Charleston by the Harbor

Our farewell look at Charleston, South Carolina, just before leaving. The Citadel there was the site for the 2014 North American Lutheran Church convocation. If you were standing where this pic was taken, Fort Sumter would be off to your right.

The college proved to be a very good host.

And the people of Saint Timothy Lutheran Church of Goose Creek, South Carolina, provided participants in all the Lutheran events happening on campus last week with shuttle service from the parking lots to the meeting venues.

Thanks to all!

Unity for a Purpose

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

John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ and unity among those who confess that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “I do not pray for these alone [meaning the disciples who were with Him in first century Judea], but also for those who will believe in Me through their word [Jesus is praying for us here; we have come to believe in Him through the apostles’ word about Jesus.]; that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us...”

What is the unity among Christians for which Jesus prays?

Well, first of all, let's remember one thing it is not. It is not coerced uniformity. I knew a man who made this brag about his marriage: “One of the things I’m proudest of is that we’ve been married more than thirty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” He really was proud of that. But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and seeing a counselor for years. He was happy; she was a wreck. That husband and wife didn’t seem to be “one” to me. Unity is not coerced uniformity.

Also, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict is to be expected.

Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Saducees for valuing their religion over having a personal relationship with God.

He upbraided His fellow Jews for refusing to believe in Him, though He had come into the world because God loved the world and then died and rose so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him can have eternal life with God.

He called His own disciple, Peter, a Satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.

Paul and Barnabas, as well as Paul and Peter, had raging arguments.

Sometimes, in the Church, as in our marriages and friendships, it’s only through the clash of ideas that the truth becomes clearer. But that need not threaten unity.

The unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations.

As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth.

In Luther’s Two Kingdoms understanding of how God rules--you remember, the kingdoms of the earth that are ruled through laws, rules, and coercion and the kingdom of God which is ruled by grace among those who believe in Jesus Christ--the institutional Church is not part of the kingdom of God. It’s one of the kingdoms of the earth.

The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession “is to remain forever.” Notice, it's not our buildings, candlesticks, robes, organs, hymnbooks, fellowship halls, office equipment, parsonages, parking lots, and so on that will remain forever. All of those things will one day be destroyed to make way for a new heaven and a new earth, but the Church will remain forever. Article 7 goes on to say that the Church “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”

When agreement about the Gospel of new life through Jesus and agreement about the administration of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion exist, along with the commitment to sharing Christ with the world that flows from that agreement, then we begin to experience the unity for which Jesus prays.

I enjoy getting together with Christians of other denominations and heritage. That’s been part of my faith journey. I was baptized in an evangelical Friends Church and was confirmed in a Methodist Church. A Roman Catholic priest preached at my ordination service. He and a Nazarene pastor joined my own Lutheran pastor in laying on hands when I was ordained. I’ve participated in and led prayer and study groups with Methodists, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals. I served on or chaired five committees for the Billy Graham Mission in Cincinnati back in 2002, working with folks from every Christian faith tradition. Since coming to Logan, I’ve participated in a number of multi-denominational prayer services, including one just a few weeks ago.

We can and should affirm that Christians of other traditions have Jesus and have eternal life. We can pray with them. We can praise God with them. We can join them in serving our community, as we do through the CHAP emergency food bank and will likely increasingly do through the Inspire shelter for the homeless.

We must avoid the sin of denominationalism, thinking that we have an exclusive claim to God’s truth.

But there is a place for our denominations. As Lutherans, we want the Church to be united. But we have disagreements on fundamental aspects of the Christian faith with our sisters and brothers in Christ in other traditions.

So, we continue to proclaim the good news of new life by God’s grace through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus as we understand it and pray for that day when unity goes beyond institutional affiliations or legalistic checklists of cooperative ventures.

We pray for that day when the whole Church on earth will be united in the pure Gospel and the right use of the Sacraments. And like Martin Luther before us, we will offer to gladly admit our errors and any straying from God's Word if it can be shown to us.

Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy. Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”

Love allows for a little neurosis in those we love and in ourselves. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.

Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity.

Look at verse 23. There, Jesus prays, “...that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

The unity for which Jesus prays has one purpose then: to empower us and lend us the credibility with the world to tell others about Jesus Christ.

I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. Listen: A truly united church loves nothing more than making disciples. Members of united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”

The Church is the fellowship of the saved, reaching out to those who are still lost. We reach out in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends when repentant sinners believe in Jesus Christ!

In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

A truly united church, like John, wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God.

A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!

Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.

