Prayer (Part 2 of a 4-Part Series)

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 6:7-15
Sometimes, at the end of a youth group devotion or during a Catechism class unit, I’ll ask a young person if they would offer a prayer. Honestly, I don’t do this to embarrass anybody. Maintaining any good relationship entails the commitment of time and energy and communication. This is no less true of our relationship with the God we know through Jesus Christ. So, I want to encourage young people to feel that they can talk with God any time without flowery or pretentious language.

The fact is that whenever any of us pray, no matter our age, no matter if we offer our prayer publicly or privately, we may get a little tongue-tied or experience brain-freezes or become totally confused by life. I know that’s true for me!

Fortunately, those who believe in Jesus and approach God in prayer in Jesus' Name know that their prayers don’t have to be perfect. Romans 8:26 says: “[God’s Holy] Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us [that means, the Holy Spirit speaks up for us] with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

Whenever we’re overwhelmed by life, knowing that we need God, but not knowing what to pray, we not only have the advocacy of the Holy Spirit, though. We also have a pattern for prayer that Jesus has given to us. It’s what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Last Sunday, using the version of the Lord’s Prayer found in the gospel of Luke, we looked at what we call the introduction and the first and second petitions of the prayer. Today, we’re going to consider the third, fourth, and fifth petitions, the next three things Jesus says you and I should be seeking from God when we pray.

Please turn to Matthew 6:7-15 in your Bible. Slide down to verse ten of our gospel lesson, where we find the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will [or Your will] be done.”

In instructing us to pray in this way, Jesus isn’t asking us to ask God for anything that He Himself wasn’t willing to pray for or live with. You remember that before He was arrested, tried, and murdered for our sins, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Even when He knew with perfect clarity all of the suffering that the Father's will would bring to Him, Jesus prayed that God's will would be done.

Jesus is teaching us here that there’s more to being a Christian than cashing in on His promise to give new and everlasting life to those who believe in Him.

That's because believing in Jesus is more than accepting the propositions that He is God the Son or that He died for human beings or that He physically rose from the dead. As the New Testament book of James says: “You believe that there is one God; you do well: the demons also believe, and tremble.”

When Jesus says that all who believe in Him will be saved, He means that all who entrust their whole lives to Him will be saved. Those who trust Jesus are the people who can say (or are willing to ask God to help them to pray) things like this:

• “Here is a sin of which I’m really fond and over which I feel I have no control, God. But I accept that when You and I disagree about what’s a sin, you’re right and I’m wrong. Help me to resist temptation to sin in this way.” 
• Or, “Lord, I really want this job or want to keep this job. But if You have some other plan, Your will be done.” 
• Or, “I want to be with this person. But if You say, ‘No,’ I’ll do what You want.” 

Sometimes, of course, God’s will may not be entirely clear to us. But know this: God will never will us to do what is contrary to what He has revealed about Himself in the Bible.

When we feel unclear about God's will for us, we also have a promise from Jesus. As we live in relationship with Him, seeking His will in prayer, and reading God’s Word in the Bible, Jesus says in John 16:13 that the Holy Spirit will guide us in truth. In fact, the closer we grow to Christ, the more God’s will and our will get in sync.

The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer represents a shift in emphasis in the prayer. Up to this point, Jesus has instructed us to pray for things that are helpful to us both today and in eternity. Here, we begin to ask God to things that are important to us today. In Matthew 6:11, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Martin Luther reminds us in The Small Catechism that Jesus has in mind here more than just the bread or food we need day in and day out, but everything we need to live every day.

But, we may wonder, why should we have to ask God for what we need each day? When I was a kid, I didn’t have to go to my parents and say, “Hey, Dad! Hey, Mom! You remember those three square meals you gave me yesterday? I’m going to be needing something similar today.” They knew I needed food, water, shelter, an education, medical care, love, and other things every day. They didn’t have to be reminded.

God doesn’t have to be reminded of our needs, either. He knows them better than we do ourselves. Jesus teaches us to pray in this way, I think, for three reasons:

First: So that we will remember and acknowledge that no matter how hard or ingeniously you and I may work, all that we have comes from God.

People may say (as I've sometimes heard them say), “I work hard for everything I have. What does God have to do with it?”

The answer to that question is simple: Where did the brain and the brawn you use to do that work come from? And who is the ultimate source of all the things you work so hard to attain?  These are gifts from God! James 1:17 in the New Testament says: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes from the Father...”

Second: We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” to teach us contentment.

There’s nothing wrong with ambitions, wanting to achieve great things, living up to our God-given potential, or trying to provide for our families’ needs.

But it’s also important to remember, as the New Testament tells us, “we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.”

How much of what we work so hard to get can be categorized as “needs” and how much as “wants”?  So often, the reason we focus on our "wants" is because of a basic insecurity we have about ourselves, a need we feel to justify even taking up space in the universe. At other times, we focus on what we want because, like Adam and Eve, we want to "be like God" and feel a sense of entitlement to superiority over the "normal people" of the world.

In the prayer from the book of Proverbs that made up our first Bible lesson for today, we read: "Give me neither poverty nor riches—Feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, “Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God" (Proverbs 30:8-9)

A third reason I think that Jesus teaches us to ask God for our daily bread is to remind us to share our abundance with others.

God has engineered this planet so that there is more than enough of everything that all six-billion of earth’s inhabitants needs. Jesus teaches that God “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Those with plenty--including plenty of knowledge on how to create sustainable agriculture in inhospitable soils and climates--are told by Jesus’ commandment to love God and to love others as we love ourselves, to share our plenty with those who have little. There’s plenty of daily bread to go around if we will simply share with one another.

In the fifth petition, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts [or trespasses], as we forgive our debtors [or those who trespass or sin against us].”

Of all the petitions in the Lord's Prayer, this one may be the most counter to the ways our culture thinks. The prevailing thinking of the world is illustrated by the title of the best-selling album in the United States this past week: God Forgives, I Don't by hip-hop artist Rick Ross.

If being told to pray, “Thy will be done” (“You take control, God”) makes us wince, being told to pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us," may absolutely make us want to throw our hands up in despair!

Does Jesus want us to pray that God will forgive people who have hurt us, robbed us, gossiped about us mercilessly, lied to us? More than any of these things, actually, Jesus commands us to forgive people like these who have made our lives miserable!

Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15 of our gospel lesson: “...if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Jesus isn't saying that if people have hurt us, we have to keep placing ourselves in situations in which they can hurt us again. He is saying that if we want the forgiveness and new life that His death and resurrection can secure for all who repent for sin and believe in Him, we must forgive, we must let go of our resentment and bitterness.

It’s a homely illustration I’ve used in sermons before (and even during the Bible study at Von Bora Circle this past week), but think of what Jesus tells us here in this way. Imagine that you’re going through your life holding onto all your grudges and resentments. As long as you’re holding onto those, refusing to forgive others, you cannot grasp the hand of Jesus offering you forgiveness for your sins and pulling you to eternal life with God.

Letting go of our resentments does not come naturally to us. You and I are born in sin, which means that if there is anyway that we can lord it over others, feeding our fantasies of being morally superior, to being “like God,” in some way, we’re inclined to exploit those opportunities. But that’s the way to death.

We think that by holding grudges we’re in some way imprisoning or hurting the people we refuse to forgive. But the opposite is true. Someone has said, “Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for another person to die.”

Unforgiven sin kills. Jesus has opened up the possibility of forgiveness and new, everlasting life to all who will repent and believe in Him. So, why would we want to throw away eternal life just for the momentary--or even lifelong--satisfaction of feeling superior to someone who has hurt us?

Sometimes bitterness, an unholy superiority complex can sneak up on you.

