Now is the Moment

Luke 16:19-31
The basic story that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 16:19-31, had, scholars say, been around for centuries before Jesus told it. But as was true of everything Jesus said and did, He turned the old tale on its head in His telling of it. The twist Jesus gives it is designed to get our attention and to remind us of the urgent need each of us has to turn from sin and claim God’s grace now.

Jesus says: “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.” Purple was, in the ancient world, the color of royalty and of the wealthy. The “fine linen” referred to here is an expensive underwear imported from Egypt. Ordinary folks couldn’t afford it. This first character mentioned in the parable really is a rich guy then.

Read on, please. “At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.” The verb translated here as laid literally means thrown. This beggar has been tossed aside by a world that has no use for the poor, the powerless, the incapacitated, the racially different. For all of the indignities to which this man is subjected though, the beggar is the only fictional character in any of Jesus’ parables given a name: Lazarus, meaning God is my help. (He’s not to be confused with the real man Jesus raised from the dead in Bethany.) The fact that Jesus gives this character a name indicates that God has a high regard for every human being made in His image, no matter what their status among other people may be. The name is ironic though, because no one seems to help Lazarus.

In those days, there were no napkins. (Or silverware.) So the wealthy used scraps of bread to wipe the residue of food off of the fingers they’d just used to eat, then tossed the bread scraps to the floor. And since this was in an age before Hoovers or Dysons, often, dogs, which no one kept as pets and lived as scavengers, would come along and eat the scraps from the floor. In Jesus' parable, Lazarus, desperately hungry, wishes that, like a dog, he could get to the bread scraps the rich man and his guests tossed on the floor. He can’t even do that! He occupies a place lower than dogs.

No two people could be more different than Lazarus and the unnamed rich man in Jesus’ parable. But the difference between them is greater than what can be observed by the naked eye.

See what happens next. “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’”

Don’t be misled here. Lazarus isn’t saved from hellish torment by his poverty and the rich man isn’t denied entrance into the heavenly banquet because of his wealth.

Abraham, the ancestor of all of God’s people, to whose side Lazarus is carried by the angels in Jesus' parable, was himself a wealthy man, wealthy enough to duke it out with kings and kingdoms. But his wealth didn’t keep him out of God’s kingdom.

There are poor people in God’s Kingdom. There are rich people in God’s Kingdom.

Entrance into God's Kingdom happens by a different route.

Genesis 15:6 says that Abraham (then Abram) “believed the Lord, and [God] credited it to [Abraham] as righteousness.” Abraham trusted the promises of God. He trusted God to cover his sins and give him a future. That’s what faith does. Its gifts are available today to all people who turn from sin and trust in the God we now know definitively in Jesus.

The rich man clearly had no faith in God. He lived in unrepentant disrespect for the God he knew about as a Jew, a descendant of Abraham, and as a consequence, with callous disregard for the poor man at his gate.

The rich man seems to feel no sense of irony about asking Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him by cooling his tongue, even though he had, in this life, passed on the opportunity to serve Lazarus in his need.

And it’s here that Jesus’ parable differs from the usual popular tale. Go to verse 25, please: “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’”

In the common folk tale, Abraham granted the rich man’s wish and sent Lazarus to Hades to give the man relief. But not in Jesus’ parable! Abraham refuses the request.

Why?

Because the rich man had countless opportunities in this life to repent for sin and trust in God as Lord of his life, Lord of his pocketbook, Lord of his attitudes and actions. He had chosen instead to be his own lord, to live for the moment, for his own convenience and comfort.

But time was up. He was past the point of God’s consolation.

Listen: God never tires of forgiving, renewing, and helping those who repent and trust in Him. Even the woeful Old Testament book of Lamentations declares: “...Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” [Lamentations 3:22-23].

God loves to forgive us and give us new life! As long as we are on this earth, we human beings, like the thief of the cross, can turn to Him.

But because this life is so fragile, so unpredictable, and because life with God here and now is indescribably better than it is without Him, the best time to turn to the God we know in Christ is now, this moment, every moment.

As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6:2: “...now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”

The rich man had wasted the gift of now--the gift of this life. Now it was over and he was inconsolable. Beyond the gates of death, there is and will always be a great chasm between those who trust in the Lord and those who trust in other things.

But, for all his lack of faith or compassion, the rich man in Jesus’ parable does seem to have what we would call “family values.” He thinks of his brothers, all evidently as unrepentant and disbelieving as he had been.

