Showing posts with label Mark 1:9-15. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark 1:9-15. Show all posts
Monday, February 19, 2018
Life for the Wilderness and Beyond
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Mark 1:9-15
On Friday, I was scanning Twitter for the comments people were making on the recent school shooting in Florida. One woman’s tweet particularly struck me. She said, “I can’t believe in a God Who would let children be killed in school.”
She’s not alone in such feelings. People often feel and say things like this. “My husband/my wife has left me,” someone will say, “How could God let this happen?” “My friend was killed in a car accident, my wife has died from cancer. Where is God?” For many, life on this earth is a savage wilderness and God seems like a distant and powerless being.
As Christians, we can be brutally candid: This world is a wilderness.
As beautiful and breathtaking and wonderful as this life can sometimes be, it’s also a fallen place where bad things happen to unsuspecting and even faithful people.
It’s a place where evil and deranged people prey on others.
It’s a place where death can come to people at early age, where death, weeping, and sorrow exist.
As Christians, we realize that while we live on earth, we’re looking for what the New Testament calls “a city” God has prepared for us (Hebrews 11:16).
We believe God’s promises given in Christ of “a country of [our] own” (Hebrews 11:15).
But for now, we are “foreigners and strangers on earth” (Hebrews 11:13).
Every human being is an alien here, whether they know it or not. We weren’t meant for life in a brutal wilderness. Our very revulsion and questions in the face of tragedy demonstrate that fact.
But as hard as it can be to remember and cling to when the wilderness does its worst to us, we need never be alone!
God has not forgotten us.
And He never will.
Not when you’re at work or school.
Not when you’re at home.
Not when you rejoice in victories.
Not when you die.
God will never forget you!
Today’s gospel lesson finds God affirming this truth. Last week’s lesson from Mark narrated an event that happened near the end of Jesus’ ministry, the Transfiguration. This week’s lesson, Mark 1:9-15, takes us to the beginning of His ministry. The two events are connected in ways that remind us of God’s presence with us and His mission for us in this world, as well as God’s promise of life beyond the boundaries of this wilderness. So, please look at our our gospel lesson.
Verse 9: “At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'”
I love how graphic this verse is. After being baptized by John, Jesus looks up to see “heaven being torn open.” The phrase translated into the English as torn open from the Greek in which Mark wrote is σχιζομένους (schizomenous), the root of which is the verb σχίζω (schizo). (Yes, it’s where we get the word schizophrenia for a split personality.) This verb means to split, to cleave, to divide.
This is important!
When Jesus was baptized, God the Father was offering a preview of things to come. Through Jesus, God in the flesh, God was going to tear an opening in the wall that divided our perfect, loving, and holy God from His imperfect, sinful, and fallen human children.
This Jesus accomplished when He died on the cross. Mark 15:38 tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” The verb translated as torn there is ἐσχίσθη, a past tense form of the same verb in today’s lesson, σχίζω.
The curtain that was torn after Jesus’ crucifixion separated the area where pious Jews had worshiped from the place known as the holy of holies, where God was thought to dwell.
Listen: With the death of the sinless Jesus on behalf of sinful humanity, all that divides us from God was torn down.
Jesus tore an opening to eternity with God for all who repent and believe in Him.
It’s through Jesus that we are privileged to address God as “our Father.”
It’s because of Jesus that we can trust that nothing, not even the wilderness, can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:31).
And it’s because of Jesus that we can affirm, as we often do after we’ve received Holy Communion, that in the sacrament in which Jesus comes to us, heaven touches earth. Eternity reaches us here in the wilderness, promising God’s forgiveness and presence here and an eternity with God forever!
All of this was foreshadowed when, after Jesus’ baptism, the heavens were torn open in celebration!
And the same thing happens when we are baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Heaven is opened to us as God claims us as His own, which is what happens next at Jesus’ baptism. “You are my Son, whom I love,” the Father says, “with you I am well pleased.”
But even after our baptisms, there is wilderness to go through. And Jesus could only tear open the heavens for us after He had gone through the wilderness too, only after He did successfully for us what God knows we can not do ourselves: Jesus lived in the wilderness without caving into sin or despair. Verse 12: “At once the Spirit sent [Jesus] out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.”
There’s no way to overestimate the importance of the fact that when God took on human flesh, as He did in Jesus, He faced the same challenges, dangers, everyday joys, and temptations you and I face.
Unless Jesus had been susceptible to the temptations of our wilderness, it would mean nothing to say Jesus is sinless.
If Jesus had been hotwired to resist temptation, it would have taken no dependence on God the Father for Him to say no when the devil and the world tried to lure Him into sin.
Because Jesus could be tempted, He was able to save those who believe in Him when He offered His sinless life on the cross.
It also means that when we face temptations and we cry out to Him, He understands.
And when we have given into temptations and sinned and cry out in His name for forgiveness, He understands and brings God’s forgiveness.
Hebrews 4:15 says: “[in Jesus] we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.” Because Jesus was tempted in the wilderness of this world, He empathizes with us and gives us strength to face evil, whether that evil comes from the world around us or from the fallen hearts inside of us.
Many of you have heard me tell the story of the woman in my first parish who was dying of cancer. It had been a tough slog for her, with rallies and setbacks and finally the word from her doctors, “There’s nothing more we can do.” I asked her as she neared her death if she’d ever gotten angry with God. “At first, yes,” she told me. “But then I remembered, He’s right here with me.” And this same Jesus Who endured the worst this world can do to a human being, also is with all who trust in Him when they pass from this life to the next, leading us to those rooms He has prepared for all who trust in Him (John 14:2).
After Jesus had faced down Satan in the strength God provided to Him, the same strength God can send to us in our wilderness experiences, Jesus still had a mission to fulfill. He still needed to call people to follow Him and to believe in what He was doing for them...and us. Verse 14: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”
When Jesus arrived on this earth, the days of this wilderness were numbered. The jig was up for the power of sin, death, the devil, despair, and darkness. Jesus has eternally and definitively conquered their power for all who believe in Him. We don’t know when Jesus will return to this earth. But we do know that we can trust the promised return of a Savior Who guaranteed His promise with His shed blood and His resurrection from the dead.
In the meantime, He stands living and ready to comfort and encourage the grieving and the dying, to give new life and new purpose to the uncertain and the doubting, to fill with strength those who have been knocked down low by life.
The psalmist says of the God we know in Jesus: “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11).
Through Isaiah, God promises those who follow Him: “...those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
And Jesus tells us: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
If the wilderness seems to have been winning in your life lately, you’ve come to the right place, to worship God in this fellowship of believers. Jesus says that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, He is in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20).
The One Who conquered the wilderness is here today among us and He says, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent [turn away from the wilderness, its blind alleys, and sin that leads to death] and believe the good news.”
