How to Have Faith

"I wish I had a faith like yours," a man told me one Sunday. "It makes me feel guilty that I don't."

"Don't ever wish you were someone else, especially not me," I answered. "I believe in Jesus, for sure, and I'm grateful that He went to the cross and rose from the dead for people like me.

"But I'm just a forgiven sinner. And every day I still do, say, and think sinful things, things that don't show love for God or love for others. I have to go back to God every single day, asking Him for forgiveness and for help in living like a Christian."

The man said that he understood all that. What he wanted was a stronger faith. He wanted to be more sure about Jesus.

With a clearer grasp of what the man was getting at, I then shared with him one of the most important truths I've learned on how to appropriate faith in Christ, as well as on how to enjoy a deepening relationship with Christ.

"Here's what I've found," I told him. "You have to live into faith. No amount of praying, reading, or thinking will get you there, as important as those things are. Faith in Christ is a gift from God. All you have to do is grab hold of it. And you can grab hold of it when you live your way into it."

As many who have read this blog or heard me preach know, I was an atheist when my wife and I first married. Marrying an atheist wasn't the smartest thing Ann could have done. She was a Lutheran Christian and it would be hard for her to build a strong marriage with a husband moving in a different direction from the one in which she moved.

But early in our marriage, mostly to get Ann off my back for sleeping in late on Sundays, I started going to worship with her at the Lutheran congregation of which she was a member.

I liked what I saw and experienced there. The members were real, down to earth people who dealt with real issues in their lives and also had real faults. What I learned from them, as I've told others, is that the church--any church--is a hospital for hypocrites, a place for sinners to come and be nudged toward a new way of life by the God we meet there.

I found that whatever tough times or personal flaws of character the members of Ann's home church dealt with in their lives, they kept coming back to Jesus. They kept seeking healing and the power for living morally better lives in the hospital for hypocrites, the church.

In worship, they confessed their sins, heard God's Word of forgiveness and new life through Christ, and tried to follow Jesus in their everyday lives.

In spite of myself, I found that I wanted to be like these people. I wanted to have faith in Jesus. But I really didn't know how to get it. (I was also too embarrassed to tell even my wife that this was what I wanted. I guess I didn't want to appear either weak or ignorant.)

Then, without knowing that this desire to have the faith was percolating in me, the pastor of Ann's church stopped by our apartment one evening. "Would the two of you take over as leaders of the junior high youth group?" he asked.

I had never admitted to the pastor that I was an atheist. But I was still on the roll of a Methodist church in which I'd been confirmed. So, I tried to use that as a an excuse to say, "You know," I told him, "I'm not even a Lutheran." He wasn't buying it. "We won't hold that against you," he said with a smile. Left out of defenses against taking on this task, I retreated, certain that Ann would put a stop to the whole thing. "Ann just told him, "We'll do it." "Well, if Ann wants to do it," I told him, "I guess I could try to help her."

This was a turning point in my road to faith. My wife and I were suddenly supposed to provide some spiritual leadership to young people. That entailed getting to know the kids and providing them with an environment in which it was safe for them to talk with God and interact with others in their own unique Christian way.

I started doing things that were needed for me to play my role with some sort of authenticity and effectiveness. I...

• showed up for the evening youth group gatherings
• hung out with the kids
• listened to what was happening in their lives
• helped plan activities
• listened to their Bible devotions
• tried to pray, though at first seemed a little weird to me.

Later, I began to more seriously do things that would help me understand what I was doing alongside my wife when we hung out with the youth. Among other things, I...

• attended worship regularly
• began to read the Bible (I couldn't believe I was doing this. But I was...and enjoying it!)
• started attending adult Sunday School class and adult Bible studies

Notice the progression: I moved from activity to appropriation of the faith; from living the Christian faith to actually believing it.

If you want Christ in your life or if you want to enjoy a deepening faith relationship with Christ, I recommend following this pattern. If you're not a Christian, find a church and, without expecting to be a leader (in fact, always expect and aspire to be a servant), volunteer to be involved in some ministry the congregation does. It might be...

• helping collect food for area needy
• corresponding with a child sponsored by the congregation through organizations like World Vision or Compassion International
• driving an elderly person or a family with young children to church or to doctor appointments
• joining in whenever the congregation does a community kindness outreach
• if you're a musician, offering to play your instrument (it could be brass or woodwind, strings or piano, guitar or bass, harmonica or bongo drums, whatever) for worship or for other gatherings 
• volunteering to go on a church mission trip, whether it's in town or to impoverished Third World locations
• helping the homeless

It could be a million other things like these.

But whatever it is, if you want faith or you want a deeper faith, find a worthy Christian ministry and get involved.

Live into your faith and the living Jesus will live in you in ways that bring you confidence, hope, and...a deeper faith.
As long as you haven't landed at a church filled with institutional gatekeepers or where your particular talents are wildly out of sync, I believe something incredible will happen to you. As you live as a believer in Jesus, God will turn you into a believer in Jesus.

If you're a member of a congregation, this will entail getting off your tail. It will mean getting in the game. Suddenly, I think you'll find, that a faith you once found boring or meaningless will come alive. Jesus will come alive to you.

I have seen this work in countless people. But how? The answer, I think, is that Christian faith is not about us. It's what God has done for us in Jesus. And it's about sharing forgiveness, hope, and new life that comes from God with others. Living into Christian faith--serving others in Christ's Name before we fully understand what that means--gets our minds off of ourselves, cultivating the belief that, no matter what, God is with us.

Freed from the slavery to ourselves, God's Spirit empowers us to trust in Christ and to get on with the business of living.

When that happens, the Spirit has an open will on which to imprint new ways of living and thinking.

Live into Christian faith and it will grow inside of you.

Want to Know Why N.T. Wright's Books Are So Great?

Whether writing for general audiences, for clergy, or for Biblical theologians, the qualities of deep reverence for God and thorough scholarship are apparent in the writings of N.T. (Tom) Wright. This short post tells you why. Humility before the Lord and the world has made Wright a powerful spokesperson for Christ in this confused and confusing age.

Here is a link to the N.T. Wright page on Amazon. Laypeople, clergy, and scholars alike will really enjoy his 'For Everyone' commentaries on the books of the New Testament. They're great for anyone wanting to understand the New Testament.

"Why your best try is such a miserable failure"

Matt Johnson presents Martin Luther on our unfree human will.

This Just In: I AM a Dork

My dorkiness was confirmed today (once again) by the fact that I was psyched to rip into the package containing the latest volume in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. There had been a delay of several months since the publication of the last book and in an email to me about two months ago, a spokesperson for the company wasn't certain when the next installment would be released. He assured me that, as a subscriber to the series of books, the next volume would be sent to me as soon as the ink dried. So, it came as a happy surprise for me to see it in my mailbox today.

Of course...ahem...my excitement may have been deepened by the fact that a note on the packaging indicated that the new book's subject is the Old Testament book, Song of Solomon (aka: Song of Songs), a sometimes saucy celebration of the marital love enjoyed by husband and wife.

Whenever I read or think about Song of Solomon, I remember the episode of M*A*S*H in which Father Mulcahy, visiting the wounded and sick, comes upon a soldier reading the Bible intently. Delighted, Mulcahy asks the young man what book of the Bible he's reading. The soldier says, "Song of Solomon." Mulcahy grabs the Bible from him and says that it might be a bit too much for him to read right then.

