This is the journal of my quiet time encounter with God in His Word today. I spent time in Psalm 42, two verses of which especially caught my attention.
Look: “I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?...Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” (Psalm 42:9,11)
The psalmist recalls being among the crowds who went to the temple in Jerusalem for festivals, where he would join in the worship of God and offer sacrifices to Him.
But those happy times are, at this point, only memories. The psalmist is suffering oppression, unable to go to Jerusalem to praise God. The psalmist asks God why God has forgotten him.
Whether it’s through the dry spiritual patches that come to every believer or in those times when people are, in whatever ways, making our lives miserable, the honest question of the psalmist in verse 9 comes to the mind of every Christian. We may not be bold enough or honest enough to speak the question. But we all sometimes wonder, “God, why have you forgotten me?”
Jesus Himself asked this question when, at the very hour at which Psalm 22 would have been read in the temple, He cried out to God the Father from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34)
Even when we know intellectually that the God fully revealed in Jesus Christ never abandons us, there are times when we feel abandoned and alone. It would be a lie to not admit that to our heavenly Father. When we honestly admit our "issues" to God, issues like sins, fears, temptations, or the suspicion that God has abandoned us, that the God can help us. Owning our feelings of abandonment with God is as an honest prayer and a permission slip to God to intervene, assuring us that we aren’t alone!
As the psalmist continues to pray, to remember God’s past deeds of goodness to them, and, I assume, to consider God’s Word, he ends up in verse 11, talking not to God, but to himself. (I think of the line from the Bob Dylan song, “You’re gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to.”) The psalmist asks, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”
You know God, the psalmist was telling himself. You know that God always triumphs over the enemies of our soul: sin, death, and darkness. Given God’s track record of faithfulness and love, you know that nothing can separate His people from God. So, why are you so glum? Even if you die, God will not let you go.
We know that God won’t let an earthly death be the last word over the lives of those who trust in Him. God in the flesh, God the Son, Jesus, tells Martha, grieving over the death of her brother Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
As he finishes his prayer, the psalmist, having come again into the presence of the living God in whom he believes, reminds himself of a truth that belongs to all who today know and follow the God of Israel disclosed to the whole world in the crucified and risen Jesus: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God”!
Listen: In those times when I feel bleak, dry, or doubtful, I need to come into God’s presence again. Even when I don’t feel it's true, God is real and God is there, even when I’m conscious of walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Even when I feel far from God, His cross, His empty tomb, and His Word, not to mention all of the blessings, grace, and answered prayers I can look back on, show me that He is never far from those who call on Him. Facts are facts. God is never far from me. Never!
Respond: Lord, help me to place all my hope in You alone as I lift up my prayers to You today. Even when I can’t see how You will orchestrate things for my good, the good of my family and friends, the good of Your Church, or the good of Your creation, help me to trust that You have not forgotten us. You haven’t forgotten your promises. And remind me that because Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, You have already successfully accomplished everything needed to create an eternal fellowship with those who believe in Christ. Because of Jesus and my faith in Him, I know, with the psalmist, that I will again praise You, my God and my salvation. Help me to remember and live all of this today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label Mark 15:34. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark 15:34. Show all posts
Monday, March 26, 2018
Sunday, February 25, 2018
In Christ, You Can Hold Your Head High!
[This message was prepared for worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today. I developed a cough that erupts every time I take a deep breath. It's a cold both my wife and me have right now. So, I thank Mark Brennan, our worship director, for pinch-hitting for me.]
Romans 5:1-11
A Christian scholar writes of listening to a radio interview with a film star. The star said it was “ridiculous...to think that, if there is a God, he might actually be concerned with every single human creature at every single moment.” As the scholar, N.T. Wright says: “Put like that, of course, it seems absurd; and yet absurdity lies in the attempt to picture God as just like us only a bit bigger and more well-seeing.” [Italics are mine.]
People unfamiliar with the God first worshiped by ancient Israel and then disclosed to the rest of us through Jesus Christ don’t understand the enormity of God.
Nor do they understand the depths of His love for us.
As Wright says: “...his very nature is love, it is...completely natural for him to establish personal, one-to-one relations with every single one of us.”
That’s exactly what God has set out to do in Jesus Christ.
And it’s precisely through such a relationship with Christ that God can save us, give us strength for each day, and supply us with a hope that will never disappoint us.
All of this is what the apostle Paul writes about in our second lesson for this morning, Romans 5:1-11.
The New Testament book of Romans, you’ll remember, is a letter written by the apostle Paul to first-century house churches in Rome. It’s Paul’s masterpiece, an exhaustive presentation of the gospel that can bring eternal life to all who bet their lives on it.
In the chapters before our lesson appears, Paul has talked about the fundamental human problem, sin, which leads to death, among other things. Because sin is universal to every human being, Paul says, quoting a psalm: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
But, Paul says that’s not the end of the story. God is unwilling to see you and me die in our sin, forever separated from Him. So God acts.
God the Father sends God the Son Jesus to receive the punishment we deserve for our sin. Jesus dies, although He committed no sin. Jesus experiences separation from God the Father, the Maker of life, which is why Jesus cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) It’s also part of the reason Jesus descended into hell (1 Peter 3:19); He bore the full weight of sin and its fatal consequences.
