4 Disciplines That Let Christ Into Our Lives

[This was shared tonight with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio. We were commemorating Ash Wednesday.]

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

In tonight’s Ash Wednesday Gospel lesson, Jesus talks about four spiritual disciplines of the Christian life and how we should approach them. A spiritual discipline is a practice by which we surrender our lives to the Lordship and love of the God we know in Jesus in a particular way. 

As children, if our parents truly loved us, we experienced being disciplined. (Christian parents are called to discipline in love, not punish in anger, by the way.) My parents taught me basic lessons of respect for one’s elders, consideration of others, and thriftiness by, initially, imposing discipline on me so that I would live out of these values. I didn’t always adhere to their expectations of me. 

But usually, discipline imposed out of love eventually does have its effect until discipline imposed becomes discipline embraced as parts of the ways we live.

When we become adults, you know, we can become a bit self-indulgent. We slack off on self-discipline because there are few people who will tell us what to do, even when a discipline may be good for our health or our souls. 

When I was growing up for example, my parents had strict rules about no snacking after school or before dinner. I lived that discipline for a long time, until just a few years ago. Now I graze too much. My waistline shows this breakdown in personal discipline. Like Saint Paul in Romans 7, I can say: “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”  

Now, eating without discipline may seem trivial, although we know that even if a Christian never reaches a state of “morbid obesity,” there are, speaking for myself anyway, spiritual implications to overeating. In First Corinthians 6:19, we’re reminded that what we do with and to our bodies is significant: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own…” 

In a very real sense, the ways we use our bodies--from overeating to engaging in sex outside of marriage, from binge drinking to driving ourselves to exhaustion for whatever reason--represent our futile attempts to grasp for the joy or the personal significance that only comes from God. And if we aren’t willing to voluntarily submit to the discipline of the gracious God Who, through Christ, loved and redeemed us before we even knew we needed His help, we are in rebellion and risk blocking Christ and life with God completely from our lives. The stakes then can be high for things we may count as trivial.

Please don’t misunderstand! We are saved from sin and hell by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. That truth is central to our faith and lives as Christians. Spiritual disciplines won’t save us. Only Christ does that. 

But spiritual disciplines are means by which we open ourselves up to the saving work of Christ in every aspect of our lives. 

Think of it in this way: Until you turn on your laptop, desktop, smartphone, or TV, you’re not going to see the Super Bowl, Game of Thrones or the 700th presidential campaign debate of 2016. Spiritual disciplines are the channels by which believers open their wills and lives to the grace and guidance of God.  

Throughout this Lenten season, our midweek gatherings will focus on Reach Up, Reach In, Reach Out, the six words we use to summarize the mission of Living Water as a congregation and as individual disciples who are part Living Water. 

To help unpack the meaning of those six simple words, in coming weeks, we’ll focus on six spiritual disciplines that God can use to strengthen our faith and to fulfill our mission and purpose as disciples of Jesus Christ. There are many spiritual disciplines; starting next week, we’ll look at just six foundational ones. 

But tonight, Jesus speaks with us about four such disciplines of the Christian life: 

• giving to the needy; 
• prayer; 
• fasting; and 
• using all of your money in a way that honors God. 

Discipline one Jesus mentions is giving to the poor. When we do so, He says, our motivation shouldn’t be to look upstanding and honorable to the crowd, but to give because it’s the right thing for those of us who have more to share with those who have less, whether anybody else sees it or not. God does give the world its daily bread. There's more than enough for every person on earth. It’s up to us who have been given more of it to share our excess to others, to even things out. 

Jesus then talks about the discipline of prayer. In this case too, Jesus says, don’t pray to be noticed by others. If we play to the crowd when we pray, we get the very thing we’re looking for, the notice of the crowd. But we won’t be connecting with God, which is the real purpose of all spiritual disciplines. And prayer can be a joyous connection with God. When we pray to God in Jesus’ name, we become conduits by which His grace, love, and power enter the lives and circumstances for which we pray. It’s an awesome and humbling thing!

