That love command hasn't been rescinded

TobyMac posted this over on Facebook. Check out Matthew 22:36-40:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Why Does God Command Us to Love Him?

Does God "need" our love? Why does He command us to love Him (just as He commands us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves)?:

To put it simply, God doesn’t need our love. While speaking to the people in the marketplace in first century Athens, the apostle Paul noted: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”  

God doesn’t need for us to love Him. God isn’t some self-absorbed egomaniac needing constant reassurance that He’s the apple of our eyes. God has all the love He could ever need or ever want within Himself, the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

The New Testament tells us that, “God is love,” which doesn’t mean that God is some abstraction called love. It means that love informs every aspect of God's character and personality. Love is the motive behind everything God does--including judgment and discipline, including giving us the freedom to walk away from Him, including the cross and the empty tomb. 

Out of an extravagance of love, though He didn’t need to do it, God gave us life and made us in His image. 

The Old Testament says that we are the apple of God’s eye, the object of His passion and commitment and concern. That’s why, after humanity fell into sin, God set to work to save us from our sin--to save us from ourselves--and to save us from the death we deserve by becoming one of us in Jesus Christ, then dying and rising, so that all who repent and believe in Christ have life with God that begins now in this imperfect world and is “brought to perfection in the world to come.”  

The fact is that God commands us to love Him not because He needs to be loved by us, but because we need to love Him. 

When we love God, we simply acknowledge the reality that He is God and we aren’t, that He made us and that our lives are completely in His hands. We acknowledge that all of life is a gift from Him. And with gratitude, we acknowledge the depths of His passion for us, a passion that led Him to submit to suffering and death on the cross for us. 

Kindness Needed

Be kind to everyone, not just because it is Christ's command that we love our neighbors, but also because you don't know how many hidden broken hearts you encounter every day. There are people carrying griefs they don't reveal and you can bring God's comfort to them.

Loving Others

[This was prepared to be shared during this morning's two worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Matthew 22:36-40
During this Lenten season, we’re considering five building blocks for our Christian discipleship and for the faithful mission of Christ’s Church that come to us from three passages of Scripture. In them, Jesus gives to us the Great Commandment, the Great Commission, and the New Commandment. Last week, our focus was on what Jesus calls the first and greatest commandment, reiterating the Old Testament, that we are to love God.

Today, we consider the command which Jesus says is of the same importance as loving God. Please turn again to Matthew 22:36-40 (page 692 in the sanctuary Bible).

It says that a Pharisee approached Jesus with a question:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

“Love your neighbor as yourself” was not a commandment that Jesus just made up. It’s not a new commandment. In Leviticus 19:18, part of that section of the Old Testament referred to as “the holiness code,” God told His ancient people Israel: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”

From the beginning, God intended human beings to live in a community of shalom--a community of peace and wholeness--with God and with other human beings.

This comes through in Genesis, after the first murder had taken place. The blood--the very life--of Abel cried out to God after Abel had been murdered by his brother Cain. When God asked Cain where Abel was, Cain responded with words that must have broken God’s heart: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” For God, the answer to that question was, has always been, and always will remain “Yes.”

We are called to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Human beings may sometimes crave and need solitude. Even Jesus would sometimes pull away from the needy crowds in order to rest and pray in the presence of God the Father. But we are not made to live outside of loving community with others.

In the Old Testament, God commanded His people to, first of all, love and care for their fellow Israelites, especially the weak, the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned.

But they were also to extend precisely that same love to the “resident aliens,” the foreigners who lived among them. God told the Israelites through Moses in Deuteronomy 10:19: “...you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (There's a lesson to be learned there for those of us who are descendants of people who were at one time foreigners in what is now the United States of America.)

And even in Old Testament times, God commanded that His people love their enemies. (This may surprise those who support the stereotype that the God of Old Testament is stern and vengeful, while the God of the New Testament is mooshy. Neither stereotype is true.) Proverbs 25:21, for example, says: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”

The Pharisee who asked Jesus about what the greatest commandment was had hoped to trap Jesus, showing to be some wild-eyed leader of a cult, introducing notions about God different from what God had revealed of Himself and His will through the centuries to Israel, as recorded in what we call the Old Testament.

But far from trapping Jesus, the Pharisee who asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, found Jesus upholding the very law and the prophets--the Old Testament canon--which they claimed Jesus threatened.

Jesus underscored the central importance of love of brother and sister or love of neighbor, repeatedly. In Luke 10 for example, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which a foreigner who happened upon a man who had been beaten by thugs, helps the man, cares for him, and provides for him. Jesus says that whoever we come across in need is our neighbor and that we are to love them.

Under the influence both of his time with Jesus and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle John wrote in his later years in 1 John 4:20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (How's that for directness?)

But one thing we should be clear about is that from the Bible’s perspective, love is not primarily a feeling. Feelings of affection come and go. They fluctuate in intensity. Love, the Bible insists, is something different.

There’s an old preacher story told about a young man in love. (I've updated a little bit so that I don't seem hopelessly ancient!) This guy texts his girlfriend: “I would climb the highest mountain for you. I would swim the deepest ocean. I’d cross the Mojave Desert. I would even go to a Justin Bieber concert. I would do anything for you. By the way, I’ll be over tonight if it doesn’t rain too much.”

His girlfriend may have wondered how much he really loved her, not because his words were so objectionable but because his commitment to the deeds of love seemed questionable.

