Living Reminders

[This was shared during Maundy Thursday worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on April 1.]

John 13:1-17, 31-35
In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prepares His disciples for the events of the next few days and the years beyond.

He knows that it’s time for Him to go to the cross, to be the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, to die, to rise, and, in time, to leave His disciples as He ascends to heaven. Jesus wants to comfort the disciples and to assure them that however alone they may feel in the coming years, they will never be alone. That’s why later on during this dinner, in a section of John’s Gospel not part of tonight’s lesson, Jesus promises that after He has risen and ascended to heaven, He will send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to all believers. As believers in Jesus, we have that same promise today.

But Jesus knows how hard it is for us to believe that He and the Holy Spirit are with us right now. He knows how experiential we human beings are, how physical. We want evidence.

When the chips are down in life, it’s hard to believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit we can’t see. It’s hard to believe in the presence of a risen Jesus we can’t see.

It’s to help us believe that Jesus is risen and that the Spirit is with us that Jesus also gives the disciples a new commandment in our Gospel lesson. It’s our commandment, too. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another.” This commandment, mandatum in the Latin, mandate in modern English, and, it appears, Maundy in the Middle English of long ago, is what gives this day of Maundy Thursday its name.

But how does Jesus' command that we Christians love each other help us to trust in Christ’s promises to be with us and to give us new, eternal life?

Karen, who I've mentioned to you before, was a member of our former congregation in Cincinnati. Karen died at age 37 after a two-year fight with cancer. Her death came at her home at about 2:30 one morning. Her husband called me right after it happened. He was there with his parents and sister-in-law. They were waiting for the funeral home personnel to come and take Karen’s body, he said. I asked if I could come over for a visit and he said, “Of course.” On the way, at about 3:30 in the morning, I stopped by Krispy Kreme for fresh doughnuts. We sat at the kitchen table, eating, waiting, and talking together. “Oh, I just thought of something,” Karen’s husband Tom said. He ran to another part of the house and returned a few moments later with a note from Karen. It turns out that she had written notes to many people, physical reminders of her faith, love, and friendship, and each note an affirmation of her belief that because of the risen Jesus, all who repent and believe in Christ live with God for eternity.

Sometimes, our faith needs to be bolstered by things we can see and touch, usually by the people we can see and touch. Jesus commanded His Church—you and me—to love one another just as He loved and still loves us. Jesus doesn’t do this to lay a new guilt-inducing obligation on us. He does it so that we can be personal reminders of His love and all His promises.

The most dramatic thing Jesus does at the meal recounted in our lesson, of course, is wash the feet of His disciples, a menial servant’s task done by the Maker of the universe. Jesus does this to underscore His new commandment.

After the foot-washing, Jesus tells the disciples, “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” Jesus says that you and I are to put skin and life and our very beings into the faith we confess.

Each of us who are part of Christ’s Church are commanded to love our sisters and brothers in Christ so that whenever the faith of that person in the next pew, in the Sunday School class or Bible study, or at the potluck, is challenged or growing faint, your act of Christian love will assure them that Jesus is real, His victory over death and sin is real, His promise to be with us is certain.

A woman Ann and I got to know in our former community joined Friendship not long before we came to Logan. She and her family were going through a lot--so many challenging circumstances at once--and felt the need to connect with God and the Church. They became deeply involved and not long after we moved here, this woman’s husband died. She has written to me several times since to say, “God brought us to the church at the right time. I don’t know what we would have done without it.” The people of the congregation, by their love for her and her family, strengthened her faith in the risen Jesus and helped her to believe in the promises of Christ to be with His people always!

Every person who is part of the Church—including those of us who are part of Saint Matthew—has something in common: We are all ordinary, imperfect, sinful human beings.

For many, this is a disappointment because church people aren’t as perfect or as sinless as they want them to be. When the Church disappoints us—and it does and it will—it’s good for us to take a close look in the mirror. Jesus commands us to love the Church as it really is, filled with people as imperfect, as prone to sin and mistakes, as we are, in as much need of forgiveness, understanding, and charity as we ourselves are.

In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul marvels that “God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus didn’t wait for the disciples to get clean before He washed their feet. And He didn’t wait for the world to repent before He died for the sins of all. Jesus proved that, as several Old Testament passages remind us, God is gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

This is a good thing for we Christians because every congregation I’ve ever been part of or observed is filled with a cast of characters, including the pastors, who could make up a hit television sitcom or drama. We all have our faults. We are all recovering sinners.

But when we love one another where we’re at, as we are, we remind one another of a love so great that not even Good Friday could kill it off. Love like that transforms those who receive it and those who give it. The love of our fellow Christians makes us want to follow Jesus more closely. It incites us to deeper faith and greater self-sacrifice.

Once, I heard the lay member of a congregation who was asked by his pastor to speak for a few moments one Sunday morning about what that church meant to him. He couldn’t help thinking, this man said, of the scene in the movie, As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson’s character tells Helen Hunt’s, “You make me want to be a better man.” The love of Christ he had experienced in his church, that man said, incited the exact sentiment in him.

In each other’s patient love, we experience the kindness of God and, as Paul reminds us in Romans 2:4, it’s the kindness of God—not harsh judgments, not haranguing sermons, not spiritual tongue-lashings, not perfectly-executed liturgies, but the kindness of God—that leads to repentance, that leads us all back, again and again, to the God we know in Jesus.

And when we in the Church share this kind of love for one another, it has an effect on more than just those within our fellowship.

Pastor Bill White recounted the legend of two old friends who, through the circumstances of history, ended up living in two kingdoms that were hostile to one another. But their friendship endured. One of the men visited the other friend in his country, the king got wind of this foreigner’s presence, and ordered the visitor’s execution. The king was sure that the visitor was a spy.

“Your majesty,” the man begged. “Please give me 30 days to settle my affairs in my homeland. When I return, you can execute me.” Naturally, the king didn’t believe him. “A condemned man will return to his execution after he gains his freedom? Do you think I’m a fool?” That’s when the man’s old friend, stepped forward. “Jail me, your majesty. This is my friend. I trust him. But if he isn’t back in thirty days, you can take my life.” Incredulous, the king went along with the plan.

The thirty days were nearly up, when the accused man, having gotten his affairs in order, returned for his execution. His jailed friend said, “You should let me take your punishment. I’ve prepared myself to die in these thirty days. You can go free and live.” But the accused man said, “It isn’t right that you should take my punishment in my place.” They argued like this for some time. Finally, the king interrupted, “Enough!” He had never seen selfless love before, the king said. “I pardon you both and I ask you a favor: May I become your friend? I would give anything to be like you!” The two men agreed and the three became fast friends.

Some fifty years after the incidents recounted in tonight’s Gospel lesson, one of the disciples whose feet had been washed by Jesus, by then a much older man, wrote a letter to be circulated among churches then experiencing persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire. Faith in a Savior they could not see was hard to maintain in the face of the threats of the Roman Army they saw every day.

But John, the beloved disciple, traditional author of tonight’s Gospel lesson, encouraged those fearful believers to keep loving God, loving their neighbors, and loving one another. In fact, John says the love of Christians for one another verifies the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Listen to what he says in 1 John 3:14-16:

“We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

As we prepare to remember the crucifixion of Jesus on Friday and His resurrection on Sunday, let the magnitude of God’s love for you, just as you are, sink deeply into your life.

Then dare to love the Church and all who are part of it as you have been loved. The Bible says that the Church is a living organism and when the faith of one member is built up by love, the faith of the whole Church is built up. And a faithful, loving Church, as you know, is among God’s very best gifts. Amen

Tough Issue for the Christian Who is Criticized

When to speak and when to keep silent.

A Bit About Jesus' "New Commandment"

In two days, Christians all over the world will celebrate Maundy Thursday. Together, we'll read and hear the account from the Gospel of John about the dinner Jesus had with His disciples on the night of His betrayal and arrest.

In the passage, after washing the feet of His disciples, Jesus says that all His followers--the Church, are to "do as I have done to you." Then, Jesus says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

The latter verse, in fact, is where it's thought that the name Maundy comes from. It's the Middle English version of the Latin term, mandatum, in modern English, mandate or command.*

But what's new about this commandment? Isn't Jesus' "new commandment" just another way of expressing God’s will for humanity from the beginning, expressed in the two tables of the Ten Commandments and summarized by Jesus as the Great Commandment: to love God completely and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves?