God the Father then raises Jesus from death. As Paul explains elsewhere: “...Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).
All who renounce sin and trust in Christ have reconciliation with God and have life with God, an intimate and enduring personal relationship with the One Who loves us more than anyone in this world ever has or ever will.
Jesus tells us: “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). Even more than that, Paul goes on to tell us at the beginning of today’s lesson, we have peace with God even when the sin, darkness, and imperfection of this present world makes war on us.
Take a look at what Paul says, Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…”
In other words, we who are born wrong and who have lived wrong are made right with God through our faith in Jesus.
Although we deserve death, God gives peace to those who trust in Christ.
A man saw me, deeply disturbed because he thought that his sins would forever separate him from God. A woman spoke with me, her conscience thunderstruck for some horror she had perpetrated. These are real people whose consciences convicted them.
They thought that they were too sinful to receive the promise of God given to us through the crucified and risen Jesus: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13; Acts 2:21). There is nobody beyond the scope of God's "everyone."
“You are stained red with sin,” God says in Isaiah 1:18, “but I will wash you as clean as snow.”
If you trust Christ with your sins, along with the rest of your life, you are made clean.
You have peace with God.
And you can keep having peace with God through faith in Jesus even when you, as is true of each of us every single day, sin again or experience life’s pressures and need to repent or take refuge in Christ.
That’s why Paul says what he does next. Verses 2 and 3: “...through [Jesus] we [believers] have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God…”
The word translated as stand is histemi. We get the word histamine from it. Histamines get released naturally by our immune systems to help our bodies to function properly, to help us to stand strong. (The New Testament Greek word for resurrection is rooted in this word and literally means to stand again.)
The idea here is that because of the charitable forgiveness--the grace--that God bears for sinners like you and me who open ourselves to trusting in Christ, we stand in God’s kingdom.
By this grace given to those who trust in Christ, God will always give us life, always give us hope.
The psalmist spoke of what it means to stand in God’s grace when he wrote: “I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side…” (Psalm 3:6)
Paul says that we who stand and keep standing in the gracious kingdom of God can brag, not of ourselves, but “of the hope of the glory of God.”
When God’s full glory is revealed to all the world at Jesus’ return, everyone who has believed in Him, will experience the fullness of God’s promises. You have been saved by God’s grace through your faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. So, hold your head high, stand tall, not from arrogance, but knowing that by the grace of God, you’re eternally free from sin and death.
Paul says that’s not the only thing in which we can glory. Verses 3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
As believers we can glory in our sufferings.
Does that seem strange? It shouldn’t. Why?
Because in the person who stands in God’s grace, suffering produces endurance, the capacity to keep on believing as we meet the crucified Jesus at our crosses. And we can glory in our sufferings because through persevering faith in the midst of suffering, God forges our characters. We become more dependent on God the Father, as Jesus was as He bore His cross. We become more sympathetic to the suffering of others. We understand the depths of Christ’s love that reaches us even when we suffer. We’re humbled by the realization of our own limitations; we can no longer worship ourselves or our desires with straight faces or clear consciences.
And a character forged through reliance on Christ’s grace in the midst of our suffering will be filled with hope in the Savior Who pours Himself into us.
If you have experienced or are experiencing now the sustaining grace of Christ as you have suffered, you have a God-given rendezvous with an eternity about which you can boast, a story of grace to share, a track record with the Lord that can give you hope even “in the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4). When you have a hope like that, you “fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4).
Paul then gives the reason for our hope as Jesus people. At the time set aside by God, Jesus died for sinners like us. Paul says that this happened “when we were still powerless” (Romans 5:6).
The word powerless translates the Greek word asthenon, which means weak, unable to stand.
Paul is saying that those who once were so weakened by sin that they couldn’t stand in the presence of a holy God nor have any hope of standing beyond their graves, now stand in God’s kingdom of grace because of what Christ has accomplished for them...for us, you and me!
Jesus lifts dead and dying believers out of everlasting separation from God and makes it possible for us to stand in the life-giving presence of God forever, even now!
In the last section of today’s lesson, Paul says that if by His shed blood on the cross, Jesus can save us from death, how much more as the One Who stood alive again and stands forever alive and forever first, can He give us life with God that nothing can destroy?
In Christ, we meet a God big enough to save us from sin and death.
He’s also loving enough to care about each of us, to die and rise for everyone, to hear our prayers, to stand with us in defeat, death, and darkness, and to give us the hope of living fully in His glory forever. This God cares about you as an individual person.
This week, I invite you to soak that reality up by reading the Gospel of Mark. Take a week to read this one gospel in the New Testament. Mark is just sixteen chapters long. That comes to 2.28 chapters a day. That’s doable. As you read, whether on your own or with your family or a friend--and this is key, ask God to help you see His love for you and show you too how you might respond to that love, His grace, that day or the next. Let Christ love you in every part of your life. There's nothing He wants to do more than that. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Romans 5:1-11
A Christian scholar writes of listening to a radio interview with a film star. The star said it was “ridiculous...to think that, if there is a God, he might actually be concerned with every single human creature at every single moment.” As the scholar, N.T. Wright says: “Put like that, of course, it seems absurd; and yet absurdity lies in the attempt to picture God as just like us only a bit bigger and more well-seeing.” [Italics are mine.]