The Bible does say that our love for others must be rendered from our hearts, meaning that we should be intent on loving others and not render acts of love resentfully or with selfish ulterior motives.

But love isn't primarily an emotion. And it's not just words. Love is a verb.

It’s about the good we do for others, even when we don’t feel like doing it.

Jesus‘ earthly brother James writes in James 2:14-17: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” Where is our faith if we don't love others? Where is our love?

We can claim to love our neighbors--from the people who occupy the same homes in which we live to the victims of poverty, calamity, or despotism in foreign countries--but unless that sentiment is backed by deeds of self-sacrifice and compassion, our claims will be hollow and without meaning.  

The most famous portrait of love in the Bible probably is the so-called “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13. It’s often read at weddings, although the original issues Paul was addressing when he wrote to the Christians in first-century Corinth included the pride that some in the church had because they’d been given the gift of tongues and the arrogance of the wealthier members toward those with less.

Yet it does bear relevance to any discussion about love.

Take a look at part of it now with me, please. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (page 800). It says:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

I have to tell you that when I consider that portrait of love, I feel ashamed.

I do not measure up.

More often than not, I don’t love my neighbor as I love myself. I am self-absorbed and often selfish. I’m not always patient or kind. And I often watch news reports about people who are hurting in other places and don’t even muster enough compassion to pray for them. (A friend of mine always prays when a squad passes by and I find it hard even to remember to do that!)

Yet, here today we again confront Jesus’ command that we love others as we love ourselves. It is a core element in God’s will for us all, summarizing the second table of the Ten Commandments.

It’s part of the law written on every human heart.

And, I don’t keep this commandment.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that it’s instructive to notice where in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus gives the Great Commandment.

The Pharisee’s question was more or less a last ditch effort to derail Jesus’ credibility among His fellow Judeans. But Jesus gave an answer to which no one could object.

And then, Jesus asks a question of them: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They reply without hesitation: “The Son of David.” Then, we’re told in Matthew 22:43-46:

“[Jesus] said to them, 'How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him "Lord"? For he says, '"'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." If then David calls him "Lord," how can he be his son?' No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

The Pharisees, who had wanted to stump Jesus, were now stumped themselves. They could marshall no evidence warranting Jesus’ death. So, in order to get rid of Him--in order to get rid of the authority of God over their lives and their religious fiefdoms, they would have to resort to trumping up fake evidence to put Jesus on the executioner’s cross. That’s exactly what they did.

But in doing so, of course, they played into Jesus’ hands.

This One Who perfectly loved God and loved neighbor and Who was the Messiah called Lord by King David multiple centuries earlier had come for the express purpose of living out His love for us by dying on the cross, the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus lived the love He commands. He demonstrated that He is the Messiah, the King above all kings, by doing love’s ultimate deed, taking the punishment for sin you and I deserve so that when we repent for sin and believe in Him, we have everlasting life with God.

And He gives the righteousness that He lived--including the righteous obedience of the command to love others as we love ourselves--to all who believe in Him. Jesus gives His perfect obedience to us and then pours God's Holy Spirit into all with faith in Him.

Through Jesus then, N.T. Wright says, having been made right with God not by our deeds of love, but by Jesus’ deed of love rendered on the cross, we see that the Great Commandment--to love God and love neighbor--isn’t so much an order “to be obeyed in our own strength”--which we can not do anyway--but an invitation and a promise to new way of life.

The God Who claims us as His own by grace through our faith in Christ will, as we daily  call on Him to be in our lives, give us “a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become [a larger and larger] reality [in our lives].”

During our recent study of Ole Hallesby's book, Prayer, we noticed that the content of our prayer in Jesus' Name isn't as important that in praying in Jesus' Name, we invite Jesus into our lives and circumstances.

We may approach God with a perceived need or desire. But in responding to Jesus' call and command to pray, we actually are inviting Him in to do what He deems best in our lives. Give Jesus an inch and He will take a mile! As we pray in Jesus' Name, He takes up residence in our lives, usually with consequences we couldn't imagine, most especially consequences for our faith, our characters, and our priorities.

The simple fact is that we cannot love our neighbor unless we first let Jesus love us into following Him and surrendering to Him.

But as we dare to let Jesus into our lives each day--when we let Him know our dreams and our sins, our fears and our personal challenges and invite Him to be Lord over all our lives, to transform all our lives in accordance with the will of God--He will gradually, often without our even knowing it, usually without our even knowing it, help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Not just in words and not just in feelings, but in deeds and in living.

Jesus comes to live in the lives of all who call on Him and as we call on Him, both we and all the people with whom we come in contact are the better for it.

Our call is to let Jesus in, so that His love can go from us to all the world. Amen

Loving God

[This was prepared to be shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, during worship this morning.]

Matthew 22:36-40
Fads blaze in and out of life in the Church world as surely as they do in the realms of business, education, medicine, movies, and teenage music. All the time, it seems, someone selling a book or a DVD or a whole program with claims of having the silver bullets that will transform the lives of churches and individual believers, helping congregations to find and pursue their missions, and grow in all the ways God intends.

And some parts of those products and programs may actually help churches. After all, even a stopped clock, as they say, is right two times a day.