Jesus then talks about, “When you fast…” We’ve noticed on previous Ash Wednesdays the significance of Jesus not saying “If you fast…” He assumes that fasting will be part of the Christian life. Fasting as a seasonal discipline during Lent is fine, of course. But the real purpose of fasting is to remove from our lives all immoderate or even sinful behaviors that get in the way of our loving God, loving our neighbor, or being a faithful disciple of Christ. You can fast from anything--food, social media, excessive TV viewing. You can fast from particular sins with the intention of exorcising the habits that undergird those sins from your life forever, so that your fast from that sin is lifelong. But never should we fast, says Jesus, to get applause for our piety. Except when enlisting prayer partners or spiritual mentors in praying for you and supporting you in the pursuit of your fast, no one else should even know that you’re fasting. It’s your own connection to Christ, not someone else’s.

Finally, Jesus addresses the spiritual discipline of using our financial assets in eternal things. In this discipline, we honor God with our money. This isn’t necessarily about giving to a local congregation, though every believer is called to do that. And the adoption of this discipline doesn’t mean that we can’t sometimes use our money for fun things. Fun can feed our faith too, you know. But Jesus is saying, invest in things that last, eternally. According to the Bible, only one thing on this earth will last eternally, and that’s the people of God, the Church, the fellowship of believers in Christ. When you invest in people, whether by writing a check or getting involved in a mission project or telling a coworker about Christ, you’re seeking to help the people in whom you invest to know Jesus Christ so that, like you, they can enjoy life with God now and in eternity. Absent the investment of our time, our talents, and our treasures in people who need Christ, they will be lost for eternity in their sin.    

Always, the measure of the worth and the power in our exercise of spiritual disciplines--whether these listed by Jesus tonight or those we’ll address in the coming weeks--isn’t whether the world notices us or not, it’s whether our motivation is to honor the God Who sent Jesus to die and rise for us. 

Without that motive, our disciplines are meaningless. 

With them, we become the humble means by which God makes disciples of Jesus Christ, starting with us. 

More next Wednesday.

4 Disciplines for Lent

Lent is the forty-day season that falls between Ash Wednesday (this year, February 13) and Easter (this year on March 31), minus the seven Sundays that fall within those two days. (Sundays aren't counted in Lent's forty days because Sundays are always celebratory "little Easters" when we remember Christ's resurrection from the dead.)

Lent isn't a mandate from God. It's a completely human creation. With the other seasons and days of the Church Year, Lent is, in essence, a means of teaching Christians and those seeking to understand Christianity what it means to believe in and follow Jesus Christ.

Many people use Lent to align themselves with Christ. They do this through the adoption of what are called spiritual disciplines.

Lenten disciplines can be good, strengthening faith and helping people to love God and love others more faithfully. But like many good things, we human beings have had a way of messing up the whole idea of Lenten disciplines. "I'm going to give up chocolate," some will announce. "I'm not drinking beer during Lent," others might say. "I've decided to give up cussing until Easter," I've heard people proudly announce.

But, here's the deal: If something is getting in the way of our being Christians, isn't it also worth asking God to help us get rid of it, not just during Lent, but through our whole lives?

That includes things that aren't intrinsically sinful, but which we realize, keep us from living as followers of Jesus. For example, a learned friend of mine has, since the beginning of the year, been on a "book fast." He isn't buying any books, new or old, unless he needs them for his work. That's because he feels that his love for books, learning, and bragging rights of knowing something can sometimes block out God's priorities for his life. He wants to honor God, not feed his ego.

Are books bad? Of course not. But as Paul writes in Romans 14:12: "...whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." My friend understands that.

If you're giving up chocolate just to lose weight, or giving up beer to please a spouse, or giving up cussing to make yourself more acceptable to some people, your "giving up" is really meaningless from God's perspective. You're not undertaking these disciplines to honor God, but as part of a self-help kick.

And if your "discipline" is about trying to prove your "will power," forget it! A will that isn't bent to the will of God may make you feel like you've got something to brag about. But God isn't impressed!

But if your intent is to grow closer to Christ through your discipline, it can be a very good thing.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy we use in my tradition mentions four disciplines most closely associated with Lent. There are many more, of course. But if you've never observed a Lenten discipline, these four might be ones you'll want to consider in 2013. But undertake them not with the attitude that, "I'll give them up after Lent." Use Lent as a time to integrate these disciplines into your life, for keeps.

1. Repentance. Repentance gets a bad rap. It's portrayed as a grim obligation in which we make ourselves miserable for our sin.

