Joy in Jesus!

[Below, you'll find live stream video of the modern worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. (The video of the traditional service has major video issues. So, I'm not sharing it.) Also below is the text of the message. Have a great week!]



Matthew 11:2-15

Charlie was an old man, a member of Ann’s and my home church. Afflicted with arthritis, he could barely walk. But he was in worship every Sunday and served with the church in many ways. Charlie had painted houses and put up drywall his entire working life, but had been retired twenty years when I got to know him. For many years of his retirement, except for when his daughters spelled him, he took care of his bed-ridden wife. Following a long illness, his wife died. On the day of her funeral, Charlie spent time talking with me and another twenty-something. This man, who would have seemed to have every reason to complain told us, “Mark and Whitie, the Lord has been awfully good to me. All I can do is thank and praise Him.”

What I saw in Charlie at this moment when he was grieving was Christian joy! Joy in the midst of this world’s darkness and fallenness.

That’s what this Third Sunday of Advent is about: joy. It’s called Gaudete Sunday or Rejoice Sunday. It comes to us from Philippians 4:4-5, which was historically used for the procession to the altar on this Sunday of the Church Year. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” the passage tells us, “I will say it again: Rejoice!”

So, what exactly did Charlie, broken down by aging, work, arthritis, and taking care of his wife for long years, have to rejoice over on the day of his wife’s funeral?

And, for that matter, what do we, in a crazy world filled with war, hatred, suffering, and death, have to rejoice over?

John the Baptist may have wondered the same thing. John was the only prophet who was himself the subject of Old Testament prophecy. In about 430 BC, God told His people through the prophet Malachi: “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.” (Malachi 3:1) John fulfilled his call of preparing God’s people and all people for the saving work of the Messiah, the Christ: Jesus. In today’s lesson, Jesus confirms the greatness of John. “...among those born of women,” Jesus says, “there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist…” (Matthew 11:11)

But, as we meet John today, he’s in prison for his faith, hardly a joyful thing.

Whether for himself or for his own disciples, who were undoubtedly reeling, questioning God, as they’ve seen John put in chains, John sends messengers to ask Jesus a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3) Is Jesus the One Who’s finally going to make this sin-imprisoned, death-filled world right? Is Jesus God in the flesh?

A cynical world writes faith in Jesus off as closed-minded stupidity. A brilliant young woman from Brazil named Sarah, who I follow on Twitter, who recently became a Lutheran Christian, reported this past week of the the place where she works, “Today I heard a ton of jokes about my faith…” She held her tongue although the group of men who joked about her faith all are living lives of unrepentant sin.

Sarah might well wonder if Jesus really has conquered sin and death when she, seeking to follow Jesus faithfully, is subjected to such nastiness and derision.

So might Christians in other parts of the world who are persecuted, facing arrest, violence, arson, and death.

Before getting self-righteous though, honesty compels me to say that while I am a baptized believer in Jesus, I only have to look in the mirror to see the same sin and insanity that makes being a disciple of Jesus hard.

I’m a sinner prone to breaking every one of God’s ten commandments, whether by thought, word, or deed.

I daily fail to love God completely.

Daily I fail to love others as I love myself.

I’m still a sinner.

So are you.

Does that mean Jesus is less than God the Son?

Or, are we to look for someone else, something else?

When John’s messengers asked Jesus this question, Jesus didn’t respond directly.

Instead, He pointed them to the things He was doing, things that the Old Testament, at various places, said the Messiah, the Son of God, would do when He brought God’s kingdom into this fallen world: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Matthew 11:5)

The world waits–we wait–for Jesus’ second advent when He will make all things right.

But, for now, we know that Jesus is our strong fortress and our eternal hope in the midst of a crazy world.

We hold onto Jesus in faith because, sinners though we are, we also know that Jesus has conquered our sin and our death for all eternity! Jesus’ words stand in Scripture: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Many wonder if Jesus really is a conqueror who has overcome the world’s troubles. This appears to be the question that rattled either John the Baptist, his disciples, or both.

If Jesus was the Savior, why was John about to lose his head?

If Jesus is the conquering Lord, why is there cancer, war, despots and dictators, pandemics, ERs, and funeral homes?