But, the problem is that often once churches and pastors adopt such programs, however well-intentioned, their lives effectively demonstrate that where they claim to believe in Jesus, they really believe in the mission statement, or the program, or the book, or the church growth guru, or the computer algorithm. Yet Jesus says, “I will build My church.”

The Church doesn’t need fads or new mission statements or DVDs or programs to know what its mission should be. Jesus, true God and true man, Who endured the condemnation for sin we deserved when He submitted to death on the cross, then sprung alive from the grave so that He can give us reconciliation with God, forgiveness of sin, power for living today, and eternity with God to all who repent and believe in Him as their only God and King, has already laid out the mission of the Church and the mission of Christ in plain language.

In three passages in the Gospels, Jesus defines the mission of every Christian congregation and of every Christian.

What He commands in these three passages is so impossible for us to do that unless we live in constant faithful dependence on Him, unless we constantly and regularly receive His grace and power as we pray in Jesus’ Name, worship Him with other believers, and receive His forgiveness and presence in Holy Communion, we simply will not be able to live the fivefold mission Jesus has given to us in these three key passages of Scripture.

As we begin this journey into deeper discipleship this Lenten season, let’s leave behind any notions of silver bullets or special programs that create instant discipleship or an instantly faithful and effective congregation.

If we as a congregation want to be all that Christ has in mind for us to be and if we as individual Christians want to live with the hope and peace that God has in mind for us, we must be attentive to the five building blocks for Christian living and mission that Jesus gives us in these three passages.

Let’s take a look at each of the three passages briefly.

The first is what we call the Great Commandment, found in Matthew 22:36-40. (Page 692 in the sanctuary Bibles.) A man asks Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Here, Jesus quotes two Old Testament passages which, taken together, summarize the two tables of the Ten Commandments, the first three deal with our relationship with God and the latter seven dealing with our relationship with our neighbors.

The second passage in which Jesus gives us our mission as congregation and individuals is referred to as the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20. (Page 698 in the Bibles.) The resurrected Jesus tells the 11 remaining apostles just before ascending to heaven: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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."

Notice how frequently Jesus uses the word all here: God the Father ceded all authority to Him and Jesus in turn gives us authority in His Name to make disciples of all people and to teach them everything (another word for all) about Jesus, His commands, and the new and everlasting life He offers to all people who trust in Him.

The third passage that gives us our mission is the New Commandment, John 13:34-35. (Page 751 in the Bibles.) Speaking to His disciples during the Last Supper, Jesus says to His Church: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Here, Jesus commands us to love our fellow disciples because doing so authenticates the reality of our faith and that we really have been made new by the grace of Christ.

This doesn't mean we will never disagree. Someone has said that if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant. We will have disagreements with one another in the Church; that doesn't mean we don't keep loving each other!

The five building blocks by which Christ builds His Church are seen in these three passages. They were the focal point of our church-wide vision and mission retreat in January.

They will continue to inform everything we do as a congregation and can help us all become the followers of Jesus--the disciples of Christ--we are called to be and that we all want to be.

The building blocks are:

• loving God; 
• loving our neighbors (wherever they may live); 
• loving our fellow believers; 
• making disciples; and 
• personally growing in our faith every day of our lives. 

Our focus during Lent, both on Sunday mornings and, in more informal gatherings, on Wednesday nights, including the testimonies of faith of our young people, will be on these five building blocks and how we can surrender ourselves to the gracious hand of Jesus Christ to become, as the Bible puts it, “living stones” in His body on earth, the Church.

Today, our focus is on loving God. Jesus says, quoting Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy 6:5: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Jesus, Who, after all is also God, says that this “the first and greatest commandment.”

Why does God need our love?

And why should we love Him?

And what does it mean to love God?

Let’s take each of those questions in order. Why does God need our love?

To put it simply, God doesn’t need our love. While speaking to the people in the marketplace in first century Athens, the apostle Paul noted: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”

God doesn’t need for us to love Him. God isn’t some self-absorbed egomaniac needing constant reassurance that He’s the apple of our eyes. God has all the love He could ever need or ever want within Himself, the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The New Testament tells us that, “God is love,” which doesn’t mean that God is some abstraction called love. It means that love informs every aspect of God's character and personality. Love is the motive behind everything God does--including judgment and discipline, including giving us the freedom to walk away from Him, including the cross and the empty tomb.

Out of an extravagance of love, though He didn’t need to do it, God gave us life and made us in His image.

The Old Testament says that we are the apple of God’s eye, the object of His passion and commitment and concern. That’s why, after humanity fell into sin, God set to work to save us from our sin--to save us from ourselves--and to save us from the death we deserve by becoming one of us in Jesus Christ, then dying and rising, so that all who repent and believe in Christ have life with God that begins now in this imperfect world and is “brought to perfection in the world to come.”

The fact is that God commands us to love Him not because He needs to be loved by us, but because we need to love Him.

When we love God, we simply acknowledge the reality that He is God and we aren’t, that He made us and that our lives are completely in His hands. We acknowledge that all of life is a gift from Him. And with gratitude, we acknowledge the depths of His passion for us, a passion that led Him to submit to suffering and death on the cross for us.

But how do we love God?

1 John 4:19 says: “We love because He first loved us.” Only God can empower us with the capacity for loving Him. We are only capable of truly loving God or other people because God, in Christ, has loved us into relationship with Him. In Christ, our love is no longer hostage to our thoughts or our emotions, which can change from day to day. To love God is to acknowledge the reality of both my need for Him and His grace for me, no matter what the circumstances of my life or my psyche at the moment.