People unfamiliar with the God first worshiped by ancient Israel and then disclosed to the rest of us through Jesus Christ don’t understand the enormity of God.
Nor do they understand the depths of His love for us.
As Wright says: “...his very nature is love, it is...completely natural for him to establish personal, one-to-one relations with every single one of us.”
That’s exactly what God has set out to do in Jesus Christ.
And it’s precisely through such a relationship with Christ that God can save us, give us strength for each day, and supply us with a hope that will never disappoint us.
All of this is what the apostle Paul writes about in our second lesson for this morning, Romans 5:1-11.
The New Testament book of Romans, you’ll remember, is a letter written by the apostle Paul to first-century house churches in Rome. It’s Paul’s masterpiece, an exhaustive presentation of the gospel that can bring eternal life to all who bet their lives on it.
In the chapters before our lesson appears, Paul has talked about the fundamental human problem, sin, which leads to death, among other things. Because sin is universal to every human being, Paul says, quoting a psalm: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
But, Paul says that’s not the end of the story. God is unwilling to see you and me die in our sin, forever separated from Him. So God acts.
God the Father sends God the Son Jesus to receive the punishment we deserve for our sin. Jesus dies, although He committed no sin. Jesus experiences separation from God the Father, the Maker of life, which is why Jesus cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) It’s also part of the reason Jesus descended into hell (1 Peter 3:19); He bore the full weight of sin and its fatal consequences.
God the Father then raises Jesus from death. As Paul explains elsewhere: “...Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).
All who renounce sin and trust in Christ have reconciliation with God and have life with God, an intimate and enduring personal relationship with the One Who loves us more than anyone in this world ever has or ever will.
Jesus tells us: “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). Even more than that, Paul goes on to tell us at the beginning of today’s lesson, we have peace with God even when the sin, darkness, and imperfection of this present world makes war on us.
Take a look at what Paul says, Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…”
In other words, we who are born wrong and who have lived wrong are made right with God through our faith in Jesus.
Although we deserve death, God gives peace to those who trust in Christ.
A man saw me, deeply disturbed because he thought that his sins would forever separate him from God. A woman spoke with me, her conscience thunderstruck for some horror she had perpetrated. These are real people whose consciences convicted them.
They thought that they were too sinful to receive the promise of God given to us through the crucified and risen Jesus: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13; Acts 2:21). There is nobody beyond the scope of God's "everyone."
“You are stained red with sin,” God says in Isaiah 1:18, “but I will wash you as clean as snow.”
If you trust Christ with your sins, along with the rest of your life, you are made clean.
You have peace with God.
And you can keep having peace with God through faith in Jesus even when you, as is true of each of us every single day, sin again or experience life’s pressures and need to repent or take refuge in Christ.
That’s why Paul says what he does next. Verses 2 and 3: “...through [Jesus] we [believers] have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God…”
The word translated as stand is histemi. We get the word histamine from it. Histamines get released naturally by our immune systems to help our bodies to function properly, to help us to stand strong. (The New Testament Greek word for resurrection is rooted in this word and literally means to stand again.)
The idea here is that because of the charitable forgiveness--the grace--that God bears for sinners like you and me who open ourselves to trusting in Christ, we stand in God’s kingdom.
By this grace given to those who trust in Christ, God will always give us life, always give us hope.
The psalmist spoke of what it means to stand in God’s grace when he wrote: “I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side…” (Psalm 3:6)
Paul says that we who stand and keep standing in the gracious kingdom of God can brag, not of ourselves, but “of the hope of the glory of God.”
When God’s full glory is revealed to all the world at Jesus’ return, everyone who has believed in Him, will experience the fullness of God’s promises. You have been saved by God’s grace through your faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. So, hold your head high, stand tall, not from arrogance, but knowing that by the grace of God, you’re eternally free from sin and death.
Paul says that’s not the only thing in which we can glory. Verses 3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
As believers we can glory in our sufferings.
Does that seem strange? It shouldn’t. Why?
Because in the person who stands in God’s grace, suffering produces endurance, the capacity to keep on believing as we meet the crucified Jesus at our crosses. And we can glory in our sufferings because through persevering faith in the midst of suffering, God forges our characters. We become more dependent on God the Father, as Jesus was as He bore His cross. We become more sympathetic to the suffering of others. We understand the depths of Christ’s love that reaches us even when we suffer. We’re humbled by the realization of our own limitations; we can no longer worship ourselves or our desires with straight faces or clear consciences.
And a character forged through reliance on Christ’s grace in the midst of our suffering will be filled with hope in the Savior Who pours Himself into us.
If you have experienced or are experiencing now the sustaining grace of Christ as you have suffered, you have a God-given rendezvous with an eternity about which you can boast, a story of grace to share, a track record with the Lord that can give you hope even “in the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4). When you have a hope like that, you “fear no evil” (Psalm 23:4).