I may have mentioned the experience I had one day while praying. Something just didn’t seem right. I felt physically and spiritually exhausted. “God,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

At that moment, I refused to fill the silence with my words and instead just waited on the Lord. You know the promise of God in Isaiah 40:31: “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength...” Or the words of Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God."

After a few moments, God whispered to my soul in the silence. I knew what was wrong. Bitterness had infected my relationship with someone. I asked God to forgive my sin and to help me forgive the person with whom I was bitter.

Like everyone, I suppose, I still find bitterness and an unforgiving spirit sometimes welling up within me. But I’ve found an effective antidote, a supernatural cure for my natural impulse to sin. Whenever I find myself harboring bitterness toward anyone, I pray for them. I ask God to bless them. I ask God to show Himself to them that day and to help them to feel loved by Him. I militate against my sinful orientation and ask God to help me see things His way and to live His way.

I’ve heard that you can’t hate someone for long if you pray for them. I’ve found that to be true.

And Jesus says that you can’t claim the love of Christ if you’re not willing to throw away bitterness. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

An authentic prayer life will include the elements Jesus teaches in the third, fourth, and fifth petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We pray to God:

• “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” 
• “Give us this day our daily bread,” and 
• “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” 

May God teach us all to pray in these ways.

By God’s grace, we’ll talk about prayer more next Sunday.

Curiosity: Unadulterated Wonderfulness!

In the midst of the bad news that haunts our media, the landing of Curiosity on Mars (along with the images it's beginning to send back to the folks of NASA) is unadulterated wonderfulness!

As they have so often in the past, the folks at NASA exemplify the good things that human beings can do when working together in teams for a common lofty purpose. And who can imagine what we will learn about our universe from Curiosity?

Who's Open-Minded?

This from Craig Keener: "Signs [of a miraculous nature] were accorded high evidential value in antiquity. That the modern Western educated elite tends to denigrate them is more a commentary on our culture than theirs; most cultures in the world today (virtually all cultures not influenced by deistic rationalism or atheistic Marxism) accept diverse forms of supernatural activity. Thus those who reject miracles merely on the basis of philosophical a prioris may do so as ethnocentric dogmatists rather than as genuinely open-minded intellectuals."

Prayer (Part 1 of a 4-Part Series)

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

Luke 11:1-4
In my years as a pastor, I’ve found that prayer is one of the biggest objects of confusion, insecurity, and, at times, even doubt that exists for Christians.

People ask, “What can I pray to God about? Are some things too trivial to bring up with God? Will God be mad at me if I ask for the wrong things? What am I supposed to say?”

On top of basic questions like these, there are times when almost every Christian feels that God has turned a deaf ear to their desperate prayers for the health, safety, or lives of their loved ones. In circumstances like these, we may wonder where God is, if God is, or, if God is there, why He isn’t responding as we devoutly beg him to respond.

Today, we begin a four-part sermon and worship series on prayer. Three weeks from today, we’ll consider the mystery of unanswered prayer. But today and over the next two Sundays, we’ll consider how to pray and, along the way, why.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus, within sight of His disciples, is pictured as doing what He often did during His earthly ministry: Praying.

As we’ll see in coming weeks, this doesn’t mean that praying is solely a personal matter. There’s a time and a place for both private prayer and group prayer with our fellow believers in Christ.

In any case, Jesus‘ disciples were taken with the fact that, at every opportunity He had, Jesus spent time in prayer to His Father. Seeing how important prayer was to Jesus and remembering that John the Baptist had taken time to teach his disciples how to pray, the disciples make a simple request. “Lord,” they say to Jesus, “teach us to pray.”

In response to their request, Jesus proceeded to share with them what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

Matthew has a slightly different version of the same prayer that we see in today’s lesson from Luke.

And the version we use during worship is sort of a blending of the Matthew and Luke versions, along with the addition of a “word of glory,” or a doxology--”For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever”--that the Church has been adding to the prayer ever since the late first century.

Nonetheless, when Jesus was asked how to pray, He shared this prayer.

That doesn’t mean that all our praying should parrot the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus warns us against prayer that’s mere repetition. In Matthew 6:7, Jesus says: “...when you pray, do not use vain [that means meaningless] repetitions as the heathen do.”

Vain repetition isn’t prayer! But in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches what we need to know about how to pray. So, what exactly does He teach us?

Go to our gospel lesson, please: Luke 1:1-4 and look at verse 2. Jesus begins the prayer with, “Our Father in heaven.”

In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther calls this the introduction to the prayer. And, though only four words in length, it’s amazing: Through Jesus Christ, we are given the privilege of an intimate relationship with the Creator of the entire universe!

As many of you know, the word translated as Father is, in the Aramaic language in which Jesus daily spoke and first taught this prayer, Abba, a word used by small children of their daddies. Galatians 3:26 in the New Testament says that “in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” That’s why we’re privileged to call the first Person of the three-persons-in-one God our Father!

In teaching us to address God the Father so intimately, Jesus is telling us that God is never too busy to hear from those who follow Jesus Christ.  I've heard Pastor Bill Hybels talk about when he was a small boy, his hard-driving, workaholic father had a dedicated telephone with a number known only to Bill. When Hybels' father gave young Bill the number he made clear that no matter what he was doing, no matter how important the meeting or how important the person with whom he was meeting, he would always answer Bill's call. Decades later, Hybels still remembers that telephone number! In Jesus Christ, you and I can know that our heavenly Father is anxious to hear from us, no matter what else may be happening in the universe!

Jesus once told the story of a widow who had been swindled and who sought justice from a corrupt judge, a judge who only found in favor of plaintiffs who paid him bribes. Initially, the judge wouldn’t hear the poor widow out. But she wouldn’t stop nagging the judge. She petitioned him constantly. In Luke 18:4, the corrupt judge in Jesus' parable caves. He says: “‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her [I will give her the justice she seeks], lest by her continual coming [after me] she weary me [or wear me out].”

Now, don’t misunderstand this parable. Jesus is not saying that our Father in heaven is like that unjust judge. Jesus says that if an unjust judge who has no respect for God or people can eventually be forced into listening to a poor widow’s pleas, how much more will the pure and incorruptible God Who sent His only Son so that all who believe in Him will have everlasting life be quick to hear us when we call to Him?

The God Who, through Jesus, we know is our Father, wants to hear from His children and we need never hesitate to call out to Him.

The late Lutheran writer R.A. Dell, whose Senior Catechism taught generations of young Lutherans what the Christian faith is about, pointed out that in Luke 18:1, Jesus says that believers “ought to pray.” Jesus commands Christians to pray. But Dell also puts his finger on why Jesus makes this command when he says, “Prayer is a communion with God, in which we bring all our joys and sorrows to Him as our dear Friend.” We call God our Father because prayer is the intimate conversation that God our Father and our best friend wants to have with us!

But we dare not forget that prayer is also an encounter with the Lord of the universe Who is infinitely greater than us in power and goodness!

God is the friend of believers in Christ. But He is not our buddy!

When we come before Him, we should be ever mindful of God's holiness and power.

Go back to Luke 11:2 and read the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the first thing Jesus teaches us to ask from God in prayer: “Hallowed be Your Name.”

Jesus teaches us that when we come to God in prayer, we need to acknowledge that God isn’t a genie or a rabbit’s foot; God is the King and Creator of all, Who deserves to be loved, feared, honored, respected, and surrendered to.

The hardest lesson a parent must teach her or his child is that the child isn’t the center of the universe. It's a hard lesson to teach and it's a hard lesson to learn! You and I are born in sin, meaning that Adam and Eve have passed onto you and me a desire to “be like God.” But when each of us decides what is right in our own eyes, placing our own desires and impulses first in our priorities, our lives and the life of the world gets out of whack. Everything that is wrong with our world is the result of this kind of sinful me-first thinking.