My friends sometimes call me a human Thesaurus. If that’s even partly true then I have to tell you that a near synonym for the phrase love God is one simple word, worship.

To love God is to worship God, not just on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights, but with our whole lives. The Old English word from which we get worship was worth-ship. When we worship God, we acknowledge His worthiness of all our praise, honor, allegiance, and sacrifice. When you know that you have been saved for eternity from sin and death by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, you know that putting your life at His disposal is the only course in this life that makes sense. God’s people, the Israelites, who looked to the coming of the Messiah so that God could make His fallen creation right again, often extolled God’s worthiness. “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom,” Psalm 145:3 declares, for example.

But this raises a final point: To worship God involves more than our words: more than recited creeds, more that hymns or praise songs, more than offerings.

Through the prophet Amos in Old Testament times, God confronted a people who were evidently good at planning and executing impressive worship services. But He wasn’t pleased. “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies," God told His people. "Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” In other words, to truly love God means that we do more than give God or Jesus or our faith lip service. It entails seeking to do God's will and enlisting His power to do so.

David talks about this in Psalm 51: “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it...My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise...”

To love God means to seek each day to align ourselves with God.

To praise and honor Him, not just with our lips, but with our lives.

To repent for sin.

To pray for the needs of others.

To help those in need.

To put God first because we know that in Christ, God has always put us first.

To put God first is the hardest and most impossible of all the commands God gives. It runs counter to our inborn nature as sinners.

But as we heed the call of the Holy Spirit to faith in Christ and to call out to God in Christ’s Name, God will do battle each day in the little places where we live our lives so that, whether with our families, at work, or in some ministry of the congregation in which we’re involved, God will help us render Him worship, honor, glory, and praise through who we are and what we do. By the power of the Holy Spirit given to Christians by Jesus, Who Himself was given to us by the Father, we will love God. Amen 

The Importance of Persistent Prayer

[This message was shared during both worship services at Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Luke 18:1-18
To begin this morning, I’d like to ask you to pull out one of the pew Bibles and turn to the first two verses of Psalm 13. There, King David writes: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?”

Have you been there?

Do you go through times in your life--maybe you’re going through such a time right now--when it feels like your prayers aren’t being heard, that they climb as high as the ceiling of the room in which you pray, then come crashing down again?

Do you suspect hat God doesn’t hear?

Or maybe even that God doesn’t care?

That prayer isn’t your thing?

That there’s no point in praying again today about the same things you feel prayed for with no result on the day before, or the month before, or the year before that?

Jesus has important words for you (and for me) today. Please go to our Gospel lesson, Luke 18:1-8. You can find it in the bulletin or in the pew Bibles. (Incidentally, if you need a Bible, feel free to take the one you’ve just grabbed home with you to keep.)

Verse 1: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”

That word, then, is important. It alerts us to the fact that what’s about to follow in the text is related to what came just before it.

If you scan the passage just before our Gospel lesson, you’ll see that Jesus was talking about the day of His return, when He will “judge the living and the dead.” It will be a great day for those who have turned from sin and trusted in Him for forgiveness and eternally new lives.

But it's a day that will come without warning. Jesus is saying that we need to be prepared for His return. And we prepare for His return by turning to Him in faith each day, confessing our sins, receiving His forgiveness, and seeking His will.

Jesus says all this for two reasons.

First, to help us to understand the urgency of heeding His call to “repent and believe” that “God so loved the world He gave His only Son [Jesus], that whoever believes in Him may not perish [as all who refuse Jesus’ offer of new life will] but have everlasting life” with God.

And second, to help His Church--you and me--understand how urgent it is for us to be about the great commission He has given to us, to make disciples, to reach into the Church and to reach out to the world to help people know the crucified and risen Jesus!

It’s so easy in this world to lose our urgency about following or sharing Christ.

It isn’t just life’s tragedies that challenge our faith and cause us to give up on prayerful reliance on God.

It’s also the sheer volume of stuff we are called upon to accomplish each week; we get so caught up in minutiae that we give up on praying.

Instead, we take the weight of the world onto our own shoulders.

That, folks, is a prescription for eternal disaster.

We won’t be saved by how much or how often we pray, of course. Salvation from sin and death are gifts from a gracious God to all who believe in Jesus. But if we forget to pray, whether by deliberate decision or by the constant undertow of daily work and daily cares, we will also soon forget Jesus.

We will forget to trust in Him.

We will lose our faith.

That’s why Jesus tells this parable, to encourage us “to always pray and not give up.”

Look at verse 2, please: “[Jesus] said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men.’”

Jesus' fictional judge was living in a way totally opposed to the will of God.

In one of his most important insights, Martin Luther talked about how God’s Ten Commandments are divided into two tables--two sections. The first three commandments--the first table of God’s Law--address our relationship with God. The fourth through tenth commandments--the second table of the Law--address our relationship with other people. Jesus summarized the two tables once. Quoting from two passages of the Old Testament, Jesus said that God’s will for humanity, His great commandment, is that we love God with all of our heart, mind, and strength and that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

The judge was living deep in sin, out of fellowship with God and with others.

In verse 3, Jesus continues the parable: “And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'”

Widows were at the bottom of the social ladder in first century Judea where Jesus lived. They had no legal rights at all, not even rights to the properties of their dead husbands.

