The Call to Reach Out (Part 5, Reach Up, Reach In, Reach Out Lenten Series)

[This was shared during Wednesday night's midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]



Matthew 28:19-20

We come this evening to the last installment of our Lenten series, “Reach up. Reach in. Reach out.”

We consider what some see as the most difficult and distasteful aspect of the Christian life: reaching out to others with the gospel–the good news–that, in Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, God has broken human imprisonment to sin and death and opened eternity to all people.

As people who have been gifted with saving faith in Jesus through the Word and the Sacraments, our call is to give away that gift to all people.

In doing so, we echo Jesus’ words at the beginning of His ministry: “Repent [that is, turn away from sin and death] and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15) 

Of course, the call to reach out is in Jesus’ great commission. As mentioned during our first midweek gathering this year, Jesus is cited as giving the great commission in five different places in the New Testament.

One of those places, Matthew 28:19-20, is the mission statement of Living Water Lutheran Church: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

We can see both God’s Law and God’s Gospel in Jesus’ words here. 

The Law here in the great commission is: “Church, I command you to make disciples of all peoples.”

As is always true of God’s Law, what Jesus commands here is impossible for us.

Reaching out to others to give them the free gift of God’s grace in Christ is foreign to our sinful natures. The first thing we want to do when we get a gift is hoard it, keeping it to ourselves. This was why God had to warn the ancient Israelites to not take more manna than they needed from day to day because the excess would simply rot and be worthless to them.

Besides, as we’ll see, Jesus doesn’t expect us to reach out or make disciples in our power, as though we could say, “We’re going to do it” and actually do it. Jesus, after all, says, “I will build My Church.” (Matthew 16:18)

We can’t make disciples, bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. Only God can do that.

It is only the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of God–heard, read, or received in the Sacraments–Who creates faith in Jesus and “the communion of saints.”

But God has always used His people to bring His saving Word to others. In fact, when God Himself brought the good news into our world, He did so as a sinless Man Who died on a cross for us and rose from the dead for us. God likes using human beings to touch other human beings.

And so, as is His penchant, there is also a Gospel Word–a word of undeserved promise, undeserved grace–in the great commission. After telling us to make disciples and knowing that we couldn’t possibly do that on our own, Jesus graces us by saying, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Think of what Jesus is saying here!

We don’t have to wait until we die to know that He is by our sides. That in itself is a great comfort when we face the challenges of this life.

I can’t tell you how many times in the past forty-plus years of being involved in ministry how often people have told me of being comforted by the fact that there in the hospital, there in the intensive care unit, there in the funeral home, Jesus was beside them!

What have we done to deserve such a promise from the Lord of heaven and earth?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Jesus has done it all for us!

And He's' promised us life beyond the grave besides!

Our call is simply to daily turn from sin–repent–and trust in Him for the forgiveness of our sins and everlasting life with God. And when turning to Jesus gets too hard, we need to soak up the Word, because it is the Word that will turn us to Him.

So, how does the great commission get accomplished? I mean it seems like a monumental thing.

It must have felt that way to the first apostles when Jesus gave them the great commission. Imagine it! Jesus tells these eleven men, who don’t have exactly a stellar track record in the first place, that they’re going to carry His Gospel Word to the whole world. They were to make disciples of all nations.

So how does this impossible mission get accomplished?

The Savior Who gives us eternity and promises to be with us always works through us. That’s the plan and there’s no plan  B.

He speaks through us.

He serves through us.

He does this in the lives of imperfect people who heed His call, given in Luke 9:23: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

The God we know in Jesus saves, sanctifies, and sends those who daily turn to Him in repentance and faith and are then assured by His Word, “For Jesus’ sake, all your sins are forgiven and you belong to Me forever! And for Jesus’ sake, you belong to God now and forever!”

Many Christians refuse to even consider reaching out to others, even when it comes things like inviting them to “pre-evangelism” events like Toddler Time or pickleball. They’re also wary about engaging in kindness outreaches or asking their friends and acquaintances to join them for Bible studies or even worship.

Why? They fear rejection.

But God’s Word says: “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

Rejection hurts; but nothing is eternally fatal to the person who trusts in Jesus Christ!

You may remember the story I’ve shared before about South African bishop Desmond Tutu. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against apartheid in his country. That work also won him constant death threats. He was asked why, in light of those threats, he continued to work against injustice. He said he couldn’t help it: as a Christian, his blood boiled against injustice. “Besides,” he said, “death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.” We need not fear rejection.

Some Christians think they don’t know enough to share Christ and the Gospel with others.