But, back to my dorkiness. Anybody who is serious about understanding Scriptures will be well helped by all the commentaries in the Brazos series. I own all the volumes published so far and each one has deepened my understanding of the Biblical books covered and helped me in thinking about their theological, practical application. I've been especially helped (so far) by Stanley Hauerwas' volume on Matthew, Risto Saarinen's on The Pastoral Epistles and Philemon and Jude, and David L. Stubbs' work on Numbers.

God Can Heal Our Wounds Today

Thanks to Pastor Deb Grant for this.

'Healer of Our Every Ill,' #738 in With One Voice, comes to mind here. It was composed by Marty Haugen. You can find clips from the hymn here.

The Only Way to God

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

John 10:1-10
There’s a common belief held by many in our culture these days. You hear it all the time, whether in barber shops, on TV talk shows, or at church meetings. It’s the belief that all religious convictions are equal in their ability to lead people to God. You don’t need to give your sins or your life to Jesus exclusively, some people assert. They say, “All religions are headed to the same place.” Is that true?

Not according to Jesus! And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have only through Him.

But before considering what Jesus has to tell us today, we should set the scene. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?

It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. That caused a controversy because Jesus dared to do this loving deed on a Sabbath day. Jesus’ action made some of Jesus' fellow Jews--the Pharisees--so angry that when the blind man He healed said that Jesus must be from God, they threw the man out of the temple, no longer considering him a faithful Jew.

Of course, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like people today who claim that all religious beliefs lead to God. The Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. But, based on what God has revealed of Himself in both the Old and New Testaments, both the advocates of anything-goes spirituality in the twenty-first century and the Pharisees of the first century have one big thing in common: They are equally wrong. Accepting the assertions of either group will lead us away from God and the life God offers only in Jesus Christ.

Over the centuries, starting with a people to whom God gave a land and a promise, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race. From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are to give our lives back to the Giver of our lives and give our lives only to Him.

Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God because he entrusted his life to God. He believed in God.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that through the centuries, God revealed Himself through the prophets of Israel, but in these last days, God has revealed Himself definitively in Jesus. If we want to live with God, we need to listen Jesus.

All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, God the Son, have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham: rightness with God and life with God.

It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods” or that God commands exclusive fidelity to Jesus Christ.

It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. Indeed, He will only give us life and, as Jesus puts it in today's Gospel lesson, life "abundantly," through Jesus Christ and our faith in Him.

All other roads are dead ends, literally dead ends.

So, in today's lesson, Jesus says that He is the shepherd of God’s sheep. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are—whether through good works, other religious beliefs, or all manner of cosmic niceness—are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. Look at verses 2 to 5 of the Gospel lesson printed on the Celebrate insert:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

In this illustration, Jesus is the shepherd. God the Father is the gatekeeper.

For just a second, think of God’s kingdom as a show everybody (including you and me) wants to see. The problem is that the gatekeeper—God the Father—will issue tickets to only one kind of customer: People who are absolutely clean and clear of sin.

That would leave us all on the outside, pining for a relationship with God because, as the Bible says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Standing there in our sins, we would be without hope except for one thing: Jesus, the shepherd of the sheep, tells the gatekeeper, “It’s OK. She’s with me. He’s mine. You can let them in. I paid for their sins on the cross, the sacrifice of a sinless human being who didn’t deserve death on behalf of all other sinful human beings who deserved death.”

All who repent and believe in Christ are ushered into God’s eternal kingdom—long before their lives on this earth have ended, if they dare. Even now--even today--if you dare to trust in Him, you are living in Christ's eternal kingdom. As our second lesson from Peter reminds us, until we rise again, we live in a fallen world where suffering and challenges happen. But if suffering is a reality that can and does come to any of us, it's better to go through this life with Jesus leading us than to try to go it alone.

Those who heed Jesus’ voice live each day knowing that whatever our sins, deficiencies, and shortcomings, we belong to God forever! He is our ticket into eternity!

Like sheep attuned to the shepherd’s voice, when you dial into God through a relationship with Christ, you begin to know His voice. It brings incredible comfort, hope, and energy, straight from God, into your life!

Sometimes that voice will come with direction we'd rather not hear or will call us to do things we'd rather not do. I was the first person in my seminary class to interview for a call. It was for an associate pastor's position. There was another candidate who would be interviewing. Her candidacy made mine a long-shot because she had done her internship at that congregation. But my interview went well and, before Ann and I headed back to Columbus, the senior pastor told me he would be in touch in a few days. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into a month, and still no word from the senior pastor or the congregation.

More than a month after the interview, I was scheduled to be at the district convention, where, along with all the recently graduated seminarians, I would be trotted onstage to be introduced. In the evening, a service of Holy Communion was held in a college auditorium. We had just finished confessing our sins when I looked to see that senior pastor. "Mark," he said, "God wouldn't let me take Holy Communion until I came to apologize to you. I'm so sorry I never contacted you to let you know that the other candidate received the call. I didn't want to tell you that, so I kept putting off contacting you. Would you please forgive me?"

You see, that senior pastor was known by the Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus. And he knew Jesus. So, when Jesus called on him to make things right, that's exactly what he did.

The Shepherd speaks to His children in other ways too.

A member of this congregation recently told me that after her husband died, she was sobbing in her bed one night, seeking comfort, when she sensed a hand on her shoulder. So real was the touch she felt, that she reached around to feel for the unseen hand. No hand was felt, but the touch was no less real. In that quiet exchange, one of Christ’s sheep heard His voice of comfort and healing. She was comforted because she is one of Jesus’ sheep. Jesus knows His own and His own know Him!

A friend of mine has pastored a Lutheran congregation for decades. In spite of his faithfulness and innovative leadership, the congregation hasn’t grown. It’s actually declined in membership, attendance, giving, and activity. Day after day, year after year, he has prayed and worked faithfully, sharing Christ, leading people to deeper levels of faithfulness. But things have only gotten worse.

Then one day last year, after a long time in prayer, he sensed God asking him, “You pray for this renewal to happen, for new people to come to faith in Christ. But have you prayed that all the evil in the world that conspires against that happening be kept from this church, kept from its people, kept from the places where worship and education and planning happen?” No, my friend told God, he hadn’t done that in prayer. “Do it now!” God seemed to tell him forcefully.

And so, my friend went all through the church facility, praying in every room, asking God to take control of all that happened there, to displace Satan and all evil from every inch, and to fill the building and the people of the church with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the power and truth of the Word of God!

Things haven’t yet changed in that congregation. But my friend now knows they will change. That’s because after he had prayerfully surrendered himself and his congregation and prayed that God would prevail over all evil that assailed them, the good shepherd assured him that all he had prayed for would come to pass.

God gave him a vision of a sanctuary filled with joyful people excited to be in God’s presence, excited to give themselves in worship to God on Sunday morning in anticipation of using their whole lives to worship God through the week. The voice of the shepherd spoke to my friend and he was filled with comfort, renewed hope, and holy energy!

But Jesus uses another image in our lesson to describe Who He is; He says that He is also the gate to eternity.

Years ago, Ann and I went to a party and realized after we got back home that we’d locked ourselves out of the house. Long story short, with Ann’s help I was able to push myself through a first-floor window that we had left partially opened. I was halfway into the house by this route, my arms and torso inside, my legs still hanging outside, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a policeman? After all, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.

Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. You can't get into God's kingdom in any other way! “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” Jesus says elsewhere. “If you know Me, you will know the Father also. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.”

The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This “quest” isn’t an onerous task. It’s a joy like falling in love.

That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also join us, even belatedly, in reading the Bible in a year.

I hope that every member will be in Sunday School. (Yes, every member.)

I hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily habit.

I hope that you’ll help us share Christ in a very practical way when we collect those filled grocery sacks next Saturday during our PPSST! Food Drive.

These are all ways to follow the voice of Jesus, ways to enter more deeply into a relationship with God that only comes through Jesus.

This past week, at the graveside of our friend Betty, we heard her confirmation verses. Betty chose them sixty years ago when she was confirmed at the age of 23. They're words of Jesus from Matthew 10:32-33:

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” 

Freedom from sin comes only to those who turn away from the dead-end ways of the world and trust the only One Who can give us forgiveness and new life, Jesus, the good shepherd and the gate—the front door—to eternity.

Let yourself get to know Him better.

Trust in Him and in His Word alone.

As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often-confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that here will sometimes bring inexplicable challenges, but also a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God, today and always.

The Shepherd is calling you today. Follow Him…and live!

"If people really knew this about me..."

God is anxious to forgive our sins and help us to move on with our lives unencumbered by the weight of sin.

All sin, of course, is equally worthy of death.

But all sin is also equally forgivable for the one who humbly turns to Jesus Christ in repentance and belief (trust) in Him.

Whatever your sin, whether...

• sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage (what the Bible calls adultery and fornication);
• gambling; 
• taking God's Name in vain; 
• murder; 
• gossip; 
• greedily aching for what others have (coveting); 
• thievery; 
• or any other thought or action that violates God's command that we love Him above all and love others as we love ourselves...

these two truths--the gravity of all sin and God's willingness to forgive all sin--apply.

God knows all about you and loves you anyway...and through Christ, has done everything needed for you to be with Him now and in eternity.

God is out to get you. But not to punish, but to reclaim, renew, and revive you. Repent and trust in Christ each day...and you are good to go without guilt or shame.

Here are some really great thoughts under the title, "If people really knew this about me..."

Too Many Keys

Three Great Gifts from God

[This was shared during the funeral for a friend of ours earlier this week.]

Ecclesiastes 1:1-15
1 Corinthians 15:51-58
John 14:1-4

All of you who mourn Betty’s passing this morning: Today we know for a certainty that Betty wants you—and all of us—to hear the words of Jesus that begin our Gospel lesson. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me.”

We know that Betty wanted you to hear these words because back in 1988, she took the time to do what, in my experience, few people ever do, when she selected the passages of Scripture for possible use at her funeral. So, let Jesus’ words be our theme as we worship God and commit Betty to Him today: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me.”

Betty’s love for family—evident in how she and Virgil always made their kids’ and grandkids’ events, among many other ways—shines through in all of the Bible lessons she chose for us today. It was important for her to give a testimony for the Savior in Whom she believed, of course. And you can hear that in these passages. But it was also important to her that she comfort all of you and everyone who loved her with three great gifts from God: realism, joy, and hope!

The realism is supplied by King Solomon in the passage from Ecclesiastes that Betty selected. It begins with the famous words: “For everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…” And that includes “a time to be born, and a time to die.”

This family knows too well that the time to die Solomon mentions can come tragically soon, as it did for Chad. But you also know that the death of someone you love can come, as it finally did for Betty, as a blessed release. She and Chad and all the saints—all who have trusted in Jesus in this life, are safe in the hands of their Lord…our Lord!

Betty once asked me, “How do people who don’t believe in Jesus face hard things?”

Betty, like many of us, could be a worrier. But she could face all the times mentioned by Solomon—the times to be born and to die, the times to plant and the times to pluck up what is planted—because of Jesus. And the fact is that it is only those with faith in Jesus who can face life and death with realism. We know, as we celebrated just a few weeks ago, that Jesus has conquered sin and death and futility. We can, even in the midst of tears, be filled with joy because we know that while the times of this life will one day come to an end for us, all of our times and all of our eternity are in hands of our risen Lord!

We see joy in all the passages Betty picked, but maybe especially in the reading from 1 Corinthians. There, the apostle Paul assures us that those who have died in the Lord share a great joy: “Listen!” he says, getting our attention, “We will not all die [death is not the end of the road], but we will all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet…the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable…then the saying…will be fulfilled, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is a victory? Where, O death, is your sting. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

There’s joy in this passage, laughter in the knowledge that those who die in Christ rise again. And that seems appropriate because, not only did Betty believe in Christ, she also loved to laugh.

Ann and I have had so many fun times with Betty and Virgil! In the wee hours one Sunday morning, Ann woke me up while I was sleeping over in the parsonage. “Mark,” she said, “there’s a racket going on outside.” I reluctantly decided that I had to do my duty to protect my wife and kids. So, I quickly pulled on some trousers and went downstairs to the front door. There were Betty and Virgil, along with Kae and Kenny, and Larry and Cheryl, singing “Happy Birthday”…almost on key.

Several years later, when we were living in Cincinnati, we were bowling with friends, when we suddenly became aware of two people who were rooting for us. We’d never had fans before. We turned around and there, laughing, were Betty and Virgil.

I will always remember Betty’s laugh. So far as I can remember, she never laughed at anyone. She just enjoyed herself, whether she was rooting on her kids and grandkids or spending time with Virgil and friends at events like wedding receptions. And I know she enjoyed that hole-in-one.

Today, we can be certain that Betty is enjoying herself in the presence of God!

In another place, Paul writes that we who believe in Jesus Christ grieve, but we do not grieve as those without hope. God lets all who follow Christ in on the most wonderful punch line in history. For Betty and for all who believe, death has lost its sting. You can derive joy from that even today…and I know that you do!

Finally, in her selection of Bible lessons for today, Betty also showed that she clearly wanted to share the hope that comes to us from Christ. Our Gospel lesson is part of a long stretch of teaching Jesus shared before His arrest and crucifixion. The disciples sense that things aren’t going to go as they’d previously hoped. Jesus wouldn’t supplant the Romans and establish a government in Jerusalem. He was intent on being exactly what John the Baptist had described Him as being one day at the Jordan River: “the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus addresses their fears and apprehensions. “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” He tells them, “so that where I am, there you may also be.” Just a few verses beyond our lesson, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

The condition of sin and the reality of death represent threats to every human being. But all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ are reconciled to God for all eternity. Jesus is readying places for us now, even as He readied a place for Betty. In Christ, there is infinite hope and that is cause for celebration!

Another Paul (McCartney) sings words that could well speak to all of us about the comfort and the promise of a place in eternity that Jesus Christ gives to those who follow Him:

You lead me to places, that I've never been
Uncovering secrets, that I've never seen
I can rely on you, to guide me through, any situation.
You hold up a sign that reads, follow me… 

Today, in the words Betty has chosen for us, Jesus Christ is saying...

"Do not be troubled.

"Believe in Me.

"Follow Me.

"Be comforted.

"Be filled with joy and hope, even as you face the realities of life.

"And know that, one day, all who have trusted in Me will be together again for eternity. And we will laugh.” 

And to that, all of God’s people can say, “Amen!”

Changing Relationships for the Better

So practical...and, from my experience, so true.

Look to Jesus!