That’s why the widow of this parable is so remarkable!

It was a bold and audacious thing for her to plead her case before a judge.

Since we know that in this parable, Jesus is talking about prayer, let me ask you a question you might want to think about this coming week: How bold, how audacious are you in your prayer life? Are you willing to be incessant in your prayer life?

The thing that’s important here is that this widow did not give up. She was certain that her cause was right, of course. But she was also sure that only this judge had the power to give her justice.

Listen: We never have prayed until we do so knowing the only One Who can render the help we need is God Himself.

My favorite book on prayer, as many of you will come to know, is called Prayer. It was written by the Norwegian Lutheran pastor and theologian of the last century, Ole Hallesby.

Hallesby said that there are two essential elements to prayer. Without these two elements, the words we may call prayer aren’t prayer at all. Those two elements are faith and helplessness. This widow was helpless. That’s why she kept going to the judge. She also trusted that only the judge, despite, his corruption, could give her justice.

When we believe in God and know that we are helpless without Him, then we will pray and not give up in our praying.

Verses 4 and 5: “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"

The corrupt judge was worn down by this woman’s persistent petitions.

But beware, this is the most dangerous part of the parable. If we ignore what Jesus says next in explanation of the parable, we will miss the whole point.

Verses 6, 7, and the first part of verse 8: “And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

God will vindicate our trust in Him, by responding to our prayers, sometimes in ways and at times we may not expect.

Now, the takeaway from this parable isn’t that God is just like the unjust judge. You don’t have to keep pounding at the gates of heaven in order to get God’s attention!

He knows the number of hairs on your head. (Or the number of hairs you used to have on your head, anyway.)

He cares about every moment of our lives.

Never doubt that the God Who gave you the gift of life, then took on human flesh so that He could give up His own life on the cross and rise from the tomb to give new and everlasting life to all who believe in Jesus, cares about you.

God does care about you.

God truly is in love with you.

He wants what is best for you.

So, He wants to hear from you.

God will not put you off.

But there will often be times when God will expect us to persist in prayer.

Let me tell you a story from my own experience. Years ago, there was an element in my own life which I was sure was not as it should be. I asked God to change the situation.

I prayed about it, offering the same basic petition night and day, for thirteen years.

Nothing seemed to change.

Still, as I read God’s Word and as I waited for God in silence, I saw no reason to stop praying this same petition.

I had no sense that God was telling me to stop praying about this matter, the way He once told the apostle Paul to stop a particular prayer request he had. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that after he had prayed three times that a “thorn in the flesh”--some painful circumstance in Paul’s life that he never identifies--be removed from his life, he sensed God telling him, “No, Paul. I won’t remove this harsh reality from your life. My grace, the grace that saves sinners from their sin and from its consequence, death, is sufficient. My grace is all you need.”

I was willing to accept that sort of answer from God. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I would have accepted it.

But I got no answer. So, I kept praying.

And then, amazingly, after thirteen years, out of the blue, the answer came.

It happened in ways I never could have imagined nor foreseen.

Here’s the lesson I learned from that experience--a lesson I try to remember, but often forget: God delays the answers to many of our prayers so that when the answers come, there will be no doubt about Who answered those prayers.

God wants us to come to the ends of ourselves, the ends of our resourcefulness, of our wills, and realize that, as the New Testament says, “every good and perfect gift” comes from God alone. God calls us to persistence in prayer so that, in the face of life’s challenges, our faith will grow.

Saint Augustine put it this way back in the fourth century: “Faith pours out prayer, and the pouring out of prayer obtains the strengthening of faith...”

I can’t explain why God doesn’t answer some of our prayers--like our prayers for loved ones or friends suffering from some chronic or terminal disease, or our prayers that marriages be saved, or those for a new job or admission to the college of our dreams. I will not be so flippant as to say I understand the mysteries of God. I don’t. (Though I do know that the God Who suffered and died on a cross understands every pain we endure, even the pain of death.)

But I do know this: To live life with any joy or hope or staying power, we need faith in the crucified and risen Jesus. And to have faith in Jesus--the kind of faith that saves us to live with God now and in eternity, we need to practice persistent, dependent prayer. 

We lay everything at the feet of Jesus--our sins, our arrogance, our hopes, our past, present, and future, our fears--and through constant prayer, we learn to truly pray and live the hardest petition Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.”

And so, Jesus says at the end of our lesson: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Wherever Jesus finds people who pray with persistent faith and persistent helplessness--persistent desperation--for Him and His will, He will find faith. It is in people who pray like this even today that He finds faith.

May He find and keep building that kind of faith in you and me. Amen

A Mindful Life

Jesus said: "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have strength...to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:34-36).

Jesus says that we're to live "mindful lives." Grateful for the free gifts of forgiveness and new life that belong to all who turn from sin and give their lives to Him, we're to be mindful of ways in which we can fulfill what Jesus calls the greatest commandment: to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).

Mindfulness of others--of God and of other people--doesn't come naturally to us. The Bible says that from imperfect parents and imperfect ancestors, we inherit an inborn impulse to think of ourselves first (Psalm 51:5).

But self-absorbed living, Jesus says, is a trap. It prevents us from having the life only the Creator of life can give. And it prevents us from fulfilling the most joyful part of being human, being able to share the life God gives in Christ with others (1 John 1:4).

