The Message We Need to Hear

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

Mark 1:1-8
On Thursday, Bloomberg Businessweek reported the latest trend in Silicon Valley. The tech businesses there are bringing in models and actors, male and female, who are given fake biographies and sign non-disclosure agreements, to show up for companies’ Christmas parties. They’re supposed to bring some life to the otherwise dreary gatherings of tech geeks.

Believe it or not, as a different kind of geek myself, this story made me think of John the Baptist.

John, the Baptizer, first-century outspoken and ill-clad man of God, would never be hired by the mavens of Silicon Valley to spread Christmas cheer among their twenty-first century employees. And yet, during Advent every year, as we Christians gather to worship God and prepare for Christmas and for eternity, we invite John to speak to us and, in a different way, liven things up. That’s true again on this Second Sunday of Advent.

Is that a good idea?

I think so, because, unlike the models recruited for high tech Christmas parties, telling people the things they want to hear, John came into the world to tell people, including you and me, what we need to hear.

John and his message are front and center in the gospel lesson, Mark 1:1-8, for today, the Second Sunday of Advent. Take a look at it, please. (And if you have your Bibles with you, be sure to underline passages and make notes in the margins.)

The lesson starts with a simple and significant sentence fragment. Verse 1: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…”

Mark is here signaling that the entire succeeding sixteen chapters are just the beginning of the gospel, the good news of new and everlasting life with God for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are just the beginning of what this gospel--this good news--is doing.

The fact that you and I are here this morning testifies that the gospel is still at work giving life to all who believe.

And it will keep on giving those who trust in Christ life for all eternity!

This good news, as Mark says, is “about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…” The phrase, Son of God, doesn’t mean that Jesus descended from the Father. It means that He is one with the Father. He is the Messiah, God’s anointed King, to be sure. But He is also God Himself.

By the way, this is a good time to mention someone is invited to all Christmas season gatherings, sacred and secular every year: Saint Nicholas. Nicholas, celebrated every year as a gift-giver, was a bishop and theologian. History tells us that he was so committed to biblical truth, that no heresy ever arose in the diocese of Bishop Nicholas.

He also reportedly smacked or punched a guy named Arius in the nose for saying that Jesus was only "like the son of God" and not actually the "Son of God," as Mark says in today's gospel lesson.

Arius and the adherents to his ideas claimed that God had created Jesus before Jesus came to earth. They repudiated the idea that Jesus had been God the Son before He was born in Bethlehem.

The Arians, as they were called, missed the point of the prologue to John's gospel, which tells us: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." (John 1:1-3, 14)

Nicholas threw the punch at Arius during the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. At the end of the council, the gathered bishops and theologians issued a statement of faith--the Nicene Creed, which we don’t recite nearly often enough--that includes the confession that Jesus is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”

Mark tells the good news about Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God.

In verses 2 and 3, Mark cites two passages from Old Testament prophecy, Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1. Hundreds of years before the births of either John the Baptist or Jesus, these words point to a messenger, a voice, who would prepare the world for meeting the Son of God. Mark says that that messenger/voice was John the Baptist.

Verse 4: “And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

As I’ve pointed out before, Jews were not unfamiliar with baptism. Gentiles who became Jews were required to be baptized because Gentiles were seen as dirtied by sin and Jews were seen as clean, simply because they were the genetic descendants of Abraham. (No condescension there, right?)

But, John is preaching that if his fellow Jews want to be ready for the Son of God to enter their lives, or to become part of the Messiah’s eternal kingdom, they needed to repent for their sin. They too were unclean. They too needed to own their sinfulness. They too needed to receive God’s forgiveness.

Now, in other times, Jews would have completely repudiated John’s message. And some, most notably King Herod, would repudiate John. Ultimately, Herod would have John killed.

And, let’s be honest, most of the time, you and I don’t like to hear the truth about our sinful natures or our sinful actions. When I get called to the carpet for my sins, whether by other Christians or by God and His Word, I don’t like it. When this happens to us, we want to dismiss both the message and the messenger.

But, at least for a season, John the Baptist wasn’t an unwanted guest. Verse 5: “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

There are probably two reasons for this astounding response to John’s preaching.

One, of course, is that John was moving on God’s timetable and in response to God’s call.