[These are thoughts shared with residents of the Carlin House assisted living facility in Logan, Ohio, earlier today. I didn't write this message in advance, but this is, basically, what I hoped I said.]

The main reason that the first Christians, who were all Jews, began worshiping together on Sundays rather than on the Jewish Sabbath, was because the first Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead, happened on a Sunday.

And truly, no matter what the season of the Church Year, every Sunday is a little Easter for Christians. Jesus can never be stuffed back into His tomb. He is risen!

But one of the things I particularly love about being a Lutheran--and this is something we share with many other Christian traditions--is that we don't just especially celebrate Easter on one Sunday a year. On our church calendar, Easter Sunday is just the first Sunday of Easter. Yesterday, for example, was the third Sunday of Easter for us. We just keep celebrating Easter for six weeks. It's great!

So, I'm still celebrating Easter and because of that, I want to share two passages of Scripture with you this morning.

The first is Philippians 4:4-9. A preacher named Paul wrote a letter to the first century church in Philippi and these verses are taken from that letter. The thing to keep in mind is that when he composed this letter, Paul was imprisoned. Yet the entire letter is shot through with joy. Here's what Paul wrote:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ⁸Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. 

Then, I want to share part of the Gospel of John's narrative of what happened the day that Jesus went to Bethany to see his friends, Martha and Mary, after the death of their brother, Lazarus. The scene, by the way, would have been bedlam. Family and friends would have been there crying, of course. But in those days, there were also "professional mourners," people who would led the wailing. It must have been a scene of craziness! John writes:

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” 

There's a story told of a mother and a father who were deeply concerned about their eight year old twin boys. One was an optimist, the other a pessimist. The parents knew that neither condition was healthy or realistic. So, they asked a psychiatrist to help each boy to move toward greater realism.

The psychiatrist hit on a strategy for each boy. As part of his treatment, he promised a gift for each one of them.

Then, he led the pessimist into a room filled with toys, games, sports equipment, and classic books--things bound to make any eight year old boy happy beyond measure. But this kid didn't do any thing. The psychiatrist asked, "What's the matter? Don't you like all this stuff?" "Yeah," the kid replied evenly. But then, hanging his head in sorrow, he said, "But eventually, they'll all wear out or break."

Shaken, but still intent on seeing his treatment regimen through, the psychiatrist took the optimistic kid to another room, this one piled high with horse manure. The kid's face grew bright with excitement and he flung himself into the middle of the pile. The psychiatrist, once more, was baffled. "How can you be so excited?" he asked. The kid laughed. "Because," he said, "with all this manure, there's bound to be a pony for me somewhere!"

I think that you'd have to say that neither boys' attitudes were realistic. Pessimism and optimism without some real foundations, always spawn despair.

Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, tells the fictional but true to life story of Willy Loman. Willy was an optimist. He always thought he was going to make that next big sale, experience that next big triumph. But he never did. And that led to his tragic death. Hope, optimism, without a certain object on which to base it will only end in disappointment and death.

But pessimism doesn't work well either. Back in my factory-working days, there was a guy with whom I worked who always spouted this little ray of sunshine: "Live in hope; die in despair." He said it all the time. "Live in hope; die in despair." I don't know if that man ever had hope. But I know that he lived and died in despair. And there is no more reason for living life pessimistically than there is for living it with unfounded optimism!

What we need is a real and certain hope, a hope that defeats pessimism, a hope beyond puny human optimism.

Jesus is that hope!

That day in Bethany, when He called Lazarus back to life, Jesus demonstrated His capacity to shatter the powers of sin and death and futile living.

Jesus showed that we need not, as my old coworker always insisted, live in hope but die in despair.

He showed that we waste our time looking for the next big personal triumph.

Triumph and victory...life and hope...forgiveness and reconciliation with God...purpose, even when we find ourselves needing assistance with the living of our daily lives...eternity which cannot be taken from us...all these blessings and more belong this very moment to all who dare to believe in Jesus Christ.

And when we face challenges and adversities, we would do well to look at the words of that prisoner for Christian faith, Paul. Even when facing the worst that life can bring, we can see something more honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, and excellent than anything that has ever happened in this dying world. We see unsurpassed passionate love and an infinite will to give life to us when we look to Jesus Christ crucified and Jesus Christ risen.

Don't settle for the trophies of this world that wear out and break.

Don't settle for the ponies that might be lurking in the world's piles.

You want a sure and certain hope, a strong foundation.

Look to Jesus! Look to Jesus alone!

Jesus alone is can bear the full weight of all our hopes and dreams. He alone can raise us up to new life.

Look to Jesus!

Write a Caption

My nephew Jameson and I were asked to pose today as the family Mother's Day festivities were winding down. I'm not certain why, although it's said that Jameson resembles me (poor kid). He's better looking.

Jameson suggested that, rather than stand there smiling, we stare in terror at something in the distance. (The distance was actually my sister and brother-in-law's family room.) Jameson affected terror. I, on the other hand, affected comic stupidity, my usual expression.

Do you have an apt caption?

How Big is Your God?

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

Luke 24:13-35
On this third Sunday of Easter, our Gospel lesson from Luke confronts us with a mystery about two of Jesus’ disciples. And that mystery, ultimately, leads us to an important question about ourselves.

There is no mystery about what the two disciples we meet in the lesson are doing as our passage starts. We can  understand their sense of sorrow and why, because, just like you and me, they had never seen a dead and buried person rise to life again, they left Jerusalem, certain that the report of Jesus’ resurrection couldn’t be true. But there is something about the entire incident recount in our lesson that baffles us.

As Luke tells it, the two disciples walked with a stranger they’d met on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus for some distance as He explained to them that the events of the previous Thursday and Friday, when Jesus had been arrested, tried, condemned, and killed, didn’t add up to the tragedy or dead end they surmised them to be. Everything had happened precisely as that part of the Bible we call the Old Testament had said it would. “Was it not necessary,” the stranger asked them as their hearts pounded within them, “that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into His glory?”

Encouraged by the stranger’s words of clarity and hope, they begged him to eat and converse with them once they reached the village. But through all this, they had no idea who this stranger was.

It was only when the stranger “took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” that they finally recognized Him to be Jesus. Then, Jesus disappeared.

In spite of their earlier fears of traveling at night in open country where thugs and wild animals might lurk, the two disciples hurried back to Jerusalem to tell the others that they too had seen the risen Jesus.

Still, we wonder: Why hadn’t they immediately recognized Jesus?

Our lesson says that “their eyes were kept from recognizing” Jesus. Had Jesus, God-incarnate, been playing hide and seek with these grieving disciples only to finally play “gotcha” by revealing Himself in a way they readily recognized?

No, God doesn’t play games.

But He does allow people to live with the hardened hearts and thickened skulls with which they choose to live their lives.

Those of you who have read the book of Exodus know exactly why the disciples’ eyes couldn’t recognize the risen Jesus. Exodus tells us that about 1500 years before Jesus was born, God’s chosen people, the Israelites (or Hebrews), were enslaved in Egypt.

God told Moses that He was going to send Moses, along with Moses’ brother Aaron, to demand that Pharaoh, king and deity of Egypt, let God’s people go.

But Pharaoh wasn’t about to let Hebrew slaves tell him what to do.

Nor was he going to let Yahweh, the God of these slaves who they claimed as the one and only God of the universe, call the shots.

As you remember, God performed a total of ten plagues through Moses, all of them designed to convince Pharaoh to relent, repent, and let God’s people go. But Pharaoh dug in.