We spend much of our lives trying to gain, earn, beg, or steal the things we think will give us life. But only Christ can do that (John 14:6; John 6:68).

One step toward a mindful life is to ask that God will free us from the common human addiction to living for ourselves (or for our family, country, or cause) and to replace it with a dependence on Christ alone (Luke 10:41-42). Jesus sets us free to become our true selves, who we were created to be by the master designer, God.

When we're living mindfully, here's some of what happens:

• We see Christ in those in need and try to serve them as though we were serving Christ Himself (Matthew 25:31-46).
• We prepare to share the hope we have with others (1 Peter 3:15-16).
• We resist the temptation to sin, which is really a temptation to dehumanize ourselves or others and dishonor God and ourselves (Matthew 6:13).
• We get over ourselves and forgive others as God forgives us (Luke 11:4).

Turn to Christ each day and ask Him, "Lord, help me to lead a mindful life. Help me to be alert to the possibilities this day presents for me to live in the freedom from self You want to give to me. Amen."

[This was inspired by yesterday's readings for Read the Bible in a Year here at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Be Patient: God Will Make Things Right

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

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
When I was in the first grade, we learned about how seeds become plants. To show us how the process worked, we were each given seeds and some dirt. We were told to take them home and ask our parents for an old cup and then plant our seeds in the dirt in the cup, put the cup in a windowsill where it could catch light from the sun, water the seeds slightly every day, and then watch what happened.

I did everything our teacher told us to do. But after a few days, I got impatient. Nothing had sprouted. I knew from our study at school that, at the very least, by that point, the seed should have been sprouting some roots beneath the surface. But, I wondered, since nothing seemed to be happening above the dirt, if anything was happening beneath it.

I just had to find out, so I could fix things. So, I poked around and found that below the dirt, my seed had sprouted a root that looked just like the one pictured in the mimeographed handout our teacher had given to us.

Just then, my Mom walked into the kitchen and explained that since that I had dug the seed from the dirt, it would no longer grow. (I don't know if that was true or not, but it's what my Mom told me.) My impatience had ruined everything!

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells a parable—or story—that tells we Christians to be patient for the full flowering of God’s kingdom. We may not be able to see it clearly, but God has already answered the petition Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come.”

That’s why Jesus says elsewhere that the time of God’s kingdom “is coming and now is.”* God’s kingdom isn’t yet all that it will be when Jesus returns to this earth. But it is alive in our world and it is alive in all who turn from sin and trust in Christ as their God and Lord.

Our call, as believers in Jesus, is to patiently be about God’s business and to patiently trust that one day, as Jesus promises at the end of today’s lesson, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.”

Please pull out the Celebrate inserts and take a look at our Gospel lesson. “Someone” (Jesus says the someone is Himself) sows good seed in a field. The field in this parable, Jesus explains, is the world in which you and I live.

Unlike last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, in which the seeds represented the Word of God, Jesus explains that the good seeds in this parable, are the children of God’s kingdom—those who believe in Jesus Christ.

Once, Jesus says, while everybody was asleep, an enemy—Jesus identifies this as the devil—goes into the field and sows weeds.

It needs to be pointed out that Jesus, in the original Greek in which the New Testament was written, identifies a specific kind of weed that was sown, the weed known as a tare. The problem with the tare is that, like people, masquerading as Christians or children of God, this weed looks exactly like wheat…until the ears appear.

By the time tares are seen to be growing alongside wheat, it’s usually too late to save the wheat!

That explains what happens next in Jesus’ parable. The slaves of the householder—servants of Jesus—discover the tares among the wheat. They go to the Master—Jesus—and ask if they can uproot the weeds and burn them. They think that by this strategy, they (and not their Master) can save the wheat.

This request and the thinking behind it is really no different from what I did as a first grader. I thought that I could speed up or fix the processes for growth that God Himself created by uprooting the seed in the cup on our kitchen windowsill. We need to trust that God knows what He’s doing. He doesn’t need us to “fix” things.

Once, Jesus and His disciples were heading to Jerusalem and passed through a town in Samaria. Knowing that Jesus is a Jew headed for the Jewish holy city, none of the Samaritans in that town would share food, water, or hospitality with Jesus or His disciples. Two of the disciples, James and John asked Jesus, “Do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy this village, Lord?” They wanted to pluck up the weeds of unrighteousness, rather than trusting Jesus to take care of things with His own long-term plan. Jesus, instead, turned to James and John and rebuked (or reprimanded or condemned) them and left the disbelieving village intact, allowing the people there to live and grow with the hope that, somewhere among the tares, wheat—people who trust in Christ for forgiveness and life—might take root and grow there.

We see Christians impatient with the way God does things in our world today.

Some well-meaning believers, for example, insist that courthouse squares must have statues with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them.

Other believers send their bishops to testify before Congress, on the theory that it’s righteous and godly for the federal government to appropriate X-amount-of-dollars to combat this or that problem in the world.

Advocates of such steps are often quick to write off the faith or righteousness of those who disagree with them. But, no coercive step we may lobby a government body into doing will hasten the coming of God’s kingdom.

Both of them exhibit impatience with God and the way He intends to work in this world.

In the Great Commandment to love God and love neighbor and in the Great Commission to share God’s Word about Jesus in its fullness and make disciples, Jesus has shown us the role His followers are to play in the coming of His kingdom.