Verse 27: “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’”

For centuries, God had spoken to His people through “Moses [or the Law] and the Prophets,” what we call the Old Testament. That book, the record of God’s encounters with His people over centuries, had called God’s people--and even Gentiles who heard it--to repent and trust in God.

This Word, Abraham is telling the rich man, is sufficient to communicate God’s call to repent and believe...if people will only pay attention to it. This same Word should have been sufficient for Jesus’ fellow Jews to know that He was God in the flesh when they saw Him.

But people always seem to want one more thing for God to prove Himself and His authority to them.

Years ago, I got to know a Pentecostal pastor named Howard, a wonderful man. He and I had traveled to an event in downtown Cincinnati and, stuck in traffic, we talked about things that mattered to us. At one point, Howard said, "One of the things that bothers me about Pentecostals is that they're always looking for some new revelation from God, some fresh word of prophecy or direction. But the thing is, God has already told us everything we need to know on the pages of the Bible." I chuckled and said, "Howard, you sound like a Lutheran!"

What Howard was saying is exactly what Abraham tells the rich man in Jesus' parable: "God's Word is sufficient. You don't need to ask God to do something special to prove His Lordship or people's need to repent and believe. It's all there in black and white."

The rich man isn’t done, though. “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

‘No,’ Abraham says to the rich man in the parable, ‘if your brothers refuse to trust in God when they have the testimony of God’s faithfulness found in the Old Testament, they won’t believe a man risen from the dead.’

In our home church was a woman named Rosie. Rosie was older. She lived by herself and didn't say much. We were in an adult Sunday School class being taught by a seminarian, who asked us, "If you could add a commemoration or holiday to the church calendar, what would it be?" The question was met with silence until, of all people, Rosie spoke up. "Well, I always thought that we should have a day to thank God that we live now because if I'd been alive when Jesus walked the earth, I might not have believed in Him. Now, I know that He died and He rose and it makes it easier for me to believe."

You and I are especially blessed. We live on the other side of Easter: Jesus has died and He has risen from the dead. The Old Testament pointed forward to Jesus, God on earth. And we have the testimony of the New Testament about Jesus, how He died and rose to set free all people--Jews and Gentiles--from sin and death and to live in God’s kingdom now and for all eternity, if they will do what the rich man never saw the need to do until it was too late: To daily turn from sin and daily trust in Christ above all. Rosie was right!

“In the past,” Hebrews 1:1-2 in the New Testament tells us, “God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.”

Jesus has spoken to us, not just or even primarily with His words, but with one eternity-changing action, the sacrifice of His earthly life on the cross, where He took our punishment for sin and gained life for all who trust in Him.

Today and every today is a good day to repent and follow Jesus.

But watch out! When we do that, God will enlarge our hearts and help us see the poor men at our gates and even learn from them more deeply what it means to be a disciple. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was presented during both worship services this morning.]

Upside Down World

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

Matthew 16:21-28
In his book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt tells about several people from underground house churches in Asian countries where it’s illegal to worship or witness for Jesus Christ.

He mentions Jian, a “doctor who has left his successful health clinic and now risks his life and the lives of his wife and two kids in order to provide impoverished villages with medical care while secretly training [a] network of house-church leaders.”

There’s Lin, a woman who teaches at a university where it’s illegal to talk about Jesus. She secretly meets with students interested in knowing more about Him though, risking the loss of her job in the process.

People like these, who embrace living with the risk of suffering or death in order to glorify God and who share Christ with others, live in an upside-down world.

It’s a world in which living for Jesus, and not for comfort or status or material success, is the highest priority.

Death, sacrifice, and risk looms over their lives.

Yet the people I've met who live like this are more alive and more joyful than most of the people you and I know or know about.

Jesus talks about the strange alternative universe—the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God—in which people like Jian and Lin live, in today’s Gospel lesson. It’s the world in which He calls us all to live, too.

If that scares you, it should. I know that it scares me. Yet there is no other place where true life can be found than in Jesus’ kingdom.

Let’s learn more about it. Please turn to the lesson, Matthew 16:21-28 (page 687 in the sanctuary Bibles).