Paul then gives the reason for our hope as Jesus people. At the time set aside by God, Jesus died for sinners like us. Paul says that this happened “when we were still powerless” (Romans 5:6).
The word powerless translates the Greek word asthenon, which means weak, unable to stand.
Paul is saying that those who once were so weakened by sin that they couldn’t stand in the presence of a holy God nor have any hope of standing beyond their graves, now stand in God’s kingdom of grace because of what Christ has accomplished for them...for us, you and me!
Jesus lifts dead and dying believers out of everlasting separation from God and makes it possible for us to stand in the life-giving presence of God forever, even now!
In the last section of today’s lesson, Paul says that if by His shed blood on the cross, Jesus can save us from death, how much more as the One Who stood alive again and stands forever alive and forever first, can He give us life with God that nothing can destroy?
In Christ, we meet a God big enough to save us from sin and death.
He’s also loving enough to care about each of us, to die and rise for everyone, to hear our prayers, to stand with us in defeat, death, and darkness, and to give us the hope of living fully in His glory forever. This God cares about you as an individual person.
This week, I invite you to soak that reality up by reading the Gospel of Mark. Take a week to read this one gospel in the New Testament. Mark is just sixteen chapters long. That comes to 2.28 chapters a day. That’s doable. As you read, whether on your own or with your family or a friend--and this is key, ask God to help you see His love for you and show you too how you might respond to that love, His grace, that day or the next. Let Christ love you in every part of your life. There's nothing He wants to do more than that. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Still Reasons for Hope!
[The funeral for my Uncle Jim happened yesterday. I was honored to be asked by my Aunt Marge, my father's older sister, to preside. This is the sermon I shared then.]
Isaiah 40:27-31
Romans 8:31-39
Psalm 23
John 11:21-27
Aunt Marge, Danny, Jennifer, Cindy, and all your family members: Alongside Uncle Jim, you’ve been through terribly hard times. In just a short while, you’ve suffered sudden multiple losses after long suffering on the parts of people you loved.
There will be, sadly, hard times yet ahead. The loss of loved ones isn’t something people can just “get over.” In a sense, losing Uncle Jim—who, along with Aunt Marge—presided over a “brood” that included eighteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, is something none of you will ever “get over.”
And why should you? When the ties of love are strong, so is the sadness you feel when the familiar voice and the well-known heart are gone.
But, as the Bible says, we who believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, don’t grieve as people without hope. We have hope. Even today there is hope!
There’s hope, first of all, because the moment Uncle Jim left this life, his suffering ended and he entered a new reality. The words of Isaiah, chapter 40, spoken by God to His chosen people, Israel, through the prophet hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, are for you to hold onto today. "Those who wait for the Lord,” God says, “shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Through trust in Jesus, we can know that Uncle Jim, denied his health and the ability to walk in this world, is not only walking again, but is running without weariness. He’s once again alive, living in the presence of God.
But this passage from Isaiah is also a promise to you. Uncle Jim’s long illness and the other adversities and tragedies faced by this family have left you depleted and tired. But God will give you strength! The God Who created the universe and died and rose for us, can give you rest and renewal! “Come to Me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.”
Aunt Marge: When I read the passage from Romans 8 a few moments ago, Ann smiled because I've told her many times that if it isn't read at my own funeral, I'm getting up and reading it myself. I love it so much because it contains another amazing promise, one that underscores this hope that you can have as you move through day to day in the weeks and months to come. Those who trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior, it says, can live knowing that nothing “in all creation…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God has not forgotten any of you or any of us this morning! That, God says in another place in Isaiah, is impossible: “I will not forget you…I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.” Even now, God is...
Jesus doesn’t bother sparring with Martha; God is big enough to take our accusations and our sense of abandonment. After all, if we get upset with God, it only proves our belief in God because you don’t get upset with a God you don’t believe is there. (Jesus Himself would later have the same feelings as Martha had, when, as He was being executed on the cross, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have Your forsaken Me?”) Instead of being defensive, Jesus told Martha plainly, “Your brother will rise again” and “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
Then Jesus asks Martha a question that He asks us again this morning: “Do you believe this?” Martha said that she did. Without any evidence but the credibility and love she saw in Jesus, Martha said that she believed that all who trust in Christ will live again.
Shortly thereafter, Jesus gave a sign that He could be trusted to make good on this promise to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Him: He called Lazarus back to life.
Later still, Jesus gave the ultimate sign that we can place all our hope in this promise: He took our punishment for sin on the cross and then was raised from the dead. In Christ, we have the hope of everlasting life with God…alongside all who have trusted in Him.
Now, there’s one last hope that we have this morning. That’s the hope for this life we derive from a good example, like that given to us in so many ways by Uncle Jim.
It’s one of the indelible memories of my growing-up years. Somehow, Uncle Jim and I found ourselves alone in the living room of Pop’s and Grandma’s house in Bellefontaine. Marge and Jim had recently celebrated a wedding anniversary and out of the blue, Uncle Jim told me: “You know, Mark, a lot of people say bad things about marriage. But it is a wonderful thing, especially when you're married to the right person.”