Sorrow for sin is part of authentic repentance, but the main words used in the Bible for repent tell a fuller story.

• The usual Old Testament word literally means to turn around, to change directions. When we acknowledge our sins, we turn away from our sins, which are thoughts, words, and actions that find us walking away from God, and turn back to God and relationship with Him. 
• The word usually used for repentance in the New Testament means to change one's mind. In repentance, we submit to God in order, in the words of an old Bob Dylan song, "change our way of thinking."

So, repentance entails approaching the God made known to all through Jesus Christ, then

(1) confessing our sins to God
(2) receiving forgiveness and the power for new living that belongs to those who follow Christ. 

Paul had both elements of repentance in mind when he encouraged believers to "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:4). That means humble submission to the crucifixion of our old selves so that our new selves, recreated in the image of Jesus, can rise to life with God.

Repentance is a painful thing because in it we confess our sins, imperfections, and need of God.

But repentance is a joyful thing because it allows us to receive the reconciliation and new with God which Christ's death and resurrection make possible.

This is why when Martin Luther spoke of repentance, he talked about "repentance and renewal."

2. Fasting. We've already touched on this. Fasting can mean giving up those things that get in the way of our following Christ or living life God's way.

It may also mean doing without some things--food, hours on the computer or watching TV, going to sporting events, window shopping at the mall (a vice of mine which I used to indulge a lot)--that might keep us from prayer, worship, reading Scripture, attending to our primary relationships, or serving others.

This is why I always suggest replacing the thing from which you're fasting with a positive, God-honoring activity. If you've decided, for example, to give up watching television one night a week, you'll be able to follow through on your discipline and imbue it with some meaning beyond being a forty-day stunt of your will by, for example, scheduling to volunteer at a food bank on your fasting night.

3. Prayer. Prayer is conversation with God (see here). Of course, believers should always "pray without ceasing." But focused times of prayer, at set times each day, become special appointments with God, deepening our faith, giving our lives both peace and direction.

One point about these special prayer times I would make is to be certain that you always begin your prayers by reading a chapter from the Bible or a devotion based on a passage of Scripture. Since prayer is conversation with God, it's good to let God get in the first word. Otherwise, our prayers can devolve into a monologue about our wants and our feelings.

If you're wondering what to say when it's time for you to pray, the so-called ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) I first read about in a book by Bill Hybels and which I explain here is a good way to start.

And you can never go wrong with the Lord's Prayer, using its profound and exhaustive petitions as a skeletal framework for your conversation with God. (See here for Martin Luther's explanation of the Lord's Prayer found in The Small Catechism.)

4. Works of love. Jesus says that whenever we have cared for those the world regards as "the least of these...you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:40).

Caring for and serving others in Christ's Name is one way we can fulfill both the great commission of making disciples, because people who experience the love of Christ we share through our deeds of kindness will want to follow Jesus, too AND the great commandment that we love God completely and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

One work of love we may undertake is reaching out to a family member who has been ostracized from the family.

Or, volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food bank.

It could mean participating in a kindness outreach.

Whatever the work of love turns out to be, if it's done in the Name of Jesus, you'll find that what started out as something you thought you were doing to benefit others will, miraculously, benefit you, freeing your from your slavery to yourself, turning you out to the wider world. Forgetting ourselves through Christ has the byproduct of filling us with more joy and life than we could possibly derive from spending time worshiping at the altar of me. This miraculous transformation probably shouldn't surprise us because Jesus says, "Those who find their life will lose it, and lose their life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).

Now, if I've come across as some "expert" in all this, let me close by saying that I am a sinner in daily need of Christ's forgiveness and help to live as the truly human being I was created by God to be. If you share this trait with me, you might consider adopting a Lenten discipline this year. It could change your life.

[This was originally intended to be my presentation for the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church women's group tomorrow. But because the meeting has been canceled and presenting it at the March meeting would find us three months into Lent, here it is.]
 

Who Do You Put First?

[This was prepared for Ash Wednesday worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Matthew 6:16, 16-21

In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”

He goes on to give three concrete examples:

• When you give charity to the poor, don’t make a show of it. 
• When you pray in public, don’t pile phrases one on top of the other in order to wow the people around you. 
• And when you fast—that is, give up food for a time, don’t let your outward appearance call attention to your “sacrificial” religious devotion.