The other is that the people of the Judean countryside and those in Jerusalem--the hayseeds and the sophisticates, notice--were living in desperate times. They were under the boot of Roman occupation. They were largely poor and destitute.

When we are vulnerable, we see reality more clearly.

When things are going well--when we’re doing OK financially, we’re healthy, or our families are seemingly functioning well, it’s easy to delude ourselves with the idea that our good fortune stems from our virtue and goodness.

It’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve got everything under control and don’t need God. Or at least that we only need Him on the edges of our lives, when we can fit Him in.

But when life makes us vulnerable, we see how much we need God.

Vulnerability also causes us to look at our own characters, our faults, our sins.

Until we’re aware of our own vulnerability, we won’t be open to God. 

Nor will we be open to our need for repentance and forgiveness.

The people who thronged to meet John in the wilderness were vulnerable enough--honest enough--to confess their sins and trust in God so that they could be ready to meet Jesus.

Are we living our lives with the same kind of vulnerability so that we’re ready to meet Jesus whenever it happens?

Now, John’s baptism was only a symbolic action. It was a way for repentant people to outwardly demonstrate to God, themselves, and others that they wanted to turn from sin and live under the gracious reign of the Son of God.

But, at the end of our lesson, John points to another baptism, a baptism instituted by One greater than John.

Verses 7 and 8: “[John said] After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

“I’m just a voice. I’m just a messenger. This baptism is only a symbol,” John is saying. “But soon the Son of God will be here and when His Word connects with water in Holy Baptism, much more than a symbol will be seen. The fire of His Holy Spirit will meet you in the water and you’ll be set ablaze with the very life of God.”

There in the Judean wilderness, John was pointing away from himself and from his symbolic baptism.

Instead, he pointed to Jesus and to the sacrament of Holy Baptism in which God, without our help, gives us life and makes us His own, gives us a share in His crucifixion, where our death is atoned for, and a share in His resurrection.

John is pointing to the time when all believers baptized in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, will be able to live with the Son of God Who the crowds who thronged to John in the wilderness waited for.

As twenty-first believers in Jesus, we also wait, of course.

But we don't wait for Jesus to show up and do something.

We know that Christ has already done something.

He already has appeared and already died and risen for us.

He already has conquered our sin and our death for us.

He already has set apart baptized believers to be His for eternity.

Hebrews 10:10 says that: “...we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

What we wait for is Jesus to return. We wait to meet Jesus.

We need not fear facing Jesus or facing the death that will likely precede that moment.

If, like those vulnerable and open people in the Judean wilderness, we will daily turn from our sin and trust in Christ, the God Who has set the fire of the Holy Spirit ablaze within us in our Baptisms, empowering us to believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, we can rest assured that the moment we meet Jesus face to face will be infinitely and eternally more joyful and wonderful than we can imagine.

And that joy and wonder will never go away. Nor will it ever be taken from us!

This is the truth, the message, to which John, voice and messenger for Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, was pointing. With a message like that, I move that we keep inviting John the Baptist to spend time with us during Advent. Amen

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

"I believe that we will..."

"I believe that we will win." By now, many will have heard that simple, infectious chant at sporting events.

Evidently, it was taken up by fans of the United States soccer team during its recent World Cup matches.

Youtube shows a lot of college basketball and football fans using it, especially out in Utah, as early as 2010.

But wherever the chant came from, it's cool, especially when it's not part of the official program, simply arising spontaneously from the stands.

The whole phenomenon set me to thinking, though. Every Sunday at our church and, I know, at most churches, there's a time set aside for people to confess their belief in the triune God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some do it with altar calls. My tradition does it with the historic creeds of the Church--the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and sometimes the Athanasian Creed.

But what if, at the point in our services usually designated for us to confess our faith, someone took up a simple chant, believers bobbing up and down in celebration and belief? It might be kind of cool. Can you hear it?

I believe in Father God
I believe in God the Son
I believe in God the Spirit
I believe the Three-in-One!

I believe in Father God
I believe in God the Son
I believe in God the Spirit
I believe the Three-in-One!

I believe in Father God
I believe in God the Son
I believe in God the Spirit
I believe the Three-in-One!