The good news, the gospel, for us today is this: Every person lost in the wilderness who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13) and this Jesus can be with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
Count on Jesus to take you through your wilderness and beyond, to life with God that never ends. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Mark 1:9-15
On Friday, I was scanning Twitter for the comments people were making on the recent school shooting in Florida. One woman’s tweet particularly struck me. She said, “I can’t believe in a God Who would let children be killed in school.”
She’s not alone in such feelings. People often feel and say things like this. “My husband/my wife has left me,” someone will say, “How could God let this happen?” “My friend was killed in a car accident, my wife has died from cancer. Where is God?” For many, life on this earth is a savage wilderness and God seems like a distant and powerless being.
As Christians, we can be brutally candid: This world is a wilderness.
As beautiful and breathtaking and wonderful as this life can sometimes be, it’s also a fallen place where bad things happen to unsuspecting and even faithful people.
It’s a place where evil and deranged people prey on others.
It’s a place where death can come to people at early age, where death, weeping, and sorrow exist.
As Christians, we realize that while we live on earth, we’re looking for what the New Testament calls “a city” God has prepared for us (Hebrews 11:16).
We believe God’s promises given in Christ of “a country of [our] own” (Hebrews 11:15).
But for now, we are “foreigners and strangers on earth” (Hebrews 11:13).
Every human being is an alien here, whether they know it or not. We weren’t meant for life in a brutal wilderness. Our very revulsion and questions in the face of tragedy demonstrate that fact.
But as hard as it can be to remember and cling to when the wilderness does its worst to us, we need never be alone!
God has not forgotten us.
And He never will.
Not when you’re at work or school.
Not when you’re at home.
Not when you rejoice in victories.
Not when you die.
God will never forget you!
Today’s gospel lesson finds God affirming this truth. Last week’s lesson from Mark narrated an event that happened near the end of Jesus’ ministry, the Transfiguration. This week’s lesson, Mark 1:9-15, takes us to the beginning of His ministry. The two events are connected in ways that remind us of God’s presence with us and His mission for us in this world, as well as God’s promise of life beyond the boundaries of this wilderness. So, please look at our our gospel lesson.
Verse 9: “At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.'”
I love how graphic this verse is. After being baptized by John, Jesus looks up to see “heaven being torn open.” The phrase translated into the English as torn open from the Greek in which Mark wrote is σχιζομένους (schizomenous), the root of which is the verb σχίζω (schizo). (Yes, it’s where we get the word schizophrenia for a split personality.) This verb means to split, to cleave, to divide.
This is important!
When Jesus was baptized, God the Father was offering a preview of things to come. Through Jesus, God in the flesh, God was going to tear an opening in the wall that divided our perfect, loving, and holy God from His imperfect, sinful, and fallen human children.
This Jesus accomplished when He died on the cross. Mark 15:38 tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” The verb translated as torn there is ἐσχίσθη, a past tense form of the same verb in today’s lesson, σχίζω.
The curtain that was torn after Jesus’ crucifixion separated the area where pious Jews had worshiped from the place known as the holy of holies, where God was thought to dwell.
Listen: With the death of the sinless Jesus on behalf of sinful humanity, all that divides us from God was torn down.
Jesus tore an opening to eternity with God for all who repent and believe in Him.
It’s through Jesus that we are privileged to address God as “our Father.”
It’s because of Jesus that we can trust that nothing, not even the wilderness, can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:31).
And it’s because of Jesus that we can affirm, as we often do after we’ve received Holy Communion, that in the sacrament in which Jesus comes to us, heaven touches earth. Eternity reaches us here in the wilderness, promising God’s forgiveness and presence here and an eternity with God forever!
All of this was foreshadowed when, after Jesus’ baptism, the heavens were torn open in celebration!
And the same thing happens when we are baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Heaven is opened to us as God claims us as His own, which is what happens next at Jesus’ baptism. “You are my Son, whom I love,” the Father says, “with you I am well pleased.”
But even after our baptisms, there is wilderness to go through. And Jesus could only tear open the heavens for us after He had gone through the wilderness too, only after He did successfully for us what God knows we can not do ourselves: Jesus lived in the wilderness without caving into sin or despair. Verse 12: “At once the Spirit sent [Jesus] out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.”
There’s no way to overestimate the importance of the fact that when God took on human flesh, as He did in Jesus, He faced the same challenges, dangers, everyday joys, and temptations you and I face.
Unless Jesus had been susceptible to the temptations of our wilderness, it would mean nothing to say Jesus is sinless.
If Jesus had been hotwired to resist temptation, it would have taken no dependence on God the Father for Him to say no when the devil and the world tried to lure Him into sin.
Because Jesus could be tempted, He was able to save those who believe in Him when He offered His sinless life on the cross.
It also means that when we face temptations and we cry out to Him, He understands.
And when we have given into temptations and sinned and cry out in His name for forgiveness, He understands and brings God’s forgiveness.
Hebrews 4:15 says: “[in Jesus] we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.” Because Jesus was tempted in the wilderness of this world, He empathizes with us and gives us strength to face evil, whether that evil comes from the world around us or from the fallen hearts inside of us.
Many of you have heard me tell the story of the woman in my first parish who was dying of cancer. It had been a tough slog for her, with rallies and setbacks and finally the word from her doctors, “There’s nothing more we can do.” I asked her as she neared her death if she’d ever gotten angry with God. “At first, yes,” she told me. “But then I remembered, He’s right here with me.” And this same Jesus Who endured the worst this world can do to a human being, also is with all who trust in Him when they pass from this life to the next, leading us to those rooms He has prepared for all who trust in Him (John 14:2).
After Jesus had faced down Satan in the strength God provided to Him, the same strength God can send to us in our wilderness experiences, Jesus still had a mission to fulfill. He still needed to call people to follow Him and to believe in what He was doing for them...and us. Verse 14: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”
When Jesus arrived on this earth, the days of this wilderness were numbered. The jig was up for the power of sin, death, the devil, despair, and darkness. Jesus has eternally and definitively conquered their power for all who believe in Him. We don’t know when Jesus will return to this earth. But we do know that we can trust the promised return of a Savior Who guaranteed His promise with His shed blood and His resurrection from the dead.
In the meantime, He stands living and ready to comfort and encourage the grieving and the dying, to give new life and new purpose to the uncertain and the doubting, to fill with strength those who have been knocked down low by life.
The psalmist says of the God we know in Jesus: “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11).
Through Isaiah, God promises those who follow Him: “...those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
And Jesus tells us: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
If the wilderness seems to have been winning in your life lately, you’ve come to the right place, to worship God in this fellowship of believers. Jesus says that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, He is in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20).
The One Who conquered the wilderness is here today among us and He says, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent [turn away from the wilderness, its blind alleys, and sin that leads to death] and believe the good news.”