But did you notice the story of the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at Jacob’s well that we read a few Sundays ago?

The woman thought maybe Jesus could be the Messiah and went back into the village to invite others to meet Jesus. There is no indication that between the time she left the well and went into the village that she’d gotten a Master of Divinity degree. She didn’t receive any evangelistic training.

After encountering Jesus and His Word, the townspeople later told the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)

All it took was a woman who only knew what she knew, giving her tentative conclusions about Jesus to the people of Sychar, inviting them to hear the Word for themselves.

To reach out to others with the Gospel, you don’t need to know everything; you only need to point others to Jesus.

There is no such thing as failure or embarrassment for the Christian who shares Christ and His Gospel with people they know or care about.

Reaching out, evangelizing, is, as someone has said, nothing more than, “One beggar telling another beggar where to find food.”

Jesus is the bread of life none of us can earn but all of us can freely receive.

Every person here tonight knows how important Christ is for them in their daily lives.

How He has helped them in hard times.

How His promises to sustain us through grief always come through.

How He fills us with peace through His gracious love.

We don’t want anyone we know to go through this life or to face eternity without Jesus by their sides!

That’s why, even though I pray every day that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be brought to an end and that Putin will be brought to justice, I also pray that he will come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Christ even died for him. Christ even wants him in the fold.

The New Testament book of Acts tells the history of the first Christians, almost all of them Jews, and how the risen and ascended Jesus used them to spread the Gospel and build His Church among both Jews and Gentiles.

Not long after the first Christian Pentecost, Peter and John were hauled before the religious authorities at the temple and told to never again speak or teach in the name of Jesus.

This was not just advice. It was these same authorities who had, not long before, lobbied Pilate to have Jesus crucified.

But Peter, who once denied knowing Jesus three times, is now filled with the Holy Spirit Who had come to believers as Jesus promised, joins John in telling the authorities: “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20) Peter and John knew that nothing could separate them from the God Who had justified them, saved them, by His grace through faith in Christ Jesus.

That’s why, after the authorities released them and they returned to the fellowship of the Church, the whole Church prayed together, “Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” (Acts 4:29) They prayed for boldness to speak the name of Jesus in the face of threats.

Friends, at your Baptism, you received the same Holy Spirit Who gave Peter and the first disciples boldness to share Jesus and His Gospel.

May we pray for boldness to tell others about Jesus too, knowing the Holy Spirit can do that through us as certainly as He helped the first Christians to be Christ’s witnesses!

One prayer you might offer to God each day is, “Father, in Jesus’ name, push my fear and insecurities aside and unleash the Spirit to speak the good news of Jesus to someone today.”

Jesus has already saved you from sin and death and condemnation. It is an accomplished fact. May you live in the peace and assurance that gives, and so, as Peter says elsewhere, “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15)

As long as you live on this earth, the Holy Spirit will empower you to reach out with the good news of Jesus whenever and wherever God leads you. Jesus has promised that and you can believe it. Amen

Our Call, Our Privilege, Our Life ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 1)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

1 Corinthians 12:12-28

She was the wealthiest person in the small community where I served as pastor. She was also on the rolls of our church, although I’d been there several months already and hadn’t met her: She was in and out of town a lot. 

Then, one day, she met Ann at a local social gathering. She told Ann that she’d like to meet me and asked if I’d be available that afternoon. It turned out that I would be and, at the appointed time, she showed up. 

She quickly told me that she was an artist (an assertion that I came to doubt that...a lot), that she really couldn’t be bothered with the Bible, that she had a bevy of former husbands, each succeeding one more wealthy than the last, and that she intended to live her life as she wished whether God liked it or not. And, she made it clear, she wasn’t sure about the whole God thing anyway.

The purpose of her visit was plain enough. She was there to get a fix on what I was like, whether this worm in a clerical collar who sat before her was going to “play ball” with her view of the church as her own private country club, whether I was willing to compromise on Biblical truth in order to ensure that she wrote big checks for the general fund. Our conversation was pleasant enough. But I’m fairly certain that I disappointed her. Now, I’m not a perfect pastor or a perfect Christian or a perfect person, but one thing was absolutely clear to me: This woman had no idea what it meant to be a member of Christ’s Church, the body of Christ.

Over the next several weeks, with Thom Rainer’s book, I Am a Church Member, as a starting point, we’ll be considering what God, in His Word, the Bible, tells us about what it means to be a church member. I need to underscore that. While we can value Rainer’s book, it’s God’s Word that we most value. The Bible is, as we Lutherans say, the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice. 