After the first five plagues, Exodus tells us things like: “…Pharaoh…hardened his heart”; and “the heart of Pharaoh was hardened.” Then, after the sixth plague, the plague of boils, a shift comes in the Bible’s narrative of these events.

Take a look at Exodus, chapter 9, verse 12, on page 36 of our pew Bibles. No longer is Pharaoh hardening his own heart to God’s call to repentance. God is doing it for him. There we’re told:

But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharoah; and he [that is, Pharaoh] did not heed them [that is, Moses and Aaron], just as the Lord had spoken to Moses. (NKJV)

God had given Pharaoh repeated opportunities to conform to the will of God. Pharaoh had dug in his heels. Finally, God said, “Have it your way, Pharaoh. I will now escalate the level of the plagues and prevent you from changing your mind. I will let you live with the consequence of the path you have already chosen. We have hit a point of no return.”

The disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus had chosen the path of disbelief when they set out on that first Easter Sunday.

In spite of the reports of Jesus’ resurrection, they were convinced that Jesus was as dead that day as He had been on Friday and Saturday.

But thank God—for them and for we who gain strength of faith from their story, they hadn’t yet reached “the point of no return.” They remained open enough to God to be able to see the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

The question remains, though: What took them so long to recognize Jesus? 

The answer is simple: Their God wasn’t big enough.

In spite of all the signs and promises made about the Messiah in the Old Testament and the promises and signs which Jesus Himself gave during His earthly ministry, it was still beyond the scope of their imaginations to conceive...

• that Jesus could rise from the dead, 
• that God could wring life from death, 
• that the perennial enemies of humankind—our own sin, death, and pointless living—could possibly have been defeated by a Savior Who had, just days before, been crucified at the garbage dump just beyond Jerusalem’s walls. 

They couldn’t believe that God was that good, that gracious, that loving, that powerful, that big.

So, having solved the mystery of the disciples’ failure to recognize Jesus for so long, here’s the uncomfortable question all of us must answer: How big is the God we meet in Jesus Christ for each of us?

Is the God Who bore all your sins and all the death and futility we confront on this side of the grave big enough to be entrusted with your biggest problems, your sternest challenges, your most vexing worries?

Or do you want to keep dealing with these issues on your own?

Is the God Who defeated your sin on the cross to be trusted when He promises you victory over the temptations and sins you can’t beat on your own?

Or will you insist on trying to go it alone in facing sin?

Or will you try to fake yourself out, telling yourself...

• that it’s not too bad to put your family or your work above God; 
• that using God’s Name for purposes other than prayer, praise, or thanksgiving is a minor matter; 
• that ignoring God’s Word in Scripture or the fellowship of the Church is OK because you’re so busy; that dehumanizing and demonizing others through mistreatment or unkindness isn’t really, as Jesus teaches, really murder; 
• that stealing the gift of sexual intimacy God meant to be opened only by husbands and wives in marriage is acceptable today; 
• that little thieveries from others are justified because “everybody does it’; 
• that gossiping about others who strike you as too weird for words is entirely understandable; 
• that being obsessed with having what others have is no big deal?

In short, will you lie to yourself in saying that the Ten Commandments, the moral law of God for all time, have been rescinded by advanced human enlightenment? Or will you accept the commandments as God's clear statement of His will for your life, allow them to show you your need of a Savior, and trust in Christ to send the Holy Spirit to point your life in God's direction even as you live in the certainty of the grace and favor God bears for those who repent of sin and believe in Him?

Is the God we meet in Jesus Christ a first-century version of Pee Wee Herman, weak and compliant to our wills and whims?

Or is He the God and King of the universe...

• Who faced down money-changing extortionists in the temple of the Lord, 
• Who upbraided hypocrites for concealing their sins behind the whitewashed façade of moral perfection, 
• Who stood up to a raging crowd about to stone a woman to death caught in the act of adultery, 
• Who accepted a cross that we deserve to give us the forgiveness and new life we don’t deserve?

How big is your God?

He gave His life for you. Is He big enough for you to give your life to Him in return?

Dare to surrender this moment to God.

Tell God, “My faith in You is puny. But right now, at this moment, I ask You to...

• handle my problems at work or at home; 
• conquer my sins and strengthen me to beat temptation; 
• overcome my worries and my grief. 

Conquer this moment for me, please, Lord. Help me to entrust this moment to You, God.”

If you will give your life, moment by moment, to the big God made known to all the world in Jesus Christ, it will, by His grace and power, add up to an eternity with God!

A man in northwest Ohio told me that shortly after his wife died, “I fell on the floor and wept and asked the Lord just to get me through that night.” God did that. That man said he kept praying that prayer each night. He learned over time that the God we meet in Jesus is big enough to comfort us, to give us hope, until our hope encompasses the certainty that, like the Savior in Whom we believe, we will one day rise again.

Let the God of Easter reach out and transform your life, moment by moment.

Leo was a member of the congregation in Michigan where I did my internship. Leo never knew anything about the Lord before he met his wife, Betty. She was a Lutheran. He started attending worship with Betty and, as happened to me years later when I went to worship with Ann, he got hooked. Jesus Christ grabbed hold of Leo and Leo didn't want Christ to ever let go!

Leo came to believe in Jesus and his life was transformed.

He had purpose and hope.

He became a better man.

Though he never went to college, he became the head of a company’s engineering department.

Because of Christ, it seemed to me that Leo’s life was always firing on all cylinders.

He was a terrific husband and father; a talented carpenter and quilter; a great photographer and cook.

And Leo understood the power of surrendering to the big God we know in Christ through incremental, baby steps.

He used to tell skeptics: “Promise me that you’ll go to worship six Sundays in a row. And then try to miss the seventh Sunday. You won’t miss, because by then, you’ll want to be in worship. You’ll want to get closer to God.”

I promise that if you will dare to give the moments of your life to the control of the big God of the universe, you will, just like the disciples who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, see the risen Jesus working in your life.

You will see just how big and wonderful God is!

But watch out: If you give God an inch of your life, He will soon take the whole thing. Let Him take it!

Hope for the Living

[This was shared during the funeral for Dale, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor, earlier today.]

Psalm 23
Romans 8:31-39
John 11:17-27

Over the past three-and-a-half years, as his pastor, I’ve gotten to know Dale a bit. Because Dale, who was never a talkative man from what I have gleaned, was increasingly silenced by illness in this period, some of what I’ve learned about him has come from others.

One day, for example, while visiting Dee at her house, she showed me a beautiful piece of furniture that Dale made for her dining room. He was a tremendous carpenter!

But his talents weren’t confined to carpentry, of course. Luke used to tell me about how knowledgeable Dale was when it came to anything mechanical or, as Luke would put it, “handy.” (High praise from Luke!)

From everyone—from Dale himself—I also learned how much Dale loved the outdoors. He loved to boat and hike. Were it up to him, I think, Dale really would have kept a “home, home on the range.” (A song he loved to sing.)

In later years, unable to hike or travel, he enjoyed, when the weather allowed, sitting on the deck amid the trees and the chatter of the birds. (I know he appreciated the gift of the “birdie cam” he recently received.)

Dale’s love of nature was also reflected in the home he built on that hill near Lake Logan back in the 1970s. This dwelling did not always meet with Elaine’s approval. As some of you will remember, the first time I visited Dale and Elaine, she commented on their house, “Dale says it’s secluded; I say it’s isolated.”

