[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
In his book, Too Busy Not to Pray, Bill Hybels tells about a day at his church in the Chicago area when lots of people were baptized. All were adult converts, many of them people who had spent years walking without God or away from God. But on this day they found themselves welcomed into the Lord’s family, the way little McKenzie was at our baptismal font a few Sundays ago.
Hybels was understandably excited. But after the service, he found a woman crying in a church stairwell.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “No,” she answered. “I’m struggling. My mother was baptized today.”
Hybels wondered what the problem was. The woman went on, “I prayed for her every day for twenty years.”
Hybels still couldn’t understand the woman’s tears.
“I’m crying,” she said, “because I came so close—so close—to giving up on her…at five years, I said, Who needs this? God isn’t listening. After ten years I said, Why am I wasting my breath? After nineteen years, I said, I’m just a fool. But I…just kept praying, even though my faith was weak. I kept praying…and she was baptized today. I will never doubt the power of prayer again.”
We can rightly be impressed by that woman’s perseverance in prayer.
But, even more impressive to me is the perseverance of the God to Whom she prayed.
The Bible teaches us that it’s God Who gives us the capacity to believe despite our doubts. It was God who incited that woman to keep praying for her mom when she felt like giving up. It was God Who never gave up on her mother as a hopelessly lost sinner.
The God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ is absolutely relentless in reaching out to us, in caring about us, in desiring a relationship with us. He will go to any lengths to make those things happen.
Just how far God goes can be seen in our first lesson for this morning, Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24.
Ezekiel lived six centuries before the birth of Jesus. He was part of a group of Jews, the elite of their country, captured and sent to Babylon to serve the king there as bureaucrats and courtiers in 597 BC.
When he was thirty, while living in Babylon, God called Ezekiel to be a prophet.
The work God gives to prophets is thankless. That was especially true for Ezekiel. God gave him a succession of messages, mostly for his fellow Jewish exiles in Babylon, that they didn’t want to hear at all.
That’s because, in Babylon, the exiles led fairly cushy lives. Sure, they no longer lived in the land God had given their ancestors, but their bellies were full, they had roofs over their heads, and they enjoyed luxuries. (It's amazing how cheaply we'll sell out what's important, even God, for our creature comforts!)
So, when God sent Ezekiel to tell his fellow exiles that their homeland would soon be crushed and that all of God’s people would be scattered and hounded by enemies unless they and all the people back home turned from sin and trusted in God once more, Ezekiel’s fellow exiles laughed it off. Many went to hear him just to be entertained.
The exiles were like many churchgoers who like the sound of the pastor’s voice or the playing or singing of musicians, but have no intention of surrendering their lives and wills to Christ.
So, the exiles, like their countrymen back home, kept worshiping other gods, acceding to the sacrifice of children to those gods (a horrific form of child abuse), mistreating the foreigners in their midst, ignoring the needs of widows, stealing from one another, violating each others’ wives, and depending on the military power of foreign allies rather than on God alone.
God’s people had moved so far away from a relationship with God that, through Ezekiel, God said unless they repented and trusted in Him alone, He would soon wipe Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple off the map. God would execute judgment on His people and do it through a conquering foreign power whose kings and people didn’t even believe in Him.
God incited Ezekiel to persevere in sharing this message because God was so relentless in His love for His people: Though His people jilted Him over and over, God still wanted them back.
Ezekiel’s exile audience laughed off these prophecies until 586 BC, when Babylon overran God’s people, destroyed the temple, and sent the Jews running in terror. The laughing stopped.
Long before this point, a reasonable person would say that God would have been justified in giving up on Israel…and on the whole sorry human race, for that matter.
But as long as we have breath, God will never give up on us.
God won’t give up on you.
After Israel was destroyed, God gave Ezekiel prophecies of hope. Punishment for past sin doesn’t have to be the end of the human story. Weeping and gnashing of teeth in hell doesn’t have to be the final, eternal destiny of human beings.
“As I live,” God instructed Ezekiel to prophesy, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?”
Even in prophecies God ordered Ezekiel to share with foreign nations, God showed Himself to be relentless in His desire that all people—Jews and Gentiles—to turn to Him and live.
It’s because of this very desire on God’s part that Jesus has commissioned we Christians to make disciples of all nations.
In our lesson, we see that God presents Ezekiel with a vision of a new future God wants to give Israel and all people. To people all over the world, scattered by their sins and the sins committed against them in this fallen world, in verse 11 of our lesson God says: "I Myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out.”
And in verse 23, God says that the shepherd will also be a descendant of David.
Six hundred years before Jesus’ birth, God said that He would be the Shepherd King Who would come to His own people as a humble human servant in order to take us to Himself once again.
Jesus, of course, God in human flesh, is the same Shepherd King Who spoke through Ezekiel and six hundred years later would Himself say, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”
In my work as a pastor, I find there are two major ways people look at God that keep them from trusting their lives and concerns to God.
The first way was expressed by a woman in a former congregation when she told me that she never prayed. “I don’t think that I could ever ask God for anything," she said. "I wouldn’t want to bother him.” She thought that God was too big, too busy, and too important to care about her.
Another wrong way that people look at God is to see God as powerless. A member of my extended family once told me, “Look, Mark, God may have started this world up. But He’s done all that He can. It’s up to us to keep it going.”
But on this Christ the King Sunday, we affirm that God is neither too busy for us nor too powerless to help us!
For sure, there are things that happen to us in this fallen and imperfect world that we can’t explain. But we still affirm that God cares about us and has the power to give us life with God that never ends.
God is our Shepherd King, so relentless in His love for us that He searches us out no matter how lost we may be, so persevering in His love that He takes on our humanity and though sinless Himself, willingly receives the punishment for sin we deserve, then rises from death to give new and everlasting life to all who believe in Him.
Maybe today you feel that, like the Israel of Ezekiel’s day, you’ve wandered too far from God.
Maybe your life feels rudderless or you realize that you’ve fallen into patterns of sin that are walling you off from God. God wants to be your Shepherd King.
No matter where we are spiritually, whether we are mature believers, as I hope one day to become, or people far away from God, we can always use more of Jesus.
All of us would do well to take as our own a simple prayer that Johann von Staupitz taught a young monk named Martin Luther when Luther felt far from God. The prayer goes like this: “Lord Jesus, I am Yours; save me.” “Lord Jesus, I am Yours; save me.”
Say that prayer with me right now, so that you’ll remember it later: “Lord Jesus, I am Yours; save me.”
God, the Shepherd King Who we know through Jesus, will take to Himself anyone who so surrenders to Him!
He can forgive our sins.
He can give us the power to resist the temptations that threaten to take over our lives.
He can heal our hurts and lighten our burdens.
He can set us free to be more than the mere products of our environments, our genetics, or our sinful impulses.
He can move all who surrender to Him toward becoming the people God means for us to be: free and hopeful, faithful and in sync with our Maker, no longer imprisoned by our past and confident that our future is in the hands of Christ!
As long as we are still on this earth, God will never give up on finding us, saving us, and making us His own.
And He will never tire of keeping us as His own for all eternity! Jesus Christ, God enfleshed, is our Shepherd King!
In Jesus Christ our King, fully God and fully human, we meet a God Who understands us and all that we go through. He is never too busy to hear from us. And He is big enough and great enough to give us new life now and in eternity.
That’s worth remembering not just on this last day of the Church Year, but every day of our lives. Amen
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
A Few Words with My Fellow Christians (I hope my non-Christian friends will eavesdrop)
Today's Our Daily Bread post and the powerful passage of Scripture on which it's based, has me reflecting and now, sharing with you.
The Biblical passage is one of my absolute favorites. The first century preacher and evangelist Paul is speaking at a site in ancient Athens known as the Areopagus. People went there to exchange ideas and gossip all the time. It was to Athens what the local bar, a favorite restaurant, the break room at work, or Internet sites like Twitter and Facebook, are today.
Paul wanted to tell people about how, through the centuries, God had revealed Himself and His will for the human race, first through Israel and ultimately through a son of Israel, Jesus.
Jesus, he said, also happened to be God Himself. After dying, Paul asserted, Jesus was raised from the dead as a sign that God would one day take full control of all creation and judge humanity based on whether they have welcomed Jesus with faith or rejected His authority over them. (Actually, Jesus will just be affirming the judgment people make about Him.)
But, in addressing this heavy issue, Paul didn't start out by reciting a bunch of Bible verses or lore from his own religious or ethnic heritage.
He met the people where they were, reciting the words of one of their very own poets.
Just as Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that his people could know God for themselves and just as he translated and reformed the Mass so that people could participate with understanding in the worship of God, we modern Christians need to understand "where people are coming from" in order to help them know the God Who meets our greatest needs through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Christians need to be intentional in forming respectful friendships with all people. After all, we're commanded to love our neighbor, no matter what.
In addition, because we're commanded to love all people, God's Word commands (and privileges) us to share the new, eternal life that belongs to all who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus.
That's what Paul did.
We can do this ourselves with the non-Christian friends we make in our lives.
Knowing that they're NFL fans, we might ask our friends, "What did you think of the Jets getting Tebowed last night?"
Or, to a Lady Gaga fan, we might say, "I think she's right when she says that we're all 'born that way.' The question for me, though, is whether just because we're born that way, does it mean we should stay that way?"
Or, to the movie buff, we might authentically ask, "My wife and I are thinking of going to a move tonight. Any recommendations?"
Or we might simply and truthfully ask them about their spouses, their families, their work.
We might ask how they're doing as they grieve the recent loss of a family member. It's sometimes amazing to me hear people say, "You're the first person who's mentioned [their loved one] in weeks."
Christians don't do these things to be "ambulance chasers" who earn heavenly brownie points by piling up "good works" or by trapping hapless victims into following Jesus.
We do these things because Christ calls us to love our neighbor, tells us that when we do, we're really loving God, and because we know that our friends, like us, crave being treated with respect and love and concern.
We do these things because they're right.
And we do these things to share Christ with others. It's God's will for us to share our Best Friend with our other friends. Our Best Friend is the God you and I have met and know in Jesus Christ!
So, fellow Christians...
I've been able to have lots of these conversations with spiritually-disconnected friends over the years. Only a few have culminated in people turning from sin and trusting in Christ. But I do know that God has used conversations like these and conversations these friends have with other people, life events, and other things--to nudge people closer to Jesus Christ.
Only God can open a person to Christ. And He does it, not by force, but by gentle persuasion.
But God can use us all as instruments by which He turns an enemy of God, bound for eternal separation from God, into a person of faith in Christ, living life in the power of God's amazing grace.
When we show sensitivity and concern for the interests and needs of others, they see a Christ-follower and stereotypes of Christians as arrogant, self-righteous, and closed-minded are challenged.
They see our hopefulness and wonder whether they couldn't appropriate the same way of life themselves.
Pray about it. Then find those little "wrinkles in time," when you might, naturally, give an account for all the hope that you have through Christ!
The Biblical passage is one of my absolute favorites. The first century preacher and evangelist Paul is speaking at a site in ancient Athens known as the Areopagus. People went there to exchange ideas and gossip all the time. It was to Athens what the local bar, a favorite restaurant, the break room at work, or Internet sites like Twitter and Facebook, are today.
Paul wanted to tell people about how, through the centuries, God had revealed Himself and His will for the human race, first through Israel and ultimately through a son of Israel, Jesus.
Jesus, he said, also happened to be God Himself. After dying, Paul asserted, Jesus was raised from the dead as a sign that God would one day take full control of all creation and judge humanity based on whether they have welcomed Jesus with faith or rejected His authority over them. (Actually, Jesus will just be affirming the judgment people make about Him.)
But, in addressing this heavy issue, Paul didn't start out by reciting a bunch of Bible verses or lore from his own religious or ethnic heritage.
He met the people where they were, reciting the words of one of their very own poets.
Just as Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that his people could know God for themselves and just as he translated and reformed the Mass so that people could participate with understanding in the worship of God, we modern Christians need to understand "where people are coming from" in order to help them know the God Who meets our greatest needs through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Christians need to be intentional in forming respectful friendships with all people. After all, we're commanded to love our neighbor, no matter what.
In addition, because we're commanded to love all people, God's Word commands (and privileges) us to share the new, eternal life that belongs to all who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus.
That's what Paul did.
We can do this ourselves with the non-Christian friends we make in our lives.
Knowing that they're NFL fans, we might ask our friends, "What did you think of the Jets getting Tebowed last night?"
Or, to a Lady Gaga fan, we might say, "I think she's right when she says that we're all 'born that way.' The question for me, though, is whether just because we're born that way, does it mean we should stay that way?"
Or, to the movie buff, we might authentically ask, "My wife and I are thinking of going to a move tonight. Any recommendations?"
Or we might simply and truthfully ask them about their spouses, their families, their work.
We might ask how they're doing as they grieve the recent loss of a family member. It's sometimes amazing to me hear people say, "You're the first person who's mentioned [their loved one] in weeks."
Christians don't do these things to be "ambulance chasers" who earn heavenly brownie points by piling up "good works" or by trapping hapless victims into following Jesus.
We do these things because Christ calls us to love our neighbor, tells us that when we do, we're really loving God, and because we know that our friends, like us, crave being treated with respect and love and concern.
We do these things because they're right.
And we do these things to share Christ with others. It's God's will for us to share our Best Friend with our other friends. Our Best Friend is the God you and I have met and know in Jesus Christ!