In one way, yes, Jesus’ new commandment is no different from the Great Commandment that God has always given to us. And who could expect otherwise? God is unchanging in His goodness, strength, and will. In Malachi 3:6, God says, “For I the Lord do not change…” And Hebrews 13:8, says of God the Son, “Jesus is Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” The God Who created us out of love and His desire to give that love away, wills that we not only love Him, but also love all the people He loves. And that’s everybody. So, at one level Jesus’ new commandment isn’t very new at all.

Yet, at another level, it is new. Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet was a kind of visible parable for what He meant when He used the term, love.

For Jesus, love is more than compassion or consideration of others, more than respect or regard. When Jesus washed those filthy feet, He did a menial task which all first-century Judea agreed to be beneath someone hailed by many as a teacher (rabbi) or Lord. In this action, Jesus was just beginning to re-image lordship and greatness, ultimately, deity itself.

Of course, Jesus definitively re-imaged love on the cross. There, He lived a love so passionate that it laid aside dignity as the world sees it, to reclaim humanity from sin and death.

This is what Paul is talking about in citing what many scholars believe was a hynm sung by early Christians, when he writes that "though [Jesus] was in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave...He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:6-8)

This is love as Jesus defines it, a love so great that it willingly dies for the beloved, even when the beloved is contemptuous of the lover. Another word for it is passion, which is why we refer to Christ's crucifixion as His passion.

But, wait. It gets even more difficult and countercultural!

Remember that Jesus says to His followers, "You also should do as I have done to you." Jesus' new command is that we are to love with the same reckless disregard for the reactions of others that Jesus displayed. This is what Paul is talking about when he introduces that hymn in Philippians by saying, "Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus..." (Philippians 2:4-5)

Can Jesus be serious? Can Paul?

When Jesus gave His brand of love to the disciples, washing their feet, it didn't change their actions in the ensuing hours. They abandoned, denied, or betrayed Jesus.

And when Jesus offered Himself as the forgiving, eternity-granting Servant King to the Roman and Jewish authorities, they nailed Him to a cross.

And Paul himself, spending his life to spread the good news of Jesus, ended up on the wrong side of Roman "justice," a martyr for the faith.

Why would anybody want to love like that? What exactly is in it for us?

That last question, one we all ask if we're honest, actually has things backwards. Restating it with its implied premise, it might be expressed, "If I love like Jesus loves, what do I get out of it?"

The answer, of course, is that we don't love like Jesus (or, strive in our imperfect, sin-marred human way, to love like Jesus) to get anything out of it. We strive to love like that because we already have been loved like that, because when Jesus died and rose, He opened up new life and eternity to those who believe in Him. As John writes elsewhere in the New Testament, "We love because He [God] first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

We don't love to get anything. We love because through Jesus, we've already got everything--forgiveness, eternity, hope, purpose, love. The game has been won, the A already been given. Because Jesus went through the cross, even death has lost its sting.

Following Jesus doesn't mean we don't suffer in this world. In fact, we may suffer more than non-Christians precisely because we follow Christ. But we feel motivated and empowered to love like Jesus because in Christ, we're freed to love without regard to consequences.

It's fair for anyone reading this to ask me, "Do you love like Jesus? Do you love without regard to consequences? Do you serve selflessly?"

No, I don't love like Jesus. But I pray and hope that by God's grace that I will grow up as a Christian to do so. I ask God to help me obey Jesus' new commandment.

Thank God we're graded on a curve. The curve is called grace, God's charity, and it belongs to all who confess their powerlessness over sin and trust in Jesus Christ to love them into eternity.

With Christ in your life, even when you fail, you can not fail.

*"According to a common theory, the English word Maundy in that name for the day is derived through Middle English, and Old French mandé, from the Latin mandatum, the first word of the phrase "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" ("A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you"), the statement by Jesus in the Gospel of John (13:34) by which Jesus explained to the Apostles the significance of his action of washing their feet." (See here.)

Parable of an Unwanted Painting

[This was presented by my friend and colleague, Glen VanderKloot, in his daily email today.]

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A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

A wealthy man and his son loved to collect rare works of art.
They had everything in their collection, from Picasso to Raphael.
They would often sit together and admire the great works of art.

When the Vietnam conflict broke out, the son went to war.
He was very courageous and died in battle while rescuing
another soldier. The father was notified and grieved deeply
for his only son.

About a month later, just before Christmas,
there was a knock at the door. A young man stood at the
door with a large package in his hands. He said, "Sir, you
don't know me, but I am the soldier for whom your son gave
his life. He saved many lives that day, and he was carrying
me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart and he died
instantly. He often talked about you, and your love for art."
The young man held out this package. "I know this isn't much.
I'm not really a great artist, but I think your son would have
wanted you to have this."

The father opened the package. It was a portrait of his son,
painted by the young man. He stared in awe at the way the
soldier had captured the personality of his son in the painting.
The father was so drawn to the eyes that his own eyes welled
up with tears. He thanked the young man and offered to pay
him for the picture. "Oh, no sir, I could never repay what your
son did for me. It's a gift."

The father hung the portrait over his mantle. Every time visitors
came to his home he took them to see the portrait of his son
before he showed them any of the other great works he had
collected.

The man died a few months later. There was to be a great auction
of his paintings Many influential people gathered, excited over
seeing the great paintings and having an opportunity to purchase
one for their collection.

On the platform sat the painting of the son. The auctioneer pounded
his gavel. "We will start the bidding with this picture of the son.
Who will bid for this picture?" There was silence. Then a voice in
the back of the room shouted, "We want to see the famous
paintings. Skip this one."

But the auctioneer persisted. "Will somebody bid for this painting.
Who will start the bidding? $100? $200?" Another voice yelled
angrily, "We didn't come to see this painting. We came to see the
Van Goghs and Rembrandts. Get on with the real bids" But still
the auctioneer continued. "The son The son Who'll take the son?"
Finally, a voice came from the very back of the room. It was the
longtime gardener of the man and his son. "I'll give $10 for the
painting." Being a poor man, it was all he could afford. "We have
$10, who will bid $20?" "Give it to him for $10. Let's see the masters"
"$10 is the bid, won't someone bid $20?"

The crowd was becoming angry. They didn't want the picture of
the son. They wanted the more worthy investments for their
collections. The auctioneer pounded the gavel. "Going once, twice,
SOLD for $10"

A man sitting on the second row shouted, "Now let's get on with
the collection" The auctioneer laid down his gavel. "I'm sorry, the
auction is over." "What about the paintings?" I am sorry. When I
was called to conduct this auction, I was told of a secret stipulation
in the will. I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this
time. Only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever
bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, including the
paintings. The man who took the son gets everything"

God gave His son 2,000 years ago to die on the cross. Much like
the auctioneer, His message today is:

    "The son, the son, who'll take the son?"

Because, you see, whoever takes the Son gets everything.

                author unknown to me

Scripture
 1 John 5:12 TNIV

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have
the Son of God does not have life.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for giving your son to die on the cross
so that I might live.  Help me every day to renew
my faith and commitment to Jesus. Amen

*************************************************

'That You Should Do As I Have'

That's the title of this Maundy Thursday sermon by US Lutheran Pastor Sam Zumwalt. It's presented on the Lutheran site,  Göttinger Predigten im Internet. The sermon was presented five years ago. So, its references to taxes and health care shouldn't be read as related to the specifics to this country's recent debates on health care reform. There is plenty in this sermon to make both conservatives and liberals upset, which is fine. If the truth of Jesus and of the Bible doesn't upset us sometimes, we probably haven't been paying attention. Please, wherever you get offended, if you get offended, keep reading. This is a call to faithful discipleship...and that often makes us uncomfortable.

Lutheran Christians don’t believe that Holy Baptism is an outward sign of an inward action – something one does once you have invited Jesus into your heart. Rather we believe that Holy Baptism is God’s gracious act of choosing us (especially as helpless infants) for Christ’s sake. We believe, teach, and confess that Holy Baptism is the pattern of our lives until we die. Yes, we are only washed one time with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet we believe, teach, and confess that Holy Baptism is a way of life – daily dying to sin through confessing our need for a Savior and daily being raised to live a new life in the power of the Holy Spirit (given as a free gift in baptism).