The lesson actually continues the incident that we looked at in last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, in which Peter confessed that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” The first verse of today’s lesson follows: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Now, Jesus had a typical way of “explaining” things He wanted them to know. Turn please, to Luke 24:27, as the risen Jesus spoke with two disciples on the way to Emmaus: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets [the phrase, Moses and the Prophets, like the Law and the Prophets, referred to what we call the Old Testament], he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Jesus always pointed to the God of the Old Testament to explain Who He was and what He was about. Jesus taught that everything that Christians confess about Him—from His virgin birth to His sacrificial death for our sin, from His kingship to His resurrection—was foretold in the Old Testament.

Peter though, wasn’t interested in what Jesus or the Old Testament had to say about the Messiah suffering, dying and rising. Peter wanted Jesus to be an earthly king who could produce results, like freeing him and his countrymen from Roman rule and their oppressive taxes. Peter wanted Jesus to make his life easy. That’s why, in verse 22, we read: “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’”

Peter wanted a king who would do things the way he thought that they should be done.

He wanted a God who would be complicit in his favorite sins, things like pride and the disdain of foreigners he presumed God didn’t care about.

Sometimes, I confess, I can be like Peter. I go to God in prayer and say, "Now, Lord, what you need to do is thus and so. That will cause such and such a person to do what you and I both know they need to do. Then, I can step in and do this."

I’ve got everything figured out for God. All He needs to do is sign off on my plan.

Do you know what God's reaction to a "prayer" like that is?

After He stops laughing, He treats my calling out to Him in Jesus’ Name as an invitation for Him to do what He thinks is best.

Peter thought he was going to tell Jesus how to be God and King. He soon found out how off-base he was. Look at verse 23: “Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’”

The man Jesus had just called “the rock” is now “a stumbling block.”

The man who was commended for listening to God in order to know Who Jesus was, now is being condemned for listening to Satan!

Jesus uses the same word for Peter, the word Satan, which means accuser, that He used for the devil when the devil tempted Him in the wilderness.

Back then, Satan tried to tempt Jesus to avoid the cross and take the easy way to becoming a king. No suffering. No cross. All Jesus had to do was worship Satan and Jesus could have the world He had come to reclaim for God.

Jesus refused to take the easy way.

Like the devil, Peter wanted Jesus to take the easy way. The easy way, the way of going along with the world to get along with the world, the way of cutting corners on ethics and our characters in order to get what we want, is exactly what Jesus warned anyone who wanted to follow Him to avoid when He said, “The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.”

What path are you and I following in life: the Jesus way or the easy way? This is a question worthy of asking ourselves each day.

My mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us about counseling parents whose high school or college-age children were addicted to drugs. He told these parents that if they loved their children, they wouldn’t give the kids the money they knew the kids would just use to buy more dope. “But we can’t stand the thought of our kids hating us and thinking they can’t turn to us for help. We can’t see them in such agony either,” they would say. “It’s too painful.” “How painful will it be,” he would ask them, “if you give them what they want and you lose them forever?”

Peter, like Satan before him, confronted Jesus with the same sort of choice that confronted those parents. It would have been far easier for Jesus to give people what they wanted, to be a king who led a revolution and tossed out the Romans.

But if He had done that, His mission would have remained unfulfilled. You and I would be left hopelessly imprisoned to sin and death.

Jesus willingly endured the hatred of the whole human race and the punishment for sin we deserve so that He wouldn’t lose us forever.

He endured suffering and death on the cross so that on Easter Sunday, when the Father raised Jesus from the dead, He could give new life to all who repent for sin and believe in Him.

It was by the hard way of the cross that Jesus won life for all who trust in Him. God’s saving grace in Christ is free, but we must give up life as it’s usually lived in order to be free to grab hold of it!

In verse 24, Jesus amplifies this point, when He says in part, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” To take up our cross has nothing to do with enduring the pains or inconveniences of life, no matter how severe they may be.

Rather, to take up our cross is to acknowledge that our sins put Jesus on the cross.

I love what Martin Luther says when, in The Small Catechism, he explains the meaning of Holy Baptism for our daily lives: “[Baptism] signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil desires, should be drowned by daily sorrow for sin and repentance and be put to death, and that the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Just as Christ’s crucifixion led to His resurrection, daily taking up our crosses, confessing our sins, and submitting to the death of our sinful selves brings us fresh new life every moment we walk with Jesus.

When we live in daily repentance and renewal, we can confess with Jeremiah, writing in the Old Testament book of Lamentations 3:22-23: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”

But what does it mean to deny ourselves? It means to ask God to help us to dare to trust God’s revealed word and will and not in our own reasoning or experiences.