Go ahead, you know you're chanting it silently at your computer right now. Stand up! Do a little aerobic praise. Bob up and down and chant away what you believe! Feel free to post videos of you, your family, your youth group, your basketball team, or whatever on Facebook or Youtube. A lot of people might be encouraged by the sight of Christians showing as much enthusiasm in cheering for God as all of us often do at ball games.

Oh, if you're not sure how the chant should go, here's one example from Utah State four years ago:

What Do Christians Mean When Confessing "the Resurrection of the Dead"?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on April 22, 2012.]

Luke 24:36-49
To begin this morning, let’s look at two great verses about the greatest promise God gives to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

First, Romans 10:9: “...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Now, turn to one of my favorite passages, John 11:25-26. Jesus spoke these words to His friend, Martha, grieving over the loss of her brother, Lazarus: “I am the resurrection and the life. [All] who [believe] in Me, though [they] die, they shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”

Both of these passages--and many more--tell us that Christ shares His Easter resurrection with all who entrust their lives to Him. They bring God's comfort and power into our lives!

But they can trouble and baffle us too.

A woman in my first parish had just lost her husband. “Pastor,” she said, “what exactly do we mean when we say that we believe in ‘the resurrection of the dead.’ I’ve said it all my life. But I’m not sure I understand it.”

Her confusion was understandable.

Ask the average Christian what happens to believers after they die and they may say something like: “Well, I guess that our immortal spirits go to live with God.” This is the kind of thing that the ancient Greeks and Romans said happened to people when they died. It’s not what the Bible teaches.

First of all, the Bible doesn’t say that we have immortal spirits. It says that we are mortal beings, completely dependent on the breath or the Spirit of God to live. Genesis says that when God created the first man, He did so by scooping dirt from the earth He had just created and exhaling life into it. We have no immortal spirit; either we have the breath or spirit of God within us and live or we don't have God's life within us and die. This is why we often say at grave sites, "Ashes to ashes; dust to dust."

And, according to the Bible, as believers in Christ, you and I are not destined to be airy murky ghosts.

When you and I, as believers in the promises of God recorded in both the Old and New Testaments, confess a belief in “the resurrection of the dead,” we’re saying something different from what any other religion or popular belief system has asserted.

Take a look at 1 Corinthians 15, starting at verse 51. These words written by the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit in the first century and are addressed to believers in Christ: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed--in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible [this not only means they can no longer sin, but also that their bodies will no longer deteriorate, age, or decay], and we shall all be changed. For this corruptible [nature] must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality...”

When believers in Christ are resurrected, it will be the result of God making a brand new creation. It’ll be a new Genesis.

We will, in some sense, look the same as we do here and now and we will have the benefit of all the lessons this life has taught us, but we who were once simply people of earth will become people of both earth and heaven.

On a day known only to God the Father, Jesus will show up on this earth and bring His new, eternal creation to supplant the old, tottering, death- and sin-infested creation in which you and I now live and we will rise, not as wispy spirits, but as new human beings.

It may happen long centuries after we have died, our skin and bones already reduced to dust or ashes, but God can bring new life from ashes. And God will not forget us! He will raise up all who have believed in His Son.

This is not a new teaching. Job is probably the oldest book in the Old Testament. Yet Job expressed belief in the resurrection that would come to all who believed in the God Who would, in the fullness of time, come into the world to die and rise again. Look at what Job says in Job 19:25-26: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He shall stand on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know: That in my flesh I shall see God.” In my flesh I will see God; not from the perspective of some ghostly phantom!

But how do we know that it’s true? In 1 Corinthians, Paul calls Jesus Christ “the firstfruits of the dead.” The resurrected Jesus is God’s prototype of what we will be like when those who follow Jesus are resurrected. 1 John 3:2 speaks to believers, “...it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when [Jesus] is revealed [at His return to this world], we shall be like Him...” The risen Jesus is the new Adam and those who believe in Him are destined by God to be like Him!

Turn to our gospel lesson, Luke 24:36-49 to see what we will be like.

Let's set the scene: It’s later in the day on the first Easter Sunday. Just before the events of today's lesson, Cleopas and another disciple had walked with the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. But they only realized it was Jesus when Jesus, at the table with them, “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” 

After Jesus disappeared, they tore back to Jerusalem to tell other followers of Jesus that the crazy story brought from the tomb by some of the women disciples was true. Jesus was risen from the dead. They had seen Him too! When they got back to Jerusalem, they were told that Peter too, had seen the risen Jesus.