Spiritual disciplines are meant to draw us closer to Christ, deeper into His orbit, and to create habits of dependence on God within us.

When we give, we’re trusting God to keep providing for our needs even though we have less.

When we pray, whether publicly or privately, we’re acknowledging our complete dependence on God and not ourselves.

When we fast, we’re seeking freedom from what we want and asking God to give us only what we need, what Jesus calls “our daily bread.” (And that, above all, means Him.)

Spiritual disciplines aren’t meant to give us bragging rights, so that we can show the world how faithful we are.

All of that is easy enough to understand. It’s easy to understand too, when Jesus says that those who make shows of their acts of religious piety get the very shallow, meaningless rewards they seek: People notice them.

But the notice of people, the applause of the crowd, won’t get us what only Jesus, Who bled and died and rose again for us, gives.

To those who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Him, Jesus gives the only rewards that last after the cheering has stopped, after the crowds have turned away. Those rewards include forgiveness of sin, eternal life with God, and purposefulness for the living of these days.

Don’t forfeit the only reward worth having, Jesus is telling us in tonight’s Gospel lesson, by allowing your life with God to boil down to things you do for show.

The fact is that what people think of us doesn’t matter. Jesus commands us to play to an audience of One. The opinion Jesus Christ has of our beliefs and motives is the only opinion that will count on judgment day, when He will return to the world to judge, as we say in the Creed, "the living and the dead."

The apostle Paul knew all of this. The first century church of Corinth that he founded, after a time, became a dysfunctional mess requiring him to send at least two letters of correction, both of which the Holy Spirit has inspired the Church to include in the New Testament portion of the Bible. One dispute among many that existed in the Corinthian church was between those who liked the teaching of Paul and those who preferred that of a preacher who came along after Paul left Corinth, named Apollos. Paul wrote to say that such arguments were silly. Paul hadn’t died for their sins and Apollos hadn’t risen from the dead for them. Only Jesus could save them, Paul reminded them.

In the midst of this conflict, some of the Corinthian Christians who aligned themselves with Apollos said nasty things about Paul. Paul couldn’t have cared less. He wrote, “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you…I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord Who judges me.”

Paul knew well what Jesus is getting at in this evening’s Gospel lesson:

• Don’t worry about showing others what a good Christian you are; just be a Christian. 
• Don’t call attention to your acts of Christian devotion; just be devoted to Christ.

We could end the sermon right there, I suppose. But, as Lutherans, we believe that we can’t just take pieces of Scripture and leave them as isolated proof texts for the hobbyhorse of the day. Martin Luther said that we should let Scripture interpret Scripture. In other words, a single verse of Scripture, without consideration of the witness of the whole Bible, can be used or misused to say anything. Do that enough with single passages of scripture and you distort the whole Bible and the entire Christian faith.

The distortion to which Jesus’ words for us this evening often get subjected seems especially popular among we Lutheran Christians. Historically, Lutheranism has its roots among the people of northern Europe: Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians. These aren’t folks known for being talkative or demonstrative. So, Lutherans have often taken Jesus’ admonition to not make a show of religious piety to mean that we're to never talk about our faith, never tell a friend what Jesus means to us, never invite others to come and see what God is doing in our church family. This is why Lutherans are sometimes called “the frozen chosen.”

But in what Jesus says to us tonight, He isn’t telling us not to live our faith in Him out in the open where the whole world can see it. Pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 553, please. Take a look at a passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which we discussed a few weeks ago, Matthew 5:14-16. Jesus says: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Now, turn to page 557 in the pew Bibles and look at Matthew 10:32-33. Jesus says: “Therefore whoever confesses Me before [people], him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before [people], him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”

Then, turn to page 572, and find Matthew 28:19-20. There, the resurrected Jesus, about to ascend to heaven, gives the Great Commission to all who believe in Him. The Great Commission is of equal importance for us as the Great Commandment, which Jesus gives in Matthew 22:34-40, to love God and love others. In the Great Commission, Jesus says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

We are to live our faith out loud. We are to share Christ with others. We are to seek to make disciples of our neighbors, friends, and family members. Jesus commands us to do these things. But what He says to us this evening is a simple admonition: “Watch your motivation. If you’re out to glorify yourself and not Me, Your religious observances are meaningless.”