When we pray that God’s Name and God’s will be hallowed--respected, revered, held in awe--we are saying, “God, I bow my knee to You and I beg You to put the world right by ensuring that You and Your good will are of first importance in the world!” 

This petition that God’s Name will be hallowed and respected and praised by us and by the world bears a relationship to the second commandment. There, God tells us, “You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless those who take His Name in vain.”

To do anything vainly is to do it for no good purpose, uselessly. When we use God’s Name as a swear word, or as a witty punctuation, as so often happens on sitcoms these days, we are violating the holiness of God’s Name.

It’s a privilege to be given access to God by knowing Him and His Name. That’s why Luther says that “we should fear and love God so that we do not use His Name superstitiously or to curse, swear, lie, or deceive, but call upon Him in every time of need, and worship Him with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.”

When we ask that God’s Name be hallowed, we’re asking that He would give us the faith to use His Name only to petition Him in Jesus’ Name, to praise Him for His goodness and grace, and to thank Him for His blessings.

By praying that God's Name will be hallowed, we militate against our inborn selfishness and re-orient our hearts, minds, and wills toward pleasing God the creator, not his creatures.

Back to Luke 11:2. The second petition Jesus teaches us to pray is, “Thy kingdom [Your kingdom] come.” Praying as Jesus prayed to His Father, having advanced to the second petition, we find that Jesus still doesn't want us to pray for what we want. In the second petition, ee’re still praying that God will help us put God’s priorities first.

God’s kingdom is God’s reign. God’s kingdom exists when and where people voluntarily submit to the rule of the Lord we know in Jesus Christ, where people take up their crosses (that is, acknowledge their sin), repent, and believe in Jesus Christ as their only God and Lord, and so, have the assurance of life with God, now and in eternity. As Luther says, “God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and live a godly life now and in eternity.”

King David was encouraging the people of ancient Israel (and Christians who, through Jesus, have come to believe in Israel’s God), to live under the reign of God when he sang in Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations...”

I am convinced that, in these times, there is no more important prayer for us to pray than that God’s kingdom will come, that there will be a worldwide turning from sin and to faith in Christ.

The world, with its rampant materialism, sexual promiscuity, sexism, violence, and hatred for Christ and the Word of God, needs a new awakening to the goodness of God and to our need of the new life that only comes from the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

We need to realize that being a follower of Jesus Christ isn’t about being a nice person or keeping our mouths shut in the face of evil.

Those who live in the kingdom of God love all their fellow sinners while hating all sin, whether it's the sin inside themselves or the sin enslaving the world to Satan and hell.

We need for God to come and reign over us, to turn our lives and the lives of our churches, our countries, and our world to Jesus Christ.  

So, how do we pray?

• First, believing in Christ, we come to God our Father, authentically and helplessly as children who need Him for life and guidance, forgiveness and hope. 
• Second, we pray that His Name will be respected and honored, first by us and also by the world. 
• And third, we pray that His kingdom, which comes without our help but which we can only receive through faith in Christ, will come to us afresh each day, finding us truly submissive to Jesus, tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives of devotion and holiness. 

These, Jesus says, are the starting points of true prayer.

More next Sunday. Amen

Speaking of 'Matchbox'

Peaches: Yummy!

Took a break from sermon preparation today to enjoy some of these fresh-from-the-farm peaches that my wife had peeled and sliced. They were wonderful! She bought them from an orchard store (where they also have delicious apples!) in Laurelville, Ohio.

Every time I have peaches, I can't keep from doing my best Ringo impression: "Well, if you don't want my peaches, honey, please don't shake my tree." (The song is Matchbox. Of course, it was originally written and recorded by Carl Perkins, but I love the Beatles' version.)

Faith and Works?

This is an awesome, thought-provoking, and helpful piece based on James 2:14-26 in the New Testament.

You can see why the young Martin Luther, excited with the insight that we are only saved from sin and death by the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ, was driven a bit crazy by some of the things that James writes in those verses. (Faith, by the way, includes repentance for sin and trust in Christ to erase the power of sin and its result, death, over our lives.)

But, of course, James is not, in these verses, disputing the power of faith--simple trust--in Christ to save.

He is saying that faith is more than simple intellectual assent to the truths taught in the New Testament, such as that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's law and the Old Testament, that He is the "Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world," and that all who follow Jesus alone have life with God forever (John 3:16-18; John 14:6; Acts 4:12). 

True faith, James is pointing out, infects the life of those who believe and, as a result, they live differently.

Among other things, they are more loving toward God and neighbor, they seek to undertake acts of mercy and kindness and justice, and, speaking the truth in love, they share with their neighbors Jesus' call repent (turn from sin) and believe in Him in order to have new and everlasting life with God. Jesus calls all of this "bearing good fruit."

As we trust in Christ, daily turning to God for forgiveness of sins in Jesus' Name and daily being renewed by the grace and goodness of God, two important things will happen in the lives of believers:

(1) We'll be motivated to do the will of God;

(2) Often without our even knowing it, God will supernaturally empower us to do His will. (Check out, for example, the reactions of "the blessed" in Jesus' parable of the final judgment in Matthew 25:31-46. They were so operating in utter dependence on Christ in their daily lives on earth that when Jesus lauds them for their good works, they express unawareness of those works.)

This isn't to say that there aren't times when Christians don't have to say, "OK, Lord, this isn't something I want to do. But it's your will. So, I'll do it." (Even Jesus prayed that way in the garden of Gethsemane asking the Father to create some other means by which human beings could be reconciled to God. It turns out that there was no other way. So, Jesus accepted the cross and died for our sins.)

The thing God wills us to do may be to give money to provide housing for the homeless, speak out against prejudice, help a neighbor who gets on our nerves, forgive a family member who has hurt us, refrain from a sin that excites us, or tell a friend a hard truth about their sin and its consequences.

But as we consciously accept God's will for us in particular situations, God will build our faith, lift us by His grace, and fill us with His supernatural power to do the good of which we are, by nature, incapable on our own. God will help us to do good and righteous deeds that are otherwise foreign to those of us who are "born in sin" (Psalm 51:5).

Keep drawing closer to Christ and, however imperfectly or haltingly or infected with the inevitable mixed motives of human beings who haven't gotten to heaven yet you may act or feel or think, you will bear good fruit.

Acts 1-3: Christ's Church Begins (Read the New Testament in a Year Discussion, August 1, 2012)

As you may know by now, the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are in the midst of reading the New Testament together in a year's time. Each week, we have discussion groups that look at the week's readings.

Last night, we looked at Acts 1 to 3. One inaccuracy on my part from the discussion: I was asked if Sadducees still existed. I said yes and cited a picture I had seen recently of a Sadducee priest. That was incorrect. The picture I saw in Eerdman's Handbook to the Bible was of a Samaritan high priest. The Sadducees passed out of existence after the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The Jewish Virtual Library contains interesting and useful information on the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes here.

Among the primary sources of the information I present here are:

• Study through the years, especially what I learned about Luke under my professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein;  
• The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament by Craig Keener; 
• Acts, from the Interpretation Bible Commentary series, by William Willimon

"God works through us to meet the needs of those around us."

See here.

"Recall Notice"

If you don't click on another link today, please click on this one.

It may mean the difference between life and death.

And be sure to pass it on to someone else.

Listening in on an Apostle's Prayers

This is a rather faint and scratchy recording of this Saint Matthew's Chapel Holy Communion worship service, held at 8:30 this morning. The Bible lesson was Ephesians 3:14-21.

We Need Never Be Afraid

[This was prepared to be shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 6:1-21
Did you notice anything strange in the gospel lesson from John?