We’re to be patient. We’re to be patient in accepting that, by allowing wheat and weeds to grow side by side, God knows what He’s doing.

In verse 29 of the Gospel lesson, the Master of Jesus’ parable, instructs the slaves not to gather the weeds for fear that in doing so, the wheat would be uprooted at the same time.

It can be depressing for Christians to look at the world today. There are many things we might like to see uprooted.

We see people relying on material goods rather than on God to give their lives meaning.

We see people ignoring the needs of others so that they can pursue what they call “happiness.”

We see people ignoring God’s will that sexual intimacy is to be expressed between one man and one woman in a lifelong relationship known as marriage.

We hear people violating God’s command that we not bear false witness as they engage in gossip.

We see people consumed with resentment and hatred, murdering one another with words and with guns.

Even more depressingly, if we’re honest, we see how every day, we ourselves violate the Ten Commandments, failing to love God and to love neighbor.

We see how, because of our sins, we ourselves constantly need to come to God, seeking forgiveness in the Name of Jesus. (Personally, there are times, when I consider my sins, that I wonder why God puts up with me at all!)

When will this madness all come to an end?

When will Jesus bring His Kingdom to us in its fullness, ridding the world of its evil and ridding us of the evil that lives inside each of us?

We don’t know the answers to those questions. But we do know two things.

First, we know that evil will come to an end.

In Jesus’ parable, the Master lets the wheat and the weeds keep growing. But at harvest time—or, as Jesus explains, when Jesus returns to the earth—the weeds—all the causes of sin and all evildoers—will be thrown into the furnace of fire. There, Jesus says, there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” as people spend an eternity regretting that they rejected Jesus’ free gifts of forgiveness and new life.

But the reapers—the angels or messengers of God—will also gather the wheat into the Master’s barn. Those made righteous by the grace of God given to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, will live with God for eternity!

When God’s people are gathered to Him in eternity, then their perseverance in turning constantly to Jesus for life and hope, forgiveness and new life, will be rewarded.

The apostle Peter says this about Jesus’ promise to gather us into an eternity without sin, evil, pain, or suffering: “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all come to repentance.” The Lord is patient.

And this is why God is patient. God can do something that, so far as I know, has never happened in any farm field: He can turn weeds into wheat.

God can convert those imprisoned by sin and evil into the forgiven children of God. He will do this for anyone who turns from sin and trusts Jesus as God, Savior, and King of their lives.

Jesus hasn’t returned yet because He wants to use His Church—you and me—to share His message with all the world—wheat and weeds.

God wants all people to have the opportunity to live in His kingdom.

If you trust in Jesus, you can live each day in the confidence that Paul expressed in the New Testament: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” The lives we live here, no matter how long or short they may turn out to be, aren't even a fraction of the eternity God wants us to spend with Him!

Meanwhile, while we live this life, our call is clear. As Ephesians puts it, “Be careful how you live…making the most of the time, because the days are evil…”

Even in a world filled with the weeds of evil and sin, you can grow strong as a child of God!

Keep loving God and loving neighbor.

Keep repenting and believing in Christ.

Keep praying in Christ’s Name and keep sharing Christ with others in word and deed.

Know and be happy that you are already at this very moment, part of God’s kingdom.

And know that one day, in the presence of your Lord Jesus, sin and evil will be a thing of the past, and, with all believers in Christ, you will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father.

That’s worth being patient for. Amen!

*Jesus used this phrasing several times during His ministry.

"Born in the USA"

Regular readers of this blog know that I wade into political waters reluctantly. Usually, if I do write about political matters, it's to make historical comparisons* or to discuss the politics, the strategy and mechanics, of politics.** But I am loathe to express my personal political convictions; because I'm a pastor, I don't want to claim that my convictions are God's convictions. The Bible doesn't lay out a political program and anyone who claims otherwise, whatever their political philosophy, dishonors God. Attempts by preachers and others to use the authority of God to prop up their own political preferences are either cynical or idolatrous, reducing the almighty God of the universe to self-chosen propositions which become objects of worship.

The only circumstances under which I deem it appropriate for pastors or church bodies to comment on the political or governmental processes is when justice or the love of neighbor, both commands of God, are clearly at issue.

In recent weeks, billionaire and showman Donald Trump has been creating a stir by intimating that he may run for president. Among the main "issues" he has been raising is whether the current President of the United States, Barack Obama, is, as required by the United States Constitution, a natural born citizen of the country.

This question first arose during the 2008 presidential campaign, when people were heard to say that the African-American senator from Illinois with the funny-sounding name wasn't "one of us."

But, as pointed out by conservative Republican Linda Chavez in a recent column, the facts of this "case" aren't even disputable: Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. (Contrary to what some have said, it should be pointed out that this was approximately two years after Hawaii was admitted as a state. But even had the President been born in Hawaii, a US territory, prior to the state's admission in 1959, he would still be considered a natural born citizen of the country.) For more detailed information, you can go to FactCheck.org, a non-partisan site, to confirm that the President was, indeed, born in the USA.

So, why am I writing about this matter?

It's simple. Donald Trump may be a demagogue and a racist, but I don't think he's stupid. He can't be ignorant of the fact that the President is a native-born US citizen. He appears to be striving to give life to what has already been shown to be a lie, appealing to a strain of racism in our country that refuses to believe that someone who doesn't look like any previous president and doesn't have a name like any previous president could be qualified or worthy of the office.