These are great words for us to remember as we begin the season of Lent. I knew a guy who gave up all sweets during Lent. He seemed to tell everybody he knew that he had given up sweets for Lent. “Want a cookie?” someone would ask him. “No,” he’d say, “I gave up sweets for Lent.” “Want a piece of cake?” Same answer. “Want a can of pop?” Same answer. The first twenty or so times he said, “No, I gave up sweets for Lent,” the response was predictable. People applauded him for his discipline and self-sacrifice and altogether upright behavior. He basked in their compliments. But after a time, people quit asking him if he’d like a cookie, a piece of cake or candy, or a can of pop. Without these offers and the opportunities they gave him to brag about his Lenten discipline, he found it harder and harder to stay away from sweets.

This fellow's desire for compliments isn't unique. Just yesterday, I read about a study conducted by scholars at Ohio State who determined that receiving boosts to their self-esteem was the thing that college students loved more than anything. The compliments of others can be addictive.

Taking on a discipline for Lent (or at any other time of the year) can be a fine thing. But, Jesus says, if it’s all about getting compliments, we’ve got it wrong.

The other night, Ann and I saw an interview on TV with an educated, middle clas Libyan man who had never before held a gun in his hand and, despite having so much to lose, had enlisted in the fight to bring down the dictator Moammar Gadhafi in his country. He said that, for him, it boiled down to a simple sentiment: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” We who confess Jesus as our God and Savior belong to the Kingdom of God. Tonight, Jesus challenges us to set our egos aside, to ask not what our acts of religious devotion can do for us, but how our acts of religious devotion can make us more submissive to the will of God and how they can help us to tell the whole world the story of the God Who loves all so desperately that He became one of us, died for us, rose for us, and gives everlasting life to those who dare to put Him first in their lives.

That’s the dare Christ lays before us this Lenten season, the dare He lays before us every day we live: Put Him first just as He did when He went to a cross for you two thousand years ago. Jesus characterizes His call to us in this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Don’t ask what’s in it for you; just follow the God revealed in Jesus, whether anybody else notices it or likes it or not.

May seeking God’s kingdom and the righteousness that belongs to followers of Jesus be our chief motivation this Lenten season…and our whole lives. Amen!

Forming Habits That Form Us

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

Luke 2:41-52
Someone has said, “We form our habits. But over time, our habits form us.”

Most of our habits probably don’t mean much. I always put my credit cards in the same places in my wallet, for example. That way, I always know where they are.

I also am in the habit of putting my bath towels up to dry with the tags inside, where they can’t be seen. If I walk into the bathroom and see a towel with the tag turned out, I switch it around. (That's not too crazy, is it?)

But many of our habits are more consequential. A young child may learn to be a good student at a young age; that habit, long after she or he is even conscious of being conscientious and hard-working, will serve them well all through life.

Some habits have negative consequences, of course. A teen may get involved with drugs, alcohol, or sex outside of marriage until these habits gain such a foothold and control over them that they hardly consider the spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical destruction they may be inflicting on their lives.

We form our habits. over time, our habits form us.

So, it’s important that we choose our habits wisely.

I bring all of this up because of a word that appears in today’s Gospel lesson. You know the story it recounts well. It’s the only place in the entire Bible that tells about the childhood of Jesus. The incident recounted happens when he is twelve years old, one year before Jesus, as a Jewish boy, would have been bar mitzvahed. Then, He would have declared, “Today, I am a man.” But as is true of any twelve year old, in our lesson, Jesus can already be seen tilting toward his adulthood.

The word from the original Greek in the New Testament that, in our Gospel lesson, so interests me is ethos. Ethos gets taken over into the English language as ethic or ethics. In our language, it refers to ethical standards or morality. But in Greek, it simply means habit or custom, the way in which people ordinarily or habitually do something. An ethos could be bad or good, just as for us habits can be bad or good.

The word crops up early in our text when we’re told that on Passover, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover “as usual,” the word in Luke actually being, “as ethic,” as was their habit or custom. That word alone will tell you why God chose Mary and Joseph to be the earthly parents of Jesus. They were people of good, godly habits.