From that, I learned something else about Dale (and Elaine): whatever differences in their personalities, these two who grew up as classmates in a rural Michigan one-room schoolhouse, were a team. Dale smiled when Elaine said things like that to me. It was the smile of recognition of a “discussion” they had rehearsed countless times before.

Sometimes, Dale’s smiles would turn into laughter that I loved to hear: the breathy, hearty laugh of someone truly tickled.

I came to know Dale also as a man of great intelligence.

And I also experienced Dale as a caring person. When someone was in the hospital, he wanted to know how she or he was doing. He relished telling me how things were going with Sandy’s and Perry’s lives and work and with his grandchildren. He enjoyed it when neighbor Butch brought his own granddaughter Isabelle, a young ball of energy, along for visits. After I had a heart attack last summer, I mentioned that the church council was after me to take it easier; Dale fixed me with a stare and asked bluntly, “Are you doing it?”

On top of all this, Dale was a man of quiet faith. He was always anxious to receive Holy Communion during our visits. Even when it had become a struggle for him to move his hand to his lips, he determinedly ate the bread and drank the wine that are Christ’s body and blood. And no one ever more sincerely thanked me for bringing the Sacrament to him.

Dale was truly grateful for the grace and love of God, whether he saw it in the meticulously engineered beauty of the created world or in the gift of Jesus on a cross, Whose death and resurrection brings eternal life to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

And it is to this I want to point all of you who grieve Dale’s passing today. At one level, Dale’s death brings a story to a close. With that, there will be, understandably, some sense of relief. Dale had suffered from multiple maladies over an extended period of time. His suffering is ended. But his death is a sad ending for all of you, too: A father, a grandfather, a friend, a strong presence, is gone.

But you can take heart. You can have hope. Dale’s passing is also a beginning. The Gospel lesson from John which I read a few moments ago tells the story of what happened one day when Jesus went to Bethany, the hometown of friends: two sisters and a brother named Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

The sisters and the whole town are grieving when Jesus arrives. Lazarus was dead. At first, Martha seems to lash out at Jesus. "Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

But to Martha in her grief and her confusion, Jesus says, “Your brother will rise again” and “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” He then asks Martha to trust those assertions. Jesus asks her to believe them, to believe in Him.

Jesus asks the same thing of you this morning. You see, if the promise that Jesus makes to share His Easter victory over sin and death isn’t true today, it isn’t true. It is precisely for moments like these that Jesus makes His promise to be the resurrection and the life!

And our faith in Jesus’ resurrection promise isn’t just a hope whispered against the grim realities of life. After telling Martha that all who believe in Him will live with God forever, Jesus gave a sign of His capacity to make good on His promises. He stood at the place where Lazarus' body had been placed some four days before and commanded his friend’s dead bones to come back to life on this side of eternity. The voice of Jesus, God in the flesh, spoke with the same voice as the One Who called the heavens and the earth to life in the first place. In response to the command from that voice, Lazarus stepped out of his tomb, back into the embrace of his family.

Of course, Jesus would, shortly after the events at Bethany, give an even more emphatic sign of His authority over life and death and sin. After bearing the weight of all the sin of human history—including your sin and my sin—on the cross, though Himself sinlessness, Jesus rose to life again. The Bible says of the crucified and risen Jesus: “God raised Him up, having freed Him from death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”

Fortunately, God recognizes how hard it is for us to believe such good news, especially on days like these. That’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to any of us who want to believe. If we will pray to the God the Father in the Name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will help us to believe in the same Lord so welcomed by Dale every time he gratefully received the Lord’s Supper and listened to God's Word...the same Lord he so reverenced every time he joined the Saint Matthew family for worship over the radio on Sunday mornings.

In the days and years ahead, you will miss Dale, just as you have missed Elaine. Grief is natural and understandable when the love runs deep and the memories are piled high.

But those who follow the risen Jesus don’t grieve like others do. We have hope. We belong to a Savior Who rose on Easter.

Because of Jesus, Dale will rise too. So will all who believe in Jesus.

May God fill you with this hope and the peace that comes from it in the days ahead…and through all the days of your lives. Amen

"Mild" Jesus?

In his book, Your God is Too Small (1961), the late J.B. Phillips wrote:

Why mild? Of all the epithets that could be applied to Christ this seems one of the least appropriate. For what does "mild," as applied to a person, conjure up to our minds? Surely a picture of someone who wouldn't say "boo" to the proverbial goose; someone who would let sleeping dogs lie and avoid trouble wherever possible; someone of a placid temperament who is almost a stranger to the passions of red-blooded humanity; someone who is a bit of a nonentity, both uninspired and uninspiring.

This word "mild" is apparently deliberately used to describe a man who did not hesitate to challenge and expose the hypocrisies of the religious people of His day: a man who had such "personality" that He walked unscathed through a murderous crowd; a man so far from being a nonentity that He was regarded by the authorities as a public danger; a man who could be moved to violent anger by shameless exploitation or by smug complacent orthodoxy; a man of such courage that He deliberately walked to what He knew would mean death, despite the earnest pleas of well-meaning friends! Mild! What a word to use for a personality whose challenge and strange attractiveness nineteen centuries have by no means exhausted. Jesus Christ might well be called "meek," in the sense of being selfless and humble and utterly devoted to what He considered right, whatever the personal cost; but "mild," never!

The Privilege of Work (and the Stupidity of Proof-Texting)

Have you ever heard of "proof-texting"? (No, it doesn't have anything to do with your cell phone.)

Proof-texting is what happens when people choose a passage of Scripture to prove a point they want to make without taking the rest of the Bible into account.* Proof-texting is destructive and un-Christian.

A central principle taught by Martin Luther for understanding the Bible is to "let Scripture interpret Scripture." In other words: pray, read, think, and reflect on what the whole Bible reveals of God's will on a given subject. This will give you a clearer picture of God's character and of God's will for your life.

One isolated piece of Scripture people misuse to uphold a strange belief they hold is Genesis 3:17-19. There, after Adam had decided to rebel against the will of God, God tells Adam:

"...cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; ¹⁸thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The proof-texters look at this and claim that it means that human work is a curse for sin. One of my factory co-workers was fond of repeating a mantra during our breaks and lunch times. "Live in hope; die in despair," he would say sagely between drags on cigarettes. That "little ray of sunshine" was based in part on his viewing Genesis 3:17-19 in isolation. He believed that God had decided to punish the human race, including punishing us with work to do, long before he was born.

But work is not a curse.**

In Genesis 3:15, after God had created the first human being, we're told:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

In other words, from the beginning, before the fall into sin, human beings were meant to work. Work is not a curse; it's a privilege.

But something happened to our work after the fall into sin. As surely as death became part of the human life on earth after the fall, so did the burdens of futility and self-service in our work. Sin--not work itself--is what can often make our work hard or futile.

Sin lay behind all the watercooler gossip that can make work hard.

Sin lay behind the "It-can't-be-done" jeers directed at workers who have dreamed, innovated, researched, or striven through the centuries.

Sin lay behind the laziness that ruins productivity--ours and others.

Sin lay behind bosses who shortchange employees and consumers.

Sin is what causes employees to miss deadlines, cut corners, skip out early, and even swipe money or supplies from employers.