Those words were as much a tribute to you, Aunt Marge, as they are in remembering them now, to Uncle Jim. I have to tell you that, along with the examples of good marriages I saw in my own Mom and Dad and those of other couples I got to see up close, it gave me hope that I too, could one day have a good and happy marriage, with which I am blessed today. I never forgot what Uncle Jim told me!
And today, in addition to the hope that comes from knowing that God is with you and the hope that comes from knowing that God has promised everlasting life to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, I want to suggest that you also latch onto the hope that belongs to those who have been inspired by a good example.
Uncle Jim was a good man who loved the Lord, loved his wife, and loved his family. May his example help give us all inspiration to live lives at the end of which people can say similar things about us. Amen
*Until illness and the closure of the congregation of which he and my aunt were long-time members, Uncle Jim regularly assisted the pastor in sharing Holy Communion during worship.
Isaiah 40:27-31
Romans 8:31-39
Psalm 23
John 11:21-27
Aunt Marge, Danny, Jennifer, Cindy, and all your family members: Alongside Uncle Jim, you’ve been through terribly hard times. In just a short while, you’ve suffered sudden multiple losses after long suffering on the parts of people you loved.
There will be, sadly, hard times yet ahead. The loss of loved ones isn’t something people can just “get over.” In a sense, losing Uncle Jim—who, along with Aunt Marge—presided over a “brood” that included eighteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, is something none of you will ever “get over.”
And why should you? When the ties of love are strong, so is the sadness you feel when the familiar voice and the well-known heart are gone.
But, as the Bible says, we who believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, don’t grieve as people without hope. We have hope. Even today there is hope!
There’s hope, first of all, because the moment Uncle Jim left this life, his suffering ended and he entered a new reality. The words of Isaiah, chapter 40, spoken by God to His chosen people, Israel, through the prophet hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, are for you to hold onto today. "Those who wait for the Lord,” God says, “shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Through trust in Jesus, we can know that Uncle Jim, denied his health and the ability to walk in this world, is not only walking again, but is running without weariness. He’s once again alive, living in the presence of God.
But this passage from Isaiah is also a promise to you. Uncle Jim’s long illness and the other adversities and tragedies faced by this family have left you depleted and tired. But God will give you strength! The God Who created the universe and died and rose for us, can give you rest and renewal! “Come to Me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.”
Aunt Marge: When I read the passage from Romans 8 a few moments ago, Ann smiled because I've told her many times that if it isn't read at my own funeral, I'm getting up and reading it myself. I love it so much because it contains another amazing promise, one that underscores this hope that you can have as you move through day to day in the weeks and months to come. Those who trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior, it says, can live knowing that nothing “in all creation…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God has not forgotten any of you or any of us this morning! That, God says in another place in Isaiah, is impossible: “I will not forget you…I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.” Even now, God is...
- as close as a prayer,
- as close as His Word in the Bible,
- as close as a church fellowship in which we can confess our sins, hear the Gospel, and receive Christ’s body and blood* along with others who, like us, need comfort and hope and strength,
- as close as a friend or a family member willing to listen, to help, and to pray with you.
Jesus doesn’t bother sparring with Martha; God is big enough to take our accusations and our sense of abandonment. After all, if we get upset with God, it only proves our belief in God because you don’t get upset with a God you don’t believe is there. (Jesus Himself would later have the same feelings as Martha had, when, as He was being executed on the cross, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have Your forsaken Me?”) Instead of being defensive, Jesus told Martha plainly, “Your brother will rise again” and “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
Then Jesus asks Martha a question that He asks us again this morning: “Do you believe this?” Martha said that she did. Without any evidence but the credibility and love she saw in Jesus, Martha said that she believed that all who trust in Christ will live again.
Shortly thereafter, Jesus gave a sign that He could be trusted to make good on this promise to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Him: He called Lazarus back to life.
Later still, Jesus gave the ultimate sign that we can place all our hope in this promise: He took our punishment for sin on the cross and then was raised from the dead. In Christ, we have the hope of everlasting life with God…alongside all who have trusted in Him.
Now, there’s one last hope that we have this morning. That’s the hope for this life we derive from a good example, like that given to us in so many ways by Uncle Jim.
It’s one of the indelible memories of my growing-up years. Somehow, Uncle Jim and I found ourselves alone in the living room of Pop’s and Grandma’s house in Bellefontaine. Marge and Jim had recently celebrated a wedding anniversary and out of the blue, Uncle Jim told me: “You know, Mark, a lot of people say bad things about marriage. But it is a wonderful thing, especially when you're married to the right person.”
Those words were as much a tribute to you, Aunt Marge, as they are in remembering them now, to Uncle Jim. I have to tell you that, along with the examples of good marriages I saw in my own Mom and Dad and those of other couples I got to see up close, it gave me hope that I too, could one day have a good and happy marriage, with which I am blessed today. I never forgot what Uncle Jim told me!
And today, in addition to the hope that comes from knowing that God is with you and the hope that comes from knowing that God has promised everlasting life to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, I want to suggest that you also latch onto the hope that belongs to those who have been inspired by a good example.