The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over! It’s an incredible miracle, a sign of His authority over the elements of the world, of His compassion for people, of Jesus being more than just a good man.

The last six verses recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. And it’s here that something that may seem strange to us happens. Or, more accurately, something that, after reading the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we might expect to happen, but isn’t mentioned.

Turn please to John 6:16-21. We’re told: “...when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum...it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.” (Just imagine being in a boat out on Lake Erie facing a wind like some of those we’ve been experiencing around here lately.) “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat and they were afraid. But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.”

Neither John nor Mark, in their gospels, mention that after Jesus identified Himself, Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really You, call to me and let me walk on the water to you.” Matthew tells us about this and about how, having taken a few steps, Peter looked at the wind and the waves and lost his faith in Jesus to do the impossible and began to sink into the waters.

Now, these differences in detail shouldn’t rock our worlds! Each of the gospel writers tells us about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in his own way, touching on particular themes. John even tells us that he leaves out some details. Turn to John 20:30-31. These words come toward the end of the gospel and they constitute John’s “mission statement,” his reason for writing his gospel. He says: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples; but these [that is, the one John recounts in his gospel] are written than you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

Keep those two verses tucked in your mind as we look at another detail surrounding Jesus walking on the water that John doesn’t include, but which both Matthew and Mark mention.

Look first at Matthew 14:32. It says: “And when they [Jesus and Peter] got into the boat, the wind ceased.”

Now, please go to Mark 6:51: “Then He [Jesus] went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.”

Matthew and Mark both say that the moment Jesus got into the boat, the wind stopped. That’s a pretty amazing occurrence, isn’t it, another sign that Jesus is Lord and God of the universe? Wouldn’t you think that John, who shows us signs of Jesus’ identity so that we can believe in Him and have the forgiveness of sins and new life only Jesus can give, would mention it?

But John doesn’t mention it. All He says is that the disciples rode the waves through the storm, saw Jesus walking on the water, and that their boat landed safely on the other side after Jesus climbed into the boat.

So, why doesn’t John tell us about the calm that came to the Sea of Galilee?

Maybe because it isn’t really important. In fact, my guess is that John deliberately left out the detail about the becalmed wind to make a point. What do I mean?

You know, if I dared to let you listen in when I have my time of personal prayer each day, one minute would not have passed before I would begin to blush in embarrassment. That’s because, on reflection I realize that, more often than I like, my prayers can be so childish, immature. I run into a problem here, a challenge there, and instead of asking God for guidance, or courage, or wisdom, or faith, I ask God to just take away the problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong: God is so compassionate, He’s even willing to hear us when we pray the most childish, even selfish, things. For God, the fact that we pray to Him is a lot more important than what we pray. The God we know in Jesus Christ is a great artist: Our imperfect prayer petitions are like ill-formed messes of clay offered up to God, which God can turn into masterpieces of His design. But when we’re going through storms in our lives, as unpleasant and hard and sad as the storms that may afflict us can be, our ultimate concern shouldn’t be whether Jesus takes the storms away or not, but whether we’re riding the storm out while following Jesus.

I’ve known some people whose lives were mostly spent in pleasant circumstances whose faith in Christ was destroyed by the smallest hint of adversity. But I’ve also known people who have endured more tragedy than most of us can imagine. The storms were fierce in their lives. Yet their faith in Jesus, their belief in His presence with them now and in His promise of eternity to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, actually was strengthened during their storms.

Nobody wants to experience adversity or pain in their lives. But God can use life’s storms to strengthen our faith in Christ.

In fact, if we pay attention to the experiences of believers like Job in the Old Testament or Paul in the New Testament, we see that, while Satan is the ultimate author of all evil in the world, sometimes God allows adverse experiences to befall us in order to teach us to rely more deeply on Him and less so on ourselves.

There’s a story told a goldsmith. He was explaining what it takes to refine a piece of gold to turn it into something beautiful and useful. It all has to be done at a precise temperature, he explained. And the timing has to be just so. “How,” someone asked, “do you know when the gold has reached perfection?” “That’s easy,” he said, “when I can see my reflection in it.”

In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a compassionate miracle worker. Each of us can name experiences either in our own lives or in the lives of others where we know that Christ has intervened  to give healing, strength, encouragement, or new starts in our personal lives, our jobs, our relationships.

But sometimes the winds still blow against us.

Sometimes things happen that we will not be able to understand or explain until, after our own deaths and resurrections, we see Jesus face to face.

In the meantime, God allows the circumstances of our lives to re-form our characters so that, one day, in eternity, when He looks at us, He will see Himself--His love, His perfection--reflected in us.

This is what John, the author of our gospel lesson, means when he writes to believers in Christ in another book of the New Testament: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus] is revealed [when we see Jesus on the Day of the Lord], we will be like Him...” 

One of the biggest misconceptions into which Christians can fall is the notion that being part of the Church is like being a member of a civic club. You know: You join, throw some money into the till, and get goods and services for which you pay. “Membership has its privileges.”

That’s not what being a member of Christ’s eternal fellowship, the Church, is about!

You see, Jesus Christ has already paid our membership dues for the Kingdom of God. He did that when He died on a cross, taking our punishment for sins, and rising from the dead to give life to those who turn from sin as the ultimate authority over their lives and instead, entrust their lives to Jesus as their only God, King, and Savior.

The privilege of being part of Christ’s Church is the privilege of being remade in the image of Christ as we daily surrender our lives and wills to Him.

The privilege of being a Christian is knowing that the God Who, out of His amazing grace, saves from sin and death those who believe in Jesus, isn’t in the business of just getting us out of the pain we encounter in this life. He's playing for much higher stakes! He’s reshaping our characters for eternity!

We still have storms in this life. The adverse, painful winds still rage in this fallen world. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, face persecution for their loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God.

But there are two other things that the last six verses of our gospel lesson should teach us.

The first is this: When they received Jesus into the boat, they landed safely on the shore. When we take Jesus into every experience of our lives, whatever adversities we face, we can know that He is with us. Nothing can separate us from Him.

And finally this: The translations of John 6:20 in most English versions of the Bible aren’t good. Our translation says that Jesus told the frightened disciples: “It is I; do not be afraid.” That rendering really misses the point of Jesus’ words. In the Greek in which John wrote, he quotes Jesus as saying, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am." It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The name was "Yahweh," the Hebrew for I AM.

When storms hit in life, as they inevitably do, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, as the other gospel writers affirm, but the only One Who can give us strength during the storm and life beyond the storm: God, the great I AM, Who took on flesh and died and rose to give new life to all who believe in Him, Jesus Christ!

We need never be afraid.

Mission Trip 2012 Video

From June 24 to 29, five youth and three adults from Saint Matthew participated in Group Workcamps' Week of Hope in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along with 58 other Christian youth and adults, we served others in Jesus' Name in Grand Rapids. We also worshiped together, prayed together, studied God's Word together, sweated a lot, and had tons of fun. We slept in sleeping bags on hard floors and church youth groups took turns fixing breakfasts and dinners and cleaning up the facility in which we stayed through the week, the church building of Zion Reformed Church in Grandville.

We had no idea before we left Logan, but when we arrived we learned that a group from Immanuel United Methodist Church, whose building is located just a few blocks from Saint Matthew's facilities, also were participants. It was great being in Grand Rapids with them!

Group Workcamps puts on lots of these camps across the country every year.

This video gives a flavor of what the week was like. The video portion was taken on my cell phone and the stills were taken by Week of Hope staffers.

Soul Man by Sam and Dave is the song to which one member of our group, along with friends from Logan, pantomimed during a talent show.