It isn't work itself that's a bad thing, it's the inborn condition of sin we bring to work as descendants of the first parents and all the sins we commit because of that condition that can make work hard or futile.

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread is based on Proverbs 6:6-11 in the Old Testament. Through Solomon, God reveals a call for the lazy to be diligent in work, as an expression of what it means to be part of His creation:

Go to the ant, you lazybones;
consider its ways, and be wise.
⁷Without having any chief
or officer or ruler,
⁸it prepares its food in summer,
and gathers its sustenance in harvest.
⁹How long will you lie there, O lazybones?
When will you rise from your sleep?
¹⁰A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
¹¹and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want, like an armed warrior. 

No work we do will earn us a place in God's kingdom, of course. (Also see here.) The gift of eternity with God belongs to those who repent for sin and take Christ's outstretched hand of forgiveness and grace. 

But that's no license for the faithful to sit on their blessed assurance! 

Christians should hate the thought of anyone having legitimate reasons for saying of us that, as the phrase goes, we're so heavenly minded we're no earthly good. 

Work is a privilege. Do it for as long as you can in life and do it to the glory of the One Who made you and Who sent a Savior to set you free, eternally, from sin, death, and futility. Ephesians 6:7 in the New Testament says, "Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women..." 


Work because it's part of what makes us human...something that will keep being part of what it means to be human for those who live eternally with Jesus Christ.

*It also happens when people flat out misread a passage of Scripture. One of the most widely misread passages of the New Testament is the one in which people tells us to take up our crosses. 

Many look at that and figure that Jesus is referring to adversities that come our way as a cross. Jesus is portrayed as pushing an attitude that combines stoicism and self-pity. 

People don't consider what the cross was for Jesus. Through it, He bore our sins. Our crosses are our sins. To take up our crosses means to honestly acknowledge our sin and our need of Christ. It means being honest before God and the world, that we, by our inborn nature, fail to love God and fail to love others; that we deserve the punishment for sin that the sinless Jesus took for us. It means submitting our old sinful selves to daily crucifixion so that God can remake us into the people we were made to be. 

It's only in honestly taking up our crosses that the freedom from sin and death Jesus won for repentant believers in Him can come to us. 

Adversities that come to you--from small to tragically shattering--are not your cross. Sin, the only thing that has the capacity to destroy you for eternity, is your cross, and we must submit to its destruction through honest daily repentance and renewal from God. 

Jesus says take responsibility for your sin and come to Him. He will make you new.

**A superficial consideration of all the great things we have in the world because somebody worked--from the light bulb to the computer chip, from the food on your table to the music you enjoy on your iPod--will demonstrate that work itself is no curse. 

Audio from Tonight's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion (Deuteronomy 1-21)

There's some overlap with this morning's discussion. But there's some other stuff here you might find helpful.

"Give in! Get close! Clean up! Get down!"

I love this!

Audio from This Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year Discussion' of Deuteronomy 1-21

At Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, we're reading the Bible together in a year's time. During this past week, we've read the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, chapters 1 to 21.

On Wednesdays every week, we have hour-long discussions, one in the morning and another in the evening, of the latest readings. This is the morning discussion from today. I hope that you find it helpful.

Americans in Paris

That's the subtitle of David McCullough's new book, The Greater Journey. It looks interesting, as usual when it comes to anything McCullough writes.

If you're not praying...

...you're dying inside. It's as simple and as true as that.

One Way to Defeat Worry: Never Answer Your Critics

In his practical book, How to Win Over Worry, Pastor John Edmund Haggai, not to be confused with John Hagee, says that one way to defeat the power of worry over our lives is to develop poise in the face of criticism. I love what he writes here:

...follow the example of our Lord [Jesus], who answered His critics so often with silence. Our Lord defended other people. He defended the Word of God. He defended the work of His heavenly Father. He defended little children. Yet He never defended Himself.

Usually you will find it wise not to answer your critics, tempting though it may be to do so. "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him" (Proverbs 26:4).

Ask yourself what answering criticism will achieve. Your friends don't need an answer, because you retain their confidence. Instead, listen to the criticism objectively. Don't allow yourself to become emotionally involved. Sometimes you can profit from criticism. If the criticism is just, do something about it. If the criticism is unjust, ignore it.

On the other hand, if your enemies criticize you, so what? That's what enemies do. And remember that unjust criticism is often a backhanded compliment. It often indicates that you have excited the interest, jealousy, and envy of the critic. As the old adage goes, "No one ever kicks a dead dog."

What Decision Will You Make?

In my sermon this past Sunday, I talked about the decision we all have to make about whether we're open to believing in the God revealed in Jesus Christ or not.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian martyred for his Christian opposition to Adolf Hitler and Nazism, has a chapter called, "The Decision," in his classic, The Cost of Discipleship. Here's some of what he wrote there:

The time is short. Eternity is long. It is the time of decision. Those who are true to the word and confession on earth will find Jesus Christ standing by their side in the hour of judgment. He will acknowledge them and come to their aid when the accuser [Satan, who wants God to give him authority over us in eternity, by virtue of our undeniable sinfulness] demands his rights. All the world will be called to witness as Jesus pronounces our name before his heavenly Father. If we have been true to Jesus in this life, he will be true to us in eternity. But if we have been ashamed of our Lord and of his name, he will likewise be ashamed of us and deny us.

The final decision must be made while we are still on earth...

God loves us desperately. That's why Jesus died on the cross. That's why Jesus calls us to repent and believe in Him. When we believe in Him--meaning, when we trust in Him and Him alone for life, we are given an undeserved share in His resurrection, His Easter victory over sin and death.

But, as mentioned in this past Sunday's sermon, God leaves the ultimate decision between eternity with God or eternity in hell to us. We are the ones who decide the judgment rendered over our lives the moment after we draw our last earthly breaths. Jesus says of Himself to Nicodemus:

"Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." (John 3:18)

What decision have you made? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your God and Savior?

And if you've made the decision for belief, do you love your neighbor enough to present this critical decision for or against faith in Christ to them?

Your eternity and the eternal destinies of others depend on how you answer those questions. What decisions will you make?

Forgiveness, Vengeance, and Justice

Some thoughts I had regarding the London bombings six years ago, seem relevant today. Vengeance is always wrong; justice is right. Forgiveness is always right; forgetting can be foolish.

Antidote to Worry

These brief thoughts presented by my colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, from a John Ortberg book and the passage of Scripture that inspired them from Philippians 4:4-8, is worth the short time it will take you to read them.

We human beings can weave all sorts of horrible scenarios with the gift of imagination we have from God.

Or, we can focus on what is true and real and noble.

Doing the latter can make a huge difference in our lives and in the lives of those we touch every day.

By the way, if you haven't read the book from which Glen quotes, The Me I Want to Be by John Ortberg, I recommend it highly!

Do We Believe It?

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

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 116
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
Last Sunday, we considered Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and asked the question, “But did it happen?” We looked at some of the evidence presented in Matthew’s account of the first Easter Sunday. That evidence, it seems to me, supports what we Christians say about Jesus: “He is risen, risen indeed!” This Sunday we come to another question: Do we believe it?

Do we believe that Jesus, sinless God in the flesh, rose from the dead? That isn’t just a question of fact. Many believe it’s true that Jesus rose from the dead. But they aren’t believers.

A friend of ours wanted her brother and his family to get involved in a church, knowing what a difference her own church had made in the lives of her husband, children, and herself and how in a bad news world, involvement in the church helps us hold on tight to the Good News about Jesus.