So, fellow Christians...
- Establish relationships.
- Display authentic humility.
- Own personal ignorance.
- Let your friends see that you grapple with the issues of life, many of which may have you stumped, in the certainty that, despite mysteries and your faults and shortcomings, you have a relationship with Christ that helps you live today in confidence and to face tomorrow with hope.
I've been able to have lots of these conversations with spiritually-disconnected friends over the years. Only a few have culminated in people turning from sin and trusting in Christ. But I do know that God has used conversations like these and conversations these friends have with other people, life events, and other things--to nudge people closer to Jesus Christ.
Only God can open a person to Christ. And He does it, not by force, but by gentle persuasion.
But God can use us all as instruments by which He turns an enemy of God, bound for eternal separation from God, into a person of faith in Christ, living life in the power of God's amazing grace.
When we show sensitivity and concern for the interests and needs of others, they see a Christ-follower and stereotypes of Christians as arrogant, self-righteous, and closed-minded are challenged.
They see our hopefulness and wonder whether they couldn't appropriate the same way of life themselves.
Over time, they may become open to the message that Paul ended with in first-century Athens, Greece: "God overlooks it [our ignorance of Him and His will for our lives] as long as you don't know any better—but that time is past. The unknown is now known since Paul has told them about the God revealed through the history of Israel], and he's calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31, The Message].Let's love our neighbors so much that it will become unthinkable to us--maybe keep us up nights praying for them--that they could face a Christless eternity or that they need to struggle through this life without the incredible comfort of knowing the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Pray about it. Then find those little "wrinkles in time," when you might, naturally, give an account for all the hope that you have through Christ!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Jesus, Slip 'n Slides, and the Purpose of Your Life
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Matthew 25:14-30
A young man came to see me. “I know that Jesus loves me and that I’m saved by grace through my faith in Christ,” he said, “but what exactly is the purpose of my life?”
The short answer is that you and I are alive for only one purpose: To glorify God.
In Isaiah 43:7, God says, “Everyone who is called by My Name…I created for My glory.”
We most glorify God though, not when we look at the Bible’s portrayal of holy living, like we see in the Ten Commandments or in Jesus’ Beatitudes and then grit our teeth and strive to be good and holy people, whether it makes us or others miserable or not.
We most glorify God when we enjoy God and use His gifts to us in ways that honor Him.
Following Jesus from here to eternity presents its challenges. But there will be no joy in living with Christ if we think we must face those challenges on our own or in our own power.
The Lord Who saved us by going to the cross for us will also be glorified within us (and we will enjoy His company), if we will begin to learn one simple prayer of faith: “Lord, live within me and give me joy so that You are glorified.”
“Lord, live within me and give me joy so that You are glorified.”
The parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson is the story of two men who didn’t grit their teeth to do the right thing, but who remembered the goodness of their master and so enjoyed and used the blessings of the master.
It’s also the story of a third man who ignored the blessings given to him by his master, relying on his own personal sense of what was right and wrong, and so, denied himself a continuing relationship with him.
You know the story. A master, clearly a stand-in for God the Son, Jesus, is about to go on a journey. As we read Jesus’ story, we understand the “journey” Jesus is talking about. Since the crucified and risen Jesus ascended into heaven, we know that He has been enthroned in heaven, giving His followers millennia to share the Good News that all who turn from sin and believe in the crucified and risen God of all creation, will not perish in eternal separation from God, but will have eternal life with God!
There will be a day though when the millennia cease and Jesus returns here to judge the living and the dead and to establish His eternal kingdom in the new heaven and the new earth.
Anticipating his journey, the master in Jesus’ parable entrusts some of his money to three different servants. Even the measly single talent—a unit of money—the master gave the third servant could be worth between 20 and 600 years of a day laborer’s wages!
In the same way, God entrusts a fortune of blessings to every human being. It’s called being alive.
And that’s just the start for followers of Jesus Christ! Jesus expended His life on the cross so that all we fallen, sinful, imperfect human beings can, like the thief who was crucified next to Jesus on the cross, acknowledge our sin, turn from that sin, and turn to Him Jesus in faith to live with God for eternity.
What a gift! Living lives that joyfully express gratitude for these two gifts--the gift of life and the gift of life made new that comes to us by grace through faith in Christ--is not a burden. It’s joy, pure it’s-so-great-to-be-alive-that-I’m-belly-flopping-downhill-on-a-Slip-and-Slide-joy!
If you’ve ever done a Slip and Slide, you know that as much fun as it can be, there will often be a few painful bruises as a result of throwing yourself to the ground with abandon. I've even been known to throw myself onto a Slip and Slide in my adult years and every time I have, I've ended up with bruises and sore spots and friction burns.
Throw yourself with similar abandon into the life of following Jesus and you’ll get bruised too. Maybe more than bruised.
Today is an international day of prayer for the persecuted church around the world. There are Christians today who live in 52 nations in which it is illegal to confess that Jesus is Lord. (That's a huge percentage of the globe's 196 countries!)
Many Christian believers are losing their lives or being tossed into jails right now because they believe in Jesus. I think of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani mother of five condemned to death for blasphemy--for which there is no law on the books--against Allah simply because she is a follower of Jesus Christ. She is just one of many Christians throughout the world for whom it isn't safe to confess belief in Jesus!
Other Chrisitans, in safer places, feel afraid to follow Jesus because of what their friends, their neighbors, their bosses, or their family members may say about them.
But anyone who dares to follow Jesus is bound to be attacked by more than just flesh and blood enemies. Follow Jesus and you will be bruised by Satan, who hates no human being more than the one who seeks to follow Jesus.*
A woman told me a few weeks ago that she cannot speak with her father about her relationship with Christ. “He thinks I’m crazy,” she told me. That's hard!
But all who are bruised for believing in Jesus need to remember the words of James in the New Testament: “My sisters and brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking for nothing”—or, as I would put it, you will be completely ready for everything in this life and the world to come!
In Jesus’ parable, the master came back, as Jesus one day will return to the earth, and, like Jesus on judgment day, the master demanded an accounting for how the servants had used all he had given to them.
The master was delighted to see that the first two men had enjoyed and used their gifts and so brought glory to his name.
The last man, not so much. His failure to honor and enjoy either his gifts or the giver brought him total separation from the master, just as happens to those who refuse to honor or enjoy Jesus, the Giver of the best gifts of all.
In his book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren gives five portraits of what people who glorify God look like.
First, they worship God all the time. As Warren puts it, “Worship is a lifestyle of enjoying God, loving Him, and giving ourselves to be used for His purposes.”
Second, they love other believers. Long before Jesus walked the earth, God had already commanded all people to love God and to love neighbors. But just before His crucifixion, Jesus told believers, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…”
Jesus’ sacrificial love for us brought us eternity with God and He commands us to love our fellow believers in exactly the same way.
Echoing Jesus' command, Paul writes in the New Testament: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” That's sacrificial love.
I know that I can only love like that by relying on the supernatural power of God’s Holy Spirit, asking God to love others I find unlovable through me.
Loving sacrificially does not mean that we become spineless yes-women or yes-men.
It doesn’t mean that we go along with sin.
Jesus shows that sacrificial love must be tough in confronting evil, even when we find it among fellow believers. When Peter chastised Jesus for insisting that He must go to Jerusalem to be crucified, then rise from the dead, in order to claim an eternal kingdom, Jesus was blunt. “Get behind Me, Satan,” He told Peter.
Sacrificial love will always speak and live out the truth in Christian love toward our fellow believers, even when the truth isn’t pleasant.
Third, they glorify God by allowing Him to shape them into the likeness of Jesus. The New Testament teaches that it’s God’s aim for all of us to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Submitting to God reshaping us into the likeness of Jesus is a difficult process that doesn’t end this side of our resurrection.
Submission to Christ means that the Word of God and the will of God must always trump our preferences, our emotions, our reason, and our experiences.
This is something we are at risk of totally forgetting in North American Christianity and for which we must repent or risk losing all connection to Jesus. Like our Savior in the garden at Gethsemane, we must be committed to daily telling God, “Nonetheless, not my will, but Thine alone be done.”
Fourth, we glorify God by serving others with our gifts. No matter what our gifts or our limitations, God has gifted every Christian to glorify God by serving others in some way or another.
Finally, Warren says, we glorify God by telling others about Jesus. As some readers of my blog know, this past week I heard a colleague tell the true story of a contractor he recently met in Ethiopia, a lay member of the Lutheran Mekane Yesus Church. This contractor takes on big jobs in various parts of his country.
Along with the rest of the work crews at any site, he also hires two pastors for every project. Every morning, the pastors lead worship among the crew before the start of the workday. After that, the pastors go into the nearby towns to see if there are any needs they can address, any prayers they can offer, any people who might want to know about Jesus and the new life He offers.
If there’s a group of people in that community who want to be part of a new Lutheran congregation, this contractor will then also pay the salary of one of the pastors for an additional year in order to develop the new church.
Sometimes, this guy gets flak for his witness for Christ from local government authorities or from leading people in the community. He always meets the skeptics, gives them Bibles, invites them to read the Bibles, and, if after they’ve read some of God’s Word, they still have questions about why he does what he does, he offers to meet them again.
It's because of committed lay Christians like this man that the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia gained 300,000 new members between 2009 and 2010. It already has 1-million more members than our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And, recognizing how desperately America needs Jesus Christ, the Lutherans in Ethiopia are about to send missionaries to the United States.
Not all of us can do what that contractor does to tell others about Christ. But each of us can do something to tell others about Jesus, even something as simple as using one the “This meal’s on us!” cards you can still find in the back of the sanctuary.
We can be like the first two men in Jesus’ parable. We can use the gifts our Master has given to us to glorify God and joyfully use our gifts.
We do this when we worship God in our daily lives, love our fellow believers, ask God’s help to become more like Jesus, use our gifts to serve others, and tell others about Jesus and the new and everlasting life only He can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.
Today, I want to close with one simple question. Who among us is willing to belly flop with utter abandon to enjoy and follow Jesus Christ?
If you are, I promise you that Jesus will always be there to catch you...and you will glorify God!
Amen!
*Ephesians 6:10-12, in the New Testament, explains this well:
Matthew 25:14-30
A young man came to see me. “I know that Jesus loves me and that I’m saved by grace through my faith in Christ,” he said, “but what exactly is the purpose of my life?”
The short answer is that you and I are alive for only one purpose: To glorify God.
In Isaiah 43:7, God says, “Everyone who is called by My Name…I created for My glory.”
We most glorify God though, not when we look at the Bible’s portrayal of holy living, like we see in the Ten Commandments or in Jesus’ Beatitudes and then grit our teeth and strive to be good and holy people, whether it makes us or others miserable or not.
We most glorify God when we enjoy God and use His gifts to us in ways that honor Him.
Following Jesus from here to eternity presents its challenges. But there will be no joy in living with Christ if we think we must face those challenges on our own or in our own power.
The Lord Who saved us by going to the cross for us will also be glorified within us (and we will enjoy His company), if we will begin to learn one simple prayer of faith: “Lord, live within me and give me joy so that You are glorified.”
“Lord, live within me and give me joy so that You are glorified.”
The parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson is the story of two men who didn’t grit their teeth to do the right thing, but who remembered the goodness of their master and so enjoyed and used the blessings of the master.
It’s also the story of a third man who ignored the blessings given to him by his master, relying on his own personal sense of what was right and wrong, and so, denied himself a continuing relationship with him.
You know the story. A master, clearly a stand-in for God the Son, Jesus, is about to go on a journey. As we read Jesus’ story, we understand the “journey” Jesus is talking about. Since the crucified and risen Jesus ascended into heaven, we know that He has been enthroned in heaven, giving His followers millennia to share the Good News that all who turn from sin and believe in the crucified and risen God of all creation, will not perish in eternal separation from God, but will have eternal life with God!
There will be a day though when the millennia cease and Jesus returns here to judge the living and the dead and to establish His eternal kingdom in the new heaven and the new earth.
Anticipating his journey, the master in Jesus’ parable entrusts some of his money to three different servants. Even the measly single talent—a unit of money—the master gave the third servant could be worth between 20 and 600 years of a day laborer’s wages!
In the same way, God entrusts a fortune of blessings to every human being. It’s called being alive.
And that’s just the start for followers of Jesus Christ! Jesus expended His life on the cross so that all we fallen, sinful, imperfect human beings can, like the thief who was crucified next to Jesus on the cross, acknowledge our sin, turn from that sin, and turn to Him Jesus in faith to live with God for eternity.
What a gift! Living lives that joyfully express gratitude for these two gifts--the gift of life and the gift of life made new that comes to us by grace through faith in Christ--is not a burden. It’s joy, pure it’s-so-great-to-be-alive-that-I’m-belly-flopping-downhill-on-a-Slip-and-Slide-joy!
If you’ve ever done a Slip and Slide, you know that as much fun as it can be, there will often be a few painful bruises as a result of throwing yourself to the ground with abandon. I've even been known to throw myself onto a Slip and Slide in my adult years and every time I have, I've ended up with bruises and sore spots and friction burns.
Throw yourself with similar abandon into the life of following Jesus and you’ll get bruised too. Maybe more than bruised.