Maundy Thursday, the first day of the Triduum (“three days” in Latin), introduces us to shape of this baptized life and the real meaning of discipleship. We are to do as the Lord Jesus does. We are to love as our Master loves. He gives us a new commandment – to give our lives away in humble service even unto death.

Now, needless to say, the inner circle of disciples didn’t get it that night or the next or the next. When Jesus took off his outer cloak and tied a towel around himself and began to wash feet like the lowliest servant, the disciples were taken aback and even repulsed by this kind of deliberate choice. When Jesus was arrested later that night and went without protest, the disciples were terrified and lost heart by this kind of deliberate choice. When Jesus was on trial before the religious leaders and the secular leaders, when he was mocked and beaten, when he was condemned to death, the disciples were in fear for their own lives and disbelieving of this kind of deliberate choice. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, the disciples were grief stricken and utterly disoriented by this kind of deliberate choice.

Only later, after the fact, when they knew the rest of the story, only then would the disciples begin to understand that Holy Baptism is a way of life – the pattern of dying to self and rising to life a new life of humble service in the power of the Holy Spirit. In short, during the original Triduum, the disciples could not be faulted for not knowing what they didn’t know. And to the extent that anyone has not been taught what it means to die and rise with Christ in the washing of Holy Baptism, that person cannot be faulted for not knowing what she or he doesn’t know. Nevertheless, all sin and all die.

But if we know what it means to die and rise with Christ in the washing of Holy Baptism and we do not do it, then we stand with all those that have renounced and abandoned the Christian faith. Abandoning God, we are guilty of apostasy.

The hard truth about us is that we do not fear, love, and trust God above all else. In short, daily we renounce the Lord our God and abandon the Christian faith. Daily we fail to die to ourselves and knowingly commit apostasy. Following the suggestion of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, I call this functional atheism. When we exclude God from whole portions and chapters of our lives, we abandon our God and function as atheists in that area or that period of our lives.

We live in a culture that despises the Christian faith and encourages us to function as atheists. The Lord Jesus’ call to give your lives away in humble service is often mimicked by random acts of kindness like blood drives and collections for world hunger even in churches! But this culture urges and encourages us to “look out for yourself – do what you want, do what makes you happy, do what you feel like doing.”

This culture doesn’t want to be told that prices need to be raised to pay a living wage to everyone. This culture doesn’t want to be told that taxes need to be raised to provide health care to those that don’t have it, to provide an education to all that need it, to take care of those that cannot work and those that no longer can work. This culture doesn’t want to be told that roads, bridges, and sewers are wearing out and need to be replaced and that it’s going to cost money. Instead we love to hear the politicians say “No new taxes!” And we believe we can have everything without any personal cost.

This culture doesn’t want to be told that selfishness breeds selfishness, heartache, and destruction. Instead it celebrates the freedom of the individual. This culture says that whatever you feel like doing is fine within very few limits.

This culture says that if you feel like having consensual sex, go ahead and do it. This culture says that if you feel like living together outside of marriage, go ahead and do it. This culture says that if you feel like abandoning your marriage and your children, go ahead and do it. This culture says that if you feel like aborting a child, go ahead and do it. This culture says that if you feel like all the previous generations are wrong about marriage being for one woman and one man until death parts them, go ahead and do it. This culture says that if you feel like it’s a burden to take care of someone and you feel that it’s time for them to die, go ahead and do it.

The Lord Jesus says to us: “Do as I have done – give your lives away in humble service.” And we answer back: “You have got to be kidding!” After all, the culture we live in is far more appealing than the kingdom the Lord Jesus calls us to inhabit. Autonomous individuals don’t want to be told what to do, and so we keep deconstructing what God has made. Like those that put the Lord Jesus on trial, we declare that the Lord Jesus is a threat to our culture. And He is! He is out to destroy this culture of death. He is out to obliterate its obsession with selfish autonomy. He longs to give us a new life!

Someone once said: Before the truth sets you free, it makes you mad! Well, that’s not quite it. The Lord Jesus is the Truth embodied. In Hs presence, all of us are exposed as selfish, functional atheists that are on the way to the cemetery. Even our random acts of kindness are shown for what they are – magnanimous gestures by self-serving egotists! We do not fear, love, and trust God above all else. Left to ourselves, we abandon God.

Confronted with the Truth – in the presence of Jesus the truth about himself – Simon Peter asked to be washed. Confronted with the Truth – in the presence of Jesus the truth about ourselves – we at began the Lenten season on Ash Wednesday with the words of Psalm 51: “Wash me through and through from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin” (v. 2). We confessed our utter brokenness. We were reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. The Truth about us is that there is no help or hope to be found within this body of death. No matter how many counselors and false prophets tell us that we should follow our feelings. The Truth is our feelings are the stuff of death.

Baptized into the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, we die to ourselves again and again. If we do not die to ourselves, we function as atheists and abandon God. The liberation provided by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus is not, as the false prophets say, a freedom to follow my feelings and my experience wherever that leads. The Lord Jesus means freedom from the culture of death – freedom to die to ourselves daily – to go to our graves giving our lives away daily in humble service like Jesus!

We should enter into this Triduum – these three days – with awe and wonder, because we know that the Lord Jesus deliberately chose to do what we gladly run away from. In love that is beyond our imagination and our ability, God in the flesh willingly and without hesitation went the way that we cannot go if we are left to our selfish selves.

That night when the disciples were gathered with him for supper, the Lord Jesus did what every pious Jew does to this day. He took bread and wine and gave the King of the Universe thanks and praise for it. But on that occasion, the Lord Jesus said: “This my body and this my blood given and shed for you.”

His disciples did not know what He was up to, but we baptized Christians know the rest of the story. The Lord Jesus was promising that the life He was about to sacrifice for the sins of the world would be ever after given in bread and wine as we eat and drink, remembering that we were there with Him on the cross. In Holy Baptism, we have already died with Him on Calvary’s tree and now in the Holy Communion He gives us His life as a free gift again and again and again unto eternity.

Left to ourselves, we abandon God and can never love as Christ loves us. But dying to ourselves daily and being filled with that Life and that Love that can never be taken from us, we can give our lives away in humble service just like the One who lives in and through us.

Today, in this place, it seems possible as we look around to see Visible Words and living embodiments of the discipled life. Here we have been called out of the world of unbelief, out of the culture of death. But tonight and tomorrow we go to our trials, to our sufferings, and to our crosses, and the culture of death screams out: “Fools, why would you ever live like that when you can be your own little god?”

The Lord Jesus shows us that the way of eternal life leads through the death of self and, yes, the death of this body with all of its feelings and experience. The Lord Jesus shows us that the way of eternal death is nothing other than a celebration of the autonomous self and the culture of death that is trying to seduce us daily!

“Don’t go to hell with the culture of death! Come, die with me,” says our Lord Jesus, “and you will live forever.”

Saying thank You...

...reminds me of all for which I have to be thankful.

That truth made me really appreciate this piece from today's Our Daily Bread devotion.

Carnival potion sales...

...goes high tech.

How Will You React to Jesus? (Palm Sunday)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today. Today is Palm Sunday.]

Luke 19:28-40
Ronald Reagan--for you young people, he was our fortieth president and a one-time movie star--had a story he loved to tell. It went like this: “Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen the boy’s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to all fours, and began digging. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ the psychiatrist asked. ‘With all this manure,’ the little boy replied, beaming,’there must be a pony in here somewhere.’”

Of course, a little boy of a different nature might not have been so sure that there was a pony to be found. He may have decided that where there’s manure, there’s always...more manure.

The point is that two people may react to the same events, experiences, or people in completely different ways. And that’s fine. One of the things I’ve learned in life is that we all have different tastes and 99.9% of the time, our diverging views don’t really matter one way or the other.

But at other times, how we react may mean the difference between life and death, even eternal life and death.

Whenever we think of Palm Sunday, I suspect that we conjure up images of palm leaves waving, “Hosannas” being shouted, and vast throngs of people welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on the Sunday five days before His crucifixion. But if you look at our lesson from the Gospel of Luke today, you find none of those things.

We do see Jesus’ closest followers putting their cloaks on the animal He rides and onto the pathway He takes into Jerusalem. But we have no mention of what Mark calls “leaves from the field.” Or what Matthew describes as “branches from the trees.” In fact, of the four gospels in the New Testament, only John’s mentions “branches of palms.”