Get Down by Audio Adrenaline is a song with which we sang and danced during the programs each day. "Ev'rytime I'm down the Lord lifts me up, yeah!"

The theme of the week was Made and refers to Revelation 21:5, in which the risen and ascended Jesus proclaims, "See, I am making all things new!"

Audio of 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion (John 19 to 21)

The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio are reading the New Testament together in a year's time. On Wednesdays, participants who are interested gather for weekly discussion groups at either 11AM or 7PM. This is audio of this past Wednesday evening's discussion (July 25). We discussed John, chapters 19 through 21, an account of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.

A source from which I read here is Craig Keener's outstanding reference book, The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament.

During the discussion of John 21:11, I mentioned that my seminary professor, the late Pastor Bruce Schein, said that the 153 fish of the miraculous catch was "the perfect catch." I couldn't then remember why Schein had said this. But this is what he says in in his wonderful book, Following the Way: The Setting of John's Gospel:

"There are 153 fish in the net, a perfect catch fishermen would say--a third always goes to the boat, a third to fishermen, and a third to the provider of nets."

Ripley and the Underground Railroad

Ripley, Ohio is celebrating its bicentennial this coming week. An Ohio River town, Ripley was an important stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves seeking freedom from the pre-Civil War South. This release from the Ohio Historical Society has information not only on Ripley's planned celebrations, but also a few interesting looking books.

Welcome to Orwell's World: The Chick-fil-A Controversy

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy recently underscored his belief, based on both the Old and New Testament, including the words of Jesus Himself, that the covenant of marriage is between a man and a woman (a husband and a wife), period.

A firestorm of protest ensued. The mayors of both Boston and Chicago have said they would like Chick-fil-A not to operate in their cities.

But the last time I checked, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion still are guarantees in the United States. Mr. Cathy's exercise of those freedoms in no way threatens the freedoms of others.

Personally, I believe that his position is the correct one. I also believe in full civil rights for all people, including those who are gay and lesbian.

These are not mutually exclusive positions. Indeed, both spring from the same place: a belief in the God of love revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.

Christians have no interest in coercing others to agree with every facet of Biblical morality. Indeed, it's only when people are free to disobey the will of God that confessions of repentance for sin and faith in Christ have any meaning.

Out of love for God and others, my call as a Christian is to speak God's truth in love. Fully cognizant of my own sinfulness and utter dependence on Christ's grace for forgiveness and life with God, I don't pretend to be better than others. I don't think Dan Cathy pretended superiority either. Nor did he express "homophobia" or hatred in the statement he made on God's will for marriage.

The Christian is free from the enslavement of sin and death, but not at liberty to say that God is wrong in His revealed will for the human race. When God and we disagree on something, the Christian is bound to admit that God is right and we are wrong. God clearly does not approve of some things. Injustice, prejudice, thievery, deception, gossip, using His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and worship, and sex outside of marriage are some of those things that displease God. Not to earn God's love in Christ, but to express gratitude for it, Christians seek to align their lives with God's revealed will.

And the Christian who is grateful for the undeserved gifts of Christ's grace is commissioned to speak the truth that God has revealed: the truth about what is sin and the truth about the forgiveness of sin and new life that belongs to all who repent and entrust their lives to Christ.

People may not like to hear what we believe are God's revealed truths, but no one is threatened by their expression. And it is sloppy, Orwellian thinking to describe sentiments that spring from love as "hate speech."

But in the United States of 2012, the intolerance exhibited by the mayors of Boston and Chicago and those who agree with them are seen as tolerance, while Christians who accept the rights of others to engage in behaviors God reveals to be sinful, while having the temerity to underscore what they believe God teaches, are called intolerant. That is Orwellian.

Should This Be Filed Under, "No Surprise"?

JULY 24, 2012

Many Financial Pros Feel Pressure to Compromise Ethics

30% of financial services professionals say their compensation or bonus plans create pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law, according to a survey in the U.S. and UK conducted for the law firm Labaton Sucharow. 22% of female respondents say they'd face retaliation if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace, compared with 12% percent of male respondents.

Source: Professionals Feel Unethical Behavior May Be a Necessary Evil and Have Knowledge of Workplace Misconduct, According to Labaton Sucharow Survey

This came in today's Daily Stat from the Harvard Business Review. Maybe the only shocking thing about the findings is that such a small percentage of financial services professionals feel pressured to play fast and loose with ethics or the law.

If that seems cynical, I hasten to add that feeling the heat to cheat isn't itself unethical, criminal, or sinful.

When internalized, the pressure to cheat may be described with the Biblical term, temptation. Being tempted to sin isn't to do wrong.

And, if we're honest, we've all been tempted to do wrong.

That's part of being human.

 Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, experienced temptation, but unlike the rest of us, never sinned. Christ not only has conquered sin and death for those who repent for sin and believe in Him, He also understands what it's like to be tempted...to be human. Hebrews 4:15, in the New Testament, says, "[In Christ]...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin."

When faced with temptation, the God revealed to us in Christ can help us. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone," 1 Corinthians 10:13, also in the New Testament, says, "God is faithful and he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."

 Of course, if we don't want to avoid sin or successfully elude the temptation to do so, there is no help to be had from God. While God wants to help us, He won't force His help on us.

But, honestly, it's better to run away from sin (and all its consequences) into the arms of God than to run to sin. Take it from one who knows.

Shepherd for the Harassed and Helpless

Here's the somewhat scratchy and hard-to-hear audio of this past Sunday's 8:30 AM Chapel Holy Communion Service at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.

The Biblical text used is Mark 6:30-34, 53-56:

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
⁵³When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, ⁵⁵and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Barry Larkin Inducted Into Baseball Hall of Fame

Barry Larkin was a great hitting shortstop for my fave Cincinnati Reds for nineteen years. I am so glad that, yesterday, he was inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He had a true Hall of Fame career and is deserving.

Now, I hope that through the veterans committee, another Cincinnati shortstop, David Concepcion, will be admitted to the hall. Concepcion was the best shortstop of his era and deserves to be honored as a Hall of Famer.

3 Things to Remember

[This was shared this morning during the 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Ephesians 2:11-22
Our second Bible lesson for today, Ephesians 2:11-22, was written to a Gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christian community in the first century who lived in an area then called Asia Minor, which you and I know as Turkey.

But there is more than musty history to be found in these verses. In the midst of the demands and challenges of our everyday lives, these verses remind us to do three things:

• Remember who we were. 
• Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are. 
• Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are to be. 

Please go to our lesson, Ephesians 2:11-22.

Look first, please, at verses 11 to 13. We’re told, “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands—  that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

To understand this passage, we must remember a simple Biblical truth: God is the giver of life. Without a connection to God, we are dead, even if we have a strong pulse and heartbeat. We are dead in our sins and we face an eternity divorced from life and an earthly lifetime of futility and meaninglessness without connection to God.

While the Bible tells us that there have always been people who have believed there was a God and who sought Him in their own ways, God first disclosed Himself and His nature to a single people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jews. The Jews were called by God to be His own people.

God evidently had His reasons for focusing His attention and energy on one people.

For one thing, the Jews were meant to be “a light to the nations,” showing the whole world the glory of God.

For another, the Jewish people became a laboratory showing the whole world how God’s law, grace, and forgiveness work, what repentance and faith are all about.

What we see when we read the Old Testament’s account of God’s interactions with the Jewish people is that He is no different from the God we encounter in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus. (See here and here.)