But she was frustrated by her brother's response. “Look,” he told her, “John 3:16 says that whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life. I believe in Jesus. I believe He rose from the dead. Why do I have to mess with the Church?”

I suppose all of us wonder about that sometimes. But our friend’s brother was confusing two different meanings of the term, “believe.”

One meaning of belief is to simply accept the facts of a case. Even Satan believes that Jesus is the Son of God and that Jesus rose from the dead; that doesn’t mean he’s in the Kingdom of God. It doesn’t make him a believer.

When the Bible and the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds use the words, “We believe…” or “I believe…,” much more is meant than just, “These are the facts.”

For the Christian, to believe in the God revealed in Jesus Christ and to believe in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is to say:

• We entrust all our lives, all our past sins, all our present fortunes, all our future, into the hands of one person alone. 
• We don’t entrust our lives to ourselves, our efforts, or our understanding. 
• We don’t entrust our lives to our country, our political philosophy, our families, or our ways of life. 
• We entrust ourselves to the God revealed in Jesus Christ alone. 
• We trust that Jesus alone can bring us into the presence of God, that the risen Jesus alone can bring us forgiveness of sin, that the risen Jesus alone will one day make our dead bones rise to new life in the eternal presence of our God. 
• And we trust that Christ instituted the Church to help us believe in Him even as the devil, the world, and our sinful selves strive to drive us away from Christ. 

Do you believe this?

1 Corinthians 12, verse 3, says that no one can confess that Jesus is Lord—in other words, confess that Jesus is the ultimate authority over our lives and over the universe itself—unless the Holy Spirit empowers us to believe it. Belief in Jesus, is a gift, something we can’t manufacture.

In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion tried to talk himself into courage. It didn’t work. Nor can we talk ourselves into believing in the risen Jesus.

But we can decide to be open to the gift of faith. This is true of all gifts, when you think about it. A gift is offered, but we must decide whether to take it.

When Ann and I were engaged, her stepfather offered a bucket of golf balls to me. I had no need of golf balls and, probably from pride, didn’t want to be seen as grasping for his charity. I told him, politely, “No, thanks.” He raged at me for “looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

People can look the gift of faith “in the mouth,” too, refusing it, just as our friend’s brother did. It’s part of the gracious, loving nature of God that He will not force us to entrust ourselves to Him. And though it breaks His heart, God lets us say, “No” to Him, giving us the final say over whether we live with Him or live in hell.

This has always been true. In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to say no to Him and the life He offered. They misused that freedom, submerging the whole universe (and you and me) into the bondage to sin from which we cannot free ourselves. (A bondage from which Jesus alone can free us.)

To Abraham and Sarah, God gave the freedom to trust in His promises of a son and a nation of descendants. Sometimes they trusted in God. Sometimes they didn’t. When they decided to trust God, even when adversity struck, they lived in the calming, empowering certainty of God’s presence. When they decided not to trust God, chaos inevitably broke out.

Through Read the Bible in a Year, we’ve seen that this same story played out in the history of God’s people after God freed them from slavery in Egypt; it’s because Israel decided with depressing frequency to walk away from God that what should have been an eleven day journey in the wilderness took God's half-believing chosen people forty years to complete!

Every day, we have a choice, a decision. We must choose whether to be open to the gift of an ever-deepening faith that the God we meet in the risen Jesus offers us or to close our wills to Him, ignore the clear teachings of Scripture and go our own ways. Do we truly believe in the God Who raised Jesus from the dead?

In the Old Testament, Joshua, the man God chose to replace Moses as leader of the Israelites, confronts the people with a decision. “Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua told them, "...but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

That is the decision that each of us must make: Whether to believe, trust, and serve the one and only God of the universe or not.

Each of our Bible lessons for today address this reality.

In the first lesson, part of Peter’s Pentecost sermon delivered ten days after the risen Jesus had returned to heaven, Peter confronts his fellow Jews with the truth that Jesus, according to the plan of God laid out in the Old Testament, though sinless, had died for the sins of all and had risen from the dead, an event he, along with 500 of his fellow Jesus-Followers, could vouch for. His sermon was a challenge for them to decide whether they would believe that the God of promise had fulfilled the promise of new life for all who believe in their time. “Do you believe it?” Peter asked.

Psalm 16, from Old Testament times, challenged the people to believe that those who ran after other gods or ways of life were led only to trouble, but that those who trust in God are never abandoned. “Do you believe it?” the Psalmist asked.

Peter, in our second lesson, writing to Christians in Asia Minor and other locations—people who faced daily persecution for their belief in the risen Jesus—challenged them to make the decision to trust that their faithfulness would result in “indescribable and glorious joy” when Jesus returned to bring an end to the life of this world and fully establish the new heaven and new earth of which all Christians will be citizens. Peter asked again: “Do you believe it?”

Our Gospel lesson ends with what I call John the Evangelist’s mission statement—the reason why he wrote the Gospel and really, the whole reason the Church and individual, ordinary Christians like you and me tell the world about the risen Jesus. Take a look at John 20:30-31:

Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life his name. 

“Here is the evidence for the new life with God that only comes to those who believe in the risen Jesus,” John is saying. “Do you believe it?”

Do we believe it? How we answer this question day-in and day-out is important not just for our lives beyond the grave. It’s important today.

On February 25, a dear friend of Ann’s and mine died. Ron Claussen was the pastor of a neighboring parish when we arrived at our first call in northwest Ohio in 1984. Later, Ron became a member of the congregation I served, Bethlehem Lutheran Church near Okolona.

But to describe Ron simply as a neighboring pastor or a parishioner doesn’t quite give you the right idea of who he was for so many people, including my family. Ron was, quite simply, one of the greatest people and greatest Christians I have ever known. He was certainly the finest pastor I ever met. Everything about him, including his wonderful sense of humor, displayed the risen Jesus Christ. When someone was hurting, no matter the time of day or night, Ron was there. I loved him more than I ever was able to tell him!

But there’s more to Ron’s story. In the 1950s, during his teen years in Nebraska, Ron was among the last people to be afflicted with polio, just before the first polio vaccines came out. Polio, for the benefit of you young people, is a horrible virus that, without the vaccines we now take for granted, can bring about total or partial paralysis and can cause bones and muscle to shrivel and atrophy. Polio can do other horrible things to the body of someone who suffers from it. That Ron contracted polio when he did was a horribly, tragic occurrence that would impact the rest of Ron’s life. Its effects would have destroyed or embittered many people. But it did neither to Ron. I spent many hours with Ron, but I never once heard him complain about his circumstances. He radiated the certainty that can come to those who follow Jesus!

The reason for this is simple: Each and every day of his life, Ron made a decision to trust in Jesus and to live for Him alone. You see, when we decide to open ourselves to the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the joy and hope of eternity inevitably spills over our everyday lives. We know that already we have what Peter describes as “the outcome of…faith, the salvation of [our] souls.”

Deciding to let God build faith in the risen Jesus within us helps us face each day with confidence, joy, and hope.

We know that with Christ by your side, even when the world turns against us, we will prevail.

We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We know that we can love as we’ve been loved, forgive as we’ve been forgiven, be as patient with others as God is with us.

Through Jesus, you can can know that God is with you always and that, one day, God will welcome you into eternity with Him.

Do you believe all of this?

Then live it! Amen!