In Luke’s telling, Jesus’ disciples cry out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the Name of the Lord! [And, echoing the song of the angels on the night of Jesus’ birth] Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” But not once do we hear the crowds yelling, “Hosanna!,” a word that essentially means “Save now!”

And, as to crowds, our lesson only speaks of “the whole multitude of disciples,” meaning the hundreds of people who were followers of Jesus. But Luke doesn’t mention the thousands more who would have been in Jerusalem preparing to celebrate the Jewish Passover when Jesus arrives in the city.

What are we to make of these differences in the ways the four gospel writers tell the story of that first Palm Sunday? It all boils down, I think, to focus. Each of the gospel writers have different themes on which they focus, different aspects of Jesus’ story and of Christian faith.

And even more particular to today’s lesson, Luke’s account of the first Palm Sunday comes as part of a string of incidents in Jesus’ ministry and the parables he tells that hammer away at a single theme.

We see this theme earlier Luke, chapter 19, where we read of Jesus' encounter with a man named Zacchaeus. You know the story of Zacchaeus, probably. "Zaccheaus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he...”

Jesus was traveling through Zacchaeus' hometown. Being a person of short stature, Zacchaeus climbed into a sycamore tree in order to get a good look at the celebrated preacher from Nazareth. When Jesus saw Zacchaeus, He called him down from his perch, explaining that He intended to visit Zacchaeus' place right then and there. Zacchaeus climbed down out of his tree and welcomed Jesus. The problem, as some of the good people of that town saw it, was that Zacchaeus was a notorious extortionist. But it wasn't to those supposedly good people that Jesus said, "Today salvation has come to this house." It was to Zacchaeus. The difference between Zacchaeus and the good "church people" (or the first century Judean versions of good church people was that he welcomed Jesus, while they rejected or ignored Jesus. (By the way, from the Bible’s perspective, ignoring Jesus is exactly the same as rejecting Jesus.)

Later in the chapter, just before Palm Sunday, Jesus tells a story about a king who left his people for awhile, just as Jesus would do after dying, rising, and ascending to heaven. Some of the king's subjects excitedly welcomed his return. Others didn't want him around.

As we come to his account of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, Luke isn’t saying that there weren’t palm leaves, hosannas, or adoring crowds that first Palm Sunday. But, like a filmmaker showing us one or two people in a scene surrounded by thousands of extras, Luke wants to show us something very important, seen in the reactions to Jesus of two relatively small groups of people.

The first group is Jesus’ disciples. You and I know that at this point, just days before Jesus was to die on a cross, the five-hundred or so people who followed Jesus still didn’t get Him.* They thought that Jesus would be the sort of king who would get rid of the Romans, lower the taxes, and be good to God’s people…or at least, good to them according to how they saw things. But to the extent that they were able at the time, before the crucifixion and before Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples hailed Jesus as their king. They laid down their cloaks as an act of deference and respect. They praised God for Jesus and spoke enthusiastically about all the godly miracles Jesus had performed. They welcomed Jesus into their capital city of Jerusalem and into their lives.

Then, there were some Pharisees. The Pharisees, you know, believed that they could earn salvation and forgiveness of sin. They didn’t pay attention to the teaching of the whole Bible that salvation and forgiveness are gifts granted to those who turn from sin and trust in God. Appalled by the display of devotion to Jesus put on by the disciples, they tell Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop!” They rejected Jesus as the king of either Jerusalem or their lives.

Two reactions: Welcoming Jesus. Rejecting Jesus.

Those who reject Jesus reject peace in their hearts, life with God, and eternity.

Those who welcome Him receive peace, life, and eternity.

Jesus can either be the rock on Whom we build our lives or the stone on which we crash and eternally self-destruct. What will we choose to allow Him to be in our lives?

A couple I know told me about something that happened when their young granddaughter burst from her bed room, where she had been reading the Bible. "I get to live forever!" she said. So do all who welcome Jesus into the center of their lives. And even in the rough and rugged times of life, we have the promise of a God Who loves, forgives, and gives us life forever!

When the disciples welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, they had no idea what they were getting into. They didn’t realize that their king would have to die and rise before He could claim His crown. They had no idea that following Him meant turning their backs on their sins, even the ones they enjoyed, so that they could take hold of the forgiveness and new life only Jesus brings.

For some, welcoming Jesus would mean death at the hands of their persecutors. For many, it would mean being rejected by family, friends, and society for trusting in the Savior they had seen dead and risen. But each day for the rest of their lives, they chose to welcome Jesus. For them, accepting the brief and earthly complications associated with following Christ was a small price to pay compared to spending eternity at His side. It still is!

As we prepare to celebrate Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter this week, may we commit ourselves to always welcoming Jesus!

*The risen Jesus revealed Himself only to those who had believed in Him during His earthly ministry.

Thoughts on the Buckeyes Loss to Tennessee Last Night in NCAA Tournament

Of course, I was sad to see the Buckeyes men's basketball season come to an end last night. But Ohio State put up a great fight against Tennessee, who feature imposing front-line players and stifling defense. (See here.) As Buckeye fourth-year junior David Lighty said, the shots just weren't falling.

At least that was the story offensively. Most important of all, probably, was how effectively the Volunteers bottled up Buckeye three-point threat Jon Diebler, who may have had his poorest shooting performance since the Buckeyes' game against Penn State in Columbus back on February 3. (That was a game the Buckeyes won 75-62. But the final score was more lopsided than most of the game had been. The contest was nip and tuck most of the evening. The turnaround moment, ironically, came when Diebler, who had struggled all evening long, hit a three with 1:29 left in the game. But there was no such turnaround moment last night!)

Once again, as has been true of every year he's been a collegiate head coach, Thad Matta did a masterful job this season. With a short bench, the Buckeyes made it to the Sweet Sixteen. Matta has proven year after year that he is more than a great recruiter; he's a guy who can mold a winning game plan around varied personnel. As an Ohio State grad and lifelong Ohio State basketball fan, I feel that the university is as fortunate to have Matta at the helm of men's basketball as it is to have Jim Tressel coaching football!

I would love to see national player-of-the-year Evan Turner return next year. But I doubt that it will happen.

And who could blame Turner for going to the NBA? The injury he sustained earlier this season--breaking several bones in his back--demonstrates how vulnerable to injury an athlete can be. A few inches difference in the impact point of that injury and Turner might have been far more seriously injured. At least in the NBA, Turner will be paid for taking such risks and be able to afford any long-term care afterward. The risks are simply too great to expect him to come back with the Buckeyes for his senior year.

But, WOW! Turner has certainly added another great chapter to the annals of Ohio State basketball history.

Next year, with two of the top high school recruits in the country and a terrific returning cast of characters, Ohio State's basketball team will be outstanding once again. A Big 10 championship and a deep run into the NCAA tournament are clearly possible.

I'm excited!

"To show your love for God, share your love with others"

See here.

Sweet Sixteen!

Go, Buckeyes!

Here

Here

Good News from Pastor David Wayne

This first was posted nine days ago, about the same time I got word through Facebook, but I wanted to (belatedly) share it here: There is good news regarding the cancer of my blogging colleague, Pastor David Wayne. Thank God! Please continue to pray for David. Read the whole thing.

Learning to Pray (Fifth Midweek Lenten Devotion)

[This was shared during the final Wednesday Midweek devotional worship for Lent at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier this evening.]
James 1:12-16
Luke 4:1-2a
Tonight, we’re focusing on the sixth and seventh petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.”

Someone has said that the easiest thing to empirically prove about the witness of Scripture and Christian belief is the reality of sin and evil. The Bible asks us to accept as matters of faith, among other things, the existence of God, Jesus' birth to a virgin, the divinity of Jesus, Jesus’ resurrection, the true presence of Christ's body and blood "in, with, and under" the bread and wine of Holy Communion, and eternity as a reality that will be experienced by all who repent and believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord.

But it requires no leap of faith for us to believe that each of us is a born sinner or that, except for the God-man Jesus, sin is indemic to the human experience. Each of us can testify to the reality of sin and evil from what we see in the headlines, in our homes, and in our own hearts.

Ann’s and my home pastor used to tell us, “If you doubt the existence of original sin, put two 2-years olds in a locked room with a single toy.”

Our natural impulse is to be completely wrapped up in ourselves, to love ourselves but not God, and certainly not neighbor.