While they were talking about all of this, Jesus suddenly appeared among them. Verse 37 says that all of the disciples--the eleven apostles plus other believers in Jesus--”were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit.” Other translations say they thought they were seeing a ghost.

Why would they have thought that? After all, they had it from multiple witnesses by then that Jesus was raised from the dead.

The answer is simple: People with physical bodies don’t just show up in the midst of a crowd of people. They walk through open doors or, at least, slink in through open windows. But there had been no walking or slinking. Jesus had just appeared. Clearly, the resurrected Jesus isn’t constrained by the things that ordinarily constrain us.

In the face of their doubts, Jesus issues a challenge to the disciples in verse 39: “Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Then, to underscore that He is no ghost, but a body of flesh and bone, in verse 41, Jesus looks around like a teenager at the end of a school day (or at the end of the 30 Hour Famine) and asks, “Got anything to eat?” (Actually, “Have you any food here?”) The disciples give Jesus boiled fish. Spirits don’t have bodies that can be touched. Ghosts don’t eat. Living bodies do.

So, what does all of this have to do with you and me?

First of all, it means that our bodies are important. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity: "God likes matter. He invented it."

The fact is that Jesus died and rose not to bring us to some murky, spiritual half-life. Jesus died and rose so that God can recreate us as physical beings, just as He originally intended when He made Adam and Eve.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19, that the physical body of each believer in Jesus Christ is "a temple of the Holy Spirit." God cares about what we do to and how we care for our bodies.

Second, we can live each day in the confidence that whatever comes our ways in this life, we belong to a risen Lord Who has big plans for us. Romans 14:8-9 says: “For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again that He might be Lord of both the living and the dead.” The risen Jesus can be with us, filling us with His life, all the time.

Third, we know that repentance and belief are more than nice ideas. In verse 47 of our lesson, Jesus says that the reason He calls the Church into existence is to tell the world about His suffering and resurrection and so that “repentance and remission [or forgiveness] of sins should be preached in [Jesus’] Name to all nations...” It’s those who repent and believe who will share in Jesus’ resurrection. That needs to be lived out in our daily lives...and shared with others!

Finally, we should know this: While all the mysteries about what will happen the moment after we breathe our last in this world haven’t disappeared, we can be certain that those who have died before Jesus’ returns are with Him.  The New Testament does say that those who have died believing in Jesus have gone to sleep and from the perspective of this world made imperfect and time-bound by human sin, that’s true.

But the Bible teaches that there are two dimensions of reality. On the one hand, there is the earthly. In this dimension, we’re constrained by things like time and space and sin. The other dimension of reality is the heavenly. It’s the place where God reigns.

The heavenly dimension has invaded the earthly reality through Jesus and is being invaded still every time we read God’s Word, receive Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, or pray and serve in Jesus’ Name. We pray for the fullest possible invasion of the heavenly dimension into our lives and the life of the world every time we pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

One day, when Jesus returns to the world, that invasion will be complete. The old will pass away and the new will take control forever.

And what happens in the meantime? Look at Luke 23:42. Jesus is dying on the cross between two criminals. One joins the crowd in excoriating Jesus. The other though says to Jesus: “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” Then Jesus makes a promise: “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise.”

Right now, this very moment, if you trust your past sins along with your present and future life to the control of Jesus, you are in His kingdom, though we do, in the Biblical phrase, see through a glass darkly.

And right now, those who have died believing in Jesus are with Him in paradise. We can’t see them now in their resurrected bodies and, from the perspective of this time-bound world, their resurrection has yet to happen. But in that other dimension--the heavenly dimension--they are with Jesus now in strong, youthful bodies.

They’re eating and drinking at the table of the Lord.

They’re laughing and rejoicing in a kingdom in which every tear has been wiped away, every physical ailment is banished, and sin is a forgotten affliction.

If, in the power of God, we will spend our lives turning from sin and entrusting our every moment to the risen Christ, the kingdom in which they live right now--the kingdom of Jesus--will be ours forever. The resurrection of Jesus shows us that it’s so.

Amen