Psalm 118:8 tells us: “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans.” That includes the humans you and I know best, ourselves.

Denying ourselves means admitting that we need God not as we want Him to be, but God as He is, the God Who can only save us from sin and death when we give Him our daily surrender and daily--moment by moment--sign over control over our lives to Jesus Christ.

In Philippians 1:21, the apostle Paul writes, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I pray each day to live with more of that risky, “upside down” attitude of faith, of trust in Christ.

Peter rebuked Jesus because he was concerned about living and organizing life as he wanted life to be. He wanted God to bend to his plans rather than submitting to whatever God had in mind for him. It seemed to risky for Jesus to submit to death on a cross (Jesus might stay dead), too risky to give up on His preferences and give God control of his life (that seemed to frighteningly uncertain). I confess, that following Jesus, even on this side of His cross and resurrection, seems awfully risky me today. And it is risky.

True living though, whether in this life or in eternity, doesn’t belong to those who play it safe, who take a pass on the risk of faith. It belongs to people who give control of their lives to Jesus—to people who deny themselves, who take up their crosses, and who follow Jesus.

After all, truly, this life, no matter how many years we live here, is simply a warm-up lap for the one to come.

Let Jesus take control of your life now.

Start living in Jesus’ alternative universe—the kingdom of heaven—today.

Let Jesus call the shots.

Let Jesus set your priorities.

Do everything you can to tell the world about the new life that only those with faith in Jesus have.

You may not win any popularity contests for living in Jesus’ kingdom. You may not gain power or wealth or ease. But you will live in the power of the only one who can give you life, the only One Who will be left standing when sin and death have done their worst to us.

And as you live with Jesus each day, you will, as Jesus promises at the end of our Gospel lesson, “not taste death before [you] see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” You will see the imprint of Jesus on every moment that you breathe. And you will be alive!

Choose Your Fear

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, on June 22, 2014.]

Matthew 10:5a, 21-33
The following news item caught my eye yesterday:

The first Egyptian to try to legally change his religious identity from Islam to Christianity on his government ID was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison.

Bishoy Armia Boulos, formerly known as Mohmmed Hegazy, received the prison term and a fine of 500 Egyptian pounds...for what the judge called ‘disturbing the peace by broadcasting false information’ after the 31-year-old Christian documented political unrest in Egypt brought on by numerous Muslim extremist attacks on Christians, attorney Wagdy Haifa said.

The article went on to say that Boulos, because of his conversion to Christianity and his desire to have that noted on his official IDs, is somewhat notorious in Egypt, a believer in Christ living with the constant threat of harassment and worse because of His faith.

Now, if you think this is going to be anti-Islamic screed, you’d be wrong. I do believe that Christian faith, faith that the crucified and risen Jesus is God  for us--Emmanuel--and that He alone is the way to a life with God. I believe that that is foundational truth. Salvation cannot be found in Islam. It can be found in Christ alone. But all of that is not what caught my eye in this news item.

The story, in fact, brought three thoughts immediately to mind.

First, I thanked God that I live in a country where I have the freedom to worship God in my own way or to not worship God at all, this latter freedom being one that something like 70% of those who identify themselves as Christians exercise every Sunday morning by not going to church. I don’t have to put my religious preference on any government papers. I’m not going to be locked up for pointing out instances when my fellow Christians are being harassed. We have freedom of religion and of irreligion in this country...and it’s a blessing.

The second thought that crossed my mind was actually a question...to myself: “How would you hold up under the pressure that has been Bishoy Armia Boulos’ lot for several years now, would you continue to boldly profess your faith or would you collapse like a cheap folding chair?” 

My answer? “I don’t know.”

I don’t know what I would do if a government official, figuratively or literally, held a gun to my head and said, “Renounce your faith in Christ or die. Renounce your faith in Christ or face a lifetime of persecution, harassment, or time in prison.”

Thank God I live in a country where I’m not likely to ever face those kinds of choices. At least, not from the government.

But that leads to my third thought.

Today’s Gospel lesson comes from a section of Matthew’s gospel that recounts how Jesus sent the apostles out, two by two, to replicate His ministry. It was time for them to take off their training wheels and hit the bricks. In Jesus’ Name, they were to proclaim the good news that God’s kingdom can enter the lives of those with faith in Christ. In Jesus' Name too, they were also to heal the sick and cast out demons. And Jesus warned them that they would face opposition, maybe even from their own families.