And, in some instances, we Lutherans have different views of what God’s Word teaches than Rainer. But we will surface those issues in coming weeks.

So, where to start in talking about being a Church member? 

The first thing to be said is that while we who make up the Church may organize ourselves in ways that can look like other organizations in the world (we may even use Robert's Rules of Order), the Church is from God, it’s God’s idea and God’s creation. The Church was instituted by Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and the members who make up the Church are the only creatures or things that will survive the end of this dying old creation. 

The Church is built not on human will, human power, or human wisdom. The Church is built on the confession that Peter made when Jesus asked His apostles Who they said that He was. Peter confessed that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, God-come-to-earth. Jesus commended Peter’s confession and told him that on the rock of this confession of Jesus’ Lordship, “...I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18) 

The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional statements of Lutheran Christians, picks up on Jesus’ words to say: “The Church is the congregation of saints [that is, believers in Jesus] in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] are correctly administered...It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere…” (The Augsburg Confession, Article VII). 

The Church is made up of people who receive the gospel Word about Jesus and the Sacraments with faith.

But faith is more than intellectual assent. 

To receive the Word of new and everlasting life from the crucified and risen Jesus with faith is to live with Him, however imperfectly, however often we may need to repent and be made new. (For me, this happens at least twenty times a day!) 

Faith means more than to say, “I believe that Jesus died and rose and I occupy a spot on the membership rolls.” 

That’s the second thing to be said about the Church. It’s composed of disciples, people who daily follow Jesus and seek to honor Him.

So, what are disciples? I'm glad that you asked that question! 

Disciples are people saved by grace through faith in Christ. Their life with God in Christ is a free gift. Even their faith is a free gift. These gifts come to us when we receive the Word about Jesus and when, in the words of The Small Catechism, we “hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it” (The Small Catechism: The Third Commandment). 

Disciples are those who turn to Jesus as the only One Who can make them right with God, right with themselves, the only One Who can give them forgiveness and life eternity; like Peter, they say to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) 

Disciples are those who, like the man who came to seek help for his child told Jesus after Jesus had told him to believe, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) Anyone who says they're a disciple and that they never wrestle with doubts or challenges to their belief is a liar.

Disciples are those who have heard Jesus’ call, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 16:24). Discipleship is about dying to our old selves so that our new selves, our God-given selves, can rise to live with God now and for all eternity.

Disciples are those so grateful for God’s amazing grace saving them from death and hell through faith in Jesus that they seek to live that lifestyle we talked about last Sunday: they follow Jesus, go to the world into which He sends them, and they “fish” for people, telling others the good news--the gospel--of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

True church members then are disciples of Jesus. I seriously doubt whether people who don’t participate in a local church or who, like the woman who came to see me in my office that day long ago, really are church members. 

The Bible teaches that you and I need the church and not just when we agree with every decision made by the congregation. 

To be a Christian is to be part of Christ’s community of faith, the Church. Why is that so? 

One reason is that we need to be in fellowship with people who rub us the wrong way. We can get off on our own hobby horses and end up far from God if we aren’t part of a Christian congregation where there are people to set us straight. “As iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “so one person sharpens another.” 

Another reason is that the Church is the only fellowship in the world built around the Word of God. The preacher in Hebrews told the Church: “...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Nobody conveys the necessity of fellowship with the Church more graphically than the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12-28. These verses undergird Rainer’s first chapter. Church members realize that the Church isn’t about them, their preferences, their fears, their desires; it’s about Jesus and about our neighbors and our fellow members. 

The Church is about: 

• reaching up to God in worship and praise every day,
• reaching in to love, support, and provide accountability to our fellow members, and
• reaching out with the good news of Jesus to a dying world

Church membership then isn’t a spectator sport. Church membership is about giving of ourselves abundantly and serving in Jesus’ name without hesitation.

We don’t have time to look at 1 Corinthians 12:12-28 in depth this morning. Please read it before our Tuesday learning group, which will happen over at Christ the King at 6:30. But I want to hold up what I believe Rainer rightly points to as the four elements of being functional members of Christ’s Church given to us by Paul. 

First: “Membership means we are all necessary parts of the whole.” In describing the Church as Christ’s body, Paul drew an analogy between our physical bodies and the parts that make them up. Each part is essential for the functioning of the whole body. We need our hearts, brains, lungs, and other parts to function properly. As Bishop John and others pointed out last week in Denver, when any member of the church decides to sink down to spectator mode, we are all hurt by it; it’s like trying to function without eyes or ears, fingers or toes. 

Second: “Membership means we are different but we still work together.” Rainer cites 1 Corinthians 12:26: “...if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice.” 

