitations, to help you put Him first, to ask God to help you discern what you can do...because you know that on the cross, God put you first.

Leftovers are great when it comes to comfort foods like vegetable soup. But the God we know in Jesus Christ deserves our first and best and all. Amen

*Spurned lover though He is, God still wants to restore His relationship with the unfaithful Israel, just as He wants to be in relationship with us when we willfully walk away and abandon God.