Trump has said that the President couldn't be intelligent enough to be admitted into an Ivy League law school. Trump has said that the President is incapable of having actually written two best-selling books, that he must have had ghost-writers.

The clear insinuation is that everything about the President, including the location of his birth, is a fraudulent hoax. The facts say otherwise. (If you're inclined to believe any of what Trump has said about the President, you might want to read The Bridge. The author isn't a spokesperson for Obama, but a straightforward biographer, who sometimes says less than complimentary things about the President.)

But if Trump was simply wrong on matters of fact, I wouldn't be writing this post. (I myself get my facts wrong, as I freely admit.)

Donald Trump is engaging in race-baiting. Whether he uses the words or not, he portrays the President as the unworthy beneficiary of affirmative action for getting admitted to a prestigious law school. He intimates that because the President is black, he couldn't possibly write two literate books. And because he's black, Trump believes, the President can't possibly be worthy of holding the highest office in the country.

Christians, commanded by God to love our neighbors as we love ourselves--even when the neighbor is the President of the United States--and to love justice--even when the victim of injustice occupies the White House, must speak up.

Donald Trump needs to be told that he is clearly and sinfully in the wrong. Whether he gets the message or cares about it or not, that's what I'm doing here.

What do you think?

*I'm a life-long student of history and majored in Social Studies Education, with a major concentration on History, at Ohio State, from which I graduated in 1975

**I used to be involved in politics.

You GET to Love

[This message was shared at the funeral for Edith, a ninety-one year old member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Matthew 22:36-40
1 John 4:10
During my first visit with Edith about a month-and-a-half ago at the Logan Health Care center, I asked her, as I often ask nursing home residents, how she liked living there. Her answer came in an instant. She liked it very much, she told me.

Now, I have to tell you that I don’t always get an answer like that. Moving into a nursing home after a lifetime of independence is a bitter pill to swallow for anyone. Rare is the person who can look past those feelings to accept the necessity of their new living situation. But Edie did accept it.

Why is that?

I got a few clues as our visit proceeded. For example, immediately after telling me that she liked being at Logan Health Care, she said, “We’re one big family here.”

As if to confirm that, a short time later, as I was preparing to share Holy Communion with her, Edith said, “There’s a man in the next room who likes to take Communion when I do. Would that be okay?” That was more than okay with me. So, Hubert came to Edie’s room and received Holy Communion at the same time.

Part of the reason that Edith adjusted so well to life in a nursing home, then, is that she was willing to do the work necessary to create a kind of family with the other residents and the staff at Logan Health Care.

This is remarkable, when you think about it. Edith after all, was already part of a family. And, boy, did she love that family! During that first visit I had with her and almost every time I visited with her in the hospital, Edie spoke with me about her sons, Chuck and Robert and their wives, Eva and Kay. She never failed to mention that she loved them and was proud of them.

In the time since that first visit, I’ve learned more about Edie and her sense of family. The other day, Mr. Brown, the local funeral director, told me about his long association with Chuck and through him, with Edith. He talked about the cards he often received from her. Often, she signed them, “Mom Eaton.”

What this tells me is not only that her family was important to Edith, but also that her family included more than just those related to her.

I get this same sense about Edith when I talk with people at Saint Matthew. And I can tell you that to them, Edie was more than just a name on the church roster. She was a beloved member of our Christian family!

In short, Edith seemed to know how to love, to make people feel valued and included. That is a special gift, one which, by all accounts, she exhibited with good humor. This gift, in fact, cuts to the very heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, you remember, was once asked what the greatest commandment from God is. Jesus, summarizing all the laws found in the Old Testament, said, “'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind'...And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’"

All of God’s laws and the words of all the prophets, Jesus goes on to say, are built on these two commands.

God our Father wants His family, the entire human race, to be held together by the strong bonds of love made available to us through Jesus Christ.

But, let’s face it, it’s not often that you and I see people who exhibit the capacity to love in this way, to treat so many as though they are part of “one big family,” the way Edith did.

If she could be with us right now, I suspect that Edith would tell us the source of her capacity to live so differently, to love so expansively didn't come from inside of her.

She might point to words from the apostle John, who writes in the New Testament, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

God loved us before we were even born. He died on a cross for us and rose from the dead for us before were ever knew that we needed a Savior. Edith believed in this Savior, she trusted Him with her life. It was Jesus Christ Who gave her her remarkable capacity to love!

Years ago, an eminent Methodist bishop spoke to a gathering of Church leaders and admitted, “For forty years, I’ve gotten it wrong. I’ve been telling people, ‘You’ve got to love. You’ve got to love.’ But what I should have been saying is, ‘You get to love.’”

Deep inside of us all, we want to love others as God first loved us through Jesus Christ. We want others to get a sense of the love that changed our lives forever when God sent His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will never perish, but have everlasting life.

Edie, it seems to me from meeting her and talking with those who knew her, went beyond wanting to live like that to actually, very often, living like that.

As you grieve your loss, dear family and friends, the greatest memorial you can erect in Edith's honor is to follow the Savior she followed and to remember that through Jesus Christ, Who loved you from a cross and an empty tomb, you get to love. You get to treat others as though they were part of one big family.

I think that Edith would like it if you lived like that!