A hint to the answer to these haunting questions can be found in our first lesson for today, Isaiah 35:1-10. Isaiah narrates the salvation story. All began in a garden, where God put the first human beings, Adam and Eve, in charge. Of course, humanity fell into sin, that condition of inborn distrust of God, our inborn predisposition to not trust God to take care of us which leads us to individual sins against God and others. Ever since then, God has been about calling us to repent and trust in Him, to trust that one day, beyond death and beyond the end of this cosmos, He will usher those who trust in His Son will live once more in a lush and perfect garden.

It’s a reign or dominion where the blind will see, the lame will walk, the leprous will be cleansed, the deaf will hear, and the poor, those laid low by sin and death, will hear the good news of Jesus that brings us life.

Many of the things prophesied by Isaiah were already seen in what Jesus did when John’s messengers went to Jesus.

But Isaiah said there was to be more even than these things to the kingdom brought by the Messiah.

While at his first advent, in His earthly life which began on Christmas, Jesus came submissively, dying for our sins like a lamb led the slaughter, there will be a time, according to Isaiah, when “[Jesus] will come with vengeance; with divine retribution…to save you…” (Isaiah 35:4)

It will be a time when “no lion…nor any ravenous beast,” not even the sin of the devil, the world, or our sinful selves, will be able to attack or wreak havoc on the lives of those who live daily turning from sin and daily turning to Jesus in faith.

The wilderness will rejoice and blossom, blessing all people with God’s plenty!

So, how can we be certain of Jesus and the Bible’s promises about Him?

How can we have joy in Jesus as our Savior and Deliverer even in the midst of the madness of this world and in the face of our own intractable sin?

When John asked a similar question, Jesus pointed John to what He was already doing, the very works the Old Testament prophets said that the Messiah was going to do when He brought His kingdom to us. “I’m doing the works of the Messiah,” Jesus was telling John, “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” (Matthew 11:6)

And when you and I today, on December 11, 2022, look at what Jesus has done, we can see even more than John could have from Herod’s prison cell!

We can see Jesus crucified for us, praying for our forgiveness with His dying breath.

We can see Jesus risen, showing Himself to be what He claimed to be: “...the resurrection and the life,” the One in Whom we can believe and have everlasting life with God! (John 11:25)

We can see Jesus today in His Word–preached and shared and sung, imparted in water and bread and wine.

We can pray to God in Jesus’ name and know the peace of God that passes all understanding.

We can live with joy even in sorrow and uncertainty, knowing that, though everything around us crumbles in uncertainty, the God we know in Jesus Christ can be counted on to stand by us always, forgive our sin, redeem our lives, and, at the end of all ages, raise our dead bodies to live with God always.

Jesus is the source of unending joy, even now.

With Charlie and all the saints, living and dead, we can join the apostle Paul in saying, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

Amen

Uncertain World, Certain Savior (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Uncertain World, Certain Savior

Matthew 11:2-15
If this morning’s Gospel lesson leaves us a little uncertain, set a bit back on our heels, it’s understandable.

Last week, on the Second Sunday of Advent, we heard John the Baptist’s confident proclamation of the impending appearance of God’s promised Anointed King—what the Hebrew of the Old Testament calls the Messiah and the Greek of the New Testament calls the Christ.

In the Christ Who was coming, John told the crowds who heard him preach, God was getting ready to re-establish His reign over a sinful, rebellious world. When Jesus later showed up to be baptized by John, in a passage not a part of last Sunday’s lesson, John must have felt that all his preaching had been proven true. Jesus was the Messiah He’d been waiting for!

When we fast forward to the Gospel lesson for this Third Sunday of Advent, we come to a very different scene.

If John was like most of the Jews of his day, his expectations would have been that the Messiah, the King of kings, was going to push the bloodthirsty, corrupt Judean kings off of their thrones, would save the people from their foreign overlords, the Romans, and would take away the power and prominence of the vain and faithless rulers of Judea’s religious life—the priests and teachers of the law. Like other Jews, John probably expected the Messiah to execute a clean sweep of what we would call church and state, making everything in society right. John thought that the Messiah would, in one famous phrase, bring “hope and change” and, in another famous saying, “drain the swamp.” (I'm being bi-partisan.)

Since John's encounter with Jesus at the Jordan River, Jesus hadn’t taken over the government, led a military junta, established a government program, or punched anyone in the nose.