Our inborn desire to be in control of the universe, to “be like God” as the serpent put it to Eve in the garden of Eden, is something we all share, no matter how hard we may try to conceal it from others...or ourselves.

But after the Christian has prayed that

• God’s Name will be hallowed,
• God’s kingdom will come,
• God’s will is done,
• God will provide our daily bread and
• God will forgive us our sins as we forgive others,

Jesus encourages us to pray for what may be the biggest miracles of all!

Jesus teaches us to ask our Father to “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” or as a modern translation of the prayer puts it, “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.”

Think about that: Jesus is teaching us to militate against our inborn impulse to do be our own gods and ask God for the power to not do every selfish, willful, destructive, hurtful thing which, inside of us, we want to do! That the Holy Spirit would actually move us to even pray for such things is a miracle, let alone give us the power to mean the requests and actually contemplate living them!

Of the sixth petition, "Lead us not into temptation," in The Small Catechism, Martin Luther makes the same point as Jesus’ brother James makes in the words I read from the New Testament a few moments ago. Luther writes, “God tempts no one to sin, but we ask in this prayer that God would watch over us and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final victory.” Here, Luther underscores the fact that, in this petition, we ask God for a miracle.

But that’s OK; God is in the miracle business!

On the First Sunday in Lent each year, we remember that Jesus, though sinless, shared the very human experience of being tempted to sin. As an often-quoted passage of Hebrews reminds us, in Jesus, our high priest, “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”

Jesus’ successful resistance of temptation in the wilderness--along with His life-long avoidance of sin--was a miracle, in its way.

Jesus didn’t take the easy way out.

He didn’t take the selfish way out.

He endured in His faithful obedience to the will of God and because Jesus endured, He can help us to endure faithfully in the face of temptation and evil.

But we can do more than endure. The God Who has shared our life experiences has also conquered our temptations, our sins, and death itself through Christ’s cross and empty tomb!

Whenever we ask God to “deliver us from evil,” we express our conviction that no matter what temptations bedevil us and whatever sins we need to confess in Jesus’ Name, those who entrust themselves to Jesus can be raised above all evils.

During our lives on this earth, God will minister to those who truly seek to walk with Him, just as God sent His angels to serve Jesus in His wilderness of temptation.

To pray, “Deliver us from evil” is to pray for more than the power to resist evil in this life. In Matthew 24, Jesus talks about what this world will be like as its life draws to a close. There will be an “increase of lawlessness,” Jesus says, and “the love of many will grow cold.” “But,” He goes on, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

It was no doubt with passages like this in mind that Luther wrote of the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Deliver us from evil”: “We ask in this inclusive prayer that our heavenly Father would save us from every evil to body and soul, and at the last hour would mercifully take us from the troubles of this world to Himself in heaven.”

In teaching us the sixth and seventh petitions, as is true of all the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus invites us to trustingly live in the glory of two transcending Christian realities: Surrender and Triumph!

When by faith, we surrender to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit makes it possible not only for us to confess our faith in Jesus’ Lordship, but also to be empowered to relate to God as “our Father,” our intimate and loving parent. We can speak honestly to God about our desires, our hopes, our troubles and temptations, our requests.

Last Sunday, I mentioned that I've been reading John Ortberg's new book, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You. Today--after I thought I had finished this sermon yesterday--I got to a chapter where Ortberg talks about this whole business of surrender to God. To the world, he points out, surrender is equated with defeat. But for the Christian, surrender is the first step to life.

In fact, when a movement among Christians called the Oxford Group birthed Alcoholics Anonymous, it presented twelve practical steps to freedom from addiction, all of which are rooted in the Bible and Christian belief. The first step to freedom for the addict is admitting that they have a problem too big for them to control or overcome.

That is the first step to freedom from sin and the freedom to truly live for all of us. Surrender is a hard pill to swallow for us, especially for we men, who are seem to liberally imbibe the myth that if we're not in control, we're less than human.

But as Ortberg points out, when we play God, when we think that we must have things under control, we walk down the road of disappointment and unhappiness. That's because, my fellow recovering control freaks, when we presume to be in control of our worlds, we take responsibility for something over which we have zero control: the outcomes of life.

When we surrender our lives to God, God gives us the freedom to live day by day, working, loving, and living faithfully and leaving the outcomes in the hands of God.

That's a relief and that's liberating!

The child who surrenders to the Father in faith also shares in Jesus’ triumph over temptation, sin, evil, and death.

The person who asks their Father to deliver them from evil is claiming their share in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Surrender to Jesus Christ brings triumph as God sets us free to be our true selves, our best selves!

We usually end our prayers, of course, with the word, Amen. Amen is more than a religious way of saying, “Over and out.” Let Luther have the last word tonight:

Amen means Yes, it shall be so. We say Amen because we are certain that such petitions are pleasing to our Father in heaven and are heard by Him. For He Himself has commanded us to pray in this way and has promised to hear us.

When we say, "Amen" in our prayers, we take Jesus up on His offer of new life to those who surrender to Him and walk in the triumph of new life for all who repent and believe in Him!

Lord Jesus: Teach us to pray as You have taught us and live our lives in surrender and triumph in Your Name. Amen

Something About the Doxology of the Lord's Prayer

Tomorrow evening will bring the last of our congregation's Wednesday Lenten midweek devotional services. We've been considering how we can deepen our prayer lives by looking at the Lord's Prayer and tomorrow, we'll focus on the sixth and seventh petitions: "And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil."

Of course, in Lutheran circles at least, we don't usually conclude praying the Lord's Prayer with these petitions. So, some might wonder why I’m not going to talk about, what is for us, the last part of the Lord’s Prayer: “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen,” the phrase we call, the Doxology.

There are several reasons. First of all, I’ve run out of Wednesdays in Lent. Of course, there is one more Wednesday, next week. But we’ll be worshiping together at Saint Matthew on the evenings of Maundy Thursday (April 1) and Good Friday (April 2) next week. People don’t need to overdose on sermons in any seven-day period!

But another reason is that, as you can see for yourself by reading both Matthew and Luke, the doxology was not part of Jesus’ prayer. Our Roman Catholic friends are technically right for not including “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen” with the Lord’s Prayer. (These words are part of Roman Catholic worship, though they're not offered immediately after the seventh petition of the Lord's Prayer. Lutherans who try to "blend in" while attending Roman Catholic Masses often unintentionally “out” themselves by moving onto the Doxology when other worshipers have closed their mouths. That results in red faces for we Lutherans and knowing laughter from the Catholics.)

As John Brokhoff explains in his book, Pray Like Jesus, the words of the Doxology “were added by the church early in the second century to round out the prayer for use in worship.” The words themselves are borrowed from two passages of the Old Testament. One is Daniel 4:3:

How great are [God's] signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his sovereignty is from generation to generation.

The other, from a prayer of King David, is 1 Chronicles 29:11:
¹¹

Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

When I first became a Christian through the ministry of a Lutheran congregation some thirty-four years ago, I remember being surprised to see the words, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen,” called “The Doxology” by Martin Luther in The Small Catechism. I thought the Doxology was that thing that the Methodists I grew up with sang when Christians got together for potlucks (and which we sing as our Offertory at Saint Matthew). You know, “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow…”

But, it turns out that there are lots of doxologies. The word, doxology, is a compound from the Greek in which the New Testament was originally written: doxos means glory and logos means word. A doxology is a word of glory to God.

So, though Jesus didn’t teach the prayer as ending in this way, whenever we use the doxology with the Lord's Prayer in our worship together, we begin by asking that God’s Name will be hallowed and we end by hallowing His Name ourselves with our praise.

Flash Prayers

[This is the article I've written for the April newsletter of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

And [Jesus] said, “Woe also to you lawyers! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.” (Luke 11:46)

Let’s be clear: In this passage, Jesus wasn't addressing lawyers like those we know today. The lawyers He criticized were experts in not only Biblical commands, but also in the hundreds of human-created laws that were produced in the centuries before Jesus showed up. Pharisees and lawyers (also known as scribes) loved to lay the burdens of these laws on others, Jesus is saying, but they were none too keen to help anyone with the burdens these laws imposed.

I’ve been thinking about that during the Lenten season this year. On Wednesday nights during Lent, we’ve been focusing on prayer by taking a close look at the model prayer Jesus taught, the Lord’s Prayer. (You can find the prayer, presented in slightly different forms in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.)