The good news, the gospel, for us today is this: Every person lost in the wilderness who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13) and this Jesus can be with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
Count on Jesus to take you through your wilderness and beyond, to life with God that never ends. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Love We Need to Face the Wilderness
[This, as near as I can recall, is the sermon I shared this morning during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
Mark 1:9-15
Years ago, when our kids were small, we were all shopping together at a mall book store in Toledo. In the children's section, we ran across a book with a blue cover showing a happy toddler in a bath room with reams of toilet paper he had pulled from the dispenser. The title was Love You Forever. Ann read it first and then, crying, handed it to me. When I read it, I couldn't keep from crying either. Love You Forever is a fun and touching ode of love from a mom to her child. The text is punctuated with a recurring promise from mother to child: "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
Any normal parent can identify with that sentiment. When parents have children enter their lives, they don't stop being parents just because their kids grow up and live responsible, adult lives. As long as we're living, our kids will be our kids and even if they sin and rebel and walk away from God or us, we will always love them.
Parents who love their children give their kids strong foundations for life. And, while I hate to think of this as being genetically built into us, studies have shown that the love, support, and caring discipline provided by fathers is especially important.
Several studies, for example, have been done comparing the faith lives of two groups of children, those who regularly attend worship with their moms only as opposed to those who do so regularly with their dads only. Those who attend with only their fathers are far more likely to continue with lives of prayer, service in Christ's Name, and regular worship than those brought to worship only by their mothers.
Of course, it's better when both parents go to worship and Sunday School with their kids. Better too, when both parents seek to live out their faith in Christ on Mondays through Saturdays, as well as on Sundays. Martin Luther said that the family is to be "a little church," in which Christ is daily worshiped, glorified, and served. But these studies on the spiritual development of children are echoed in studies into other realms of living too: When fathers love, affirm, and nurture children, children are better prepared to face life's challenges.
Our Gospel lesson shows us that God the Father knew the importance of giving strong affirmations of His love to Jesus, God the Son. He knew that His love could sustain Jesus through all that Jesus came into the world to do for you and me. Take a look at the first few verses of today's Gospel lesson, Mark 1:9-11.
Jesus, Mark tells us, was baptized by John the Baptist. We know, of course, that Jesus didn't need to be baptized by John. John was offering a baptism of repentance, a baptism that symbolized that people were turning away from their sin and turning, instead, in faith toward God, God's will, and God's promises, in anticipation of the coming of the King of kings. Jesus never sinned and Jesus was and is the King of kings. But Jesus also came into our worlds to share everything that we go through. So, He was baptized by John.
Look at what happens next: "...just as He was coming out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart..." Last Sunday, when we looked at Jesus' transfiguration, we saw this very thing happen. The heavens were torn apart so that God the Father could express His approval for Jesus. The same verb translated as "torn apart" shows up again at another place in Mark's Gospel: At the moment when Jesus died on the cross and curtain in the temple that concealed the holy of holies, the place where God dwelt on earth, was torn. In all these instances, the unseen realm of God were breaking into our fallen, imperfect world. God's kingdom was breaking into the world at the very moment that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan.
Now, look at what comes next: "...and the Spirit [descended] like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are My Son, the Beloved; with You I am well pleased." Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all together in that moment. This really was the kingdom of God breaking into our world!
But notice what God the Father says to Jesus: "You are My Son, the Beloved; with You I am well pleased." Do you see what the Father was saying to Jesus? It's this: "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
The One Jesus taught us to call Abba, Father, the first person of our three-three-person-in-one-God is a great Father! "I love You completely and always," the Father was telling Jesus.
Something similar happens to us when we are baptized. The Word of God is invoked over the waters of Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit reaches down to us, and in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we become children of God. Rebellious children can walk away from parents and God, of course. But that doesn't alter God's love for or commitment to us. Pull out the green hymn books and turn to page 124 in the front. This comes near the end of the baptismal liturgy. A blessing is given to the baptized:
Jesus needed the assurance of the Father's love for Him. Go back to our Gospel lesson, to Mark 1:12. "And the Spirit immediately drove Him [Jesus] into the wilderness."
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are a bit more dainty in describing how Jesus came to be in the wilderness. They say that the Holy Spirit "led" Jesus there.
Mark though, says that the Spirit "drove" Jesus into the wilderness. The word translated into our English translation is, in the Greek in which it was originally written, ekballei, a past tense form of a compound word ekballo. Ek is a prefix meaning out. Ballo, from which we get words like ball and balloon, means throw. Literally, the Holy Spirit threw Jesus out into the wilderness.
The wilderness, or literally in the Greek, the desolate, is a place of terror, a place of sin and temptation, of struggle with tests of character. In other words, the wilderness is the every day world in which you and I live.
It's also a place in which a war for our eternal souls is waged between unseen forces: God and His angels, on the one hand, and Satan--a name for the devil that means adversary--and his demonic forces, on the other.
Through His cross and resurrection, Jesus has already won this war. All who repent and believe in Him and the Good News He has brought are part of God's kingdom and live with God for all eternity, starting right here and now in the wilderness.
But Satan is selfish and desperate, violent and willful. He wants to tear us from God's hands, not because he values us, but because he knows how much God values us, which God showed when Jesus went to a cross bearing our sins on His sinless shoulders.
Some well-meaning Christians deny the existence of the spiritual realm, or of a war going on between God and Satan, with you and me as the prizes for which they battle. Years ago, I was in a study group with other Lutheran pastors. The subject of angels came up and one of our colleagues scoffed at the whole notion of angels or demons, Satan or hell. "I find it hard to believe in extraterrestrials," he told us with something of a smirk. One of our older colleagues put his hand on this fellow's shoulder and said, "Mike, if you don't think that Satan, demons, or hell are real, you haven't been paying attention."
We need to pay attention too!
Turn Ephesians 6:12 in the New Testament. It says: "...our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic forces of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (And here, "heavenly" doesn't refer to the place where God reigns, but to the unseen spiritual realm where the war for our souls is played out each moment of our lives.)
In the wilderness, you and I are tempted to take the easy way through life: to sin and walk away from God. God will let us do that, if that's the path we choose.
God won't force Himself on us, ever.
And, there are going to be millions of people in hell who were baptized and who are loved passionately by God, but who spurned God's love, Christ's cross, and the call to repent and believe and so are eternally separated from God.
But that isn't the way it has to be!
We can walk with God even in the wilderness and Jesus shows the way. Look at the last phrase of verse 13 in our Gospel lesson: "and the angels waited on Him." If we will rely completely on God, He will care for us. He will make a way through the wilderness.
In his book, You Were Made for More, Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the story of Roberta, a member of his New York City congregation. Roberta had misused drugs and engaged in all sorts of sinful relationships for decades. She came to faith in Christ through Cymbala's congregation and began a life of recovery from her addictions. She was living with God, free of her past. And though she was HIV-positive, Roberta refused to let the possibility of death from AIDs keep her from living life to the full with Christ by her side.