In those days, Jews were expected to travel to Jerusalem each year for three different religious festivals centered around the temple. If they were poor, as we know Mary and Joseph were, they were only required to be in Jerusalem once a year, for the celebration of Passover. Traveling by foot from Nazareth to Jerusalem every year wouldn’t have been easy for the holy family. But it was their habit to do it. The faith of Joseph and Mary was strong and important to them, making them great candidates to raise Jesus, God-in-the-flesh.

We have no idea when Jesus was conscious of Who He was beyond being a Galilean child reared in the home of a poor handyman. We don’t know when Jesus gained what the scholars call “messianic consciousness.” Did He know it when He was in the manger at Bethlehem? I doubt that, but maybe. Or, did the awareness of His identity as true God and true human come over Him gradually?

Whatever the case may be, it must have been critical to God the Father that Jesus have the right parents, people who themselves practiced faith habits which their son could observe and, which, because of their example, He could adopt Himself. That would have included not just going to Jerusalem for the Passover each year, but also things like weekly worship with other believers, reading the Scriptures, service to others, and encouraging others to trust in God, too.

You and I know, of course, that none of these habits earn us life with God or heaven or spiritual points. We are saved by God's grace given to all with faith in Jesus Christ.

But faith habits are the means by which we cultivate closeness to God. And since God is the only source of life there is, growing closer to God fills us with the very life of God, no matter our age or the conditions of our bodies or minds.

The habits exemplified by Joseph and Mary obviously had their impact on Jesus. When, three days after first discovering that Jesus wasn’t in their party for the return trip to Nazareth following the Passover, they finally found Jesus in the temple. Mary was upset and perhaps, understandably, forgetting Who Jesus was for a moment, chastised Him for the trouble He had caused them. Jesus is mystified. He asks her, “Why were you looking everywhere? Didn’t you know that I would be in My Father’s house?” What other habit would a parent most want their twelve year old to cultivate than spending time in God’s house, growing closer to Him?

During His adult ministry, we’re told of Jesus that He always went to synagogue on the Sabbath. It was His ethic, His habit. And the Bible tells us that Jesus would often go off early in the morning for prayer. That too was His habit.

Joseph and Mary did a good job of cultivating godly habits in themselves and by example, in their child.

The faith of all of us can be strengthened by the adoption of holy habits. The New Testament book of Hebrews tells we Christians to, “consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit—the ethos—of some, but encouraging one another…”

I know that, on the Sunday after Christmas, a traditionally low-attendance day at church, I’m sort of preaching to the choir when I say that cultivating the habit of regular worship attendance is a way to grow closer to God and to imbibe more deeply of the life that only comes to us through Jesus Christ. You know and likely believe that deeply.

But in case there are any here this morning or any who may be tuned in on the radio who need convincing, let me tell you the true story of a man I knew named Louis. (That’s not his real name. But I don’t want to violate his family’s privacy.)

Louis had a rough childhood, one in which he was largely left to raise himself, not always successfully. When he graduated from high school, he wasn’t clear about what he might do with his life.

Then he met Betty. Betty was in college at the time. She was studying to become a teacher. Her family had cultivated some of the same holy habits in which the young Jesus was nurtured. They were in worship each week. They had family devotions and prayers. They regularly helped with projects designed to serve and help their neighbors, particularly the poor. They supported missionaries to faraway places. When Betty was in college, though far from home, she maintained these same habits.

When Louis fell into her orbit and fell in love with Betty, he started attending worship and reading Scripture with her. He found himself coming to trust in the same God Betty knew through Jesus.

Louis’ life was changed. The factory where he worked saw how he worked with new dedication and with a freedom from anxiety that allowed him to keep looking for new, better ways to get things done. Though he had only a high school education, they hired him to work as an engineer; eventually, he headed the engineering department.

Louis became interested in a multitude of things and shared his talents lovingly at church and in his community. I could never keep up with Louis. He was an avid photographer, cook, church banner maker, seamstress of quilts, mechanical tinkerer, Sunday School teacher, and designer and builder of earth homes.

As you can imagine, with all his talents and his willingness to use them to help others, Louis became a popular figure. He would present his co-workers with handcrafted gifts or he would go to neighbor’s places in the evening to help them chop wood, fix their plumbing, or build a shed. In his seventies, he built, almost single-handedly, a home for one of his church’s former pastors. And Louis laughed a lot.

It was natural then, that the beneficiaries of all his loving service would wonder why. Why did he do the things he did?