Look at Genesis 15:6. God has promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a son and become the ancestors of nations. It’s an outlandish promise--almost as outlandish as promising eternal life to those who repent and believe in Christ. Abraham and Sarah were old, well beyond child-bearing or child-rearing years. Yet look at Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”

Now, flip back to Ephesians 2:8 and see the remarkably consistent way by which God brings salvation or righteousness to imperfect sinners like you and me: “For by grace [that’s God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

Verses 11 to 13 of our lesson tell us that the miracle of salvation, once a gift belonging only to the Jews now belongs to all who believe in Christ. As verse 13 says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

It used to be that only Jewish men who had been circumcised, along with their wives, daughters, and sisters, could claim to be God’s people, reconciled to God, one with God. Those who weren’t Jewish were aliens, foreigners, strangers to God. But God has brought all who believe in Jesus close to Himself.

It’s good though, to remember who we once were without Christ. It’s good to remember that, in spite of not being “members of the club” and in spite of our sin, Christ welcomes all who repent for sin and believe in Him with open arms.

Nobody I know is more critical of me than me. There are times when I get so angry at myself, thinking, “How many times do you have to commit the same sin before you learn your lesson? How many more times do you intend to disappoint God with your hard-headedness and hard-heartedness?” But then I go to God in prayer and I read His Word and I’m reminded of passages like Isaiah 1:18, where God says: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Or, Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

I remember who I once was: A sinner without hope. Through Christ, like all who believe in Him, I have been transformed: a forgiven sinner with an eternity of hope.

Look at the next section of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:14-18. It says: “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances [this refers to the Jewish ritual and civil laws, not to the moral laws, like the ten commandments, which still stand], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

I heard a man say of his son, “He came out of the womb, cigar in hand, barking out orders.” Truth is, we all came into the world that way, more or less. The Bible, in Psalm 139:14, tells us that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But, we also come equipped with an inheritance from our imperfect human parents: an insatiable commitment to having things our own way, a desire to “be like God.” King David speaks for us all in Psalm 51:5, when he writes: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

We are born at war with God. But Jesus Christ has come to make peace between God and us.

Peace with God is what Christ has come to give to us. But it’s a peace that can only be ours when we surrender to Christ!

Jesus wants us in His eternal kingdom. But we can’t get in if we insist on holding onto our sins, if we insist that our favorite violations of God’s will for human beings are “no big deal.”

To God, every sin--from taking His Name in vain to sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman, from murder to false witnessing (what we call gossiping)--every sin is an assault that disrupts and destroys the peace in which He wants His creation to live.

1 John 1:8-10 contains words familiar to most Lutheran Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us.”

The  peace of God comes to those honest enough to admit their sin and honest enough to own their need of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to change their lives. In Romans 5:1-2, the apostle Paul writes: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

In Christ, repentant believers in Jesus have peace with God and even with those who hate us.

I once read about a Lutheran pastor and psychologist doing graduate work in a major US city in the east. We’ll call him Bill. Bill began attending a local congregation and made himself known to the pastor. The pastor was happy to have Bill in the congregation and took Bill up on his offer to help in any ways he could. Bill saw a few congregants in counseling situations and occasionally led worship and preached.

As time went on, Bill became aware that, to some parishioners, the pastor seemed like an angry person whose venom was creating a lot of ill-will. Bill initially discounted it until one Sunday, just before a service at which Bill was to preach, the angry pastor lit into Bill, accusing him falsely of all sorts of maliciousness.

The service began and, silently, Bill begged God to help him get through it, knowing that the entire time the pastor was staring at him with searingly angry eyes. Bill says that God not only gave him peace internally, but also peace in his relationship with that pastor. He was eventually able to get the pastor to the help he needed for healing.

In Christ, God makes peace with you and if you will let Him, He promises that--in the words of Philippians 4:7--”the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Remember by grace through faith in Christ who you are right now: a person at peace with God and with others.

Look, please, at the final verses of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

After remembering who we were without Christ and who we are with Christ, Ephesians reminds of who we are becoming through Christ. Once foreigners to God, now members of God’s own household, confident of God’s love for us and His presence with us right now, we also have a lot to look forward to.

Through the witness of the apostles and the prophets found on the pages of our Bibles, God is building us up to be part of a temple, the very place God lives. And, as much as we may like our church buildings, it isn’t in brick, mortar, or plaster that God lives, but in people who dare to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “Christians don’t go to Church. They are the Church.”

And it’s this Church into which you and I are being built for all eternity. It’s the Church in which sin, death, grief, and futile toil will come to an end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes and we will live with joy and purpose alongside all who have trusted in the Name of Christ.

The world has brought sad and tragic news to our doorsteps this past week. This life is fragile and fleeting. But when we who trust in Jesus, remember who we were, who we are, and who our God is making us to be, we do not despair.

This morning, we thank God for Christ and we recommit ourselves to that commission which Christ has given to every follower of Jesus. Turn to that commission, please, in Matthew 28:19-20. The risen Jesus commands all who have been saved by His grace:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” 

God has given us His peace through Christ. Share that peace with others by sharing Christ with them. That’s the work to which you and I are called while on earth. May it be our way of life. Amen!

After Aurora: What the World Needs Most

As Alan Knox rightly points out, every Christian is called to "preach" the gospel. This fact is part of what it means to be a member of what Martin Luther called, "the priesthood of all believers."

And, given the frail and fleeting nature of life on this earth we have seen underscored in the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, every person on earth needs to hear the gospel.

And what is the gospel? It's "the good news" that Jesus receives sinful human beings who repent and believe in the power of His death and resurrection to transform them from enemies of God to God's friends for eternity. Jesus summed up how the gospel is activated in our lives in a short sermon found in the gospel of Mark:

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

By a sheer act of charity (what the Bible calls grace), God creates faith in Christ in those who are willing to believe and by that same grace, God counts our faith in Christ as rightness with God.

That's the power of the gospel we Christians ought to proclaim (preach) with love and consideration, without coercion or apology. Every Christian should be able to affirm with the apostle Paul:

"...I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith [in Christ], to the Jew first and also to the Greek [non-Jews or Gentiles]. For in it the righteousness [rightness] of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written [in the Old Testament book of Habakkuk], 'The one who is righteous will live by faith.'" (Romans 1:16-17)

More than ever, the world needs the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's the call of every Christian to pass it on!

Prayers and Thoughts for the Colorado Tragedy

Today, we need to be in prayer for all the victims of the Colorado movie theater tragedy.

From eleven years ago, here is a column I wrote for the Press Community newspapers in Cincinnati in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks that might have some relevance today: Four Things to Tell Children After 9/11. (One of the points made is so specific to the 9/11 attacks as to be irrelevant. But you can judge for yourself whether the other three points are helpful.)

Doubt in the Life of the Christian

Recently, talking with friends, one asked me if I ever doubted Jesus' resurrection or the resurrection from the dead that Jesus promises all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

I had to answer honestly that the resurrection isn't something I doubt.

The facticity of Jesus' resurrection is supported by another fact, it seems to me: That the very first followers of Jesus were emphatic that Christ's death and resurrection were central to their proclamation about Christ. Something like 500 people staked their lives on the claim that they had seen the resurrected Jesus.

There was nothing in it for them financially.

There was nothing in it for them socially or politically.

In fact, by insisting that, as Jesus had taught during His pre-crucifixion and pre-resurrection ministry, Jesus

• was born of a virgin, 
• was both fully God and fully human, 
• was sinless, 
• suffered and died for sinful humanity, and 
• was raised by God the Father in order to open a new, eternal relationship with God to all who died to self (repented) and entrusted their lives to Christ, 

the first Christians were putting their lives on the line.*

To confess all these things, was to subject themselves to ridicule, rejection, and persecution.

If they were all guilty of hysteria, you would have imagined that at some point in their lives--and some apparently lived a long while after Jesus' death and resurrection--the hysteria would have broken.

If they were involved in some financial conspiracy--and there is no record intimating that anywhere that I know of--that too, would have broken down.