Of course, one of my aims during Lent has been to encourage people to pray more.

But I haven’t wanted and I don’t want to tell people, “You’ve got to pray in a certain way.” If I lay more burdens on people, I’m no better than the scribes and Pharisees Jesus criticized.

The great news is that we Christians don’t have to pray (though Jesus does command prayer), but that we get to pray. Through prayer, we can be drawn closer to God, praise and thank God, confess our sins, and make requests, among other things.

But not everybody should or can pray in the same way.

I have a friend who’s a committed follower of Jesus. He also has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). I tease him that his brain has synaptic connections where I don’t even have brains!

For Joe (not his real name) to be forced to spend an hour every morning in prayer with a journal in hand would be torture. His mind would flit in a million different directions. He wouldn’t get much praying done. In the end, he would only resent God. Joe isn’t going to pray the way some “experts” (modern day versions of the “lawyers” Jesus criticized) say they should.

Joe’s challenge—and the challenge of every Christian—is to learn how to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) in ways consistent with their own personalities and circumstances.

In his wonderful book, Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World, the late missionary and educator, Frank Laubach, talked about how he offered “flash prayers.” Walking down a street, he might see a man who looked despondent; Laubach would silently pray, “God help that man.” In India, where he lived and worked for years, he might see a young mother and her brood of children; Laubach would ask God to encourage them. He might see a beautiful sunset or healthy vegetables in the market and simply thank God for these blessings.

Laubach also suggested that Christians could offer these “flash prayers” throughout their days: when waking in the morning, when taking a shower, and in all the brief in-between times in our daily schedules. By this method, we can cover our world and our lives in prayer.

As Laubach describes flash praying, it can even be a lot of fun. He remembers sitting in the back pew of a Mumbai church’s sanctuary one Easter Sunday. He had expected to be inspired and encouraged. Instead, the preacher gave a sermon, which Laubach said, “was hopelessly bad.” What could Laubach do for the poor congregation suffering through this sermon? He decided to pray for all the people he saw sitting in front of him, looking at the backs of their heads as he did so.

As Laubach tells it: “To my astonished joy, every person, almost the moment I prayed, either turned, or bowed his head, or passed his hand over the back of his head. I have never before nor since experienced such a one-hundred per cent response.”

That last sentence should be a cautionary note. We shouldn’t ape what Laubach did on that particular Easter Sunday. He admits that the response he got that day was unique. (Besides, who wants to be burdened with new prayer laws?)

But I do think there’s an important principle to be gleaned from his experience and from his “flash prayers.”

You can pray all day long in Jesus’ Name, in the silence of your heart, no matter what you’re doing at work, at home, with friends, at the ball game, or wherever. And when you do offer prayers like these, God will hear your prayers. I promise.

Try it.

Blessings in Christ,
Pastor Mark

txt me i luv 2 hr frm u

Over the weekend, I told the kids in Catechism class that I didn't even have texting ability on my cell phone. (Our family had it blocked on our phones.) They couldn't believe it and tried texting my phone only to get the message, "This phone does not receive text messages."

But there's someone you can "text" and always get through. I love this!

Lives That Say, "Thank You"

[This was shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 12:1-8
Years ago, a nearly full-sized replica of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall toured the country. During its Chicago stop, a TV reporter asked one man who had gone to see the wall why he was there. “Because,” the man replied, running his fingers across one particular name, “when I was in Vietnam, this man saved my life.”

As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I can readily understand that man’s emotions. You and I are privileged to know Someone Who sacrificed His life to save ours. Jesus Christ, true God and true sinless human being, died on a cross for us, accepting our punishment for sin, so that all who repent and believe in Him live with God forever.

Jesus’ death on the cross should engender endless gratitude in those of us who have been baptized and who believe. But that true story from Chicago compels me to ask myself: Do I have as much gratitude to Jesus for saving my life as that veteran had for the man whose name he reverently touched on the Vietnam War Memorial?

Our Gospel lesson from John causes me to ask the same question about my gratitude and belief in the God we know through Jesus.

The lesson records an almost bizarre incident that happened just six days before the Passover Feast that would see Jesus’ arrest and subsequent execution. At the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, his friends in Bethany, Jesus is having dinner. In the midst of it all, Mary walks over to Jesus, falls before Jesus, and pours a costly ointment, imported from India, onto Jesus’ feet. She dabs the liquid with her hair.

If this scene is strange to us, it would have been downright offensive to the people of first-century Judea where Jesus lived. For one thing, washing or anointing feet was slave’s work. For another, a woman was never to let her hair down except in the presence of her husband. And of course, the cost of the ointment, the equivalent of about one year’s wages, would have made her gesture almost incomprehensibly extravagant to some.

And though, in a short time, Judas will betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver—roughly one-tenth the value of the ointment Mary uses on Jesus’ feet, Judas says the money that selling the ointment could have raised, rather than "wasting" it, could have been given to the poor.

Jesus upbraids Judas. Mary, Jesus knows, is grateful for what Jesus has done for her family: in the preceding chapter of John's Gospel you can read about Jesus bringing Mary’s brother, Lazarus, back to life. She knows that is but a preview of coming attractions for all who believe in Jesus, because it was to Mary that Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; those who believe in Me, though they die, will live!”

I’d like to talk about four valuable lessons this incident teaches us. In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to:

• do whatever good we can do,
• whenever we can do it,
• for whomever we can do it.
• And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about the limitations of our abilities.

Let’s consider each one of those thoughts in turn.

First, in response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can. In his new book, The Me I Want to Be, John Ortberg, talks about how we pastors can sometimes crush the spirits of our congregations without intending to do so. He writes,

A mother with three preschool-age children hears her pastor talk about [the fact that he loves] God so much that he is up very early every morning to spend an hour of quiet time, but her children simply will not cooperate. What she takes away is that she ought to be doing the same thing and so she does spirituality by comparison, living under a cloud of guilt. It never occurs to her that the love she expresses to her children might ‘count’ as a spiritual activity. It never occurs to her that perhaps she is serving God more faithfully than the very pastor who may be neglecting his wife and children in the morning so he can have that hour of quiet.

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do what we can do and not compare ourselves to others.

We know that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were people of modest means. There were no servants helping with this dinner they were serving. Yet they had this expensive ointment, something for which they’d probably scrimped and saved for years. Putting it on Jesus’ feet was an extravagant, unnecessary, and altogether loving thing for Mary to do. She did what she could do. That’s our call too: to do what we can to thank and praise Jesus.

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good whenever we can do it. Bishop Thomas Clary tells the story of a conversation that happened after the meeting of a board on which he served. People were telling stories about their most embarrassing moments. One man, Frank, talked about his dad, a fisherman who loved the sea and was devoted to his entire extended family. As the Bishop tells it:

[Frank said,] "When the weather was bad [my Dad] would drive me to school. He had this old truck that he used in his fishing business...[It made lots of noise, announcing its presence wherever it went.]...As [Dad] would drive toward the school, I would shrink down into the seat hoping to disappear...[so I wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of my schoolmates]...[Dad] would drive right up in front [of the school], and it seemed like everybody would be standing around and watching. Then [Dad] would lean over and give me a big kiss on the cheek and tell me to be a good boy. It was so embarrassing...Here I was twelve years old, and my dad would lean over and kiss me goodbye! I remember the day I decided I was too old for a goodbye kiss. When we got to school and came to a stop, he had his usual big smile. He started to lean toward me, but I put my hand up and said, "No, Dad." [Frank explained that he was too old to be kissed by his father. His dad’s eyes teared up.] He turned and looked out the windshield. "You’re right...You are a big boy, a man. I won’t kiss you any more."

[Then, Bishop Clary says that as he remembered his embarrassing moment,] Frank got a funny look on his face and the tears began to well up in his eyes as he spoke. "It wasn’t long after that when my dad went to sea and never came back. It was a day when most of the fleet stayed in, but not Dad. He had a big family to feed. They found his boat adrift with its nets half in and half out..."

[There was a pause.] Frank spoke again, "Guys, you don’t know what I’d give to have my Dad give me just one more kiss on the cheek, to feel his rough old face, to smell the ocean in him, to feel his arm around my neck. I wish I had been a man then. If I had been a man, I would never have told my Dad I was too old for a goodbye kiss."