Today is an international day of prayer for the persecuted church around the world. There are Christians today who live in 52 nations in which it is illegal to confess that Jesus is Lord. (That's a huge percentage of the globe's 196 countries!)
Many Christian believers are losing their lives or being tossed into jails right now because they believe in Jesus. I think of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani mother of five condemned to death for blasphemy--for which there is no law on the books--against Allah simply because she is a follower of Jesus Christ. She is just one of many Christians throughout the world for whom it isn't safe to confess belief in Jesus!
Other Chrisitans, in safer places, feel afraid to follow Jesus because of what their friends, their neighbors, their bosses, or their family members may say about them.
But anyone who dares to follow Jesus is bound to be attacked by more than just flesh and blood enemies. Follow Jesus and you will be bruised by Satan, who hates no human being more than the one who seeks to follow Jesus.*
A woman told me a few weeks ago that she cannot speak with her father about her relationship with Christ. “He thinks I’m crazy,” she told me. That's hard!
But all who are bruised for believing in Jesus need to remember the words of James in the New Testament: “My sisters and brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking for nothing”—or, as I would put it, you will be completely ready for everything in this life and the world to come!
In Jesus’ parable, the master came back, as Jesus one day will return to the earth, and, like Jesus on judgment day, the master demanded an accounting for how the servants had used all he had given to them.
The master was delighted to see that the first two men had enjoyed and used their gifts and so brought glory to his name.
The last man, not so much. His failure to honor and enjoy either his gifts or the giver brought him total separation from the master, just as happens to those who refuse to honor or enjoy Jesus, the Giver of the best gifts of all.
In his book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren gives five portraits of what people who glorify God look like.
First, they worship God all the time. As Warren puts it, “Worship is a lifestyle of enjoying God, loving Him, and giving ourselves to be used for His purposes.”
Second, they love other believers. Long before Jesus walked the earth, God had already commanded all people to love God and to love neighbors. But just before His crucifixion, Jesus told believers, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…”
Jesus’ sacrificial love for us brought us eternity with God and He commands us to love our fellow believers in exactly the same way.
Echoing Jesus' command, Paul writes in the New Testament: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” That's sacrificial love.
I know that I can only love like that by relying on the supernatural power of God’s Holy Spirit, asking God to love others I find unlovable through me.
Loving sacrificially does not mean that we become spineless yes-women or yes-men.
It doesn’t mean that we go along with sin.
Jesus shows that sacrificial love must be tough in confronting evil, even when we find it among fellow believers. When Peter chastised Jesus for insisting that He must go to Jerusalem to be crucified, then rise from the dead, in order to claim an eternal kingdom, Jesus was blunt. “Get behind Me, Satan,” He told Peter.
Sacrificial love will always speak and live out the truth in Christian love toward our fellow believers, even when the truth isn’t pleasant.
Third, they glorify God by allowing Him to shape them into the likeness of Jesus. The New Testament teaches that it’s God’s aim for all of us to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Submitting to God reshaping us into the likeness of Jesus is a difficult process that doesn’t end this side of our resurrection.
Submission to Christ means that the Word of God and the will of God must always trump our preferences, our emotions, our reason, and our experiences.
This is something we are at risk of totally forgetting in North American Christianity and for which we must repent or risk losing all connection to Jesus. Like our Savior in the garden at Gethsemane, we must be committed to daily telling God, “Nonetheless, not my will, but Thine alone be done.”
Fourth, we glorify God by serving others with our gifts. No matter what our gifts or our limitations, God has gifted every Christian to glorify God by serving others in some way or another.
Finally, Warren says, we glorify God by telling others about Jesus. As some readers of my blog know, this past week I heard a colleague tell the true story of a contractor he recently met in Ethiopia, a lay member of the Lutheran Mekane Yesus Church. This contractor takes on big jobs in various parts of his country.
Along with the rest of the work crews at any site, he also hires two pastors for every project. Every morning, the pastors lead worship among the crew before the start of the workday. After that, the pastors go into the nearby towns to see if there are any needs they can address, any prayers they can offer, any people who might want to know about Jesus and the new life He offers.
If there’s a group of people in that community who want to be part of a new Lutheran congregation, this contractor will then also pay the salary of one of the pastors for an additional year in order to develop the new church.
Sometimes, this guy gets flak for his witness for Christ from local government authorities or from leading people in the community. He always meets the skeptics, gives them Bibles, invites them to read the Bibles, and, if after they’ve read some of God’s Word, they still have questions about why he does what he does, he offers to meet them again.
It's because of committed lay Christians like this man that the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia gained 300,000 new members between 2009 and 2010. It already has 1-million more members than our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And, recognizing how desperately America needs Jesus Christ, the Lutherans in Ethiopia are about to send missionaries to the United States.
Not all of us can do what that contractor does to tell others about Christ. But each of us can do something to tell others about Jesus, even something as simple as using one the “This meal’s on us!” cards you can still find in the back of the sanctuary.
We can be like the first two men in Jesus’ parable. We can use the gifts our Master has given to us to glorify God and joyfully use our gifts.
We do this when we worship God in our daily lives, love our fellow believers, ask God’s help to become more like Jesus, use our gifts to serve others, and tell others about Jesus and the new and everlasting life only He can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.
Today, I want to close with one simple question. Who among us is willing to belly flop with utter abandon to enjoy and follow Jesus Christ?
If you are, I promise you that Jesus will always be there to catch you...and you will glorify God!
Amen!
*Ephesians 6:10-12, in the New Testament, explains this well:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 1112
Saturday, November 12, 2011
"Word of God, Speak"
Less of me; more of God. Not my thoughts, feelings, and experiences; but God's Word alone!
This song expresses so much about the desire of every imperfect, saved, and grateful follower of Christ to live the life of an authentic disciple, who wants to mean it when praying, "Thy will be done."
The song is called, Word of God, Speak, performed by MercyMe.
By the way, Saint Matthew folks, the chorus of this song will serve as our Gospel Verse prior to the the announcement of the Gospel lesson, during the Sundays of Advent.
This song expresses so much about the desire of every imperfect, saved, and grateful follower of Christ to live the life of an authentic disciple, who wants to mean it when praying, "Thy will be done."
The song is called, Word of God, Speak, performed by MercyMe.
By the way, Saint Matthew folks, the chorus of this song will serve as our Gospel Verse prior to the the announcement of the Gospel lesson, during the Sundays of Advent.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Contractor Who Does More Than Put Up Buildings!
I mentioned here that today I heard a colleague who has frequent contact with the Lutherans in Ethiopia tell two true and inspiring stories of faithfulness from that rapidly growing church body. I told one of the stories in that linked piece. Here's the other one.
Several months ago, while in Ethiopia, my colleague met a Lutheran layperson who owns a construction firm. Every time this man and his firm start a project in a community, he also hires two pastors along with all of construction workers he hires for the job. Every morning, before work begins, the pastors conduct a worship service on the site.
That sounded great to my colleague. But, he asked, what do they do the rest of the day?
The two pastors go into the town and look for people who need help, whether it's prayer or some physical need, and address them. If a group of people comes to believe in Christ through the work of the pastors, after the construction job is completed, the owner will provide one of the pastors pay for one year as the pastor works to get a new congregation started.
If any local authorities question this businessperson's practices, he goes to them and hands them a Bible. He tells the authorities, respectfully, that this book will explain why he does the things he does. He asks them to read it and, in a few weeks, if they have any further questions, to get in touch with him for conversation. These conversations, like the visits of the two pastors who work with the construction projects, allow the business owner to tell public officials about Christ.
The congregational starts spawned by this man's method receive no financing from the denominational hierarchy, but initially only from one committed Christian who looks for ways to spread the gospel, the good news, of new life for all who repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ through his business.
Not every follower of Christ can bankroll church starts, of course. But we all can be prayerfully on the lookout for ways of spreading the gospel. Learn from the example of this contemporary Ethiopian Lutheran saint: Ask God to help you share Jesus Christ every single day!
Several months ago, while in Ethiopia, my colleague met a Lutheran layperson who owns a construction firm. Every time this man and his firm start a project in a community, he also hires two pastors along with all of construction workers he hires for the job. Every morning, before work begins, the pastors conduct a worship service on the site.
That sounded great to my colleague. But, he asked, what do they do the rest of the day?
The two pastors go into the town and look for people who need help, whether it's prayer or some physical need, and address them. If a group of people comes to believe in Christ through the work of the pastors, after the construction job is completed, the owner will provide one of the pastors pay for one year as the pastor works to get a new congregation started.
If any local authorities question this businessperson's practices, he goes to them and hands them a Bible. He tells the authorities, respectfully, that this book will explain why he does the things he does. He asks them to read it and, in a few weeks, if they have any further questions, to get in touch with him for conversation. These conversations, like the visits of the two pastors who work with the construction projects, allow the business owner to tell public officials about Christ.
The congregational starts spawned by this man's method receive no financing from the denominational hierarchy, but initially only from one committed Christian who looks for ways to spread the gospel, the good news, of new life for all who repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ through his business.
Not every follower of Christ can bankroll church starts, of course. But we all can be prayerfully on the lookout for ways of spreading the gospel. Learn from the example of this contemporary Ethiopian Lutheran saint: Ask God to help you share Jesus Christ every single day!
Lesson Learned from Ethiopia
I heard two true stories from Ethiopia today, both told by a colleague who has frequent contact with the Lutheran body there, the Mekane Yesus Church.
The first involved a theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the body of which I'm a member and which has wandered so far from God, Christ, and the authority of Scripture. This ELCA theologian was invited to teach a class on the Gospels at an Ethiopian Lutheran seminary.
One class was devoted to discussing the miracles of Jesus. The professor told the class of Ethiopian seminarians that his wife had a doctorate in Chemistry and had confidently assured him that it would have been physically impossible to change water to wine, as the Gospel of John says that Jesus did during a wedding in the village of Cana. All the miracles, he went on to say, were added into the New Testament narrative to buttress the first century Church's claims that Jesus is God-enfleshed and Savior of the world.
One student wasn't sure that he'd correctly heard the American theologian. So, he asked the visiting professor to repeat what he'd said. The professor did so.
The student closed his book and walked out of the class room, as did all the other Ethiopian seminarians.
The professor was mystified. This had never happened to him in the States.
Soon, the president of the seminary came by to confirm what had happened. He, like the students was offended by the professor's assertion, and asked the professor if he believed in the Trinity, the teaching supported by Scripture that God is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
"Yes," the professor replied.
Then why, the seminary president wondered, would he teach something totally contrary to God's revealed truth about the Trinity in the Bible?
The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that God the Father is the Creator of the universe, the One Who invented chemistry. The doctrine also says that Jesus is God the Son. If God the Father is Lord over the chemical elements of the universe, how could anyone say that God the Son couldn't be Lord over those same chemicals to perform a miracle which affirmed His identity as God on earth?
In too much of the mainline North American churches, we've gotten to the point where we think we're smarter than God and have the right to rescind the clear witness of Scripture. We put too much stock in our own intellects, emotions, and experiences, rather than in what God has revealed through His Word over the centuries. That's why views like that of the ELCA professor who went to Ethiopia are widespread among bishops, pastors, theologians, and even church members in our denomination.
To confess that, "Jesus is Lord" is to say that God is greater, wiser, and smarter than I am.
To confess that Jesus is Lord is to say that when His revelation conflicts with what I think or feel or have experienced, what God teaches in His Word wins the conflict. Period. End of story.
A Lord Who can't turn water into wine--or kill the power of sin and death for all who believe that He died and rose to life again--isn't worth following, no different from any of the fallible human beings, from football coaches to CEOs, from theologians to reality show participants, that people often hold up as examples or heroes. (Or whose prominence they invoke as an excuse for believing or doing what they want to do, whether their beliefs or actions agree with God's will or revealed truth or not.)
Fortunately, the Church in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is teaching the rest of us who have forgotten what it means to say that Jesus is Lord. Thank God!
I pray that all of us in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (and all Christians in North America and western Europe) will learn and live this truth, too. We need to connect to God again! The world needs for us to connect to God again.
The first involved a theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the body of which I'm a member and which has wandered so far from God, Christ, and the authority of Scripture. This ELCA theologian was invited to teach a class on the Gospels at an Ethiopian Lutheran seminary.
One class was devoted to discussing the miracles of Jesus. The professor told the class of Ethiopian seminarians that his wife had a doctorate in Chemistry and had confidently assured him that it would have been physically impossible to change water to wine, as the Gospel of John says that Jesus did during a wedding in the village of Cana. All the miracles, he went on to say, were added into the New Testament narrative to buttress the first century Church's claims that Jesus is God-enfleshed and Savior of the world.
One student wasn't sure that he'd correctly heard the American theologian. So, he asked the visiting professor to repeat what he'd said. The professor did so.
The student closed his book and walked out of the class room, as did all the other Ethiopian seminarians.
The professor was mystified. This had never happened to him in the States.
Soon, the president of the seminary came by to confirm what had happened. He, like the students was offended by the professor's assertion, and asked the professor if he believed in the Trinity, the teaching supported by Scripture that God is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
"Yes," the professor replied.
Then why, the seminary president wondered, would he teach something totally contrary to God's revealed truth about the Trinity in the Bible?