In fact, if history, even recent history, shows us anything, it's that conspiracies almost inevitably break down, especially under the force of the kind of political and religious persecution to which Christians were subjected in the earliest years of the movement.

Of course, the weight of facts can't get you to faith. Faith comes to those able to say, "Lord, I don't understand it all. But I trust Jesus. I find Him credible. I want to turn away from a life without Christ and live with Him as the center of my life. I want to believe. Help me do that."

Faith, as I've said before, comes to those willing to believe.

But, that doesn't mean that doubts ever go completely away. We are human, after all.

For me, the doubts never revolve around Jesus' resurrection or His promise to raise me and all those who have believed in Him at "the last day."

Instead, the doubts that sometimes accost me revolve around today.

Despite a thirty-five year track record in which the risen and living Jesus has sustained, encouraged, and empowered me, I sometimes wonder whether He's going to sustain me in the next challenge.

The God I know in Jesus Christ has been so powerful in my life through the years and yet, when facing new challenges or hurdles, I wonder, "Are you with me, Jesus? Have you had enough of me?"

Just last week, I was facing a hurdle. I was feeling distant from Jesus.** But here's what happened: In prayer, I owned my feeling of distance with Jesus. The simple sharing of that reality in my life with Christ was the opening Jesus took to assure me of His presence and our intimacy.

Whatever our doubts about Christ or the new life He offers to those who surrender to Him, the antidote is always the same: To come to Him honestly. To surrender to Him again each day. When we do, we learn the truth of the New Testament when it tells us that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:31).

*And, by the way, recent studies indicate that the so-called diversity of Christianities of the early Church, in which it's supposed that the first followers of Christ had more diverse proclamations about Jesus than what are found in the New Testament, have proven false. The proclamation about Jesus clearly incorporated the above elements from the outset. Groups and documents claiming contrary things about many of the above points came later.

**It's important to remember that faith isn't contingent on our feelings or on our rationality. Christ is alive and the gracious Lord and refuge for sinners, whether, at any given moment, we don't feel or think those realities.

Foodie Alert: Calling All Arteries

7-11 stores in Singapore are serving up this delectable delight. But it can't be long before it will be clogging arteries in the good old USA, can it?

Black Women Among Most Religious in USA

Here.

Why Resist Evil?

[This is the sermon prepared for delivery at this morning's 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. You are invited to worship with us any time.]


Mark 6:14-29
With its account of John the Baptist’s execution, our gospel lesson from Mark for today is so laced with evil that it’s disturbing. I’d rather just close the Bible on this passage today and move on to Holy Communion.

But that’s no way to treat the Bible, God’s revealed Word. Second Timothy 3:16, in the New Testament, says that, “all scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” That’s true even of the disturbing parts.

And when I think of it, what I see in today’s Gospel lesson is a lot like what I see in life on Monday through Saturday. As wonderful as this life can be, there are things I would rather not face. These are the evils—like the inhumane things that human beings sometimes do to one another—that, when you learn of them, make you wonder, “How could this have happened? How can people be so cruel or sadistic?”

And I’m not talking just about murders or holocausts. I’m thinking also of the everyday evils, the cutting, harsh ways in which we all can diverge from the clear will of God to love God and love neighbor:

The husband or wife who ignores the spouse.

The parent who discourages a child.

The child who is disrespectful to the parent.

The customer who berates the clerk at the store.

None of us wants to be mistreated. Yet, often we can find ourselves subjecting others to the very disrespect or callous disregard that we hate to receive!

We all are sinners, of course. That’s the burden that the sinless Jesus came to take from us, the weight He took on His own shoulders on the cross so that all who repent for sin and trust in Him will have life with God forever.

As Christians, we’re called to do daily battle with our sin, which, if ignored, acts as a wall between God and us, between life and death.

We’re called to keep grabbing the strong, outstretched hand of Jesus Christ so that the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed by God’s powerful grace and deathless love.

That isn’t always as easy to do as it seems it should be.

You’ve heard me speak before about the frog in the kettle. A frog haplessly plopped himself into a kettle full of water that set on a stove top. Shortly after he got there, someone turned on the burner underneath the kettle. The frog, being a cold-blooded animal, adaptable to the world around him, didn’t realize he was being boiled to death.

Only insane people set out to be evil. Yet, like the frog in the kettle, sometimes people who should know better, are capable of evil, of cruelty to others. We allow our kettles--our environments, the world and the people around us--to dictate how we will act and react in everyday life. We adapt ourselves so well to the world around us that we boil ourselves in our own sin.

Herod Antipas was a man who should have known better than to fall into evil. He had been schooled in God’s will through a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. On top of that, Herod had good political reasons for avoiding evil: Though his family had no legitimate claim on the honor, they had for generations held themselves to be Israel’s royal family. It was so important to Herod Antipas to be seen as the “king of the Jews” that he had undertaken to build a new temple on Mount Zion, the same spot in Jerusalem where, a thousand years before, King Solomon had built the first temple. Both spiritual training and political common sense should have kept Herod from evil.

But our Gospel lesson for today tells us that Herod perpetrated a horrible evil: Ordering the execution of John the Baptizer, whose crime was speaking the Word of God.

How that happened, a story you know well, comprises most of the lesson. Please turn to it, Mark 6:14 to 29. The stotry comes in what the moviemakers would call a flashback. Herod gets reports about the miracle-working ministry of Jesus and is convinced that John, whose beheading he had ordered, has come back from the dead. The memory of his evil clearly haunted Herod.

We’re then told about the night Herod threw a birthday party for himself, how the daughter of his wife—the wife he had stolen from his brother--had danced for him, pleasing Herod a lot, how—probably a little more than drunk—Herod had promised the girl anything in exchange for the dance, how she had asked her mother what to ask for and was given the chilling reply (in verse 24), “The head of John the Baptist,” and how, in spite of what Herod knew to be right, he complied with the girl’s wish.

It was an act of evil equal to anything you might hear about tonight on the Eleven O’Clock News. But I believe that our gospel lesson can help us to avoid falling into evil ourselves.

It does this by helping us to see that evil happens, first of all, when we want what we want more than we want what God wants. Herod wanted his wife’s daughter. He let himself be led by his lust and not by God.

That sort of thing can happen to us, too.

It may not be lust that leads us.

It might be materialism or acceptance or even a competitive spirit grown out of right proportions.

A woman, upset with herself, once told me, “I don’t know what happens to me at work. It’s like I’m a different person. I say and do things to get by or get what I want that, a few years ago, I could never have imagined myself doing.”

This woman was a frog in a kettle and she didn’t know how to get out! She was being led by things other than God.

Evil also happens when we’re more concerned with how we appear than we are with who we are. Herod kept his vow to his wife's daughter because he didn’t want to seem like a welcher to his guests. He didn't want to seem incapable of or unwilling to keep his word. He let the opinions of others lead him into evil.

Years ago, a pastor I know taught me a valuable lesson. One week, he made a mistake, one that the congregation needn’t have known about, not a sin, but a failure to make a deadline which cost the church some money. The first thing that pastor did the following Sunday morning during the announcements was stand up and apologize. If he had worried about appearances, he wouldn’t have said a word. But he was willing to admit his imperfections and gained credibility for it.

Evil also happens when we ignore the Word of God. Herod, in spite of the judgment against his actions he could hear in John’s preaching, liked to listen to John. He knew that John’s words were from God. Yet, at his birthday party, Herod turned a deaf ear to God’s Word and he ordered the execution of a man whose crime had been clearly speaking God’s Word.

It’s clear that to avoid evil, we need to:

• keep God’s will foremost in our priorities, 
• be focused on our character than our status, and 
• remain attentive to God’s Word. 