Instead, Jesus had undertaken a ministry of preaching, teaching, healing, and miracle working. Great stuff, but not exactly what John had expected!

Herod, the Romans, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees were still in charge. And as we meet up with John the Baptist today, he’s in prison, the once-confident preacher wrestling with doubt.

With a probable death sentence hanging over him and with the kingdom of God seeming no nearer than it had been when he first began his ministry, John sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else??” [Matthew 11:3]

John wanted to hope in Jesus, but Jesus didn’t seem to be meeting John’s expectations. John wondered, “Is Jesus the Messiah we’ve been waiting for?”

Have you ever been there?

Have the promises of Jesus to hear and answer your prayers sometimes mocked your faith?

Have your life circumstances cast your faith in a sovereign, loving God in doubt?

Have questions pressed on you as you’ve watched loved ones suffer or die, or you’ve struggled with health issues, financial issues, or when your sense of purpose in life has disappeared?

Have you played by God’s rules and watched people who ignore them seem to skate through life as you face troubles and difficulties?

The truth, if we’re honest I think, is that we have all been there in the prison of doubt and uncertainty John experienced in that prison cell.

And so, John did what millions of people have done through the centuries when wrestling with their questions and doubts. He turned to Jesus. He asked Jesus, in effect, “Are You the One in Whom I can place all of my trust and hope?”

Jesus’ response to John’s question in today’s Gospel lesson is not just for John the Baptist, it’s for all of us who have ever doubted, who have wrestled to understand God’s plans in the midst of unbearable pain or indecipherable situations.

Please look at our Gospel lesson, Matthew 11:2-15, starting with verses 4 to 6. It says: “Jesus replied [to the men John had sent to Jesus with his question], ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.’”

Jesus didn’t deny that He was the King Who would bring judgment on the unbelieving world. And He would confirm that He was to be the judge of the world many times.

In answer to John’s question though, Jesus pointed John to all the signs that showed Him to be not just the Messiah, but the Lord of all creation, Who can speak a word and create life where there was death, wholeness where there was brokenness.

To John’s doubt and disappointment, Jesus says, “Consider the evidence. I’m doing the things that God told the prophets He would do when His kingdom came into this fallen world.”

There’s another message in Jesus’ words, though. It’s this: Change your expectations of the Messiah. Change your expectations of God.

I’m not saying that there is any limit to God’s power or to God’s willingness to hear prayers offered in Jesus’ Name. In Jesus, we meet the sovereign, almighty God of the universe Who can do anything, Who is committed to bringing the world’s injustice to an end, Who will allow those who refuse to trust in Him to go their own ways for eternity, and Who, by His cross and resurrection, has destroyed the power of sin and death for all eternity for those who believe in Christ! Everything that Jesus did, including His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His rising from the dead, show us Who Jesus is and the good plans God has for those who repent and believe in Jesus.

But Jesus’ kingdom hasn’t come in its fullness yet.

Right now, you and l live in a world in which bad things happen to faithful people. It can cause us to question, just as it did John the Baptist.

The week before she died, a friend of ours, being ravaged by cancer, wrestling with her suffering, worried about her husband and two young children, but holding onto Jesus in the midst of it all, confided to me, “I keep wondering what it is God wants me to learn from all of this.”

I think that, like John the Baptist, she wondered, when Jesus was going to act decisively. When would God finally act to bring about the promise given by God through the prophet Isaiah and repeated in the New Testament book of Revelation: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” [Revelation 21:4]

That promise will come to pass. The God Who was born in a stable, lived among us, died for us, and rose to give us life can be counted on to make things right.

Until then, He gives the Church, the fellowship of forgiven sinners.

He gives us His perfect Word.

He gives us the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, filling us with His Spirit and with His life.

He gives us a mission of reaching up to God, reaching in to grow together as Christians in His Church, and reaching out to help others to know and follow Christ.

And this life, with all its troubles, is also God’s gift to us.

But we know that God also gives new life, one free of sin, death, and darkness.

So, why doesn’t God set things perfectly, totally, completely right for us now? Take a look, please at what the apostle Peter has to say about that in 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

If we’re inclined to see Jesus as a hedge against the nasty realities of life, a cosmic Santa Claus who makes life just go away, we need to change our expectations. As was true for Jesus, before our resurrections, there will be challenges to face, hurdles to overcome, crosses to bear.