If Christians live in unity for any other purpose, they may be nice people; but they are not a church. 



One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of making a resolution to be united.

Sometimes, I have our Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus.

You know what happens? As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.

As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. We see them as imperfect AND loved people, just like us, all of us in need of daily repentance and of the grace of God given in Christ that can daily make us new again.

Jesus has to pray that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.

As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves. Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong,” will be spoken among us. And more people will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus to be part of His priesthood of all believers, each with ministries to the Church and to the world.

All of which leads us to May 19.

I cannot tell you how to vote on the question of joining the North American Lutheran Church and leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America next Sunday.

You must decide for yourself as you pray and study God’s Word.

But I do know that a humanly-created unity based on never having differences of opinion is not the unity Jesus wants us to have.

Nor is Christian unity necessarily about affiliation with a particular humanly-created denominational structure (be it the NALC or the ELCA) or with a particular humanly-created congregational corporation.

True Christian unity is rooted in a common belief in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, in a common belief that it is only by grace through a faith in Christ that includes repentance and surrender to Jesus. True Christian unity is also rooted in a common belief that in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, God acts (we don't act, God acts) in our lives to bring grace, forgiveness, and life. And true Christian unity is also rooted in a common commitment to sharing these things with fellow sinners who will be eternally separated from God unless Christians care enough to share the truth of both God’s law and of God’s promise of new life in Christ.

Let the unity that Jesus prays for guide you in your decision on how to vote. Put your decision in Christ’s hands and know that, whatever you decide, God loves you and that I too truly love every member of this congregation. Amen

Seeing and Serving the "Invisible" People

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

James 2:1-17
Through the centuries, the New Testament book of James, from which our second Bible lesson for today is drawn, hasn’t enjoyed much appreciation by we Lutheran Christians. Martin Luther himself called it an “epistle of straw,” worthy of being burned.

Yet Luther also said that this New Testament letter had important wisdom for those who already believe in the gospel.

And that’s why I believe the book of James is, as much as any other book of the Bible, the Word of God: It’s a word from God about how to live as though Jesus Christ really is the Savior and God we confess Him to be.

The Church, as I’ve said before, is Christ’s hospital for recovering hypocrites. It’s in the fellowship of the Church that we are confronted by the reality of our sin and hypocrisy, face the reality that death is sin’s natural consequence, and that only those who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus are set free  from sin and death.

But it’s also in the fellowship of the Church, gathered around God’s Word in Jesus’ Name, that God affects those mid-course corrections that we imperfect hypocrites need as we travel through life toward the moment we meet Christ face to face.

In today’s lesson, James addresses one of the most common ways we can go off course in our faith: Showing partiality to some people over others.

Please turn to the lesson, James 2:1-17. James begins:

My brethren [sisters, too], do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?’

The churches to which James wrote were themselves largely composed of poor people. Yet, James says, they fell all over themselves in welcoming rich people to their worship gatherings.

This may have been something they did out of habit; the poor of ancient cultures were taught to be completely subservient to the rich and were also taught that wealth was a sign of God’s favor.

On the other hand, they may have treated poor visitors to their worship the way they did either because it made them feel good to be superior to somebody else for once or because they had been taught that poverty was God’s curse for sin.

Whatever the reasons for their partiality, James was saying it was always wrong! It still is.

And you know what? Partiality of any kind is always wrong.

In a sermon on this passage from James, Pastor Maxie Dunham tells the true story of a woman, Dr. Ridenour, who, in her mid-forties, suffered from a stroke that rendered her partially paralyzed for some time.

“The paralysis,” Dunnam writes, “was an embarrassment, creating a kind of vulnerability and nakedness, a sadness, and an infinite kind of loneliness.” People didn’t know how to relate to her and so, hung up on their own discomfort, they ignored Jesus’ command to love others as we love ourselves and ignored Dr. Ridenour. She became invisible.

Who do we avoid--who do we render invisible--by ignoring them?

“Did you meet the visitors in worship last Sunday?” I’ve routinely asked the members of the three congregations I’ve served as pastor over the years. Inevitably, it seems, someone will say, “No. I didn’t meet them because I never met them before.”

Isn’t that answer a way of saying, “I didn’t meet them because I don’t want to meet them”?

It’s really a handy way to foil God’s purpose for our lives. And what are God's purposes for us?

Take a look, please, at 2 Corinthians 5:20. It says:

“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For [God] made [Christ] Who knew no sin to be sin for us [Christ, though sinless, bore our sin on the cross], that we might become the righteousness of God in [Christ].” 