Uncle Jim was a good man who loved the Lord, loved his wife, and loved his family. May his example help give us all inspiration to live lives at the end of which people can say similar things about us. Amen
*Until illness and the closure of the congregation of which he and my aunt were long-time members, Uncle Jim regularly assisted the pastor in sharing Holy Communion during worship.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Considering the Patience of God on This 'We Don't Get It' Sunday
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
John 16:12-15
Evangelist Billy Graham tells the story of a teacher who asked his class of fifth graders if they could explain electricity. One student raised his hand. “How would you explain it, Jimmy?” the teacher asked. The kid scratched his head and then answered, “Last night I knew it, but this morning, I’ve forgotten.” The teacher shook his head sadly. He told the class, “What a tragedy. The only person in the world ever to fully understand electricity and now he’s forgotten!”
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday on the Church calendar. Someone has pointed out that this is the only day in the whole Church Year devoted to a theological doctrine. The Trinity is a lot harder to understand than electricity. Anyone who claims to have it all figured out—this truth about the universe having been created, redeemed, and sustained by One God Who is three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—isn’t being honest, especially with themselves.
And it makes sense that we shouldn’t understand everything about God. If we did, we ourselves would be God.
But the word “Trinity” isn’t to be found in the Bible. If that's the case, then why do we Christians make such a fuss over it?
A Princeton professor of religion talked about this once. “There are probably a number of people who imagine that the idea of the Trinity was thought up by ivory-tower theologians who, typically, were making things more complicated than they needed to be and were obscuring the simple faith of regular believers,” the professor said. “In fact, it seems that the process worked pretty much the other way around. Practicing believers and worshipers were driven by their experiences of God's activity to the awareness that God related in several different ways to the creation. ... Thus what these believers came to insist upon was that God had to be recognized as being in different forms of relationship with the creation, in ways at least like different persons, and that all these ways were divine, that is, were of God. Yet there could not be three gods. God, to be the biblical God and the only God of all, had to be one God. This complex and profound faith was then handed over for the theologians to try and make more intelligible. They have been trying ever since.”
The fact is that we could just as easily call Holy Trinity Sunday, We Don’t Get It Sunday. That’s because the doctrine of the Trinity describes a truth that Christians have experienced over the centuries, yet still don’t understand.
But it isn’t the idea of a single being having different roles that’s so mysterious or unfamiliar to us. I am, among other things, a son, a husband, a father, and a pastor, for example. We all have different roles and may relate to each other in multiple ways.
But what we see in the Triune God—three Persons, one God--is something altogether different from that. Thumb through the pages of the Gospels in the New Testament, for example, and you’ll find God the Father affirming Jesus as His beloved Son, the exact image of Himself. You’ll find the Son speaking to the Father, even crying out to Him from the cross, asking why the Father has abandoned Him to bear our sins, sins He never committed. And yet, Jesus said, “The Father and I are One.” And, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” In the Father, we see God fully. In Jesus, we see God fully. Yet they are different persons.
So, where does the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, come in? Jesus talks about Him, the Holy Spirit, in our Gospel lesson for today. It’s just four verses that are part of what’s called Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus knows that He’s going to the cross. After that, He’ll rise from the dead and after a period spent with His disciples, He’ll ascend back to the Father. In Old Testament times, God the Father had led His people through the Law and the Prophets. When Jesus was on earth, God related to people in the flesh. But what was to happen to them once Jesus had ascended to heaven? Who would lead people in the truth of this God of grace Who offers everlasting life to all who turn from sin and trust in Christ? Who would relate to believers to help the mature and grow up in their relationship with God? Who would assure believers of the certainty of their hope in Christ when the chips were down, when life got tough, when they faced persecution, disease, death, conflict, temptation?
These issues were on Jesus’ mind when He told the disciples in today’s lesson, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
One of my favorite movies is Back to the Future, the story of how Marty McFly went in a DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor, back to his parents’ high school days. In one scene, Marty, played by Michael J. Fox, is invited to sing and play his guitar with a band at the high school dance. Marty starts performing Johnny B. Goode, the Chuck Berry classic, in a style that some people in the 50s, the era Marty is visiting, might have found a little daring, but most would have still thought harmless...at least as he began playing it. But as the song goes on, Marty, this power guitarist from the 80s, can’t help himself. He saunters around the stage like Eddie Van Halen. At first everybody seems to love it. But then he kicks over an amp. He slides across the stage on his knees. Finally, the guitar screeching a single high-note, he notices that the band has stopped playing and that the crowd is just staring at him. Marty stands up, hands the guitar over to the mystified band leader, and tells the crowd, “I guess you’re not ready for that yet…But your kids are gonna love it."
There were certain facts of life with Him, Jesus knew, for which His first followers weren’t yet ready. Until He had gone through the cross, they (and we) couldn’t understand that the call to follow Him means dying to ourselves and to our sins. Until He had risen from the dead, they couldn’t understand that His kingdom wasn’t about giving us the momentary advantages or pleasures of this world, but about the blessings of eternity with God. Nor could they understand how God might call them and their spiritual descendants, like you and me, to change and grow. All of these were truths that Jesus wouldn’t teach them (or us) face-to-face, truths for which God had to make them (and us) ready. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus says in our Gospel lesson from John, “He will guide you into all the truth.” And then, the Savior Who said that He and the Father are one, goes on to say that the Spirit and He are one as well: “He will not speak on His own…”
The Spirit speaks the same truth spoken by God the Father and God the Son, as we’re ready to hear it. But what does that mean?