But God doesn’t let us have pain, hardship, or uncertainty because God is slow in acting or because God lacks the power to act.

Instead, God is giving us the gift of time.

• Time for us to repent and surrender to Him;
• Time for us to share the good news of the baby born in a manger who went to a cross and rose from the dead for all sinners, making new disciples for Jesus;
• Time for us to serve others in Jesus’ Name;
• Time for us to grow as believers who are fit for eternity with God.

Today, Jesus invites you and me to seize the days we have, one by one, and to live this life fully: to turn from sin, to live for Jesus, and, just like Jesus, to spread His love by what we do and who we are.

And when, like John the Baptist, we wrestle with our questions, Jesus calls us to focus our hopes on Him alone.

After the friend I mentioned earlier had died, I was handed a note she had written for me to read in just that situation. (She had written notes for many people to read after she died.) She said, in part, “Please help everyone to know that just because I have died doesn’t mean that their prayers did not ‘work.’ Healing is so much more than having a whole and perfect body…I’ll be seeing you again—then we can forget all of this sadness…”

While we await the return of the Messiah Who came to our world on the first Christmas, we can live in this uncertain world with the absolute certainty that Jesus will make all His promises good for all who trust in Him.

When we let that certainty fill us, we can face everything with joy and peace, the very blessings of which the angels sang on the night of Jesus’ birth!

May we join their song every day we live and on into the eternity with God that the crucified and risen Jesus gives to all who repent and believe in Him! Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during both of the congregation's worship services today.]

The King Who Ignores Our Expectations

[This was prepared to share during the morning worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Matthew 11:2-15
Life sometimes throws us curveballs.

The curveballs can be good or bad.

But whether good or bad, they break from our expectations.

They can leave us breathless with horror.

Or dazzled with wonder.

Grateful beyond expression.

Saddened beyond telling.

A man looks forward to retirement, expecting long years of enjoyment with his wife, but learns he has Stage 4 cancer weeks before his retirement date.

A woman, long hurt by life, assuming that she will always be alone, suddenly and amazingly falls in love with a wonderful man she hadn’t dared to hope existed for her.

Expectations dashed.

Expectations exceeded.

The curveballs of life are enough to counsel us, I think, to check our expectations.

For believers in the God Who has revealed Himself to the world in Jesus Christ, it means, above all I think, learning to pray the hardest prayer of all: “Thy will be done.”

I can tell you that much of my life as a Christian, even to this day, has been spent learning to conform my expectations to the will of God, to truly learn to pray with my Savior, “Not as I will, but as you will."

I have not yet learned how to fully yield to God’s will for my life over against my expectations of what my life should be.

I have not yet fully learned what Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 6:19, that my life is not really my own. And that is doubly true. It's true first, because I didn't bring my life into being. And it's true second, because Jesus Christ died and rose to give me new and everlasting life. Still I struggle over proprietary rights with God. I struggle to accept that my life does not belong to me and God doesn't dance to the tune I punch in on life's juke box.

Maybe you struggle with this just like I do.

If that is our common struggle here this morning (or one of them), our Gospel lesson for today tells us that we are not alone.

John the Baptist had certain expectations of the Messiah or the Christ. Messiah (Meshiah) is the Hebrew word for Anointed One; Christ, Christos in the original Greek of the New Testament, carries the same meaning.

John rightly understood that the Messiah, Who He correctly identified as Jesus, was going to bring judgment on this old world of sin.

John also understood that Jesus was to be the legitimate King of the Jews Who would bring the Kingdom of heaven to this earth.

But John’s expectations of what that meant, of what kind of King Jesus would be, of what the kingdom looked like, were very different from what Jesus seemed to be as Jesus traveled from place to place, preaching, teaching, and performing miraculous signs.

John was looking for a king who, acting in God’s righteousness, would supplant the corrupt and violent Herod, the king who had slapped John into jail in his own house because John’s proclamation of a new king threatened him.

John wondered what was going on.

Jesus wasn’t what he had expected.