The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that God the Father is the Creator of the universe, the One Who invented chemistry. The doctrine also says that Jesus is God the Son. If God the Father is Lord over the chemical elements of the universe, how could anyone say that God the Son couldn't be Lord over those same chemicals to perform a miracle which affirmed His identity as God on earth?
In too much of the mainline North American churches, we've gotten to the point where we think we're smarter than God and have the right to rescind the clear witness of Scripture. We put too much stock in our own intellects, emotions, and experiences, rather than in what God has revealed through His Word over the centuries. That's why views like that of the ELCA professor who went to Ethiopia are widespread among bishops, pastors, theologians, and even church members in our denomination.
To confess that, "Jesus is Lord" is to say that God is greater, wiser, and smarter than I am.
To confess that Jesus is Lord is to say that when His revelation conflicts with what I think or feel or have experienced, what God teaches in His Word wins the conflict. Period. End of story.
A Lord Who can't turn water into wine--or kill the power of sin and death for all who believe that He died and rose to life again--isn't worth following, no different from any of the fallible human beings, from football coaches to CEOs, from theologians to reality show participants, that people often hold up as examples or heroes. (Or whose prominence they invoke as an excuse for believing or doing what they want to do, whether their beliefs or actions agree with God's will or revealed truth or not.)
Fortunately, the Church in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is teaching the rest of us who have forgotten what it means to say that Jesus is Lord. Thank God!
I pray that all of us in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (and all Christians in North America and western Europe) will learn and live this truth, too. We need to connect to God again! The world needs for us to connect to God again.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Following Christ Into the Future
I've always found it interesting that, at Christ's empty tomb, the angels told the women who had arrived to anoint Jesus' body only to be told that Jesus was risen from the dead:
When you follow Jesus, you can be grateful for what has happened in the past--including Jesus' death and resurrection. You can also learn from the past. But your focus is on Him and the future--both here and now and in eternity--to which Jesus takes those with faith in Him.
With a focus on Jesus and the future, we're freed from the endless rehearsal of past failures and hurts. We're free from religion's insistence on reproducing proscribed rites and conditions in order to win God's attention or approval.
Instead, Christians bearing their scars and mindful of the lessons of their lives with Christ, learn and grow and move into the great future that belongs to all who follow Christ!
Check out these thoughts, today's installment of Our Daily Bread.
"Go, tell His disciples and Peter that He [Jesus] is going ahead of you to Galilee..." (Mark 16:7).This has always seemed an apt metaphor for the fact that to follow Jesus doesn't involve nostalgia for the past or propping up old ways of doing things.
When you follow Jesus, you can be grateful for what has happened in the past--including Jesus' death and resurrection. You can also learn from the past. But your focus is on Him and the future--both here and now and in eternity--to which Jesus takes those with faith in Him.
With a focus on Jesus and the future, we're freed from the endless rehearsal of past failures and hurts. We're free from religion's insistence on reproducing proscribed rites and conditions in order to win God's attention or approval.
Instead, Christians bearing their scars and mindful of the lessons of their lives with Christ, learn and grow and move into the great future that belongs to all who follow Christ!
Check out these thoughts, today's installment of Our Daily Bread.
If You Cover Up Child Molestation, You're a Molester Too
Obviously, I don't know if all the allegations are true regarding the sexual abuse of eight boys by a former Penn State assistant football coach.
There does appear to have been a cover-up of whatever did happen, however.
The bottom line is this: There is absolutely no one more destructive or hurtful in the world than a child molester. It cannot be tolerated.
If the alleged molestations occurred and anybody in the Penn State administrative or athletic staffs knew about them, prison time would be almost too good an outcome. Nobody in the Penn State athletic program who may have had knowledge of these alleged cases and failed to tell authorities could be said to be any better than child molesters themselves. To abet molesters is to give them a free pass to keep hurting kids.
I love sports, but I can only hope and pray that the false deity of sports won't prevent the appropriate working out of justice in this case. Punishing people who have damaged children is a lot more important than a football program!
There does appear to have been a cover-up of whatever did happen, however.
The bottom line is this: There is absolutely no one more destructive or hurtful in the world than a child molester. It cannot be tolerated.
If the alleged molestations occurred and anybody in the Penn State administrative or athletic staffs knew about them, prison time would be almost too good an outcome. Nobody in the Penn State athletic program who may have had knowledge of these alleged cases and failed to tell authorities could be said to be any better than child molesters themselves. To abet molesters is to give them a free pass to keep hurting kids.
I love sports, but I can only hope and pray that the false deity of sports won't prevent the appropriate working out of justice in this case. Punishing people who have damaged children is a lot more important than a football program!
Sunday, November 06, 2011
In Memory of Sarah
Today, immediately following worship, with the brief service you'll find below, the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church prayerfully dedicated a memorial in honor of Sarah Starner, to the glory of God. Sarah died in August, but not before teaching us all so much about living and following Christ.
The memorial includes an oak tree and three butterfly bushes. (Butterflies loved Sarah!) A stone with a plaque cites the sermon which Sarah preached on Easter Sunday in 2009 and Psalm 46:10, which meant so much to her and to her family. [You can click on the images above to enlarge them.]
Dedication of a Memorial to
Sarah Elizabeth Starner
Offered to the Glory of God
All Saints’ Sunday
November 6, 2011
[We will recess from the sanctuary to the site of the memorial, on the front lawn of the church building, and sing acapella, #752 in the blue With One Voice songbooks, I, the Lord of Sea and Sky.]
Pastor: Sisters and brothers in Christ, on this All Saints’ Sunday, we seek God’s blessings as we gather with thankfulness for the life and witness of Sarah Starner and set aside this memorial to her, offered to the glory of God.
We read responsively Psalm 46, words that have sustained the saints for ages and which sustained Sarah and her family these past years.
Pastor: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Congregation: Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; 3though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Pastor: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
Congregation: God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.
Pastor: The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; He utters his voice, the earth melts.
Congregation: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Pastor: Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations He has brought on the earth.
Congregation: He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; He burns the shields with fire.
Pastor: “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.”
All: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Prayers
Pastor: Blessed are You, O Lord our God, the King of the universe. Your days are without number; a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past. You are the Lord of the past, the present, and the future; You hold eternity in the palm of Your hand.
We remember with thankfulness all the saints and witnesses to Your goodness who have gone before us, who, by their lives have testified to Your love. Give us grace to follow their examples as Your beloved children, maturing in the likeness of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whose death and resurrection You give eternal hope to all Your saints.
Be with us now and bless this memorial, a living reminder of the faith and witness of our sister in Christ, Sarah, who taught and showed us so much about what it means to follow You. As You raised up Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the firstfruits of those who sleep, so also by You Holy Spirit make us to be partakers of that new life which You have promised to those who believe; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
All: Amen
Pastor: Let us bless the Lord!
All: Thanks be to God!
Pastor: The blessing of almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you all.
All: Amen!
All Saints' Sunday (What is a Saint?)
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Revelation 7:9-17
Today is All Saints’ Sunday. But what is a saint?
This is an important question. In a real sense, the eternal destinies of every person here today—and every person in the world—depends on the answer.
To find the answer, we’ll turn today to the New Testament book of Revelation. That’s where our first lesson comes from.
Revelation, you know, is based on a series of visions given to John about sixty years after Jesus’ resurrection, while John was imprisoned for his faith in Jesus.
Beginning at chapter 6, John sees Jesus, the second Person of the one God, open the first six of seven seals. With the opening of each seal, each one of which God has been using to hold together this sinful universe and to delay the judgment that must come at God’s selected moment, John sees this creation moving closer to its inevitable end.
John also sees glimmers of the new creation that the risen and ascended Jesus will finally and fully usher in when He returns to claim His kingdom from sin, death, and the devil. Jesus’ return will bring celebration and relief to all who have turned from sin and who have believed in Christ.
But, as the last verse of Revelation 6 points out, the return of Jesus won’t be a universally welcomed event. Those who have lived for themselves, for their own sinful impulses, who have rejected Christ and the Holy Spirit’s call to repent for sin, will ask the caves, mountains, and rocks for help. “Fall on us,” they’ll beg, “and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb [the Lamb being Jesus, Who, Revelation also describes as the Lion]; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
But then, just before the opening of the seventh and final seal, John is allowed to see two scenes in Revelation, chapter 7.
The first scene comes in Revelation 7:1-8, right before today’s lesson. The location of this scene is this world. God assigns four angels to hold back the final destruction of the old creation. “Don’t damage the earth,” God tells the angels, “until we’ve marked all of the servants of God with a seal on their foreheads.” (Like the seal of the Holy Spirit with which McKenzie was marked on her forehead last Sunday after her Baptism.)
Then the numbers of those sealed for salvation are counted out. The total comes to 144,000. Don’t be worried by this number, though! The Bible is not saying that a measly 144,000 people out of all human history will be part of God’s eternal kingdom! For first century Christians, this would have been a number of perfection and completion. The number144 is the total derived from multiplying the 12 tribes of Israel times the 12 apostles Jesus chose to lead the post-resurrection church. For first-century Jews and Christians, tacking thousand onto the back of 144 would be a bit like one of us talking about “a gazillion” in describing the numbers of people shopping at Kroger’s on a Friday evening.
We see how symbolic a number this 144,000 is when we look at the first verse of our lesson, Revelation 7:9. John writes, “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count…”
Now, I can hardly read those words without getting goosebumps! This is no little crowd of 144,000. This is a multitude! But what brings me chills is the phrase saying that the crowd was so big, “no one could count.”
Here’s why I find those words so moving: On a starlit night 4000 years ago, an elderly man to whom God had promised the impossible struggled to believe that God could overcome change, decay, and death to give him a son and his descendants a future. The man’s name at the time was Abram. (Later to be changed by God to Abraham, a name that means “father of nations.”) Turn to page 8 in one of the pew Bibles and read what God did Genesis 15:5 to help Abram believe. “Then He [that is, God] brought him [Abram] outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’”
Do you know who that multitude from every nation is that John sees in His vision of heaven after the life of this old world has come to an end?
They are the descendants of Abram whom God had promised on that starry night so long ago.
And each of those descendants came to be part of the kingdom of God—they came to be the saints of God—not because they were the genealogical descendants of Abraham and his wife Sarah. They became saints in just the way Abram came to be a saint. Genesis 15:6 says that when Abram heard God’s promise, he “believed and [God] accounted it to him as righteousness.”
Today, God has revealed Himself to all the world in the crucified and risen Jesus. “If you know Me,” Jesus says, “you will know My Father also.”
And He says, “The Father and I are one.”
And, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Everyone who turns from sin and believes in the God we see in Jesus is a descendant of Abraham. They are saints.
What gives me the chills when I read the vision Jesus gave to John is the realization that God has never changed.
God has always wanted to rescue His fallen children from sin and death and to give them life.
And His plan has always been the same: to give eternal life in His new creation to all who will trust, not in their own achievements, smarts, money, shrewdness, health, or anything else, but who trust only in Him.
Saints are those who trust God to give them the free gifts that come to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus: gifts like forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and a sense of purpose.
But if sainthood is a free gift from God, we must not think for a moment that sainthood is easy. We see this from just four words in our lesson from Revelation today.
The first two of those words appear at the beginning of verse 9: “After this.” After what, exactly?
John saw the multitude of saints after an event that’s mentioned in verse 14. That’s where you can read two more important words: “great ordeal.”
The great ordeal is something John never saw in the scenes described in Revelation 7.
But the great ordeal is something through which every believer in Jesus will go, in big ways and small.
Folks, we live in a world filled with beauty and wonder. But with its beauty and wonder marred by human sin, death, and even the suffering of the saints, this world also presents but a glimmer of the beauty and wonder—the perfection—that await all who persevere in following Jesus to the end.
After life in this world, the saints who have kept on trusting Jesus, will be met by the Savior, Who will make them clean forever, Who will dry their tears, Who will feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty, and lead them into the new creation for which each of us were made.
For now, we live in an in-between time in which, as Paul writes in the New Testament, both we and the whole of creation wait with eager longing for Christ to reveal Himself and His children.
Life in this world can be hard. And sometimes, as we’ve noted before, life in this world is made harder because we believe.
I am personally convinced that the devil couldn’t care less about tempting or testing those who live their lives without faith in Christ or fear and respect for God. The devil already has them bagged; so, why should he bother them?
Instead, the devil tests, tempts, and tries the saints. And every believer in Christ will, eventually, bear the scars—physical, emotional, or relational—that come to those who put following Jesus first in their lives.
Our own personal “great ordeals” may include persecution, chronic or fatal illness, disagreements over priorities with those we love or with whom we work, or the internal conflicts that happen within us when a sin tantalizes us and we know that we must choose God’s way and not our own.
A dear friend of Ann’s and mine, Karen, spoke for millions of Christians after she’d gotten yet another poor report on the cancers that would eventually take her life. We were sitting alone when she remarked, “I just can’t seem to catch a break, Mark.”
People who haven’t experienced the biggest break any of us could possibly get—forgiveness and new life through Jesus—have no reason to wonder about the bad breaks life brings them. If you don’t know the God we meet in Jesus, Who is all-powerful and all-loving, the bad breaks of this life aren’t mysterious or baffling.
Yet, despite her disappointment and mystification, Karen, an exceedingly intelligent and wise person, persisted in her faith, confident that while the many prayers for her healing weren’t answered in this life, she would, because of her faith in Christ, experience the ultimate healing when she would, in eternity, be with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and with all the saints who, like her, trust in Jesus.