Well, here’s an example of how the Spirit speaks truth that no one was ready to hear before Jesus' death and resurrection. To a first century church grappling with whether Gentiles needed to be Jews before becoming Christians, living in a world where men ruled the roost in a patriarchal society, and where at least 25% of the Roman Empire’s population were slaves, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, probably not fully cognizant himself of the implications of his words, wrote in the book of Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The Church is still being taught by the Holy Spirit the truth contained in those words. It wasn't until 1970, for example, that we Lutherans in North America caught up to one thing that these words surely meant when we began to ordain women into pastoral ministry.
The Spirit will never teach us anything contrary to what God the Father and God the Son have already revealed to us; God never contradicts Himself. But in these times between Jesus’ ascension and the day He returns to the earth, the Spirit will continue to unfold God’s truth for us so that we understand more deeply what it means to be part of God’s kingdom.
We’ll never fully understand the Trinity. Still, we have experienced how God has, through the centuries, patiently revealed Himself as one God in three Persons.
My Geometry teacher in high school, Mr. Allen, knew how difficult Mathematics was for me. I had flunked Algebra I the year before and had to take it again in the summer. But, intent on going to college, I registered for Mr. Allen’s class. It was tough slogging for me. But Mr. Allen wouldn’t let me give in to my penchant for laziness in subjects that failed to interest me. He would go out of his way to help me understand the lesson at hand. When we got to the unit on the Pythagorean Theorem, I remember him saying to the class, “Mr. Daniels is very knowledgeable when it comes to History. You might be interested in knowing…” And then, Mr. Allen told us a little about the sixth century-BC mathematician Pythagoras who came up with the Pythagorean Theorem. Mr. Allen was trying to hook me and students like me. After he’d explained the theorem and how it worked to us, he would look around the class room for the confused faces. Mine was always among them. So, he’d explain it in a different way. And if we still didn’t get it, he’d choose one of us to come up to the chalkboard to go through things step-by-step. His patience was amazing! And, miracle of miracles, I passed the class!
On this We-Don’t-Get-It Sunday, Holy Trinity Sunday, we can say that through the centuries, first through Israel, then through Jesus, and now through His Holy Spirit, God has patiently revealed Himself to all of us. He’s still revealing Himself to us.
John 16:12-15
Evangelist Billy Graham tells the story of a teacher who asked his class of fifth graders if they could explain electricity. One student raised his hand. “How would you explain it, Jimmy?” the teacher asked. The kid scratched his head and then answered, “Last night I knew it, but this morning, I’ve forgotten.” The teacher shook his head sadly. He told the class, “What a tragedy. The only person in the world ever to fully understand electricity and now he’s forgotten!”
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday on the Church calendar. Someone has pointed out that this is the only day in the whole Church Year devoted to a theological doctrine. The Trinity is a lot harder to understand than electricity. Anyone who claims to have it all figured out—this truth about the universe having been created, redeemed, and sustained by One God Who is three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—isn’t being honest, especially with themselves.
And it makes sense that we shouldn’t understand everything about God. If we did, we ourselves would be God.
But the word “Trinity” isn’t to be found in the Bible. If that's the case, then why do we Christians make such a fuss over it?
A Princeton professor of religion talked about this once. “There are probably a number of people who imagine that the idea of the Trinity was thought up by ivory-tower theologians who, typically, were making things more complicated than they needed to be and were obscuring the simple faith of regular believers,” the professor said. “In fact, it seems that the process worked pretty much the other way around. Practicing believers and worshipers were driven by their experiences of God's activity to the awareness that God related in several different ways to the creation. ... Thus what these believers came to insist upon was that God had to be recognized as being in different forms of relationship with the creation, in ways at least like different persons, and that all these ways were divine, that is, were of God. Yet there could not be three gods. God, to be the biblical God and the only God of all, had to be one God. This complex and profound faith was then handed over for the theologians to try and make more intelligible. They have been trying ever since.”
The fact is that we could just as easily call Holy Trinity Sunday, We Don’t Get It Sunday. That’s because the doctrine of the Trinity describes a truth that Christians have experienced over the centuries, yet still don’t understand.
But it isn’t the idea of a single being having different roles that’s so mysterious or unfamiliar to us. I am, among other things, a son, a husband, a father, and a pastor, for example. We all have different roles and may relate to each other in multiple ways.
But what we see in the Triune God—three Persons, one God--is something altogether different from that. Thumb through the pages of the Gospels in the New Testament, for example, and you’ll find God the Father affirming Jesus as His beloved Son, the exact image of Himself. You’ll find the Son speaking to the Father, even crying out to Him from the cross, asking why the Father has abandoned Him to bear our sins, sins He never committed. And yet, Jesus said, “The Father and I are One.” And, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” In the Father, we see God fully. In Jesus, we see God fully. Yet they are different persons.