Take a look at our lesson, starting at Matthew 10:21 (page 681 in the sanctuary Bibles): “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.”

You don’t have to go to Egypt to find Christians who are suffering in ways similar to what Jesus describes here.

Go to any middle school or high school campus and you’ll find Christian young people dealing with the pressure to conform to peers among whom God is an old myth and self is king.

Talk to parents whose adult children deride them for their faith in Christ.

Talk to the Christian in the workplace seeking to follow Christ who is pressured to fudge sales figures, product reliability claims, or measurements of productivity.

The pressure to leave Christ behind is exerted on many of us each day.

It’s exerted by those who may be gatekeepers for our worldly success or the acceptance of others.

It’s exerted too by the temptation faced by every human being to conform to a sinful world rather than having our minds and our lives transformed by Jesus Christ.

According to Jesus, these pressures are the norm, not the exception, for those who follow Him. Verse  24: “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!”

If we are members of the household of faith in Jesus Christ, if we’re His disciples, and the One we follow was crucified by a world that did not want to recognize Him as God and Savior, did not want to recognize their need of forgiveness and grace and new life that only Christ brings, did not want to accept the Lordship and authority of Jesus over their lives, how can we possibly expect that we will be treated better than He was?

If Jesus, God in the flesh, was called Beelzebul, that is, a demon, should those of us who bear His Name expect an easy time this side of our own deaths and resurrections?

The answer is, “No.”

At my first parish, we had a five week summer school program of Bible history and Catechism for kids going into the third through the eighth grades. It was required for Confirmation, in addition to weekly school year Catechism for the kids in the sixth through eighth grades. We had 85 kids in the program. It was a difference-maker in the life of that congregation. The people of that congregation know Christ and His Word very well there. I got a note just a few weeks ago from one of my old summer school students, now thirty-seven, who said that summer school was among the best experiences of her childhood. But one mom, back when I was there, didn’t want her son in summer school. I’ll never forget the meeting I had with her in which she told me that the church’s summer school was clearly demonic because it cut into her son’s fledgling baseball career.

If you’re a believer in Jesus, Jesus is telling us today, you can bank on people giving you a hard time, putting you in pigeon holes, putting you down, even calling your faith in Him evil. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, consider yourself fortunate. (And rare.)

Now, none of this sounds like very good news, does it? I mean, I don’t like the idea of being snubbed by family members and one-time friends because I try to follow Jesus. Many of us in this sanctuary know what that feels like and it isn’t pleasant. And no one likes to think that because they strive to follow Christ, they’ll lose promotions at work or experience a loss of social standing. And I certainly don’t relish the thought of losing my life on earth because I believe in Jesus.

All of that frightens me.

I imagine it frightens you too, if you think about it.

But in the midst of this truthfulness about the risks involved in following Him, Jesus tells us this: We must choose our fears. We all fear some things. Jesus says choose to fear the right thing.

Verse 26: “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The world can destroy your bank book.

The world can take away your job and investment portfolio.

The world can make you unpopular.

The world can even take your physical life away from you.

But it cannot eternally destroy you without your permission.

That’s because God, the God we know in Jesus Christ, Who has conquered sin and death for all who acknowledge their need of God and who trust in Christ for life itself, can and will save those who fear Him and refuse to fear the world.

“The fear of the Lord,” the book of Proverbs says repeatedly, “is the beginning of wisdom.”

It’s also the beginning of life. Every other fear leads away from God and to death. The fear of God leads to life.

I’m afraid of many things, probably more than most people. That’s what comes from being a little OCD, I suppose.

My greatest fear, in some ways, is that I will die before I’ve tasted the good I’d like to most experience in this world, sometimes forgetting the eternity of joy that awaits those who fear God and trust in Christ.

So this business of choosing the fear of God over the fear of the world cuts very close to home for me. I’m made ashamed by people like Bishoy Armia Boulos. I can almost sense God telling me as He told a king through Daniel in the Old Testament: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”

But blessedly, like you, I seek to follow that same God, made plain to the world in Jesus Christ, of Whom Lamentations 3:22-23 says: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning...”

“God,” I say repeatedly in many ways every day, “forgive me for fearing the world more than I fear You. Teach me to walk through this life boldly, fearing only You.” And His forgiveness and His power come to me again.

Maybe you struggle with fears of what this finite, dying world can do to you as well.