In response to Jesus’ love, like Mary, we’re to do good whenever we can. That includes giving and receiving genuine love even among the people to whom we seem prone to subject our worst behavior, our families.

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good for whomever we can do good. Max Lucado tells the story of a friend’s visit to Walt Disney World. This friend had been at Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom. There, he was part of a huge crowd where, in one corner, a beautiful girl was playing the part of Cinderella. In an opposite corner of the castle was a boy of about seven, holding onto the hand of his older brother. The younger boy was small for his age, his face terribly deformed. He watched as “Cinderella” showered attention on all the other children around her.

But then something wonderful happened! Cinderella saw this little boy just standing there watching wistfully. She politely but resolutely walked through the crowd of adoring children right up to the little boy. She knelt down next to him with a smile on her face and then leaned forward and kissed him. The joy that overtook that little guy bespoke his gratitude.

When we do good even for those the world deems unlovely, the joy of heaven enters our world. It enters us!

In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we shouldn’t worry about the cost. Mary didn’t worry about the cost when she poured that expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet! ! When we truly value Jesus and what He has done for us, no cost is too great. Whatever it costs us in time, effort, money is worth it in order to tell Jesus Christ thank You for the gift of eternity!

And we shouldn’t allow our limited abilities to prevent us from thanking Jesus either. An old joke goes this way: A man happened to walk by a building that was on fire before firefighters arrived. A woman on the second floor called out to him and asked, “Will you save me?” The man said that he would and proceeded to walk away. “Where are you going?” the woman asked hysterically. “I’m going to get life-saving training. I’ll be back as soon as I graduate.”

Many Christians are like that man. They feel that they’re unable to be good Christians—they haven’t read the Bible enough, or they don’t pray enough, or whatever. But just as you don’t need a college degree to show your spouse, or child, or friend, or parent that you love them, you can show your gratitude to Jesus without having special training.

Mary, in our Bible lesson today, apparently wasn’t much of a cook; Martha was the one in the kitchen…again. (And who knows what Lazarus was doing, if anything!) But, grateful for Jesus’ love, Mary soothed Jesus’ aching feet at dinner. She anointed Him for burial.

There’s no reason for us to worry about the things we can’t do. God doesn’t hold us responsible for the things we’re incapable of doing. God only holds us accountable for what we can do.

The most important ability that Jesus is seeking in us is availability. Just make yourself available to Jesus because He loves you and because you love Him back.

As people grateful for what Jesus has done for us, our call is clear. We’re to do whatever good we can do, whenever we can do it, for whomever we can do it. And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about our abilities.

If we truly want to tell Jesus thanks for the cross and the empty tomb, then we, like Mary who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet, will find our own ways each day to tell Him, “Thank You!” And as we do, we will be truly alive. Amen!

"If you are a follower of Jesus, that’s all the identity you need"

Great thoughts from Joe Stowell.

See here.

Learning to Pray (Fourth Midweek Lenten Devotion)

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

Matthew 6:12
Matthew 18:21-35
To help us think about the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer tonight, here’s a literal translation of Jesus’ words from Matthew 6:12, where He teaches it: “And forgive us the debts of us, as indeed we forgave the debtors of us.”

Now, I’ll grant that this literal rendering of Jesus’ words is awkward, as almost any literal translation from one language into another will be. But I do think that it helps us to understand more clearly what Jesus is saying should be part of our praying and our living as Christians.

In his book on the Lord’s Prayer, Anglican scholar N.T. Wright observes, rightly I think, that if you ask the average person today what is meant by the word “forgiveness” today, you’ll hear some version of “tolerance,” not forgiveness.

Rare is the person who actually asks for forgiveness and if they do, we suspect that they’re doing so as a formality designed to induce us to put up with their bad behavior and move on.

“I’m sorry,” the teenager says sullenly with about as much sincerity as the world-famous athlete apologizing for letting his fans down…and incidentally, saving his 7-figure tennis shoe endorsement deal. “Tolerate—or put up with—me,” these apologizers seem to say, with little hint of repentance or of intending to live differently in the future.

But before we scale too far up on our high horses in condemnation of phony forgiveness-seekers, we should say that often, the forgiveness we seek is of the fake variety as well. “Forgive me,” we may say, more as a stratagem for getting people off our backs than anything else. “Look, I did something wrong,” we say, in effect, “Deal with it. Tolerate it.”

But Jesus sees things differently. Both in the way Matthew says that Jesus taught the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer—forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us—and in the parable I read a few moments ago, we understand that Jesus views our sins as something more than little flaws in our personalities that we must accept in ourselves and tolerate in one another.

In the eyes of heaven, sin is intolerable. Failure to love God and failure to love others is not something that God tolerates. Sin does not exist in heaven. And when, for our sake, Jesus bore our sins—the sin of the whole world—on His burdened, bloody shoulders on the cross, Jesus sensed a vast chasm between God the Father and Himself.* The magnitude of the sin which the sinless Savior bore was so immense that, at His death, all creation convulsed with grief. God grieves over our sin because, as Paul puts it, “the wages of sin is death.” If you and I are to live with God for eternity, we dare not see our sin as something that God, the world, and we must tolerate.

Jesus says that our sin is a debt we owe to God. God gives us life and we overdraw our accounts by misusing that gift. That’s what sin is: A misuse of the free gift of life.

When we do that—whether by using God’s Name for something other than prayer, praise, and thanksgiving; or, taking or craving things that don’t belong to us; or, engaging in shady practices with money; or, withholding help from the poor; or, failing to work for justice; or, in any other way, failing to love God and love neighbor, we add to what one of our Lenten hymns calls, “the debt of love I owe.”

And this is why the cross is the most important event in all of human history…why it can be the most important event for our personal histories--past, present, and future.

On the cross, Jesus pays our debt. But, as the Lord’s Prayer reminds us, this side of the grave, we still live on earth and not in heaven. Our habits and our inclinations or, as Luther phrases it in The Small Catechism, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves,” all pull us toward racking up more debt, toward letting sin once more have control of us and thereby losing our connection to the Savor Who gives forgiveness, life, and eternity to those who believe in Him.

This is why confession of sin, asking for God’s forgiveness, should be a regular part of our praying. But the way in which Jesus phrases this petition for the forgiveness of sin is really instructive: “And forgive [present tense, now] us the debts of us, as indeed we forgave [past tense, already done it] the debtors of us.” “Lord,” Jesus teaches us to pray, “Please forgive the debt of love I owe, just as I have already forgiven the debt owed to me by others.”

Last May, in one of my sermons, I shared one of my favorite stories. I’m going to tell it again. It involves Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross. Once, a friend of Barton's reminded Barton of another woman’s vicious misdeed toward her. Barton seemed not to recall it. “Don’t you remember?” the woman asked Barton in disbelief. “No,” she replied, “I specifically remember forgetting it.”

Now, we know that we human beings aren’t equipped with the divine attribute of totally forgetting the wrongs done to us. That may be a blessing from God, helping us to avoid being hurt by the same person more than once.

But even when we don’t forget, we can forgive. We can release people from the debts of love they owe to us and so, free ourselves to live. We can forgive and when we do, a wall that would otherwise block God’s forgiveness of us is torn down.

That’s really a key point in the parable of Jesus we read a moment before. The king in Jesus’ parable was perfectly willing to forgive the massive debt of the slave, just as God is willing to forgive our sin. God is the one most offended and hurt by human sin; it’s the lives He gives us that are being misused when we sin.

Imagine the cumulative debt each of us owes to God. Yet, for the sake of Jesus, God is willing to forgive our debts. But, as with the king in the parable, God will not forgive our massive debts unless we are willing to forgive those who have hurt us, offended us, crossed us, demeaned us, or hated us.

This is the hardest of all the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer to pray…and to mean. Withholding forgiveness, keeping track of the ways others have sinned against us, makes us feel powerful, important, and better than others. (I know, I wrestle with whether to give or withhold forgiveness all the time, often toward people who have no idea that they have offended me in some way.)

But God doesn’t want us to settle for being better than others; God wants us to be children of God, citizens of His eternal kingdom. He wants us to lay aside anything that might prevent His forgiveness and life from penetrating into the core of our beings!

It boils down to this: Jesus says that we can’t grab hold of God’s grace if we insist on keeping hold of our grudges. Grace or grudges, forgiveness or separation from God. Those are our choices.