Well, Louis would explain, it all had to do with his faith in Jesus. I remember him telling me that sometimes people who had grown jaded about God, Christ, or the Church would greet his faith with skepticism.

“You know what I say then, Mark?” he asked me. “I tell them the same thing my father-in-law told me fifty years ago. ‘I’m not going to preach to you,’ he said. ‘But do this: Make it a point of worshiping six Sundays in a row and see if you even want to miss it on the seventh Sunday.’”

Louis told me that since he had taken his father-in-law’s challenge, he hadn’t missed a single Sunday. That holy habit had cultivated closeness to Christ and Christ became the center of his life.

In 2009, we’ve placed a strong emphasis on the holy habit of servanthood in Christ’s Name at Saint Matthew. As God helps us, we hope to expand on that emphasis in 2010.

But I’m also praying and hoping that 2010 will be the year in which we all consciously cultivate two other holy habits: prayer and sharing our faith with the spiritually disconnected.

The one habit may seem boring and the other frightening, both of them a bit intimidating. But we will find that as we cultivate these habits, we will grow closer to Christ and so, like my friend Louis, grow more alive with the power and goodness of God.

At the end of our Gospel lesson today, we’re told, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor."

Jesus’ holy habits drew Him closer to the Father; our holy habits can do the same thing for us. “We form our habits. But over time, our habits form us.” In 2010, let’s form holy habits and through them, allow God to form us into being more like our Savior Jesus.

Being Christian, Not Just Looking Christian

[This sermon was shared at Ash Wednesday worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier this evening.]

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
True story: Years ago, the B-List movie star Fernando Lamas was guest hosting a TV talk show. He introduced his first guest for the evening, another actor and asked, “How are you doing?” “Not so well,” the guest said. “You see, I’ve been very sick. It’s been a tough road.”

The B-List star’s response was a classic, one that comedian Billy Crystal turned into a Saturday Night Live routine. “Yes,” he said. “But you look marvelous and that’s the main thing.”

For many of us today, looking good is the main thing. Many women, in a desire to “look good,” spend thousands of dollars on cosmetics and facelifts. Many men, wanting to appear successful, will overextend themselves financially just to have the biggest houses, the newest cars, and luxury box seats at the football game. Many teens feel that they simply must have the latest stuff from Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch, or they’ll lose face among their peers.

Does any of this strike you as a bit ridiculous?

We seem to have elevated shallowness to a place of high value in our society. Just consider all the time we spend listening to stories about Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears, their brushes with the law and time in the slammer. It’s appalling!

Lest we get too far up on our high horses, though, Jesus reminds us tonight that we Christians can be shallow, too. We can become obsessed with “looking good” as Christians, appearing holy, or devoted, or repentant, or faithful. We can be so hung up on looking like Christians that we fail to actually be Christians.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus addresses the overarching issue of Christian piety. One dictionary defines piety as, “reverence for God or devout fulfillment of religious obligations.” Piety is good. Genuine piety happens when imperfect human beings, like you and me, strive to follow Jesus Christ in our daily lives. But Jesus warns us: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

The rewards which every believer in Jesus Christ wants, the gifts that we can not earn but only receive when we renounce our sin and trust in Jesus, are having God in our lives today and living with God for eternity. Jesus tells us that we risk losing these rewards when, instead of living our lives to express gratitude and love for an audience of one, God Himself, we decide to make looking good in the eyes of others our greatest goal. Or at least one of our goals.

There may be more of this happening among we Christians than we realize, this big desire to appear Christian more than to be Christian. Last year, I met a man whose ministry worked with men from all across the country. He does retreats on sexual purity and pornography. He said that at these gatherings of Christian men, he always conducts an anonymous paper survey. Over the years, anywhere between 20 to 50% of all these men describe themselves as having a problem with pornography that impacts their marriages or other relationships.
Whether those percentages hold up for all Christian men isn’t important. What is important is that it’s possible for Christians to experience a disconnect between the faith we confess and the lives we lead.

We may look good and have the accolades of our fellow Christians, even as we privately wallow in sins from which we can’t seem to extricate ourselves, sins for which we can’t even muster the strength to repent.