As she was improving, serving God, and growing in her faith, at that moment, a man from her past re-entered her life. (This shouldn't be surprising, by the way. My experience shows that anytime Godly and good things are happening, Satan will try to find ways to derail them.) The man told Roberta that he was clean, free of drugs for some time.
While wary, Roberta began seeing this man. She didn't love him. But she did feel affection for him. And, as she told Cymbala, they knew about each other's "stuff." Maybe they could build a life together. Still, she was still uncertain and praying about things.
In the meantime, the man invited her to visit him at his place in upstate New York. Roberta had a friend who lived in the same little town and, wanting to do things God's way this time, she arranged to stay at the friend's house, then visit the man at his place.
She had settled into her friend's place and borrowed the friend's car to see the man she now referred to as her "boyfriend." But she was thrown out into the wilderness at almost the moment she greeted him in his kitchen. In his pocket, she could see, was a pipe for smoking crack cocaine.
Without saying a word, her head swimming, she went to his living room and began to pray. "God," she cried out silently, "give me strength to get up and run out of this house right now! I know I should leave!"
As Roberta prayed, she heard an unspoken whisper, spoken undoubtedly by Satan, the one who tempted Jesus in His wilderness: "Let's be honest here--this is who [your boyfriend] is, and this is who your are down deep, don't you know?" Satan continued to tell her that her life could never get better, that she could never be right with God, that she ought to make do and once more take up the life of an addict and enjoy some good times before she left this world.
Just then, as though reading from Satan's playbook, the boyfriend came into the living room. He knew that the jig might be up. "Don't leave!" he kept telling Roberta.
But praying to God for strength and help, Roberta picked up her purse, pulled out her keys, made her way to the car, climbed in behind the wheel, and, her hands shaking, put the key in the ignition and drove away.
The man didn't stop campaigning to get her back. He would leave calls on her answering machine. But Roberta didn't answer. You see, she knew what all of the Bible teaches and what we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson:
When confronted with temptations to sin or testing circumstances that could lure us away from God, we close our ears; we run away from the temptation; and we cry out to God to help us do things the right way, God's way.
And even if and when we do fall into sin, replacing our flimsy wisdom for the true wisdom of God, so long as we're still breathing, we can turn back to God. We can, in the Name of Jesus, turn from sin. We can entrust ourselves to Christ and know that God will make a way through all of our testings and temptations. And we can come back to God, because, as God has said through the death and resurrection of His Son:
Mark 1:9-15
Years ago, when our kids were small, we were all shopping together at a mall book store in Toledo. In the children's section, we ran across a book with a blue cover showing a happy toddler in a bath room with reams of toilet paper he had pulled from the dispenser. The title was Love You Forever. Ann read it first and then, crying, handed it to me. When I read it, I couldn't keep from crying either. Love You Forever is a fun and touching ode of love from a mom to her child. The text is punctuated with a recurring promise from mother to child: "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
Any normal parent can identify with that sentiment. When parents have children enter their lives, they don't stop being parents just because their kids grow up and live responsible, adult lives. As long as we're living, our kids will be our kids and even if they sin and rebel and walk away from God or us, we will always love them.
Parents who love their children give their kids strong foundations for life. And, while I hate to think of this as being genetically built into us, studies have shown that the love, support, and caring discipline provided by fathers is especially important.
Several studies, for example, have been done comparing the faith lives of two groups of children, those who regularly attend worship with their moms only as opposed to those who do so regularly with their dads only. Those who attend with only their fathers are far more likely to continue with lives of prayer, service in Christ's Name, and regular worship than those brought to worship only by their mothers.
Of course, it's better when both parents go to worship and Sunday School with their kids. Better too, when both parents seek to live out their faith in Christ on Mondays through Saturdays, as well as on Sundays. Martin Luther said that the family is to be "a little church," in which Christ is daily worshiped, glorified, and served. But these studies on the spiritual development of children are echoed in studies into other realms of living too: When fathers love, affirm, and nurture children, children are better prepared to face life's challenges.
Our Gospel lesson shows us that God the Father knew the importance of giving strong affirmations of His love to Jesus, God the Son. He knew that His love could sustain Jesus through all that Jesus came into the world to do for you and me. Take a look at the first few verses of today's Gospel lesson, Mark 1:9-11.
Jesus, Mark tells us, was baptized by John the Baptist. We know, of course, that Jesus didn't need to be baptized by John. John was offering a baptism of repentance, a baptism that symbolized that people were turning away from their sin and turning, instead, in faith toward God, God's will, and God's promises, in anticipation of the coming of the King of kings. Jesus never sinned and Jesus was and is the King of kings. But Jesus also came into our worlds to share everything that we go through. So, He was baptized by John.
Look at what happens next: "...just as He was coming out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart..." Last Sunday, when we looked at Jesus' transfiguration, we saw this very thing happen. The heavens were torn apart so that God the Father could express His approval for Jesus. The same verb translated as "torn apart" shows up again at another place in Mark's Gospel: At the moment when Jesus died on the cross and curtain in the temple that concealed the holy of holies, the place where God dwelt on earth, was torn. In all these instances, the unseen realm of God were breaking into our fallen, imperfect world. God's kingdom was breaking into the world at the very moment that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan.
Now, look at what comes next: "...and the Spirit [descended] like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are My Son, the Beloved; with You I am well pleased." Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all together in that moment. This really was the kingdom of God breaking into our world!
But notice what God the Father says to Jesus: "You are My Son, the Beloved; with You I am well pleased." Do you see what the Father was saying to Jesus? It's this: "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
The One Jesus taught us to call Abba, Father, the first person of our three-three-person-in-one-God is a great Father! "I love You completely and always," the Father was telling Jesus.
Something similar happens to us when we are baptized. The Word of God is invoked over the waters of Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit reaches down to us, and in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we become children of God. Rebellious children can walk away from parents and God, of course. But that doesn't alter God's love for or commitment to us. Pull out the green hymn books and turn to page 124 in the front. This comes near the end of the baptismal liturgy. A blessing is given to the baptized:
Mark James, child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.You see, through the pastor and the Church, God tells the baptized, in words similar to those the Father addressed to Jesus in today's Gospel lesson: "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
Jesus needed the assurance of the Father's love for Him. Go back to our Gospel lesson, to Mark 1:12. "And the Spirit immediately drove Him [Jesus] into the wilderness."
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are a bit more dainty in describing how Jesus came to be in the wilderness. They say that the Holy Spirit "led" Jesus there.