And unlike others who endure life’s difficulties without meaning or purpose, the saints on earth, like the saints in heaven, have a purpose: to glorify God and to point to Jesus as our only hope.
A year ago, my friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, suffered a heart attack that required two stents. Just a few weeks ago, he learned that he was suffering from a serious form of skin cancer, Merkel Cell, which is rare. The initial signs are encouraging, but Glen will be undergoing radiation treatments between now and Christmas. Today, once more, he is in the pulpit proclaiming the new life that belongs to all who repent and believe in Jesus. In an email to the subscribers of his daily devotions this past week, Glen gave glory to the God he knows in Christ. “God is good all the time,” Glen affirmed. “All the time, God is good!”
What are saints?
They’re people who trust their whole lives to Jesus.
They know to Whom they belong and they know where they’re headed.
They know that this life is not perfect.
But they have a purpose in this life: To let the whole world know about the Lamb Jesus, Who will, after the last page has been closed in the last chapter of this world's story, welcome all who have trusted in Him to His new creation.
In the meantime, dear saints of God, don’t be afraid!
Trust in Jesus.
Know His love and power for you even in the midst of life’s greatest ordeals and know for a fact that, like the saints whose names we have read, remembered, and honored this morning, Jesus will welcome you in His heavenly kingdom.
He’s eagerly waiting for the moment when you too will join angels and saints in singing and savoring the glories of our loving God and when all who have persistently, perseveringly followed their Savior in this world hear the Lord say to them in the next, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Amen!
Revelation 7:9-17
Today is All Saints’ Sunday. But what is a saint?
This is an important question. In a real sense, the eternal destinies of every person here today—and every person in the world—depends on the answer.
To find the answer, we’ll turn today to the New Testament book of Revelation. That’s where our first lesson comes from.
Revelation, you know, is based on a series of visions given to John about sixty years after Jesus’ resurrection, while John was imprisoned for his faith in Jesus.
Beginning at chapter 6, John sees Jesus, the second Person of the one God, open the first six of seven seals. With the opening of each seal, each one of which God has been using to hold together this sinful universe and to delay the judgment that must come at God’s selected moment, John sees this creation moving closer to its inevitable end.
John also sees glimmers of the new creation that the risen and ascended Jesus will finally and fully usher in when He returns to claim His kingdom from sin, death, and the devil. Jesus’ return will bring celebration and relief to all who have turned from sin and who have believed in Christ.
But, as the last verse of Revelation 6 points out, the return of Jesus won’t be a universally welcomed event. Those who have lived for themselves, for their own sinful impulses, who have rejected Christ and the Holy Spirit’s call to repent for sin, will ask the caves, mountains, and rocks for help. “Fall on us,” they’ll beg, “and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb [the Lamb being Jesus, Who, Revelation also describes as the Lion]; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
But then, just before the opening of the seventh and final seal, John is allowed to see two scenes in Revelation, chapter 7.
The first scene comes in Revelation 7:1-8, right before today’s lesson. The location of this scene is this world. God assigns four angels to hold back the final destruction of the old creation. “Don’t damage the earth,” God tells the angels, “until we’ve marked all of the servants of God with a seal on their foreheads.” (Like the seal of the Holy Spirit with which McKenzie was marked on her forehead last Sunday after her Baptism.)
Then the numbers of those sealed for salvation are counted out. The total comes to 144,000. Don’t be worried by this number, though! The Bible is not saying that a measly 144,000 people out of all human history will be part of God’s eternal kingdom! For first century Christians, this would have been a number of perfection and completion. The number144 is the total derived from multiplying the 12 tribes of Israel times the 12 apostles Jesus chose to lead the post-resurrection church. For first-century Jews and Christians, tacking thousand onto the back of 144 would be a bit like one of us talking about “a gazillion” in describing the numbers of people shopping at Kroger’s on a Friday evening.
We see how symbolic a number this 144,000 is when we look at the first verse of our lesson, Revelation 7:9. John writes, “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count…”
Now, I can hardly read those words without getting goosebumps! This is no little crowd of 144,000. This is a multitude! But what brings me chills is the phrase saying that the crowd was so big, “no one could count.”
Here’s why I find those words so moving: On a starlit night 4000 years ago, an elderly man to whom God had promised the impossible struggled to believe that God could overcome change, decay, and death to give him a son and his descendants a future. The man’s name at the time was Abram. (Later to be changed by God to Abraham, a name that means “father of nations.”) Turn to page 8 in one of the pew Bibles and read what God did Genesis 15:5 to help Abram believe. “Then He [that is, God] brought him [Abram] outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’”
Do you know who that multitude from every nation is that John sees in His vision of heaven after the life of this old world has come to an end?
They are the descendants of Abram whom God had promised on that starry night so long ago.
And each of those descendants came to be part of the kingdom of God—they came to be the saints of God—not because they were the genealogical descendants of Abraham and his wife Sarah. They became saints in just the way Abram came to be a saint. Genesis 15:6 says that when Abram heard God’s promise, he “believed and [God] accounted it to him as righteousness.”
Today, God has revealed Himself to all the world in the crucified and risen Jesus. “If you know Me,” Jesus says, “you will know My Father also.”
And He says, “The Father and I are one.”
And, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Everyone who turns from sin and believes in the God we see in Jesus is a descendant of Abraham. They are saints.
What gives me the chills when I read the vision Jesus gave to John is the realization that God has never changed.
God has always wanted to rescue His fallen children from sin and death and to give them life.
And His plan has always been the same: to give eternal life in His new creation to all who will trust, not in their own achievements, smarts, money, shrewdness, health, or anything else, but who trust only in Him.
Saints are those who trust God to give them the free gifts that come to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus: gifts like forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and a sense of purpose.
But if sainthood is a free gift from God, we must not think for a moment that sainthood is easy. We see this from just four words in our lesson from Revelation today.
The first two of those words appear at the beginning of verse 9: “After this.” After what, exactly?
John saw the multitude of saints after an event that’s mentioned in verse 14. That’s where you can read two more important words: “great ordeal.”
The great ordeal is something John never saw in the scenes described in Revelation 7.
But the great ordeal is something through which every believer in Jesus will go, in big ways and small.
Folks, we live in a world filled with beauty and wonder. But with its beauty and wonder marred by human sin, death, and even the suffering of the saints, this world also presents but a glimmer of the beauty and wonder—the perfection—that await all who persevere in following Jesus to the end.
After life in this world, the saints who have kept on trusting Jesus, will be met by the Savior, Who will make them clean forever, Who will dry their tears, Who will feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty, and lead them into the new creation for which each of us were made.
For now, we live in an in-between time in which, as Paul writes in the New Testament, both we and the whole of creation wait with eager longing for Christ to reveal Himself and His children.
Life in this world can be hard. And sometimes, as we’ve noted before, life in this world is made harder because we believe.
I am personally convinced that the devil couldn’t care less about tempting or testing those who live their lives without faith in Christ or fear and respect for God. The devil already has them bagged; so, why should he bother them?
Instead, the devil tests, tempts, and tries the saints. And every believer in Christ will, eventually, bear the scars—physical, emotional, or relational—that come to those who put following Jesus first in their lives.
Our own personal “great ordeals” may include persecution, chronic or fatal illness, disagreements over priorities with those we love or with whom we work, or the internal conflicts that happen within us when a sin tantalizes us and we know that we must choose God’s way and not our own.
A dear friend of Ann’s and mine, Karen, spoke for millions of Christians after she’d gotten yet another poor report on the cancers that would eventually take her life. We were sitting alone when she remarked, “I just can’t seem to catch a break, Mark.”
People who haven’t experienced the biggest break any of us could possibly get—forgiveness and new life through Jesus—have no reason to wonder about the bad breaks life brings them. If you don’t know the God we meet in Jesus, Who is all-powerful and all-loving, the bad breaks of this life aren’t mysterious or baffling.
Yet, despite her disappointment and mystification, Karen, an exceedingly intelligent and wise person, persisted in her faith, confident that while the many prayers for her healing weren’t answered in this life, she would, because of her faith in Christ, experience the ultimate healing when she would, in eternity, be with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and with all the saints who, like her, trust in Jesus.
And unlike others who endure life’s difficulties without meaning or purpose, the saints on earth, like the saints in heaven, have a purpose: to glorify God and to point to Jesus as our only hope.
A year ago, my friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, suffered a heart attack that required two stents. Just a few weeks ago, he learned that he was suffering from a serious form of skin cancer, Merkel Cell, which is rare. The initial signs are encouraging, but Glen will be undergoing radiation treatments between now and Christmas. Today, once more, he is in the pulpit proclaiming the new life that belongs to all who repent and believe in Jesus. In an email to the subscribers of his daily devotions this past week, Glen gave glory to the God he knows in Christ. “God is good all the time,” Glen affirmed. “All the time, God is good!”
What are saints?
They’re people who trust their whole lives to Jesus.
They know to Whom they belong and they know where they’re headed.
They know that this life is not perfect.
But they have a purpose in this life: To let the whole world know about the Lamb Jesus, Who will, after the last page has been closed in the last chapter of this world's story, welcome all who have trusted in Him to His new creation.
In the meantime, dear saints of God, don’t be afraid!
Trust in Jesus.
Know His love and power for you even in the midst of life’s greatest ordeals and know for a fact that, like the saints whose names we have read, remembered, and honored this morning, Jesus will welcome you in His heavenly kingdom.
He’s eagerly waiting for the moment when you too will join angels and saints in singing and savoring the glories of our loving God and when all who have persistently, perseveringly followed their Savior in this world hear the Lord say to them in the next, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Amen!
Saturday, November 05, 2011
It's Harder to Believe Than Not To (Reflections of a Former Atheist)
I've been an atheist. Since 1976, I've been a Christian.
I can tell you that living a life of faith in a God of total love and absolute power while continuing to live in a fallen world in which bad, senseless things happen to faithful people is far more difficult than going through this life as an atheist.
As an atheist, I had no expectations of God’s deliverance, ascribed no meaning to existence, and was not offended, except insofar as they created nuisances for me, when bad things came my way. In an uncreated world in which there is no good Creator or need for redemption, there is no reason to get riled up over what seems unfair or wrong. There are fewer things to explain and fewer unanswered questions when you're an atheist. It's a far simpler, even simplistic, way of life.
As musician, filmmaker, and satirist Steve Taylor once observed, "It's harder to believe than not to."
But whatever difficulties belief in the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ may present, I would rather live and die with Christ than live or die without Him.
Like the apostle Peter, after Jesus had asked him and his fellow disciples if, like others, they would like to abandon him, I have to say, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that You are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68).
My life has been interesting lately.
I had a heart attack that destroyed 40% of my heart in June, 2010. A stent was implanted shortly thereafter.
Just before I received a pacemaker and defibrillator on October 13, less than a month ago, a small mole was removed from my leg which turned out to contain melanoma cancer cells. The dermatologist is confident that he removed all of the cancer, but I'll undergo an outpatient procedure to remove tissue from the surrounding area in December.
These experiences are mere bumps in the road compared to what many people experience in life. I have no complaints.
But I can tell you that I have been sustained by Jesus Christ and by the prayers of other believers in the past year or so.
I have become even more convinced of the love and power--and the ultimate lordship over all things in heaven and on earth--of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Christ is with me and I am promised that when I die, as a repentant believer in Jesus, I will be with Christ for all eternity.
How could I be anything but hopeful when I know those things to be true, even when life gets tough?
I pray that every day, God will help me to make the prayer of Saint Paul, who suffered so much not in spite of, but precisely because, he followed Jesus, my very own:
But those who believe in Jesus are blessed with a certainty about their futures that gives us the freedom to love our neighbors, to choose the path of joyful service, to shake off unkindness from others, to work for justice, and to walk humbly with our God. You really can't deter or bring ultimate discouragement to people who know they're going to live forever.
I have found that, in spite of everything, while it may be better, it's still better to believe than not to.
I can tell you that living a life of faith in a God of total love and absolute power while continuing to live in a fallen world in which bad, senseless things happen to faithful people is far more difficult than going through this life as an atheist.
As an atheist, I had no expectations of God’s deliverance, ascribed no meaning to existence, and was not offended, except insofar as they created nuisances for me, when bad things came my way. In an uncreated world in which there is no good Creator or need for redemption, there is no reason to get riled up over what seems unfair or wrong. There are fewer things to explain and fewer unanswered questions when you're an atheist. It's a far simpler, even simplistic, way of life.
As musician, filmmaker, and satirist Steve Taylor once observed, "It's harder to believe than not to."
But whatever difficulties belief in the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ may present, I would rather live and die with Christ than live or die without Him.
Like the apostle Peter, after Jesus had asked him and his fellow disciples if, like others, they would like to abandon him, I have to say, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that You are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68).
My life has been interesting lately.
I had a heart attack that destroyed 40% of my heart in June, 2010. A stent was implanted shortly thereafter.
Just before I received a pacemaker and defibrillator on October 13, less than a month ago, a small mole was removed from my leg which turned out to contain melanoma cancer cells. The dermatologist is confident that he removed all of the cancer, but I'll undergo an outpatient procedure to remove tissue from the surrounding area in December.
These experiences are mere bumps in the road compared to what many people experience in life. I have no complaints.