Lent is a time of spiritual renewal. Admittedly, it’s a season of the Church Year invented not by God, but by we Christians. Nonetheless, I think that Lent can be helpful to us. It’s a time when we remind one another to lay aside those sins and habits that keep us from having a joyful, fulfilling relationship with God and to instead live our lives for Jesus Christ alone.

That’s why at Lent, on Ash Wednesday, we always begin with this Gospel lesson, words of Jesus taken from His Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. In each issue Jesus addresses in this lesson, He’s giving the same message: If your focus is on looking like a good person to others, you risk losing your relationship with God, your eternal life.

Instead, we’re to be transparent before God, admitting our sins and enlisting His power to help us overcome them.

Jesus says, “When you give alms--that is, charity to the poor, don’t call attention to yourself. Give without taking credit for it.

"When you pray, mostly do it in private; and when you pray in public, talk to God, not other people.

"Whenever you fast--giving up food or drink--don’t go around with a hangdog face so that everybody can see what a pious Christian you are; instead, clean yourself up and let the joy of God radiate from you.

"And don’t be stingy with your money. The stingy who stack up lots of cash only make themselves susceptible to thievery. Instead, be generous. Invest in people. Invest in what Christ calls all Christians to do, the work of God in the world: loving God and loving neighbor.”

Every year, I hear from people about the things they’re giving up for Lent, things like coffee, candy, cake, cigarettes, movies, text messaging, one night a week of no TV. Those things are fine, of course. But the thought often crosses my mind that if these things are worth giving up or cutting down on for the forty days of Lent, maybe they’re also worth giving up or cutting down on all through the year.

Back in my seminary days, I worked at Ross Laboratories in Columbus. Just before Lent, some of the women in the area where I worked decided that they would give up "cussing" for Lent. They set up a jar in the office and every time one of them swore, they put a nickel into it. That jar got pretty heavy before Easter rolled around! But, for the life of me, I can't figure out what good their little "Lenten discipline" did them. They just kept swearing like stevedores.

Unless our Lenten disciplines--the stuff we give up or the habits we add on--help us to glorify God and to grow closer to Christ, they risk being meaningless.

Several years ago, friends of mine decided to help fix food for the people at a homeless shelter. It became a way that their family grew closer to Christ and loved their neighbor.

And I once knew a man who had a coworker going through a tough time and made it his habit to anonymously send the coworker ten and twenty dollars every week or so. He felt so good doing this, that he continued his "discipline" after Lent was over.

None of these people were broadcasting that information to me about their Lenten disciplines. I just happened to learn of their Christian acts in the course of talking with them about other things. But it seems to me that it’s these habits of discipleship that are the kinds of things that we should be doing in Lent and all through the year.

They’re done not to impress others. But they become ways for us to tell God...

* Thank You for Jesus and His cross.
* Thank You for loving me, as we sang a short time ago, just as I am.
* Thank You for saving me from sin and death and eternal separation from You.

During this Lenten season, I invite you to militate against our common sinful impulse to look good to other people and to instead turn your focus onto Jesus Christ and His purpose for your life.

I want to urge you to embrace a new spiritual discipline, one that you’ll do not just during Lent, but all your life. It’s the discipline that the risen Jesus described to His first followers, on a Judean hillside, just before He ascended into heaven. It too, is described in Matthew’s Gospel. (I wish that I could have been there.) Here’s what Jesus said: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...”

Jesus was telling His disciples, including us: Be intent not on looking like a Christian, but on being Christian enough...

* to share Christ with others,
* invite them to know the Savior, and
* ask them to worship with you.

A person who was on that hillside with Jesus, the apostle Peter, says that when we take it on ourselves to invite others to follow Jesus, Who saves sinners like us, we are fulfilling our highest purpose. In the first of two Biblical books Peter wrote, he says to us: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Inviting our neighbors and friends to leave the darkness of life without Christ and the Church is a great spiritual discipline for all of us to embrace this Lenten season. In fact, I think that it’s the perfect Lenten discipline. That’s because when we’re witnesses for Jesus, we take the focus off of ourselves and our selfish obsessions. Instead, our focus is simply to introduce our friends to our very best Friend, Jesus, our God and Savior.

People who live as witnesses for Jesus Christ may not “look good” in the eyes of the world. But in the eyes of God, being a witness for Christ is the very best way for us to tell God we love Him and the best way for us to love our neighbor!