Mark though, says that the Spirit "drove" Jesus into the wilderness. The word translated into our English translation is, in the Greek in which it was originally written, ekballei, a past tense form of a compound word ekballo. Ek is a prefix meaning out. Ballo, from which we get words like ball and balloon, means throw. Literally, the Holy Spirit threw Jesus out into the wilderness.
The wilderness, or literally in the Greek, the desolate, is a place of terror, a place of sin and temptation, of struggle with tests of character. In other words, the wilderness is the every day world in which you and I live.
It's also a place in which a war for our eternal souls is waged between unseen forces: God and His angels, on the one hand, and Satan--a name for the devil that means adversary--and his demonic forces, on the other.
Through His cross and resurrection, Jesus has already won this war. All who repent and believe in Him and the Good News He has brought are part of God's kingdom and live with God for all eternity, starting right here and now in the wilderness.
But Satan is selfish and desperate, violent and willful. He wants to tear us from God's hands, not because he values us, but because he knows how much God values us, which God showed when Jesus went to a cross bearing our sins on His sinless shoulders.
Some well-meaning Christians deny the existence of the spiritual realm, or of a war going on between God and Satan, with you and me as the prizes for which they battle. Years ago, I was in a study group with other Lutheran pastors. The subject of angels came up and one of our colleagues scoffed at the whole notion of angels or demons, Satan or hell. "I find it hard to believe in extraterrestrials," he told us with something of a smirk. One of our older colleagues put his hand on this fellow's shoulder and said, "Mike, if you don't think that Satan, demons, or hell are real, you haven't been paying attention."
We need to pay attention too!
Turn Ephesians 6:12 in the New Testament. It says: "...our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic forces of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (And here, "heavenly" doesn't refer to the place where God reigns, but to the unseen spiritual realm where the war for our souls is played out each moment of our lives.)
In the wilderness, you and I are tempted to take the easy way through life: to sin and walk away from God. God will let us do that, if that's the path we choose.
God won't force Himself on us, ever.
And, there are going to be millions of people in hell who were baptized and who are loved passionately by God, but who spurned God's love, Christ's cross, and the call to repent and believe and so are eternally separated from God.
But that isn't the way it has to be!
We can walk with God even in the wilderness and Jesus shows the way. Look at the last phrase of verse 13 in our Gospel lesson: "and the angels waited on Him." If we will rely completely on God, He will care for us. He will make a way through the wilderness.
In his book, You Were Made for More, Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the story of Roberta, a member of his New York City congregation. Roberta had misused drugs and engaged in all sorts of sinful relationships for decades. She came to faith in Christ through Cymbala's congregation and began a life of recovery from her addictions. She was living with God, free of her past. And though she was HIV-positive, Roberta refused to let the possibility of death from AIDs keep her from living life to the full with Christ by her side.
As she was improving, serving God, and growing in her faith, at that moment, a man from her past re-entered her life. (This shouldn't be surprising, by the way. My experience shows that anytime Godly and good things are happening, Satan will try to find ways to derail them.) The man told Roberta that he was clean, free of drugs for some time.
While wary, Roberta began seeing this man. She didn't love him. But she did feel affection for him. And, as she told Cymbala, they knew about each other's "stuff." Maybe they could build a life together. Still, she was still uncertain and praying about things.
In the meantime, the man invited her to visit him at his place in upstate New York. Roberta had a friend who lived in the same little town and, wanting to do things God's way this time, she arranged to stay at the friend's house, then visit the man at his place.
She had settled into her friend's place and borrowed the friend's car to see the man she now referred to as her "boyfriend." But she was thrown out into the wilderness at almost the moment she greeted him in his kitchen. In his pocket, she could see, was a pipe for smoking crack cocaine.
Without saying a word, her head swimming, she went to his living room and began to pray. "God," she cried out silently, "give me strength to get up and run out of this house right now! I know I should leave!"
As Roberta prayed, she heard an unspoken whisper, spoken undoubtedly by Satan, the one who tempted Jesus in His wilderness: "Let's be honest here--this is who [your boyfriend] is, and this is who your are down deep, don't you know?" Satan continued to tell her that her life could never get better, that she could never be right with God, that she ought to make do and once more take up the life of an addict and enjoy some good times before she left this world.
Just then, as though reading from Satan's playbook, the boyfriend came into the living room. He knew that the jig might be up. "Don't leave!" he kept telling Roberta.
But praying to God for strength and help, Roberta picked up her purse, pulled out her keys, made her way to the car, climbed in behind the wheel, and, her hands shaking, put the key in the ignition and drove away.
The man didn't stop campaigning to get her back. He would leave calls on her answering machine. But Roberta didn't answer. You see, she knew what all of the Bible teaches and what we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson:
When confronted with temptations to sin or testing circumstances that could lure us away from God, we close our ears; we run away from the temptation; and we cry out to God to help us do things the right way, God's way.
And even if and when we do fall into sin, replacing our flimsy wisdom for the true wisdom of God, so long as we're still breathing, we can turn back to God. We can, in the Name of Jesus, turn from sin. We can entrust ourselves to Christ and know that God will make a way through all of our testings and temptations. And we can come back to God, because, as God has said through the death and resurrection of His Son:
"I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."Trust in Christ and God will make a way for you to believe and to know that His love is always true. It will empower you to live your life a better way, God's way. Amen
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Servants in the Wilderness
[This was shared during midweek Lenten worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier this evening. It was given as part of our 40-Days to Servanthood emphasis.]
Mark 1:9-15
I was fired from a job once. It happened about a year before I started seminary.
But before that happened, I went to another job where things went well. My supervisor liked the job I was doing and there would be opportunities for advancement. Besides all that, I worked at a place I had always wanted to work: the State House in Columbus.
Nonetheless, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like my job. It didn’t feel like the right fit for me.
At about the same time, this one-time atheist came to faith in Christ and our home church decided to put me on church council.
So, there I was, twenty-six years old, a new Christian, an elder, and chairperson of the evangelism committee. I took on the one task nobody else in the congregation seemed to want to do—calling on the inactives and going door-to-door to invite the unchurched to worship with us.
I loved every minute of it!
At the same time I was going to work and feeling that what God really wanted to do was become a pastor.
But that concerned me. One night, after a council meeting, I spoke with our home congregation’s pastor. I told him that I thought that maybe I was being called to pastoral ministry.
“Uh-huh,” he said, betraying a total lack of surprise on his part. (You see, he’d figured out that I should become a pastor long before I’d even thought of it.) “But...” I went on. “But, what?” he asked me, with slight impatience. “But I got fired from my last job and, although my boss really likes me at my new job, I’m not really excited about it."
I thought that my pastor would be shocked or something. But instead, he just said one word with a question mark: “Yeah?” I took that to mean, “So what?”
“Well,” I told him, “I don’t want to be going to seminary if there’s even the slightest chance that I’d be doing it just to run away from jobs I don’t like.”