But I can tell you that I have been sustained by Jesus Christ and by the prayers of other believers in the past year or so.
I have become even more convinced of the love and power--and the ultimate lordship over all things in heaven and on earth--of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Christ is with me and I am promised that when I die, as a repentant believer in Jesus, I will be with Christ for all eternity.
How could I be anything but hopeful when I know those things to be true, even when life gets tough?
I pray that every day, God will help me to make the prayer of Saint Paul, who suffered so much not in spite of, but precisely because, he followed Jesus, my very own:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18)It is harder to believe than not to.
But those who believe in Jesus are blessed with a certainty about their futures that gives us the freedom to love our neighbors, to choose the path of joyful service, to shake off unkindness from others, to work for justice, and to walk humbly with our God. You really can't deter or bring ultimate discouragement to people who know they're going to live forever.
I have found that, in spite of everything, while it may be better, it's still better to believe than not to.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Parents: Let Your Kids See Your Dependence on Jesus
"Christianity is mentored, not learned." (John Schroeder)
The simple truth John points to here is why the charge we Lutherans give to parents of children being baptized is more than just a collection of words:
Another way to say what my friend John Schroeder says about Christian faith is mentored, not learned, is that Christianity is more caught than taught.
Parents: Let your kids catch your authentic dependence on Jesus. That authenticity will make all the difference for them both in their adult years and in eternity.
The simple truth John points to here is why the charge we Lutherans give to parents of children being baptized is more than just a collection of words:
In Christian love, you have presented this child for Holy Baptism. You should, therefore, faithfully bring her to the services of God’s house, and teach her the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. As she grows in years, you should place in her hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for her instruction in the Christian faith, that, living in the covenant of her Baptism and in communion with the Church, she may lead a godly life until the day of Jesus Christ.Later in the same service, we pray for the parents of newly baptized children:
O God, the giver of all life, look with kindness upon the father and mother of this child. Let them ever rejoice in the gift You have given them. Make them teachers and examples of righteousness for their children. Strengthen them in their own Baptism so they may share eternally with their children the salvation you have given them, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AmenParents have two jobs:
- To prepare their children for adulthood.
- To prepare their children for eternity by letting them know the One Who opens eternity to all who believe in Him, Jesus the Christ.
Another way to say what my friend John Schroeder says about Christian faith is mentored, not learned, is that Christianity is more caught than taught.
Parents: Let your kids catch your authentic dependence on Jesus. That authenticity will make all the difference for them both in their adult years and in eternity.
The One People of God
Christians who are called supersessionists believe that the Gentile believers of Jesus in the Church have superseded the Jews as the people of God.
But that's not what the New Testament teaches.
It says that all--Jew and Gentile--are called to repent and believe in God's ultimate self-disclosure, the Messiah, Jesus and all be part of God's one people. Joseph L. Mangina gets at this in his very fine commentary on Revelation 7:
As Paul, a Jew who believed in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God's plans for the humanity, as the Messiah, and as God-enfleshed writes, that beginning with Israel's patriarch-founder Abraham, righteousness--that is, a right relationship with God--has always been a matter of faith and not of ethnicity, lineage, or the performance of religious duties:
But that's not what the New Testament teaches.
It says that all--Jew and Gentile--are called to repent and believe in God's ultimate self-disclosure, the Messiah, Jesus and all be part of God's one people. Joseph L. Mangina gets at this in his very fine commentary on Revelation 7:
It is the unanimous witness of the New Testament that the church is Israel (e.g., Galatians 6:16; 1 Corinthians 10; Ephesians 2:12, 19; 3:6; 1 Peter 2:9-10), the same elected and beloved people of God who were delivered from Egypt, though now under the conditions of the messianic age and with the addition of the Gentiles to Abraham's children after the flesh.Read all the linked passages above to see the basis of Mangina's argument.
As Paul, a Jew who believed in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God's plans for the humanity, as the Messiah, and as God-enfleshed writes, that beginning with Israel's patriarch-founder Abraham, righteousness--that is, a right relationship with God--has always been a matter of faith and not of ethnicity, lineage, or the performance of religious duties:
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise void...For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who the faith of Abraham...in the presence of the God in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist... (Romans 4:13-17)Revelation 7:9-17 is one of the Biblical texts for All Saints' Sunday, coming up this weekend.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
God Ain't Too Proud to Beg
I know you wanna leave me,
But I refuse to let you go
If I have to beg and plead for your sympathy,
I don't mind coz' you mean that much to me
Ain't too proud to beg, sweet darlin
Please don't leave me girl, don't you go
Ain't to proud to plead, baby, baby
Please don't leave me, girl, don't you go
Those words from the Temptations song, Ain't Too Proud to Beg, crossed my mind while reading Jeremiah 44:4, this past week.
Jeremiah was an Old Testament prophet who lived in the early seventh- and late-sixth centuries BC. God gave him a series of prophetic messages not only to God's people in Judah (the southern portion of what had once been a larger Israel) and to neighboring nations. Through Jeremiah, God called all to repent. But nobody listened.
In Jeremiah 44, God uses Jeremiah to recount His people's sorry history of trying to find life in dead things like false deities, foreign alliances, economic power, injustice toward foreigners and the powerless, and child sacrifice. God says, "...I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, 'I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!'"
God begged!
Is that unseemly behavior for the God of the universe?
To beg people to whom He had given everything--life, blessings, a land--as free gifts to beg the people to trust in Him alone, not for His ego, but for their good to turn from their persistent sin and to know life, whole and pure, again?
Eventually, of course, time ran out on Judah, and God let the Babylonians overtake the promised land, turning God's people into refugees or slaves. (But even after that, He promised restoration to all who will turn from sin and believe in Him.)
But God, it would seem, still does this begging thing. In Luke 15, in the New Testament, God in the flesh, Jesus, tells the story of the prodigal son. Throughout the whole story, the father, Jesus' parabolic representation of God the Father, does all sorts of unseemly (some would say unmanly, unfatherly) things.
First, the father violates cultural norms by giving inheritances to both his oldest and his youngest sons. Neither boy earns their estates, mind you, but in those days, a younger son could have expected nothing. The old man is a softie though and, on demand, gives the young boy his inheritance.
Second, after the younger son wastes every gift he's given and fallen into poverty and dishonor (feeding pigs and envying their menu), he heads back home to ask his dad for a job alongside the servants. Instead, showing what would have been seen as unseemly compassion, the father runs to the boy when he sees him approaching the estate, and wraps his arms around him in forgiveness and acceptance before the boy can utter a word of repentance.
With the younger son returned, the father throws a party, Jesus' parabolic representation of the kingdom of God to which all people are invited through Him. The older boy, offended by the charity and forgiveness that the father was showing the younger son, refuses to join the party. (He apparently was too good for the kingdom of God.) Jesus says the father came out of the house to plead with the older son to come and join the party.
Sin, which is separation from God, can take many forms.
It can be seen in the kind of idolatry and injustice exhibited by God's people in Jeremiah's time.
It can look like the hedonism seen in the younger son of Jesus' parable.
It can look like the stuck-up, holier-than-thou priggishness of the older son.
But whatever the form of our sin, God ain't too proud to beg us to return to Him.
There will come times--in this world, maybe, and in the age to come, for certain--when God will allow those who refuse His begging love and forgiveness, to live with the consequences of their decisions to go it alone without God.
Like a jilted lover, God told the people of Israel through Jeremiah that they had broken the covenant He had with them, "though I was their husband" (Jeremiah 31:32). But He spent years begging His people to return and remains faithful to them and to the whole human race to this day.
God is begging us now to return to Him. Through Jesus Christ, God has made Himself known to us all and wants us to be part of His eternal party.
He's begging because, paraphrasing the message of the Bible in the words the Temptations could have sung, "you mean that much to Him."
But I refuse to let you go
If I have to beg and plead for your sympathy,
I don't mind coz' you mean that much to me
Ain't too proud to beg, sweet darlin
Please don't leave me girl, don't you go
Ain't to proud to plead, baby, baby
Please don't leave me, girl, don't you go
Those words from the Temptations song, Ain't Too Proud to Beg, crossed my mind while reading Jeremiah 44:4, this past week.
Jeremiah was an Old Testament prophet who lived in the early seventh- and late-sixth centuries BC. God gave him a series of prophetic messages not only to God's people in Judah (the southern portion of what had once been a larger Israel) and to neighboring nations. Through Jeremiah, God called all to repent. But nobody listened.
In Jeremiah 44, God uses Jeremiah to recount His people's sorry history of trying to find life in dead things like false deities, foreign alliances, economic power, injustice toward foreigners and the powerless, and child sacrifice. God says, "...I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, 'I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!'"
God begged!
Is that unseemly behavior for the God of the universe?
To beg people to whom He had given everything--life, blessings, a land--as free gifts to beg the people to trust in Him alone, not for His ego, but for their good to turn from their persistent sin and to know life, whole and pure, again?
Eventually, of course, time ran out on Judah, and God let the Babylonians overtake the promised land, turning God's people into refugees or slaves. (But even after that, He promised restoration to all who will turn from sin and believe in Him.)
But God, it would seem, still does this begging thing. In Luke 15, in the New Testament, God in the flesh, Jesus, tells the story of the prodigal son. Throughout the whole story, the father, Jesus' parabolic representation of God the Father, does all sorts of unseemly (some would say unmanly, unfatherly) things.
First, the father violates cultural norms by giving inheritances to both his oldest and his youngest sons. Neither boy earns their estates, mind you, but in those days, a younger son could have expected nothing. The old man is a softie though and, on demand, gives the young boy his inheritance.
Second, after the younger son wastes every gift he's given and fallen into poverty and dishonor (feeding pigs and envying their menu), he heads back home to ask his dad for a job alongside the servants. Instead, showing what would have been seen as unseemly compassion, the father runs to the boy when he sees him approaching the estate, and wraps his arms around him in forgiveness and acceptance before the boy can utter a word of repentance.
With the younger son returned, the father throws a party, Jesus' parabolic representation of the kingdom of God to which all people are invited through Him. The older boy, offended by the charity and forgiveness that the father was showing the younger son, refuses to join the party. (He apparently was too good for the kingdom of God.) Jesus says the father came out of the house to plead with the older son to come and join the party.
Sin, which is separation from God, can take many forms.
It can be seen in the kind of idolatry and injustice exhibited by God's people in Jeremiah's time.
It can look like the hedonism seen in the younger son of Jesus' parable.
It can look like the stuck-up, holier-than-thou priggishness of the older son.
But whatever the form of our sin, God ain't too proud to beg us to return to Him.
There will come times--in this world, maybe, and in the age to come, for certain--when God will allow those who refuse His begging love and forgiveness, to live with the consequences of their decisions to go it alone without God.
Like a jilted lover, God told the people of Israel through Jeremiah that they had broken the covenant He had with them, "though I was their husband" (Jeremiah 31:32). But He spent years begging His people to return and remains faithful to them and to the whole human race to this day.
God is begging us now to return to Him. Through Jesus Christ, God has made Himself known to us all and wants us to be part of His eternal party.
He's begging because, paraphrasing the message of the Bible in the words the Temptations could have sung, "you mean that much to Him."
[The prophet Jeremiah by Marc Chagall. Click to enlarge.]
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Martin Luther and the Need for Reformation Today!
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning. We celebrated Reformation Sunday.]
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
He was born in November 1483, in the German principality of Saxony. His name was Martin Luther. From an early age, he exhibited intelligence and many talents. As time passed, he would become a great preacher, a theologian, and a musician.
These pursuits were far from his father’s intentions for young Martin. Hans Luther wanted the boy to become a lawyer.
That was the trajectory on which Martin’s life was moving until a shattering experience intervened. He was going back to the university he attended when a thunderstorm arose. A lightning bolt knocked Luther to the ground. Understandably terrified, Martin cried out to the patron saint of miners. “Saint Ann,” he said, “save me; I will become a monk.”
Luther was mistaken, of course, to trust in a saint instead of God. As one of our Read the Bible in a Year passages from last week, Jeremiah 17:7 puts it, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”
But who knows? If Luther hadn’t gone to a monastery, you and I, the beneficiaries of his rediscovery of Biblical truths that had been buried beneath traditions and power plays, might not be here this morning.
Nonetheless the new monk Luther was a disturbed young man. He saw himself as completely guilty and hopelessly condemned to an eternity in hell. He couldn’t imagine that God would ever forgive him. He was a mess!
Believing that a fully occupied life would crowd out Luther’s worries though, his superiors decided that Luther should study to become a doctor of theology. He would then teach at a new university being started in the Saxon town of Wittenberg.
At first, the new regimen of work, which included administering fourteen monasteries, pastoring a local church, and teaching at the new university, did nothing to change Luther’s loathing of God and himself.
But then, something happened to change Luther’s life--and history itself.
Like most seminarians and priests of his day, Luther had never studied Scripture. He did so now, as he prepared for the classes he was teaching. In the Bible, Luther found a God quite different from the one often preached in the Church of his day. He saw a God of grace and love...
Luther’s new understanding of God crystallized as he studied two verses in the New Testament book of Romans. Please pull out the pew Bibles and turn to page 648 to read them, Romans 1:16-17. They say:
Through Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, Christ gives righteousness to all who turn from sin and believe in Him. Christ does all this as a free gift.