That’s where our Gospel lesson starts and this morning, I hope you don’t mind, I want to focus on just the first few verses of the lesson today. Please go to it, Matthew 11:2-6 (page 682 in the pew Bibles). It begins: “When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor...’”

John was all-in for Jesus. Yet Jesus wasn’t doing any of the things John had expected of God's Anointed One!

Jesus hadn’t taken the reins of political power, hadn’t purified the temple and the priesthood, hadn’t put the righteous into power, hadn’t established the kingdom of heaven.

In His response, Jesus’ told John He needed to change his expectations. There was to be more to the kingdom of heaven than judgment!

Do you remember what happened when, near the beginning of His ministry, Jesus went to His hometown of Nazareth? To define His mission as the Messiah and the Kingdom He had come to earth to bring, Jesus chose to read from Isaiah 61:1-2. Please turn to it on page 517. It says: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn...”

Jesus does bring judgment, of course. It’s the judgment we pass on ourselves when deciding whether or not to receive the offer of life and forgiveness and joy that comes from God through Jesus alone. As Jesus told Nicodemus: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” And the aged Simeon said of Jesus when the Lord was only eight days old, brought to the temple by Mary and Joseph to be circumcised: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed."

People cast judgment on themselves--we cast judgment on ourselves--whenever we choose the darkness of life without God and when we choose sin over the brightness of forgiveness and fresh life that comes from Jesus, the Light of the world.

But judgment is not ultimately why Jesus came into the world.

And it isn’t why He will one day return to the world.

Jesus also told Nicodemus: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

All who believe in the Name of Jesus are saved to live in the kingdom of heaven where, Revelation 21:4 says that Jesus “will wipe away every tear from [believers’] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

This is why Jesus presents the evidence for His being Messiah to the emissaries of John the Baptist that He does. The words Jesus cites come from Isaiah 35:5-6. Please go there, page 497. Here, God’s ultimate intentions--beyond sin and death and judgment--and the content of life in His kingdom are described: “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water [living water?] will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.”

Jesus didn't come into the world to force God’s kingdom on us.

He came so that all who trust in Him will receive a new Eden, an eternal city where there is no darkness, only light; no death, only life; no despair, only hope!

Jesus performed the signs of the coming Kingdom so that people would not feel forced or coerced into following Him but so that, in seeing, they would be open to believing in--to betting their lives on--Jesus and Jesus only! And so that by believing in Jesus, that kingdom would invade their (our) daily lives in this world and, one day, at what one of the old hymns called “the consummation,” believers in Christ will live in that new Eden, the new heavens and the new earth, the new creation.

In essence, Jesus tells John's disciples, “Tell John about the signs."

Then, Jesus says: “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."

In verse 11 of our lesson, Jesus says: “among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” Yet John, like you and me and every other human being on the planet this morning, was left with a critical decision when considering the life, deeds, signs, death, and resurrection of Jesus:

• Would he yield to the testimony of Christ’s activities on earth and the promptings of the Holy Spirit to leave himself open to accepting that Jesus is the One Who came into the world to destroy the fallen kingdoms of this world and to bring God’s kingdom into being?
• Or would John turn his back on Jesus because Jesus didn’t match the limited expectations he had of the Savior?

I have known people who have rejected Jesus because Jesus didn’t turn out to be what they wanted Him to be.

He didn’t do what they wanted Him to do when they wanted Him to do it.

He didn’t thwart the unfair boss.

He didn’t save the marriage.

He didn’t help them get into the National Honor Society.

He didn’t cure a loved one’s cancer.

I don’t say any of this to condemn those who reject Jesus because they have been hurt! Through the years, it’s been my experience that atheists are generally more sensitive about the hurts of the world than are we Christians. (To the shame of we Christians.)

It’s that very sensitivity and the belief that life in this world should be better than it is that leads many atheists to spurn God.

But, when I was an atheist, I had to ask myself, “Where does my sense that things ought to be better come from if not from the God Who made us for something better?”

The truth is that a godless universe would give us no reason to hold up things like love, justice, or grace as ways of life to which human beings should aspire.

If we are all the result of some random collision of elements derived from some unknown force and if all of life is a contest for the survival of the fittest, our stubborn human ideas about right and wrong would be inexplicable.

For me then, atheism, though perhaps understandable as a reaction to life, simply doesn't account for all of life's realities.