My pastor sighed, fixed me with a stare, and then asked me this: “Have you ever thought that your getting fired from one job and landing in another one that you do capably but don’t like is God’s way of telling you, ‘Quit messing around and start doing what I want you to do?’”
Now, I can’t begin to express the impact of those words on me, folks. Years of confusion, self-doubt, and even self-recrimination were suddenly dissipated and destroyed by my pastor’s words. The wilderness of confusion about what God wanted me to do—at least for the next twenty-nine years of my life—were ended.
I’m convinced that my pastor was sent to me at that moment in my wilderness wandering and ministered to me—I mean, he served me by being a faithful servant of God in that moment, speaking a truth of God that set me free from my uncertainty.
Our Bible lesson ends the account of Jesus’ time in the wilderness with these words: “The angels waited on Him.” The word translated as waited literally means served. The angels served Jesus, the One Who said that He came not to be served but to serve all of us; the One Who washed the feet of His disciples on the night of His arrest; the One Who died on a cross for all of us.
Here’s the point: Whenever we go through the wilderness times of our lives, God sends servants to help us through.
And He sends all of us who follow Christ to be those servants who help others in their wilderness times.
True story: Joe had just learned he had cancer. Joe’s wife called the pastor and after chatting for a time called the husband to the phone to talk. They spoke briefly, but the pastor knew his empathy could only accomplish so much. Joe needed to talk with someone who had gone through cancer, knew what it was like, and could be a living example of how to go through thw wilderness of that disease.
So, after putting down the phone, the pastor called Bill, a cancer survivor in the congregation. The Pastor knew that Joe would still need his listening ear and the prayers of the congregation to help him face whatever loomed ahead. But he was also wise enough to know the limits of his own competence. He asked Bill to reach out to Joe. Bill was the servant who helped Joe make it through the wilderness.
We respond to the amazing and undeserved love of Jesus Christ, a love that gives new life to all who dare to turn from sin and turn in trust to Him, by offering up lives of servanthood to God and others.
We become God’s ministers in the wilderness times that people experience. And there are lots of people experiencing the wilderness right now. There are neighbors who have lost or may soon lose their homes through foreclosure. People without jobs. People who are hungry. People who are simply dealing with uncertainty. Throughout Lent, being God’s ministers to a hurting world will be our emphasis, our call, and, I pray, our passion.
In the wilderness: Our call is to rely on God. When we do, we’ll also be called to resist the temptation to walk away from God and called as well to pass the tests of character God uses to shape us for our missions in life. And, just as God serves us and cares for us as we make our ways through life, we’re called to be servants of God who bring God’s care and comfort to others.
Let’s be absolutely committed to pursuing the journey of servanthood throughout these forty days of Lent and all our lives!
Mark 1:9-15
I was fired from a job once. It happened about a year before I started seminary.
But before that happened, I went to another job where things went well. My supervisor liked the job I was doing and there would be opportunities for advancement. Besides all that, I worked at a place I had always wanted to work: the State House in Columbus.
Nonetheless, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like my job. It didn’t feel like the right fit for me.
At about the same time, this one-time atheist came to faith in Christ and our home church decided to put me on church council.
So, there I was, twenty-six years old, a new Christian, an elder, and chairperson of the evangelism committee. I took on the one task nobody else in the congregation seemed to want to do—calling on the inactives and going door-to-door to invite the unchurched to worship with us.
I loved every minute of it!
At the same time I was going to work and feeling that what God really wanted to do was become a pastor.
But that concerned me. One night, after a council meeting, I spoke with our home congregation’s pastor. I told him that I thought that maybe I was being called to pastoral ministry.
“Uh-huh,” he said, betraying a total lack of surprise on his part. (You see, he’d figured out that I should become a pastor long before I’d even thought of it.) “But...” I went on. “But, what?” he asked me, with slight impatience. “But I got fired from my last job and, although my boss really likes me at my new job, I’m not really excited about it."
I thought that my pastor would be shocked or something. But instead, he just said one word with a question mark: “Yeah?” I took that to mean, “So what?”
“Well,” I told him, “I don’t want to be going to seminary if there’s even the slightest chance that I’d be doing it just to run away from jobs I don’t like.”
My pastor sighed, fixed me with a stare, and then asked me this: “Have you ever thought that your getting fired from one job and landing in another one that you do capably but don’t like is God’s way of telling you, ‘Quit messing around and start doing what I want you to do?’”
Now, I can’t begin to express the impact of those words on me, folks. Years of confusion, self-doubt, and even self-recrimination were suddenly dissipated and destroyed by my pastor’s words. The wilderness of confusion about what God wanted me to do—at least for the next twenty-nine years of my life—were ended.
I’m convinced that my pastor was sent to me at that moment in my wilderness wandering and ministered to me—I mean, he served me by being a faithful servant of God in that moment, speaking a truth of God that set me free from my uncertainty.
Our Bible lesson ends the account of Jesus’ time in the wilderness with these words: “The angels waited on Him.” The word translated as waited literally means served. The angels served Jesus, the One Who said that He came not to be served but to serve all of us; the One Who washed the feet of His disciples on the night of His arrest; the One Who died on a cross for all of us.
Here’s the point: Whenever we go through the wilderness times of our lives, God sends servants to help us through.
And He sends all of us who follow Christ to be those servants who help others in their wilderness times.
True story: Joe had just learned he had cancer. Joe’s wife called the pastor and after chatting for a time called the husband to the phone to talk. They spoke briefly, but the pastor knew his empathy could only accomplish so much. Joe needed to talk with someone who had gone through cancer, knew what it was like, and could be a living example of how to go through thw wilderness of that disease.
So, after putting down the phone, the pastor called Bill, a cancer survivor in the congregation. The Pastor knew that Joe would still need his listening ear and the prayers of the congregation to help him face whatever loomed ahead. But he was also wise enough to know the limits of his own competence. He asked Bill to reach out to Joe. Bill was the servant who helped Joe make it through the wilderness.
We respond to the amazing and undeserved love of Jesus Christ, a love that gives new life to all who dare to turn from sin and turn in trust to Him, by offering up lives of servanthood to God and others.
We become God’s ministers in the wilderness times that people experience. And there are lots of people experiencing the wilderness right now. There are neighbors who have lost or may soon lose their homes through foreclosure. People without jobs. People who are hungry. People who are simply dealing with uncertainty. Throughout Lent, being God’s ministers to a hurting world will be our emphasis, our call, and, I pray, our passion.
In the wilderness: Our call is to rely on God. When we do, we’ll also be called to resist the temptation to walk away from God and called as well to pass the tests of character God uses to shape us for our missions in life. And, just as God serves us and cares for us as we make our ways through life, we’re called to be servants of God who bring God’s care and comfort to others.
Let’s be absolutely committed to pursuing the journey of servanthood throughout these forty days of Lent and all our lives!