The Bible calls this gift, along with all of God’s other undeserved blessings, grace.
Ephesians sums up the truth that changes the lives of followers in Jesus for eternity when it says, “by grace you have been saved through faith…”
As Luther grew in the confidence he had in the new life given to him by Christ, he grew bolder in sharing what he had learned from the Bible. On October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses--or propositions for debate—on the church door in Wittenberg.
Luther’s theses challenged a common practice in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. The Church then taught that there was a place called “purgatory,” a sort of holding room that the dead supposedly went to between death and eternity. Purgatory was supposed to be a place where people were purified for entry into heaven. Purgatory was purely a human invention. To raise money, the Church often authorized the mass sale of pieces of paper called indulgences. Indulgences allowed people to buy hundreds or thousands of years out of purgatory for loved ones or even themselves. (Depending on how much a person wanted to or could spend.) Luther was offended by this practice. It turned God's gift of grace for all who trust in Christ into a commodity to be bought and sold by human beings.
When Luther’s preaching and teaching against indulgences impacted the bottom line on their sale, the Church went after him. At a gathering in the German city of Wurms, before the emperor, Luther was ordered to recant, or repudiate, all of his writings. He refused. Ultimately, he came under what was known as an “imperial ban,” meaning that anyone who saw Luther was authorized to kill him on sight. Luther was labeled a heretic, a perverter of the Christian faith.
But Luther and those who came to agree with him remained steadfast in proclaiming the God we see in Jesus Christ, the God of grace and God of glory. Among Luther’s last words were, “We are all beggars,” an acknowledgement that none of us is better or more important than others in God's eyes and that all with faith in Christ are the recipients of God’s charitable gifts: forgiveness and new life. We cannot earn them, but thank God, He loves to give them to those humble enough to surrender to Christ! These are the central truths of God’s Word, the Bible.
Luther died in 1546.
We celebrate October 31 each year as Reformation Day because on All Saints Eve, Hallowed Evening or, as we call it, Hallowe'en, in 1517, Luther’s 95 Theses began a major reformation of the Church.
That reform movement goes on to this day.
We celebrate the Sunday closest to October 31 each year as Reformation Sunday.
I’m convinced that if Martin Luther were a pastor of our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) today, there would be some things he would celebrate. But I'm equally sure that he would also be agitating for reform within the ELCA and would be unpopular among many.
On one hand, Luther, who believed that the Bible contains God’s authoritative Word and was willing always to be shown what the truth is by Scripture and plain reason, would be delighted that, in accordance with the Scriptures, we ELCA Lutherans see women and men as equals and that women called by God are ordained as pastors among us.
But I’m sure that Luther would also look at Called to Common Mission, the agreement struck between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church-USA in 1999, and be appalled that people who call themselves Lutherans have accepted the belief that the words and actions of bishops—mere human beings—have as much authority as the Word of God.
He would look at the legalistic system we have in selecting voting members to our synod and churchwide assemblies and ask why we have replaced attentiveness to God’s Word with a Pharisee-like insistence on quotas.
I’m also certain that Luther would look at the many ELCA bishops, pastors, and seminary professors who reject the Bible’s teachings on things like Jesus’ virgin birth, on Jesus’ miracles, on Jesus being truly God and truly human, and on Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead and ask, “Why do people of the Reformation tradition no longer accept the faith of the Bible and of the Lutheran Confessions?”
Clearly, the need for the movement to reform Christ’s Church that began when Martin Luther posted those 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, has not ended.
As long as there are people within and outside the Church who believe that they can construct lives from fortresses of their own designs and efforts, in which they make people and things other than Jesus Christ the foundations on which they build their lives and hope for eternity, the Reformation must continue.
We must keep singing and continue to strive to live for the truth Luther summarized in his greatest hymn, “A mighty fortress is our God!”
Martin Luther learned and then taught from God’s Word that our relationship with God and our freedom from sin and death come only from the God of the Bible, the God ultimately revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.
These gifts—relationship with God, freedom from sin and death—come to us freely from a God Who is not subject to our human authority or our puny religiosity.
They come to us from Christ alone, Who shows us that God isn’t our enemy, but our very best friend, and worthy of all our glory, honor, praise, living, trust, hope, obedience, and surrender.
Keep the Reformation Luther began going!
Keep turning to God’s Word alone, to God’s Son Jesus alone, to salvation by grace through our faith in Christ alone!
Then, pass the truth of grace alone, faith alone in Christ alone, and God’s Word alone as our guide in life, onto everyone you know. Amen!
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36
He was born in November 1483, in the German principality of Saxony. His name was Martin Luther. From an early age, he exhibited intelligence and many talents. As time passed, he would become a great preacher, a theologian, and a musician.
These pursuits were far from his father’s intentions for young Martin. Hans Luther wanted the boy to become a lawyer.
That was the trajectory on which Martin’s life was moving until a shattering experience intervened. He was going back to the university he attended when a thunderstorm arose. A lightning bolt knocked Luther to the ground. Understandably terrified, Martin cried out to the patron saint of miners. “Saint Ann,” he said, “save me; I will become a monk.”
Luther was mistaken, of course, to trust in a saint instead of God. As one of our Read the Bible in a Year passages from last week, Jeremiah 17:7 puts it, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”
But who knows? If Luther hadn’t gone to a monastery, you and I, the beneficiaries of his rediscovery of Biblical truths that had been buried beneath traditions and power plays, might not be here this morning.
Nonetheless the new monk Luther was a disturbed young man. He saw himself as completely guilty and hopelessly condemned to an eternity in hell. He couldn’t imagine that God would ever forgive him. He was a mess!
Believing that a fully occupied life would crowd out Luther’s worries though, his superiors decided that Luther should study to become a doctor of theology. He would then teach at a new university being started in the Saxon town of Wittenberg.
At first, the new regimen of work, which included administering fourteen monasteries, pastoring a local church, and teaching at the new university, did nothing to change Luther’s loathing of God and himself.
But then, something happened to change Luther’s life--and history itself.
Like most seminarians and priests of his day, Luther had never studied Scripture. He did so now, as he prepared for the classes he was teaching. In the Bible, Luther found a God quite different from the one often preached in the Church of his day. He saw a God of grace and love...
- Who reaches out to His children,
- Who charitably understands their fallen humanity,
- Who forgives and empowers right living, and promises eternity to all with faith in Him.
- Who hates sin while loving sinners,
- Who lovingly calls all to repent for their sin and believe in His Son, Jesus.
Luther’s new understanding of God crystallized as he studied two verses in the New Testament book of Romans. Please pull out the pew Bibles and turn to page 648 to read them, Romans 1:16-17. They say:
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel [that means, the Good News about how God sent His Son Jesus to die and rise so that all who believe in Him will not be eternally separated from God in hell, but live with God eternally], for it [the Gospel] is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it [that is, in the Gospel’s message about Jesus] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written [and this comes from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk]: "The just shall live by faith."Luther saw that righteousness is not some goodness owned by super-saints. Righteousness is having a right relationship with God.
Through Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, Christ gives righteousness to all who turn from sin and believe in Him. Christ does all this as a free gift.
The Bible calls this gift, along with all of God’s other undeserved blessings, grace.
Ephesians sums up the truth that changes the lives of followers in Jesus for eternity when it says, “by grace you have been saved through faith…”
As Luther grew in the confidence he had in the new life given to him by Christ, he grew bolder in sharing what he had learned from the Bible. On October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses--or propositions for debate—on the church door in Wittenberg.
Luther’s theses challenged a common practice in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. The Church then taught that there was a place called “purgatory,” a sort of holding room that the dead supposedly went to between death and eternity. Purgatory was supposed to be a place where people were purified for entry into heaven. Purgatory was purely a human invention. To raise money, the Church often authorized the mass sale of pieces of paper called indulgences. Indulgences allowed people to buy hundreds or thousands of years out of purgatory for loved ones or even themselves. (Depending on how much a person wanted to or could spend.) Luther was offended by this practice. It turned God's gift of grace for all who trust in Christ into a commodity to be bought and sold by human beings.
When Luther’s preaching and teaching against indulgences impacted the bottom line on their sale, the Church went after him. At a gathering in the German city of Wurms, before the emperor, Luther was ordered to recant, or repudiate, all of his writings. He refused. Ultimately, he came under what was known as an “imperial ban,” meaning that anyone who saw Luther was authorized to kill him on sight. Luther was labeled a heretic, a perverter of the Christian faith.
But Luther and those who came to agree with him remained steadfast in proclaiming the God we see in Jesus Christ, the God of grace and God of glory. Among Luther’s last words were, “We are all beggars,” an acknowledgement that none of us is better or more important than others in God's eyes and that all with faith in Christ are the recipients of God’s charitable gifts: forgiveness and new life. We cannot earn them, but thank God, He loves to give them to those humble enough to surrender to Christ! These are the central truths of God’s Word, the Bible.
Luther died in 1546.
We celebrate October 31 each year as Reformation Day because on All Saints Eve, Hallowed Evening or, as we call it, Hallowe'en, in 1517, Luther’s 95 Theses began a major reformation of the Church.
That reform movement goes on to this day.
We celebrate the Sunday closest to October 31 each year as Reformation Sunday.
I’m convinced that if Martin Luther were a pastor of our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) today, there would be some things he would celebrate. But I'm equally sure that he would also be agitating for reform within the ELCA and would be unpopular among many.
On one hand, Luther, who believed that the Bible contains God’s authoritative Word and was willing always to be shown what the truth is by Scripture and plain reason, would be delighted that, in accordance with the Scriptures, we ELCA Lutherans see women and men as equals and that women called by God are ordained as pastors among us.
But I’m sure that Luther would also look at Called to Common Mission, the agreement struck between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church-USA in 1999, and be appalled that people who call themselves Lutherans have accepted the belief that the words and actions of bishops—mere human beings—have as much authority as the Word of God.
He would look at the legalistic system we have in selecting voting members to our synod and churchwide assemblies and ask why we have replaced attentiveness to God’s Word with a Pharisee-like insistence on quotas.
I’m also certain that Luther would look at the many ELCA bishops, pastors, and seminary professors who reject the Bible’s teachings on things like Jesus’ virgin birth, on Jesus’ miracles, on Jesus being truly God and truly human, and on Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead and ask, “Why do people of the Reformation tradition no longer accept the faith of the Bible and of the Lutheran Confessions?”
Clearly, the need for the movement to reform Christ’s Church that began when Martin Luther posted those 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, has not ended.
As long as there are people within and outside the Church who believe that they can construct lives from fortresses of their own designs and efforts, in which they make people and things other than Jesus Christ the foundations on which they build their lives and hope for eternity, the Reformation must continue.
We must keep singing and continue to strive to live for the truth Luther summarized in his greatest hymn, “A mighty fortress is our God!”
Martin Luther learned and then taught from God’s Word that our relationship with God and our freedom from sin and death come only from the God of the Bible, the God ultimately revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.
These gifts—relationship with God, freedom from sin and death—come to us freely from a God Who is not subject to our human authority or our puny religiosity.
They come to us from Christ alone, Who shows us that God isn’t our enemy, but our very best friend, and worthy of all our glory, honor, praise, living, trust, hope, obedience, and surrender.
Keep the Reformation Luther began going!
Keep turning to God’s Word alone, to God’s Son Jesus alone, to salvation by grace through our faith in Christ alone!
Then, pass the truth of grace alone, faith alone in Christ alone, and God’s Word alone as our guide in life, onto everyone you know. Amen!
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Reformation Polka
I've shared this before, but we're celebrating Reformation Sunday this weekend. So, here it is again.
Certainty Among Mysteries
There are mysteries beyond fathoming. But one thing that is not mysterious, because God has clearly revealed Himself in Jesus, is that God loves us. God stands with us in all of this life's mysteries and has revealed the new, everlasting life belongs to all who trust in Christ. Read today's installment from Our Daily Bread.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
The Leap That Brings Hope
[This was shared during the Celebration of Life Service of Worship and Holy Communion for the family and friends of Glenn, a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. The service happened in the Saint Matthew sanctuary on October 25.]
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
John 14:1-7
I first met Glenn over the telephone. He called me in June of 2007 about interviewing for the call to become pastor of Saint Matthew. Glenn was president of the congregation and chair of the call committee.
That first phone call, of course, was hardly a getting-to-know-you conversation; it was little more than setting the day and time for my interview. But very quickly, in several personal meetings and telephone calls, I came to form an impression of Glenn, an impression that only grew stronger after we came to Logan.
Glenn was a people person with a quick wit. He loved his wife, his family, and his friends.
He loved getting together with people, especially when getting together entailed food. “Meet to eat,” I learned early on, was one of Glen’s favorite mottos.
He cared about the Church and its mission. (Boy, did he care about the mission of the Church!)
And he had a strong and informed faith in Jesus Christ.
Now, it’s one thing to have a strong faith in Christ when things are going relatively well in your life. It’s another to still have that faith when hard times come.
The day that Glenn let us know he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I spoke with him. “We know, of course,” he told me evenly, “that this cancer will eventually take my life.” But, he explained, he and Sue were committed to fighting together for the ability to life to the full for as long as he could.
Then he said, “I’ve had a good life. And I have no doubt about where I’m headed. So, we’ll just go from there.”