So, where does the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, come in? Jesus talks about Him, the Holy Spirit, in our Gospel lesson for today. It’s just four verses that are part of what’s called Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus knows that He’s going to the cross. After that, He’ll rise from the dead and after a period spent with His disciples, He’ll ascend back to the Father. In Old Testament times, God the Father had led His people through the Law and the Prophets. When Jesus was on earth, God related to people in the flesh. But what was to happen to them once Jesus had ascended to heaven? Who would lead people in the truth of this God of grace Who offers everlasting life to all who turn from sin and trust in Christ? Who would relate to believers to help the mature and grow up in their relationship with God? Who would assure believers of the certainty of their hope in Christ when the chips were down, when life got tough, when they faced persecution, disease, death, conflict, temptation?
These issues were on Jesus’ mind when He told the disciples in today’s lesson, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”
One of my favorite movies is Back to the Future, the story of how Marty McFly went in a DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor, back to his parents’ high school days. In one scene, Marty, played by Michael J. Fox, is invited to sing and play his guitar with a band at the high school dance. Marty starts performing Johnny B. Goode, the Chuck Berry classic, in a style that some people in the 50s, the era Marty is visiting, might have found a little daring, but most would have still thought harmless...at least as he began playing it. But as the song goes on, Marty, this power guitarist from the 80s, can’t help himself. He saunters around the stage like Eddie Van Halen. At first everybody seems to love it. But then he kicks over an amp. He slides across the stage on his knees. Finally, the guitar screeching a single high-note, he notices that the band has stopped playing and that the crowd is just staring at him. Marty stands up, hands the guitar over to the mystified band leader, and tells the crowd, “I guess you’re not ready for that yet…But your kids are gonna love it."
There were certain facts of life with Him, Jesus knew, for which His first followers weren’t yet ready. Until He had gone through the cross, they (and we) couldn’t understand that the call to follow Him means dying to ourselves and to our sins. Until He had risen from the dead, they couldn’t understand that His kingdom wasn’t about giving us the momentary advantages or pleasures of this world, but about the blessings of eternity with God. Nor could they understand how God might call them and their spiritual descendants, like you and me, to change and grow. All of these were truths that Jesus wouldn’t teach them (or us) face-to-face, truths for which God had to make them (and us) ready. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus says in our Gospel lesson from John, “He will guide you into all the truth.” And then, the Savior Who said that He and the Father are one, goes on to say that the Spirit and He are one as well: “He will not speak on His own…”
The Spirit speaks the same truth spoken by God the Father and God the Son, as we’re ready to hear it. But what does that mean?
Well, here’s an example of how the Spirit speaks truth that no one was ready to hear before Jesus' death and resurrection. To a first century church grappling with whether Gentiles needed to be Jews before becoming Christians, living in a world where men ruled the roost in a patriarchal society, and where at least 25% of the Roman Empire’s population were slaves, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, probably not fully cognizant himself of the implications of his words, wrote in the book of Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The Church is still being taught by the Holy Spirit the truth contained in those words. It wasn't until 1970, for example, that we Lutherans in North America caught up to one thing that these words surely meant when we began to ordain women into pastoral ministry.
The Spirit will never teach us anything contrary to what God the Father and God the Son have already revealed to us; God never contradicts Himself. But in these times between Jesus’ ascension and the day He returns to the earth, the Spirit will continue to unfold God’s truth for us so that we understand more deeply what it means to be part of God’s kingdom.
We’ll never fully understand the Trinity. Still, we have experienced how God has, through the centuries, patiently revealed Himself as one God in three Persons.
My Geometry teacher in high school, Mr. Allen, knew how difficult Mathematics was for me. I had flunked Algebra I the year before and had to take it again in the summer. But, intent on going to college, I registered for Mr. Allen’s class. It was tough slogging for me. But Mr. Allen wouldn’t let me give in to my penchant for laziness in subjects that failed to interest me. He would go out of his way to help me understand the lesson at hand. When we got to the unit on the Pythagorean Theorem, I remember him saying to the class, “Mr. Daniels is very knowledgeable when it comes to History. You might be interested in knowing…” And then, Mr. Allen told us a little about the sixth century-BC mathematician Pythagoras who came up with the Pythagorean Theorem. Mr. Allen was trying to hook me and students like me. After he’d explained the theorem and how it worked to us, he would look around the class room for the confused faces. Mine was always among them. So, he’d explain it in a different way. And if we still didn’t get it, he’d choose one of us to come up to the chalkboard to go through things step-by-step. His patience was amazing! And, miracle of miracles, I passed the class!
On this We-Don’t-Get-It Sunday, Holy Trinity Sunday, we can say that through the centuries, first through Israel, then through Jesus, and now through His Holy Spirit, God has patiently revealed Himself to all of us. He’s still revealing Himself to us.
- In the Father, we understand God is our Creator and that God calls us to turn away from sin and toward Him and toward others.
- In the Son, we understand that when we turn, we can fall trustingly into the arms of Jesus for forgiveness.
- In the Spirit, we receive new life and the power to move toward becoming the people God made us to be.
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