Others become atheists because, like John the Baptist who wrestled with doubts in a cell in Herod’s prison, the God they tried to believe in didn’t meet their expectations. Their picture of what God should be like was based on their preferences, not on Who God has revealed Himself to be. They tried to domesticate God.

In the first volume of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, in which four children from our world visit an alternative universe and are told about Aslan. Aslan is a figure of Christ in Lewis' books, "the great King, Son of the Emperor-beyond-the-sea." When informed that Aslan was a lion, one of the children asks, "Is he safe?" The reply: "Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king..."

Jesus is like that. He is the King. He is good. But if we're looking for safety, we should look elsewhere for our Savior. Jesus calls us to turn away from the safety of our favorite sins, the safety of lives turned inward for our own ends to a life lived for Him and for our neighbor.

It’s at those moments when God fails to meet our expectations that we need to consider Jesus. We need to look at Him closely.

The gospels’ accounts about Jesus’ time on earth tell us all we need to know to have saving faith and to expand our faith in Jesus, despite the hard realities of life.

The four Gospels in the New Testament--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--make it possible for us to do exactly what Jesus said that John the Baptist should do: Look at what He did and why. See how He had control of life and death, yet never used that control for selfish purposes, not even self-preservation when they nailed His hands and feet to a cross. See the compassion of God evident in Jesus.

In effect, Jesus says, “Decide for yourself from the evidence Who I am!” Look at Jesus closely and we see the God of the universe Who may be different from our expectations, but Who is exactly the King we need!

Toward the end of his Gospel, another John writes: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples [including, most miraculous of all, His death and resurrection], which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” If you would know God, look to Jesus!

Someone once wrote that life in this world is “nasty, brutish, and short.”* There is truth in that, although there is also much beauty, love, and wonder in this world.

I got another precious glimpse of that yesterday. One of the littlest of our Christmas carolers approached us in the kitchen after we'd been singing in the neighborhood, her nose running. She asked for a tissue. There were no tissues there, so I handed her a few napkins from the dispenser. She took the napkins and blew her nose as well as she could, then handed the napkins back to me. If that isn't precious and beautiful, I don't know what is!

Beauty and wonder still rise stubbornly "like grass through cement" in this fallen world. Despite our sin and the calamities it has brought to our life on this planet, we see glimpses of how perfect this world was meant to be, how dependent and trusting we were made to be toward God and one another, every day.

But if we expect that Jesus is going to make this world--unrepentant and self-driven--into Eden, we misunderstand Him.

If we think that Jesus has laid down a political program by which people of can live out certain principles and give the world a makeover.

One of the worst sins we commit in post-modern Christianity, whether conservative or liberal, is the sin of idolatry, turning Jesus into the God we prefer, replacing His deity and Lordship with our particular political preferences and programs so that we can get what we want in this world. That, friends, is a scandal!

And it's stupid because this world is under a death sentence!

This world must die so that the new world, the new Eden can come into being.

We must die--in the waters of Baptism and in daily repentance and renewal--so that the Kingdom can enter us and so that we can be part of the Kingdom.

The God we know in Jesus, “able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine” has bigger plans for us than remodeling this dying creation.

Eternal plans.

Plans not to harm us, but to give us a future no longer darkened by sin or death or futility.

He has come and will come again to establish a kingdom in which tears are dried, the lame walk, even run, and the aggrieved know joy.

Jesus is the sign and the seal of God’s good intentions for the human race.

His death and resurrection are God’s guarantee of life free from sin and death for all who dare to surrender to Jesus Christ.

The kingdom Jesus died and rose to bring into being is living in and among those who believe in Him, the Church, despite the imperfections of we individual Christians.

We are even today empowered by His Spirit to give sight to the blind, cleansing to the leprous, life to the dead, food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, and good news that brings everlasting life.

We see that in the many ministries pursued by the people of Living Water.

May we remain open to being conduits of Jesus’ kingdom each day.

May we become ever more receptive to going wherever our King calls us to be.

And may others see the signs of Jesus in our life and so, with us, come to everlasting life in His Name.

Amen

*The writer was Thomas Hobbes. He was actually specifically referencing war. But in my lifetime, war has been a sufficiently central feature of human existence that I feel no hesitation in saying that it reflects life in this world.