Now, it seemed to Ann and me as we absorbed Glenn’s news, that if any two people had a right be bitter or to rail at the rotten hand this fallen world had dealt them, it was Glenn and Sue.
They’d had little time to savor their retirement. First, Glenn had required a major surgery. Then, sharing the care for Sue’s father with her sister occupied much of their time until his death shortly before Glenn learned of his cancer. And I know that there were times when Glenn had questions, when he felt overwhelmed. The same things will happen to you who mourn his passing in the weeks and months to come: You’ll have questions; you’ll feel overwhelmed.
But every time I visited with Glenn, no matter how tired or out of sorts he was feeling, the enduring, compelling traits of his personality remained and, in one way or another, he would affirm what he had told me the first time we talked about his cancer, “I’ve had a good life. I have no doubt where I’m headed.”
It was because of these things about Glenn’s (and Sue’s) life and character that the words of Paul from Thessalonians seem so appropriate for us today. “We do not want you to be uninformed,” Paul wrote to the church at first-century Thessalonica in Greece, “about those [believers] who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
You see, the Thessalonian Christians were worried because when they first came to faith, they’d been sure that the risen and ascended Jesus was going to quickly return to the earth and fully establish His kingdom. As the first century after Jesus’ resurrection moved on, believers in Christ everywhere were starting to become edgy. Persecution for their faith was intensifying, all the signs that Jesus had said would presage His return had appeared, and yet Jesus hadn’t come back. Paul wanted to assure the church at Thessalonica that the One Who had died and risen for them had not forgotten them. I’m sure that Glenn would want you to know that too. Jesus, Who died and rose to give new and everlasting life to all who believe in Him, has not forgotten you or His promises to you.
Because of Jesus Christ, Paul was convinced—Glenn was convinced—that believers in Jesus Christ could grieve, of course. But we don’t need to grieve as others do who have hope. Followers of Jesus Christ have hope. Glenn always had that hope!
At one level, that a man like Glenn, who was a businessperson with an inquiring mind, read history, and considered the evidence on all sides of arguments, trusted in a risen Savior he could not see, is something of a miracle.
Faith in Christ is always a miracle of God’s mercy and grace.
“No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” the New Testament teaches.
God gives faith in Christ not to those who marshal the most religious facts, or satisfactorily answer all their questions, or, who through science or logic, eradicate all their doubts.
Faith comes to those who look at the Bible’s witness about Jesus and the evidence of His presence in the lives of believers they may have known or observed and who then, dare to take the leap of the faith into the waiting arms of Jesus.
Glenn took that leap. That was why he could say, “I have no doubt about where I’m headed.” It’s why today, you can grieve that Glenn will no longer be with you in this earthly life, but you need not grieve as people without hope.
In the lesson from John’s gospel, which we read a moment ago, Jesus consoled the disciples. He had just told them that He would soon be leaving them. Jesus said: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
I believe that on Sunday morning, October 16, when Glenn leapt into what appears to be only darkness to us, he landed in the nail-scarred arms of Jesus, Who then took Glenn to that place He has prepared for all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus alone as their God and Savior.
Today, Sue (and all your family), I hope and pray that you will be comforted and strengthened in knowing that Glenn is today with Jesus. You will remain in our prayers and we ask you not to hesitate to ask us for any help or comfort we can provide. (And you may expect us to provide these things even when you don't ask for them!)
And to those here this morning who may doubt that Jesus can raise the dead to new life, I ask you to consider the evidence of Glenn’s life.
Glenn would have been the last person in the world to claim to be perfect. But I think that if you look at Glenn, you’ll conclude that Jesus—the real, risen, living Jesus—made a difference in his life.
If Jesus, Who can’t be seen by us today, can make a difference in the lives of people living in this sometimes tough and challenging world right now, aren’t you willing to entertain the notion that maybe this Jesus is alive and waiting for us all to turn to Him, waiting to give us the strength and humor and faith we need to face this life, waiting to give us the places He has prepared for all who are willing to leap into His loving arms?
Today and every day, dare to put yourself in the arms of Jesus. He will catch you and He will never let you go. I know that Glenn would love nothing better than for every person in this sanctuary to rest easy and rest eternally in the arms of Jesus. Tell Jesus you’re willing to be taken into His arms and to let Him be with you now and for eternity. Even as we enjoy and live this life, it’s good to know where you’re headed. Amen!
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
John 14:1-7
I first met Glenn over the telephone. He called me in June of 2007 about interviewing for the call to become pastor of Saint Matthew. Glenn was president of the congregation and chair of the call committee.
That first phone call, of course, was hardly a getting-to-know-you conversation; it was little more than setting the day and time for my interview. But very quickly, in several personal meetings and telephone calls, I came to form an impression of Glenn, an impression that only grew stronger after we came to Logan.
Glenn was a people person with a quick wit. He loved his wife, his family, and his friends.
He loved getting together with people, especially when getting together entailed food. “Meet to eat,” I learned early on, was one of Glen’s favorite mottos.
He cared about the Church and its mission. (Boy, did he care about the mission of the Church!)
And he had a strong and informed faith in Jesus Christ.
Now, it’s one thing to have a strong faith in Christ when things are going relatively well in your life. It’s another to still have that faith when hard times come.
The day that Glenn let us know he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I spoke with him. “We know, of course,” he told me evenly, “that this cancer will eventually take my life.” But, he explained, he and Sue were committed to fighting together for the ability to life to the full for as long as he could.
Then he said, “I’ve had a good life. And I have no doubt about where I’m headed. So, we’ll just go from there.”
Now, it seemed to Ann and me as we absorbed Glenn’s news, that if any two people had a right be bitter or to rail at the rotten hand this fallen world had dealt them, it was Glenn and Sue.
They’d had little time to savor their retirement. First, Glenn had required a major surgery. Then, sharing the care for Sue’s father with her sister occupied much of their time until his death shortly before Glenn learned of his cancer. And I know that there were times when Glenn had questions, when he felt overwhelmed. The same things will happen to you who mourn his passing in the weeks and months to come: You’ll have questions; you’ll feel overwhelmed.
But every time I visited with Glenn, no matter how tired or out of sorts he was feeling, the enduring, compelling traits of his personality remained and, in one way or another, he would affirm what he had told me the first time we talked about his cancer, “I’ve had a good life. I have no doubt where I’m headed.”
It was because of these things about Glenn’s (and Sue’s) life and character that the words of Paul from Thessalonians seem so appropriate for us today. “We do not want you to be uninformed,” Paul wrote to the church at first-century Thessalonica in Greece, “about those [believers] who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
You see, the Thessalonian Christians were worried because when they first came to faith, they’d been sure that the risen and ascended Jesus was going to quickly return to the earth and fully establish His kingdom. As the first century after Jesus’ resurrection moved on, believers in Christ everywhere were starting to become edgy. Persecution for their faith was intensifying, all the signs that Jesus had said would presage His return had appeared, and yet Jesus hadn’t come back. Paul wanted to assure the church at Thessalonica that the One Who had died and risen for them had not forgotten them. I’m sure that Glenn would want you to know that too. Jesus, Who died and rose to give new and everlasting life to all who believe in Him, has not forgotten you or His promises to you.
Because of Jesus Christ, Paul was convinced—Glenn was convinced—that believers in Jesus Christ could grieve, of course. But we don’t need to grieve as others do who have hope. Followers of Jesus Christ have hope. Glenn always had that hope!
At one level, that a man like Glenn, who was a businessperson with an inquiring mind, read history, and considered the evidence on all sides of arguments, trusted in a risen Savior he could not see, is something of a miracle.
Faith in Christ is always a miracle of God’s mercy and grace.
“No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” the New Testament teaches.
God gives faith in Christ not to those who marshal the most religious facts, or satisfactorily answer all their questions, or, who through science or logic, eradicate all their doubts.
Faith comes to those who look at the Bible’s witness about Jesus and the evidence of His presence in the lives of believers they may have known or observed and who then, dare to take the leap of the faith into the waiting arms of Jesus.
Glenn took that leap. That was why he could say, “I have no doubt about where I’m headed.” It’s why today, you can grieve that Glenn will no longer be with you in this earthly life, but you need not grieve as people without hope.
In the lesson from John’s gospel, which we read a moment ago, Jesus consoled the disciples. He had just told them that He would soon be leaving them. Jesus said: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
I believe that on Sunday morning, October 16, when Glenn leapt into what appears to be only darkness to us, he landed in the nail-scarred arms of Jesus, Who then took Glenn to that place He has prepared for all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus alone as their God and Savior.
Today, Sue (and all your family), I hope and pray that you will be comforted and strengthened in knowing that Glenn is today with Jesus. You will remain in our prayers and we ask you not to hesitate to ask us for any help or comfort we can provide. (And you may expect us to provide these things even when you don't ask for them!)
And to those here this morning who may doubt that Jesus can raise the dead to new life, I ask you to consider the evidence of Glenn’s life.
Glenn would have been the last person in the world to claim to be perfect. But I think that if you look at Glenn, you’ll conclude that Jesus—the real, risen, living Jesus—made a difference in his life.
If Jesus, Who can’t be seen by us today, can make a difference in the lives of people living in this sometimes tough and challenging world right now, aren’t you willing to entertain the notion that maybe this Jesus is alive and waiting for us all to turn to Him, waiting to give us the strength and humor and faith we need to face this life, waiting to give us the places He has prepared for all who are willing to leap into His loving arms?
Today and every day, dare to put yourself in the arms of Jesus. He will catch you and He will never let you go. I know that Glenn would love nothing better than for every person in this sanctuary to rest easy and rest eternally in the arms of Jesus. Tell Jesus you’re willing to be taken into His arms and to let Him be with you now and for eternity. Even as we enjoy and live this life, it’s good to know where you’re headed. Amen!
Monday, October 24, 2011
Don't Hold It In!
I really like today's piece from Our Daily Bread. It's based on Jeremiah 20:7-13. Be sure to read the Scripture passage, then check out the post in ODB by Dennis Fisher.
Both the the Scripture passage and Fisher's piece set me to thinking.
The prophet Jeremiah can be hard to read, as those of us involved in Read the Bible in a Year at Saint Matthew are seeing these days.
But imagine how hard it was for Jeremiah to live with the messages God commissioned him to bring to Israel. He and his prophecies from God didn't exactly put him on the A-list for party invitations. In fact, quite the opposite.
Yet, Jeremiah said that God's Word so burned within him that he had to share it. The fate of Israel rested on his countrymen turning from sin and trusting in God once again. How could he keep from sharing that truth with people he loved?
Jeremiah's feelings were echoed seven centuries later by Peter and John, after they'd been ordered by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious authorities, never to speak again in the Name of Jesus. Peter and John said, "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:19-20).
What they had "seen and heard" was Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. They had seen the sinless Savior of the world take the punishment for sin that every human being deserves. They had seen Him risen from the dead, affirming that Jesus can give new and everlasting life to all who will turn from sin and trust in Him as their only God and Lord. How could they not share that?
Christians today experience the power of the risen Jesus in our lives and, as was true for Jeremiah, this power--the power of the Holy Spirit Who enables us to confess our belief in Jesus in spite of the outlandishness of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead--burns like a fire in us.
The truth about Jesus must be shared by word and actions with all the world. Failing to do so would be deeply unloving, worse than knowing the cure for AIDs and deciding not to share it! Lots worse. Eternally worse.
That's why Jesus gave us the Great Commission! The whole world needs to know Jesus.
Don't tamp down the fire of your faith in Christ. Let it out, so that in lifting Jesus up to others, old sin is burned away and the light of new life that comes only from Jesus can be seen!
But watch out! The more you share Jesus, the more empowered God will make you to do it again.
Both the the Scripture passage and Fisher's piece set me to thinking.
The prophet Jeremiah can be hard to read, as those of us involved in Read the Bible in a Year at Saint Matthew are seeing these days.
But imagine how hard it was for Jeremiah to live with the messages God commissioned him to bring to Israel. He and his prophecies from God didn't exactly put him on the A-list for party invitations. In fact, quite the opposite.
Yet, Jeremiah said that God's Word so burned within him that he had to share it. The fate of Israel rested on his countrymen turning from sin and trusting in God once again. How could he keep from sharing that truth with people he loved?
Jeremiah's feelings were echoed seven centuries later by Peter and John, after they'd been ordered by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious authorities, never to speak again in the Name of Jesus. Peter and John said, "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:19-20).
What they had "seen and heard" was Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. They had seen the sinless Savior of the world take the punishment for sin that every human being deserves. They had seen Him risen from the dead, affirming that Jesus can give new and everlasting life to all who will turn from sin and trust in Him as their only God and Lord. How could they not share that?
Christians today experience the power of the risen Jesus in our lives and, as was true for Jeremiah, this power--the power of the Holy Spirit Who enables us to confess our belief in Jesus in spite of the outlandishness of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead--burns like a fire in us.
The truth about Jesus must be shared by word and actions with all the world. Failing to do so would be deeply unloving, worse than knowing the cure for AIDs and deciding not to share it! Lots worse. Eternally worse.
That's why Jesus gave us the Great Commission! The whole world needs to know Jesus.
Don't tamp down the fire of your faith in Christ. Let it out, so that in lifting Jesus up to others, old sin is burned away and the light of new life that comes only from Jesus can be seen!
But watch out! The more you share Jesus, the more empowered God will make you to do it again.
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