If so, don’t worry. Jesus didn’t come to die and rise for perfect people.

He came to die and rise for people willing to admit their imperfection and of their eternal need of Him.

Christ alone can cover our imperfections and replace our old fears of the world with a holy fear--a holy awe, a holy respect--of the God Who made us, loves us, and has paid the price to buy back from sin and death all who believe in Christ.

Our call as Christians living in this world is not to endure in perfection. Our call is to endure in daily surrender to Christ.

At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”

Never be afraid to acknowledge Jesus in this world because, despite our imperfections, He will never disown those to whom He willingly gives the courage to fear God and nothing and nobody else. Amen

Jesus' Alternative Universe

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


Matthew 16:21-28
In his book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt tells about several people from underground house churches in Asian countries where it’s illegal to worship or witness for Jesus Christ.

• He mentions Jian, a “doctor who has left his successful health clinic and now risks his life and the lives of his wife and two kids in order to provide impoverished villages with medical care while secretly training [a] network of house-church leaders.” 
• There’s Lin, a woman who teaches at a university where it’s illegal to talk about Jesus. She secretly meets with students interested in knowing more about Him though, risking the loss of her job in the process. 

People like these, who embrace living with the risk of suffering or death in order to glorify God and share Christ with others, live in an upside-down world. It’s a world in which living for Jesus, and not for comfort or status or material success, is the highest priority. Death, sacrifice, and risk looms over their lives constantly, yet the people I've met who live like this are more alive and more joyful than 99% of the people you and I know or know about.

Jesus talks about the strange alternative universe—the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God—in which people Jian and Lin live in today’s Gospel lesson.

It’s the world in which He calls us all to live, too. If that scares you, it probably should. It scares me. Yet there is no other place where true life can be found than in Jesus’ kingdom. Let’s learn more about it. Please pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to the lesson, Matthew 16:21-28.

The lesson actually continues an incident we started looking at two weeks ago. Back then, you may recall, Peter confessed his belief that Jesus was “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

The first verse of today’s lesson follows: “From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

How did Jesus “show” these things to the disciples, do you suppose? Pull out a pew Bible, please, and turn to page 609, to Luke 24:27. It’s part of Luke’s account of an encounter the risen Jesus had with two disciples on the road to a village called Emmaus on the first Easter Sunday. The disciples, blinded by their inability to believe in Jesus’ resurrection, don’t initially understand that the stranger with whom they’re speaking is Jesus. Then we’re told: “And beginning at Moses [in other words, starting at Genesis, the first of five Old Testament books traditionally attributed to Moses] and the Prophets [people like Isaiah and Jeremiah, whose prophetic ministries are recounted also in the Old Testament], [Jesus] expounded to them in all the Scriptures concerning Himself.”

Jesus always pointed to the God of the Old Testament to explain Who He was and what He was about. Jesus taught that everything that Christians confess about Him—from His virgin birth to His sacrificial death for our sin, from His kingship to His resurrection—was foretold in the Old Testament.

Peter though, wasn’t interested in what Jesus or the Old Testament had to say about the Messiah suffering, dying and rising. Peter wanted Jesus to be an earthly king who could produce results, like freeing him and his countrymen from Roman rule and their oppressive taxes. Peter wanted Jesus to make his life easy.

That’s why, in verse 22, we read: “Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This [suffering and crucifixion] must never happen to you.’”

Peter wanted to whittle the one he had just confessed to be the Messiah and the Son of the living God down to controllable dimensions. He wanted a king who would do things the way he thought that they should be done. He wanted a God who would wink at his favorite sins. Like Adam and Eve, Peter wanted to “be like God.”


You know, sometimes I go to God in prayer and say, "Now, Lord, what you need to do is thus and so. That will cause such and such a person to do what you and I both know they need to do. Then, I can step in and do this." Do you know what God's reaction to a "prayer" like that is? He laughs. We can't tell God how to do His job! If we do, our speech at that moment might be called many things, but it can't be called prayer.

Peter thought he was going to tell Jesus how to be God and King. Boy, was he wrong! Look at verse 23, for Jesus' reaction to Peter: “But [Jesus] turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Jesus uses the same word for Peter, the word Satan, which means accuser, that He used for the devil when the devil tempted Him in the wilderness. Back then, Satan tried to tempt Jesus to avoid the cross and take the easy way to becoming a king. No suffering. No cross. All Jesus had to do was worship Satan and Jesus could have the world He had come to reclaim for God. Jesus refused to take the easy way.