May we learn to truly pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

*This is how sin functions in our lives, alienating us from God, even though the Father is always willing to hear and stand beside us.

Prayer isn't "incidental"

Each day, my colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot of Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois, sends out an email with inspirational thoughts. Today, Glen shares an important insight from a book by Ron Sider:

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

We change history, both by our prayers and by our actions...
Prayer is not incidental to evangelism or peacemaking.
Prayer is not peripheral to empowering the poor,
protecting the unborn, and restoring the environment.
Prayer is a central part of how we do those things.

Ronald J. Sider
Living Like Jesus, pg 61-62

Scripture
1 Chronicles 22:16 CEV

Now get started, and I pray that the LORD will be with you in your work.

Prayer

Lord, help me to pray hard and work hard on both
the spiritual and social issues of our day.
Amen

*************************************************

"That's just the way grace is"

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

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
The writer Charles Dickens once said that Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, which makes up most of today’s Gospel lesson, is the finest short story ever told. Jesus was always telling parables (stories), you know. One of my old mentors, Dr. Richard Jensen, insists that whenever we moderns preach on the Prodigal Son, we should use a story.* A few years ago, Jensen, in fact, wrote a story sermon for this passage. Another pastor, Ed Markquart, revised it a bit. I've revised it a more myself and want to share it with you now. So, here it is: The Lonely Lady of Blairstown.

George Miller and his wife moved to Blairstown in the 1950’s. George was transferred there by his company and although moving was a pain, George was glad to do it. Not only was he making more money, Blairstown itself was a nice place.

In the center of Blairstown was a park, well groomed with lots of flowers and trees. George walked through the park every day on his way to and from work. He even walked through it to and from lunch every day. On his daily walks, he noticed everything about the place, including an elderly woman who always seemed to be there. At first, George didn’t pay much attention to this lonely figure.

"It’s probably just a coincidence that she seems to always be around when I'm here,” he told himself. Yet as the months rolled on, she really was always there. It started to spook George. He asked himself: “Who is she? What’s she doing in this park all the time?” Though she was ordinary in most ways, there was longing, lonely gaze in her eyes, as if she were looking or waiting for someone. George was troubled by her, and finally asked Harold Clark, a native of Blairstown, “Who is that woman?”

“Oh, you mean the lonely lady of Blairstown Park,” Harold said “Her name is Grace Simon. She’s spent a lot of time in that park recently. She’s a lonely old soul. Her husband, Tom, died a long time ago when their three kids were still little. Now, Shirley, their oldest, runs the furniture store and Steve, the middle one, runs the funeral home, both places on Main Street. When Tom died, he left the two businesses to Grace and, years later, she gave one business to each kid.

“There was a third child. Frank was his name name. Grace learned a few years back that Frank died in an automobile accident out west. Anyway, having only two children instead of three, the businesses could be neatly divided between Shirley and Steve. Grace was a huge help to them. Without Grace, they couldn't have made a go of it. But eventually, they got to the point that they didn’t want her around any more. They became engulfed in a family feud.

“The feud started one day when Grace got a letter from Denver. At first, she wouldn’t tell anybody what was in it. But people could see that it had her worked up. She asked Steve and Shirley for some money. She had to get a train ticket to go to Denver immediately. They thought their Mom had gone off her rocker. She pleaded, ‘Steve and Shirley, I have to have a ticket! I’ve got to go to Denver!’ But she wouldn’t tell anybody why. The kids finally broke down and they got her a train ticket to Denver. Grace headed west.

“It turns out, though none of us knew it when Grace made her visit, that Frank wasn’t dead at all. He was in jail on several counts of armed robbery. He’d been too ashamed to tell his mother of his conviction. So, he had one of his buddies write a letter to his mother saying that he had been killed when his car crashed through a bridge and plunged into the river. He even had him send a clipping from a Colorado newspaper that seemed to verify the story. Anyhow, years later, Frank decided to tell his mother the truth.

"I don’t know why he did it. He should have left things the way they were. It would have been better for Grace and the family to think Frank was dead. Everybody here loved Grace and we all were pretty angry with Frank for telling his mother that he was still alive. Think about it: First he runs away from home, then breaks Grace’s heart with news that he’s dead, and then comes back into her life, a convicted felon! He put his mother through a wringer and it made all of us all upset!

“It was quite a scene in prison when Grace and Frank met. The guards took Grace down a long hallway, into a waiting room with lots of other people. Then a guard took Grace into a small room. He told her to wait. She sat for what felt like an eternity. Then she heard footsteps coming down the hallway. Her heart seemed to pound in time with the approaching steps. The door opened and Grace’s eyes locked with those of Frank.

“Grace moved first; she always does. She walked over to Frank and wrapped her arms around him. She held him and began to cry. She kept on saying, ‘We thought you were dead’ She said it over and over again. At first, Frank stood stiff and lifeless in his mother’s embrace. But then, melted by Grace, he grabbed his mother and held her. He too began to cry.

”Grace visited Frank several times during the two weeks that she was in Denver. After that, she went out there every year for some years. Not long ago, Grace learned that Frank was supposed to be ready for parole any day. When Grace learned that, she told Frank that once he got out of prison, he should come home. ‘I’ve got plenty of room in the house!” she told him. “Frank, you can even be a partner in the family businesses!’

“Well, when Grace got back to Blairstown, she was all excited. She was telling anyone who would listen, ‘Frank’s alive. My boy’s alive! All that business about an accident was wrong. He’s alive!’ She told all of us. Not a word about Frank being a felon. Just, ‘He’s alive!’ over and over again.

“To tell the truth, she was about the only one in Blairstown excited because we’d never had a hometown boy stay in prison for thirty years for armed robbery. People around here weren’t too keen on the whole idea of seeing him. Frank might have been alive, but Frank was a good-for-nothing crook. I mean, what were we supposed to say to Grace, ‘Gee - I’m glad your son’s alive and in prison’? We didn’t say anything. We were just embarrassed.

“Shirley and Steve, Grace’s other kids, weren’t quiet at all, though. When Grace told them that Frank wanted to come home, to disgrace them all, and their momma – and that when she’d said that he could be a part of the family businesses – THAT was the last straw. Shirley and Steve were dumbfounded. A crook in their family businesses? In Blairstown? It just couldn’t happen! Shirley and Steve were right about that. The whole town agreed that Frank would ruin things.

“But Grace didn’t look at it that way. Frank was her son too. She argued that he had a right to be back in the family. That’s what started the family feud. Shirley and Steve had a lawyer draw up papers to rule Frank out of the business altogether. When Grace protested, they told her that it was none of her business. It was only their business and they could do what they wanted. They also told her to never to come into their businesses or to pester them about Frank again.

“I thought that was really unkind. After all, Grace had given them the businesses in the first place. She’d worked hard to help them when they got their starts. Worse than that though, is that they don’t even invite Grace over to their homes anymore. They don’t want to hear her talk about Frank. She doesn’t even get to see her grandchildren unless they sneak over to the park to see her.

“Anyway, George, that’s why Grace Simon wanders alone in Blairstown Park. The Lonely Lady of Blairstown Park, that’s what everybody calls her. She’s out there right now, watching and waiting. Of course, she’s waiting for Frank to come home. And rumor has it that he’s out of prison and coming home any day. So she’s watching that highway coming into town, watching for her boy to come back home. But, if you look at her, you can see that she’s also got her eyes on Main Street an awful lot of the time, Main Street, where her two kids run the family businesses. She’s watching for some sign of love, some softening of the heart, some sign of welcome from Steve and Shirley.”

George interrupted Harold’s story. “You’d think that she wouldn’t want anything to do with those kids,” George said. “What do you suppose Grace would do if those kids, Steve and Shirley, did have some change of heart?” he asked. Harold thought for a moment and said, “I think that Grace would do just like she did with Frank. She’d welcome them with open arms. And if they ever come to their senses, she’s going to run and throw her arms around them and give them a great big love. You know, that’s just the way she is. That’s just the way Grace is.”

And that’s the way God’s grace, given in Christ is, too. No matter how far you wander, our God of grace always wants to welcome you home!

*Theologian Helmut Thielicke calls this the parable of The Waiting Father, maybe a more apt description, since the Father--a figure of God--is the most important actor in Jesus' parable.

YES!

See here.

Go, Buckeyes!