Third: “Membership means that everything we say and do is based on a Biblical foundation of love.” I love what Rainer says here, “We are not to love fellow church members just because they are lovable. We are to love the unlovable as well.” I would add this. Jesus says that we are to love others as He has loved us. To see how He loves us, all we have to do is look at the cross. When I realize that Jesus went to the cross for me despite my sins, it makes it easier for me to love others. Besides, Jesus say, when we do love one another, we make the gospel real to each other and to the world around us. “By this,” Jesus tells us,  “everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) 

Fourth: “Church membership is functioning membership.” Rainer observes, “The concept of an inactive church member is an oxymoron.” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:28: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Folks, according to God’s Word, the Church is indispensable for the salvation of the world. 

Without the Church, billions of people will be separated from God in hell for eternity. 

According to that same Word, the Church is indispensable for our own salvation and lives. Without the Church, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves would certainly take us far away from God. 

The bottom line is this: In the Church, we need each other. 

And unless a congregation has fallen into unrepentant sin or false teaching about God, heresy, our call as church members is clear: 

We’re each to be functioning church members, grateful for the grace that has saved us, devoted to the Lord and open to His Word, devoted to each other, and excited to prompt, encourage, and challenge one another every time we gather to go into the world and make disciples for Jesus Christ. 

That’s our call. 

That's our privilege. 

And that's our life. Amen

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

"Take up your cross and follow Me"

Matthew 16:21-28
[This message was shared during the worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on September 3, 2017.]

Our gospel lesson for today, Matthew 16:21-28, begins in this way: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

We Christians have read and heard those words (or words like them) so many times in our lives that we may hardly notice them. Or give them a second thought. But when Jesus spoke them to His original hearers, the twelve apostles, their effect must have been not just jarring, but volcanic!

A few moments before, we read in Matthew, Peter had confessed his faith in Jesus as God’s anointed King, the Messiah or the Christ, as well as God in the flesh, which is what the phrase "the Son of the Living God" means. Peter was saying that Jesus was the Son of God, the very reflection and embodiment of God Himself!

Jesus had commended Peter’s confession, which He said, had come to Peter not from human beings, but from God Himself, the way our faith always does (1 Corinthians 12:3).

And Jesus said that it was on this strong confession made by Peter that “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [or hell] will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).

Peter’s confession of Jesus and Jesus’ affirmation of it must have been an incredible moment for the twelve. For centuries, their people, the people of God, had been waiting for the Messiah promised by God. And here was Jesus confirming what Peter (and probably many of the other disciples) had come to believe. The wait was over. The Messiah, Who would make all things right, had arrived.

The problem was that in the four-hundred-some years since God had given the last book of the Old Testament to His people and the moment of Peter’s confession, an enormous gap between what God means by making all things right for us and what God’s people meant by making all things right had developed.

This gap was caused by the failure to understand on the part of God’s peoplewhat their real problem was.

God’s people had come to see their problem as the Romans. And before that, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Each had been foreign conquerors. The problem, as God’s people had come to see it then, was these foreigners who had come and taken over their country.

God said that His people’s basic problem wasn’t the people who had conquered them through the centuries. It was that they had forgotten Who their God was.

They worshiped idols.

They worshiped the things of this world.

And because they did, they perpetrated grave injustices against each other and the strangers that were among them, violations of God’s holiness that God had adamantly and repeatedly forbade many times in His Word. It was because of all of this sin that God had allowed His people to be conquered.

To God’s people, including the disciples, the biggest problem they had was all of those other people who made their lives miserable. But God knew that the real problem wasn’t with all those other people.

And the only way that God could make all things right for His people and the whole world was not to give them a strongman king, the people’s version of a Messiah, the Messiah they wanted, who would boot out the foreign conquerors. Why? Because even if the strongman king was successful in routing the Romans and filling the people’s fevered desire for fat pocketbooks, the success of such a king would still only leave God’s people dead in their sin.

The only way that God could make all things right for His people and the world was to send a Messiah Who would deal with the sin into which every one of us--Jew and Gentile--is born.

Our greatest enemy in the world isn’t someone else: It’s not our spouse, our family, our boss, our government, or any of those “other people.” It’s not even the devil, although he hates us and wants us eternally separated from God.

Our greatest enemy is us. It’s us--you and me--who need to be dealt with. We and our sin must be conquered before they kill us off for all eternity.

But this isn’t something we like to hear or wrestle with. Who wants to be forced into saying, “It’s my fault”? Most of the time, those words stick in our throats.