Like the devil, Peter wanted Jesus to take the easy way. The easy way, the way of going along to get along, is exactly what Jesus warned anyone who wanted to follow Him to avoid when He said, “The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.” What path are you and I following in life: the Jesus way or the easy way?

My mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us about counseling parents whose high school or college-age children were addicted to drugs. He told these parents that if they loved their children, they wouldn’t give the kids the money they knew the kids would just use to buy more drugs. “But we can’t stand the thought of our kids hating us and thinking they can’t turn to us for help,” they would say. “It’s too painful.” “How painful will it be,” he would ask them, “if you give them what they want and you lose them forever?”

Peter, like Satan before him, confronted Jesus with the same sort of choice that confronted those parents Pastor Schein counseled. It would have been far easier for Jesus to give people what they wanted, to be a king who led a revolution and tossed out the Romans, while leaving you and me imprisoned to sin and death. Jesus willingly endured the hatred of the whole human race and the punishment for sin we deserve so that He wouldn’t lose us forever, so that on Easter Sunday, when the Father raised Jesus from the dead, He could give new life to all who repent for sin and believe in Him.

It was by the hard way of the cross that Jesus won life for all who trust in Him. God’s saving grace in Christ is free, but we must give up life as it’s usually lived to be free to grab hold of it!

In verse 26, Jesus amplifies this point, when He says in part, “If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

To take up our cross is to acknowledge that our sins put Jesus on the cross. I love what Martin Luther says when, in The Small Catechism, he explains the meaning of Baptism for our daily lives:

[Baptism] signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil desires, should be drowned by daily sorrow for sin and repentance and be put to death, and that the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Just as Christ’s crucifixion led to His resurrection, daily taking up our crosses, confessing our sins, and submitting to the death of our sinful impulses and orientations brings us fresh new life every moment we walk with Jesus.

When we live in daily repentance and renewal, we can confess with Jeremiah, writing in the Old Testament book of Lamentations: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning…”

But what does it mean to deny ourselves? It means to dare to trust God’s revealed word and will and not in our own reasoning or experiences. Psalm 118 says that “it is better to take refuge in the LORD than to put confidence in mortals [that includes ourselves].”

Denying ourselves means admitting that we need God not as we want Him to be, but God as He is, the God Who can only save us from sin and death when we give Him our unconditional surrender and when we sign over control over our lives to Jesus Christ.

There is a joy and a peace to a life like this which, I confess, I have only tasted at times, but which I want more than anything! In the New Testament book of Philippians, the apostle Paul writes, “To me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” (Talk about upside down!)

Peter rebuked Jesus because he was concerned about living and organizing life as he wanted it to be. He was a slave to his desire for personal freedom and control. He wanted God to bend to His plans rather than submitting to whatever God had in mind for him.

One of the reasons I have such an irrational fear of water and have never learned to swim, I’m sure, is because I’m afraid to let go and just…swim. I like the feeling of control I have on dry land. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that following Jesus is like learning to swim. “If you keep your foot on the bottom of the pool,” he says, “you’ll never work out how to do it.” If we are to follow Jesus into eternity, we’ll have to do something similar. Wright continues, “You have to lose your life to find it. What’s the use of keeping your feet on the bottom when the water gets too deep? You have the choice: swim or drown. Apparent safety, walking on the bottom, isn’t an option any longer.”

True living, whether in this life or in eternity, doesn’t belong to those who play it safe. It belongs to people who give control of their lives to Jesus—to people who deny themselves, who take up their crosses, and who follow Him.

This life, no matter how many years we live here, is just a warm-up lap for the one to come.

Let Jesus take control of your life now. Start living in Jesus’ alternative universe—the kingdom of heaven—today. Let Jesus call the shots. Let Jesus set your priorities. Do everything you can to tell the world about the new life that only those with faith in Jesus have.

You may not win any popularity contests for living in Jesus’ kingdom. You may not gain power or wealth or ease. But you will live in the power of the only one who can give you life, the only One Who will be left standing when sin and death have done their worst to us.

And as you live with Jesus each day, you will, as Jesus promises at the end of our Gospel lesson, “not taste death before [you] see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” You will see the imprint of Jesus on every moment that you breathe. And you will be alive.

Today, right now, this moment: Follow Jesus!