Sunday, March 01, 2009
The Wilderness Scenario
[This was shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio during worship this morning.]
Mark 1:9-15
One of the factory jobs I worked as a young man was on the DMS 350 production line at Lennox Industries in Columbus. We made the largest whole building air conditioning and heating unit Lennox manufactured at the time.
On this line, at another station, was a guy named Paul. To eat our lunches or take our breaks, just about all of us on the line, including Paul, would sit together, squatting close to the floor on the conveyor tracks on which we moved the sections of our HVAC units from workstation to workstation. Paul would mostly listen to the conversations that happened then and whenever a lull hit, take a drag on his cigarette and say knowingly, “Yeah. Live in hope. Die in despair.” (He was real ray of sunshine!)
Paul must have said that thirty times a day. He said it so many times that I came to think that he actually believed that that was the human story. He thought that all of us are condemned to live in hope and die in despair.
But our Gospel lesson for today assures us that you and I can live our lives by a different scenario. Instead of “live in hope, die in despair,” the scenario for the life of a Jesus Follower goes this way:
First: Live in the confidence that comes from God.
Our Gospel begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer. As a I pointed out a few weeks ago, John’s baptism at the Jordan River is different from the baptism that we undergo. John’s baptism was a symbol of repentance. The thousands who came to the Jordan to be baptized by John were symbolizing their intent to live repentantly, a life toward God and away from sin. It was an action done by the baptized.
But in the baptism instituted by Jesus, it’s God, not us, who is the primary actor. In our Baptism, God claims us as His own children for all eternity, end of story. We may choose to walk away from God, but God, on His part, will never revoke His claim of us as His children.
This, when you think of it, is foreshadowed in what happens at Jesus’ baptism by John. Unlike what happened with all the other people who came to the Jordan to declare their intention to live for God, God acts. Just as Jesus is emerging from the water, a voice booms out from heaven, “You are My Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well-pleased.”
At your baptism and to you, today, God says much the same thing: "You are My beloved child; with you, I am well pleased!"
When I was a college freshman, I asked to borrow my dad’s car so that I could go out on a date. Dad tossed the keys my way and as he did said, “Remember just one thing, Bub. She’s a person, too, Treat her with respect.”
Now, my dad had no idea who the girl was that I was going to take out. But he knew me. In that action and in those words, he reminded me that I was his son and no matter what temptations or tests might come my way, I could draw on that relationship and all that it entailed to be the person I had been nurtured and raised to be.
As Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, He must have felt something like I felt as I slid in behind the wheel of my day’s car. He must have felt empowered by His Father’s love, ready to deal with the uncertainties of life, to do so with integrity, and to know that no matter what, He was still His Father’s Son. All who have been baptized in Jesus Christ can live in the confidence that comes from belonging to God!
Second: We can face the wilderness with the help of God.
It’s interesting to me that in our lesson, Mark says that after Jesus was baptized, “the Spirit [God the Holy Spirit, third person of the one God] drove [Jesus] into the wilderness” and that there, Jesus was tempted by Satan.
After reading about Jesus receiving the ringing affirmation of heaven while being baptized in the Jordan, you might expect to read next that people threw a ticker tape parade for Jesus and made Him king. Instead, Jesus goes into the wilderness. The word in the New Testament Greek for that place is eremos, literally, desert. Jesus went into a barren desert, surrounded, Mark says, by wild beasts. And He did that not necessarily because that was where He chose to go. Who, after all, would choose to go to a place like that? He was driven there by the Holy Spirit so that He could be tempted by Satan.
It hardly seems an honor befitting Someone just described by heaven as “[the] Son…the Beloved.” Jesus would have every reason to feel like the man in one of Abraham Lincoln’s jokes who had been tarred and feathered. Asked how it had felt, the man replied that if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would have been just as happy not to experience it.
From The Small Catechism, we good Lutherans have learned that God indeed tempts no one. But God will allow us to be subjected to temptation in order to test us.
Every time the devil, the world, or our sinful flesh tempts us to do anything that harms God, our neighbor, or the minds and bodies God has given to us, our faith is also tested and tempered. And every time we resist temptation, our faith is made stronger.
And, make no mistake about it, resisting temptaion isn’t a matter of willpower. Take a toy from a baby you need to bathe and you will see that we all are born with strong wills. We cave into temptation not because we lack willpower. Instead, we lack what someone has called “won’t power”: "Won't power is the capacity to say things like:
"I won’t eat that second piece of chocolate"
"I won’t gossip about my co-worker"
"I won’t be so critical of my child"
"I won’t cheat on the test"
"I won’t have sex with that person to whom I’m not married"
"I won’t laugh at someone’s bigoted joke"
...and then to make those resolutions stick!
But where does the power to do that come from? I once read the memoir of a pastor who, in his younger years, had a terrible weight problem. “I couldn’t stop eating,” he confesses. He felt horrible about it. "Here I was a pastor," he said, "telling people to treat their bodies as God’s temples. I told them to rely on God for their sense of self-worth and yet I was so wracked by self-doubt and self-pity that I used food to make me feel good, at least until I caught sight of myself in the mirror or stood on the scales." Then one night, this pastor was praying and crumpled on the floor in tears, telling God that he didn’t know what to do and that he needed God's help.
Within days, a caring parishioner showed up for a heart-to-heart talk with that young pastor. He taught him about nutrition and exercise. He got the medical attention he needed. Today, that pastor is in his eighties and you would never guess from looking at him that he had ever struggled with overeating. He took his first step to recovery when he admitted that he couldn’t control his own will and needed God's help.
Jesus survived the temptations and tests He endured in the wilderness because He knew how to do something we don't do very well in the United States. Jesus knew how to surrender. He relied on God and, our text tells us, “the angels waited on him.”
Whatever test and whatever temptation you face in life, God can and will send his angels to wait on you, to care for you, and to help your test become a testimony to God’s faithfulness.
Finally: Followers of Jesus can emerge from their tests more alive and more whole for eternity.
When Jesus came out of the wilderness, fortified by the help of God, strengthened in His dependence on the Father, He was ready to begin His ministry. Whatever tests or temptations you face, whatever wilderness you may be enduring, God stands ready to help you to say no to sin and say yes to the good news that Jesus has for us all, the good news that those who turn from sin and trust in Him have life with God forever.
Back when I worked in the factory, I wasn’t a Christian. I wish that I had been and that I could have developed a friendship with Paul and shared with him the good news that we have as followers of Jesus Christ. I would love to communicate to him today that as a Christian, I’m living a life scenario that includes the confidence that comes from knowing that I belong to Jesus Christ today and always, the awareness that Christ’s followers can face the wilderness no matter what, and the certainty that when we repent and trust in Christ, we look forward to eternity with God.
May you always remember that this is God’s scenario for your life!