Peter was just like us in that way. Verse 22 tells us that Peter is horrified at the idea of the One he had just confessed as Messiah going to Jerusalem, to be rejected and crucified. Matthew says that Peter rebuked Jesus. “That will never happen to You, Lord,” Peter says to Jesus, telling Jesus, the One he had just confessed to be God that Jesus was wrong. Peter was telling Jesus how to be the Messiah. He was giving Jesus "God lessons"!

In fact, as my son Philip pointed out to me last night, the word used to describe Peter's words to Jesus--rebuked--was in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament with which Jesus would have been familiar only used of superiors upbraiding or chastising people beneath them in class or authority. Peter is treating the One he has confessed as God and Messiah like an underling!

Look what happens next, starting at Matthew 16:23. “Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’”

Jesus calls Peter, Satan! The very name means enemy or adversary. At this moment, Jesus is calling Peter an enemy of God! This is a serious matter.

To try to stand in the way of God and the will and purpose of God makes a person an enemy of God. So, when Jesus uttered this condemnation of Peter, you can imagine how mystified Peter must have felt.

Do we stand in the way of God and His will for our lives?

Are there times when we try to turn Jesus into the king of our dreams, the king who will even go along with us when we’re being selfish or hurtful?

Are there times when we expect Jesus to overlook our sins while we stand in judgment over others for theirs?

Are there times when we insist that the problems in our marriages, our families, or our lives are exclusively the fault of others and not us?

Absent repentance and trust in Christ, if our answer to any of those questions is yes, then Jesus’ words of rebuke and their intrinsic call to repentance and renewed trust in Him, first leveled at Peter apply to you and me too. I know that Jesus' call applies to me many times, too.

But there is good news! King Jesus has come to set us free and make us right. 

Look at what He says, starting at verse 24: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.’”

Jesus could have been the king that Peter, the other disciples, and God’s people in Judea wanted. He had the power to do it.

When Jesus was later arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, He said that He had at His disposal “twelve legions of angels,” 60,000 angelic soldiers ready at the direction of Jesus. He could have been a warrior king.

When Satan met Jesus in the wilderness, it was to be precisely this kind of king that he tried tempting Jesus into being. Satan knew that if Jesus relied on raw power, coercive force, to make Himself king, Jesus would have been as guilty of sin as Adam and Eve had been when, in their desire to “be like God,” they ate the fruit God told them not to eat.

And had Jesus been this kind of king, He wouldn’t have been trustingly relying on His Father and His plan, but on violent force.

Our lives could never have been made eternally right had Jesus gone that route.

We could never have been set eternally free from sin and death. Jesus had to go to the cross to take our punishment for sin so that, in rising, He could set free all who turn from sin, that is repent, and surrender trustingly in Him, that is believe in Him.

In the way Jesus chose, He could be King, not of a worldly nation, all of which eventually fail and fall from the weight of their arrogance, sin, and injustice, but the King of a new creation.

Jesus didn’t enter the world to conquer all the armies of the world while leaving everyone in this world dead and separated from God. Jesus came to conquer us with His love and so, give us life that never ends.

The only way for us to appropriate the victory won for us by Jesus on the cross and from the empty tomb is to first, take up our cross--meaning, to acknowledge, in Pogo’s famous words, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” We need to own the fact that we need a Savior, Someone Who will save us from our sins and ourselves and to save us to be all that God intended for us to be. 

And we need secondly, to follow Jesus. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it’s the last thing we want to do. Even when it’s less than popular. Even when it costs us money, time, or our lives.

Taking up our crosses and following Jesus. We Lutherans have always called this a lifestyle of “daily repentance and renewal.” This is the content of the faith in Jesus that Peter, just a few verses before our gospel lesson, confessed: a faith that believes in Jesus as the King that makes all things right, the God Who opens up infinitely more than “we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20) to all who dare to surrender to Him.

And how can we know this is true?

That’s the question from the disciples that Jesus seems to anticipate in the last verse of our lesson.

“Truly I tell you,” He says. “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Is that true?

Did the disciples see the coming of Jesus’ kingdom?

I mean, didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “Thy kingdom come”?

The first disciples did see the kingdom of God come when Jesus rose from the dead, “the firstborn of the dead” as the New Testament calls Jesus (Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5) and the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” as He’s called in Hebrews 12:2. The disciples saw the kingdom of God when they saw the King after He had died and risen.

And we see--we experience--this kingdom when we too, take up our cross and follow Jesus.

May that be how we live.

How we die.

And, by the grace God bears for all who trust in Christ, may it also be how we will all rise again.

Amen

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