Through our faith in Christ, God has made us right with God [that’s a big part of what righteousness means for us, being right with God] and we in turn are to be ambassadors for Christ and His kingdom to other people.

But, if we make other people invisible, we won’t have to be ambassadors. We won't see anybody who needs the gospel.

 “I didn’t see that visitor to worship,” we say.

“I didn’t know there were hungry people in Hocking County."

"I didn’t know that my neighbor was unemployed or having health issues."

"I didn’t know about their grief.”

This is no different from those Jesus condemns in His parable of the last judgment. Take a look at Matthew 25:44-45. “Lord,” the condemned ask plaintively, “when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” You can’t see people you’ve willfully made invisible, of no account, unworthy of your consideration, concern, or even a simple greeting.

In Matthew 5:46, Jesus says that, at the final judgment, he will say to those who have condemned themselves by ignoring Him and others, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

Now, don’t get confused!

You will not be saved from sin and death and purposeless living by doing good works.

In Jesus Christ, God has already done all the work needed to save us so that we can live this life with purpose and look forward to living with God for eternity.

Jesus didn’t lead a sinless life, die on a cross, and rise from the dead just to turn you into a neurotic who thinks you have to work hard at doing enough good things to earn God’s love or grace!

God already loves you. That’s why He sent God the Son to die and rise for you.

Turn please to Ephesians 2:8-9. It says:

“For by grace [that is, God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves [you didn’t earn your salvation]; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” 

We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Period.

For God’s “amazing grace,” we should give glory to God every single day!

But faith in Jesus Christ is more than the acceptance of an intellectual proposition. James puts it this way back in our lesson, at James 2:17: “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Faith is a trust in Jesus that will so free us from concern about ourselves that, if we let it, God will open our eyes to see others.

We’ll see the visitor to worship, the hungry, the jobless, the grieving.

The still small voice of God will tell our spirits, “Now that you have eternity with Me, what have you got to lose from reaching out to others? Not even death itself can separate you from Me. So, go for it!”

A man I know, a Christian, hesitated to call on a friend whose wife had just left him. He didn’t want to butt in and he was sure others were reaching out to his friend.

Besides, the very idea of calling his friend made him feel uncomfortable.

What would he say?

How could he handle those awkward silences?

But when he told a wise friend about his hesitation, the friend told him, as gently as he could, “Get over yourself. Your discomfort is not the issue at hand. The issue is that, right now, is that your friend feels alone, isolated from others and from God. You need to call your friend.”

He did and you know what? He learned that he was the first person to have called that hurting man in weeks. He was so glad he’d taken his friend’s advice!

First Corinthians 12:27 says that we Christians, members of Christ’s eternal Church, are part of the “body of Christ.” That means that we are Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, for one thing, it means that no one should be invisible to us. Jesus, God the Son, could have stayed safely enthroned in heaven, listening to the praises of the angels, acting as though you and I didn’t exist, ignoring the fact that without His intervention, we would live this life without His help, die in our sins, and spend eternity in hell.

But the God of love was unwilling to give up on us so easily. We weren’t invisible to God!

That’s why we’re told that Jesus “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And when Jesus walked on this earth, He reached out to and loved all sorts of people: the rich, the poor, the religious, the unrepentant sinners, the blind, the lame, the grieving, the in-crowd, and the forgotten.

Jesus could do that because He operated in the certainty that, as He trusted in God the Father, nothing could separate Jesus from Him: not the hatred of the crowds, not the condemnation of religious or government authorities, not the torture or execution or death on the cross He would undergo.

As believers in Jesus, we can live in the same assurance.

So, this week, I want to ask you to go to God in prayer and make a simple request.

“God,” we can pray, “this week let me put my faith into action. Reveal to me one person who would otherwise be invisible to me. It might be someone I have tried to forget or it may be a stranger I’ve never met. Help me to see them as you see them, as children in need of Your grace and help me to reach out to them in Your love in some way.”

I’m going to be offering the same prayer myself.

May God help us to put away partiality.

May God help us to love as He has loved us.

Faith without works is dead. May our faith in Christ be alive every day!

"A Small Untangling"

Pastor Russ Saltzman, who I knew briefly as I began my seminary education and he completed his at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, talks about his involvement with a new congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) in Nebraska. His reflections on that experience and on the departure of some people from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that gave rise to it are interesting in themselves. The discussion in the comments is also worth reading.

"Salt"

Great takes on the crisis in the ELCA and the hope afforded for faithful witness to the Gospel that exists in Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the new North American Lutheran Church (NALC) here.