Mark 1:9-15
One of the factory jobs I worked as a young man was on the DMS 350 production line at Lennox Industries in Columbus. We made the largest whole building air conditioning and heating unit Lennox manufactured at the time.
On this line, at another station, was a guy named Paul. To eat our lunches or take our breaks, just about all of us on the line, including Paul, would sit together, squatting close to the floor on the conveyor tracks on which we moved the sections of our HVAC units from workstation to workstation. Paul would mostly listen to the conversations that happened then and whenever a lull hit, take a drag on his cigarette and say knowingly, “Yeah. Live in hope. Die in despair.” (He was real ray of sunshine!)
Paul must have said that thirty times a day. He said it so many times that I came to think that he actually believed that that was the human story. He thought that all of us are condemned to live in hope and die in despair.
But our Gospel lesson for today assures us that you and I can live our lives by a different scenario. Instead of “live in hope, die in despair,” the scenario for the life of a Jesus Follower goes this way:
- live in the confidence that comes from God,
- face the wilderness with God’s help,
- emerge alive and whole for eternity.
First: Live in the confidence that comes from God.
Our Gospel begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer. As a I pointed out a few weeks ago, John’s baptism at the Jordan River is different from the baptism that we undergo. John’s baptism was a symbol of repentance. The thousands who came to the Jordan to be baptized by John were symbolizing their intent to live repentantly, a life toward God and away from sin. It was an action done by the baptized.
But in the baptism instituted by Jesus, it’s God, not us, who is the primary actor. In our Baptism, God claims us as His own children for all eternity, end of story. We may choose to walk away from God, but God, on His part, will never revoke His claim of us as His children.
This, when you think of it, is foreshadowed in what happens at Jesus’ baptism by John. Unlike what happened with all the other people who came to the Jordan to declare their intention to live for God, God acts. Just as Jesus is emerging from the water, a voice booms out from heaven, “You are My Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well-pleased.”
At your baptism and to you, today, God says much the same thing: "You are My beloved child; with you, I am well pleased!"
When I was a college freshman, I asked to borrow my dad’s car so that I could go out on a date. Dad tossed the keys my way and as he did said, “Remember just one thing, Bub. She’s a person, too, Treat her with respect.”
Now, my dad had no idea who the girl was that I was going to take out. But he knew me. In that action and in those words, he reminded me that I was his son and no matter what temptations or tests might come my way, I could draw on that relationship and all that it entailed to be the person I had been nurtured and raised to be.
As Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, He must have felt something like I felt as I slid in behind the wheel of my day’s car. He must have felt empowered by His Father’s love, ready to deal with the uncertainties of life, to do so with integrity, and to know that no matter what, He was still His Father’s Son. All who have been baptized in Jesus Christ can live in the confidence that comes from belonging to God!
Second: We can face the wilderness with the help of God.
It’s interesting to me that in our lesson, Mark says that after Jesus was baptized, “the Spirit [God the Holy Spirit, third person of the one God] drove [Jesus] into the wilderness” and that there, Jesus was tempted by Satan.
After reading about Jesus receiving the ringing affirmation of heaven while being baptized in the Jordan, you might expect to read next that people threw a ticker tape parade for Jesus and made Him king. Instead, Jesus goes into the wilderness. The word in the New Testament Greek for that place is eremos, literally, desert. Jesus went into a barren desert, surrounded, Mark says, by wild beasts. And He did that not necessarily because that was where He chose to go. Who, after all, would choose to go to a place like that? He was driven there by the Holy Spirit so that He could be tempted by Satan.
It hardly seems an honor befitting Someone just described by heaven as “[the] Son…the Beloved.” Jesus would have every reason to feel like the man in one of Abraham Lincoln’s jokes who had been tarred and feathered. Asked how it had felt, the man replied that if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would have been just as happy not to experience it.
From The Small Catechism, we good Lutherans have learned that God indeed tempts no one. But God will allow us to be subjected to temptation in order to test us.
Every time the devil, the world, or our sinful flesh tempts us to do anything that harms God, our neighbor, or the minds and bodies God has given to us, our faith is also tested and tempered. And every time we resist temptation, our faith is made stronger.
And, make no mistake about it, resisting temptaion isn’t a matter of willpower. Take a toy from a baby you need to bathe and you will see that we all are born with strong wills. We cave into temptation not because we lack willpower. Instead, we lack what someone has called “won’t power”: "Won't power is the capacity to say things like:
"I won’t eat that second piece of chocolate"
"I won’t gossip about my co-worker"
"I won’t be so critical of my child"
"I won’t cheat on the test"
"I won’t have sex with that person to whom I’m not married"
"I won’t laugh at someone’s bigoted joke"
...and then to make those resolutions stick!
But where does the power to do that come from? I once read the memoir of a pastor who, in his younger years, had a terrible weight problem. “I couldn’t stop eating,” he confesses. He felt horrible about it. "Here I was a pastor," he said, "telling people to treat their bodies as God’s temples. I told them to rely on God for their sense of self-worth and yet I was so wracked by self-doubt and self-pity that I used food to make me feel good, at least until I caught sight of myself in the mirror or stood on the scales." Then one night, this pastor was praying and crumpled on the floor in tears, telling God that he didn’t know what to do and that he needed God's help.
Within days, a caring parishioner showed up for a heart-to-heart talk with that young pastor. He taught him about nutrition and exercise. He got the medical attention he needed. Today, that pastor is in his eighties and you would never guess from looking at him that he had ever struggled with overeating. He took his first step to recovery when he admitted that he couldn’t control his own will and needed God's help.
Jesus survived the temptations and tests He endured in the wilderness because He knew how to do something we don't do very well in the United States. Jesus knew how to surrender. He relied on God and, our text tells us, “the angels waited on him.”
Whatever test and whatever temptation you face in life, God can and will send his angels to wait on you, to care for you, and to help your test become a testimony to God’s faithfulness.
Finally: Followers of Jesus can emerge from their tests more alive and more whole for eternity.
When Jesus came out of the wilderness, fortified by the help of God, strengthened in His dependence on the Father, He was ready to begin His ministry. Whatever tests or temptations you face, whatever wilderness you may be enduring, God stands ready to help you to say no to sin and say yes to the good news that Jesus has for us all, the good news that those who turn from sin and trust in Him have life with God forever.
Back when I worked in the factory, I wasn’t a Christian. I wish that I had been and that I could have developed a friendship with Paul and shared with him the good news that we have as followers of Jesus Christ. I would love to communicate to him today that as a Christian, I’m living a life scenario that includes the confidence that comes from knowing that I belong to Jesus Christ today and always, the awareness that Christ’s followers can face the wilderness no matter what, and the certainty that when we repent and trust in Christ, we look forward to eternity with God.
May you always remember that this is God’s scenario for your life!
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