It’s by these means that the God we know in Jesus Christ can free us from the push to selfishness and evil that exists within us and around us.

But that still leaves us with a question: What’s in it for us? At the end of our Gospel lesson, after all, Herod was still alive, still on his throne, and John’s body was taken away by his disciples for burial. Herod had caved into evil. John had remained faithful to God. So, does it really pay off for us to resist evil?

Of course, there’s the obvious answer to that question: Those who faithfully seek to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ will, in spite of our sins and failings, spend eternity with God. Jesus promises: “the one who endures to the end will be saved” from sin, death, and separation from God.

But there are more immediate rewards for those who commit themselves to keeping hold of Christ’s hand and resisting the temptation to sin. They’re mentioned in our lesson from Ephesians for today. We’re given, we’re told “every spiritual blessing.” Herod went to bed on the night he killed John the Baptizer knowing that he had done evil and that barring a renewal of his relationship with God, on a collision course with hell.

Unlike Herod Antipas, John the Baptist lived and died with the certainty that, even in the midst of things he couldn’t and didn’t fully understand, in resisting evil, in seeking to follow God faithfully, he had a Lord, a Friend, and an Advocate Who would never desert him, not even at the gates of death. Who, do you suppose, died a happier man: Herod Antipas or John the Baptist?

Sometimes, people ask me, “Where is God?” The simple truth is that God is present for all who want God around. God is present for all who call on the Name of Jesus Christ. If you want Jesus in your life, you can find Him in the Word of God, in prayers in Jesus’ Name, in the fellowship of the Church, in the Sacraments, in the neighbor you’re called to serve and share the gospel with each day.

And having Jesus Christ at the center of our lives makes all the difference in this life and in the one to come. And, finally, gloriously, eternally, joyfully, having Jesus Christ at the center of your life makes resisting evil worth all the trouble it can bring to our lives. Amen

Turning a Deaf Ear to God's Word (from the Pastor's Cutting Room Floor)

This didn't make it into tomorrow's sermon. But I thought that I'd share it here:

When we turn a deaf ear to God’s Word, ignoring either God’s Law or God’s promise as revealed in the Old and New Testaments, it’s like driving another nail into Jesus’ scarred flesh all over again.

It’s like joining the Good Friday conspirators who thought that by killing Jesus, they could throw off the lordship of God and, like Adam and Eve at the dawn of human history, make their play to “be like God.”

This comes through clearly in a passage in the New Testament, Acts 9:4. A man named Saul had been deputized to seek out Jews who were following Jesus and bring them back to Jerusalem, bound as prisoners. On his way to Damascus, Saul (who would later become Paul, a great preacher of faith in Jesus) encounters the risen and ascended Jesus, Who asks, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Whenever we turn our backs on the Word of God as revealed in the Bible, we persecute Jesus and distance ourselves from Him.

God forbid that we should do that! God forbid that we should turn our backs on the One Who says, "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30) and "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know My Father also" (John 14:6-7).

Wednesday Evening's 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion at Saint Matthew

This is our oft-interrupted discussion of John 8 through 11 in 'Read the New Testament in a Year,
from the evening of July 11.

The Power That Can Only Be Experienced by the Weak

[This was prepared for delivery during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, earlier this morning. But then, I forgot to bring the sermon with me and had to wing it.]

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
You and I will be telling stories about the hurricane-force winds and resultant Power Outage of 2012 for a long time to come. After our power came back for the second time on Thursday, Ann and I reminded each other not to get too used to the comfort; the power could go again.

That skepticism or wariness is warranted. Human beings and human technology aren't all-powerful. Our best laid plans and most thorough preparations can--and often are--upended by life.

But I wonder: Do we ever entertain similar skepticism or wariness about the power of Jesus Christ?

Skepticism about Jesus’ power and the good it does in the lives of those who believe in Jesus is nothing new, even sometimes among those who know Jesus well.

In our gospel lesson for today, Mark 6:1-13, Jesus, Who in the previous five chapters of Mark’s gospel is recorded to have done many miracles and signs, could do no deeds of power because of the skepticism and unbelief of the people in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.

And underscoring this theme, all four of the gospels say that after Jesus, God in the flesh, had died on the cross, His closest followers doubted that God had the power to do what Jesus had said He would: raise Jesus from the dead so that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus can have eternal life with God.

Even today, although Christ’s resurrection is an accomplished fact, people who bear Christ’s Name go through times when they doubt Christ’s power.

In our second Bible lesson, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, the apostle Paul, the first century evangelist, is dealing with Christians who are skeptical about Christ’s power, hankering for what I call happy-talk preachers who promise that following Jesus will mean that their lives in this world will be peaches and cream.

You see, shortly before Paul wrote to the Christian community in the Greek city of Corinth, the Corinthian church had been wowed by some preachers who convinced them that if the power of the God made known to the world through Jesus was really working in them, then their lives would be problem-free. They would have success, victories, and no illness.

Now, it is true that Christ gives His Church, among other ministries, the power to bring God’s help to people, including, sometimes, healing.

But no physical healing lasts indefinitely. This world is imperfect and, unless you and I are among those Christians living on earth when Jesus returns, death will come to us all. There’s no way around that.

“So, where is the power of God and what good is the power of God in your preaching?” the Corinthians asked Paul.

Their questions were pointed because, unlike the preachers who had wowed them, Paul was a less than impressive figure. By this time, about 56AD, Paul was deep into his forties or early fifties, slight, balding, a poor and rambling speaker who scratched together what little income he made by making tents.

His career as a Christian preacher wasn’t notable for what the world would call successes. In the course of his work, he’d been arrested and flogged, shipwrecked and beaten, mocked, chased out of several towns, and jailed. Most people in that time would probably have looked at Paul and seen a big “L” for “loser” on his forehead.

But by the time we get to the point in the letter to the Corinthian Christians that makes up our second lesson, this loser Paul has a message for these people who question the authenticity of his message about Jesus Christ and his authority to share it.

Wary of being a braggart, Paul starts out by using the third person to tell about a personal experience he’d had of the power of God fourteen years earlier.

Paul says, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— 4 how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words.”

Paul had an experience of heaven that the preachers who had impressed the Corinthian Christians might not have been able to even imagine.

But, Paul says, that experience, as awesome as it was, did not prove Jesus’ power over sin and death and it didn’t prove Paul’s authority to tell others about Jesus.

God's power, Paul shows us, is most readily seen in ways the world might not call flashy, but in two other ways.

The first is in God's grace.

The second is in our weakness.

Grace is God’s charity, God’s willingness to accept the repentant who entrust their sins and their entire lives to Christ. Grace doesn’t paper over or ignore our sins. But it welcomes those who are willing to turn from sin and believe in Christ into eternal fellowship with God.

God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before we have life with Him. Life with Him is a free gift for all who have faith in Christ.

The super apostles who had wowed the Corinthian Christians said that, “If there’s something wrong in your life—some illness, adversity, heartbreak, poverty, or struggle—it proves that you’re faithless.”

You still hear people saying things like this today. Some of them have TV shows and multimillion dollar ministries and books on the best seller lists. They don’t understand grace!

Having the grace of God that comes only from Jesus Christ in our lives doesn’t mean that our lives will be perfect; it means, rather, that we will still have God’s grace even when things aren’t perfect!

In verse 7 of our lesson (take a look at it), Paul says that to keep him from being too elated by his heavenly vision, God had allowed Satan to afflict Paul with a “thorn in the flesh.”

We have no idea what Paul's thorn in the flesh was. It may have been an illness, an incessant temptation, a psychological disturbance, a relationship problem, a lack of money. We don’t know.

But three times, Paul says, he had asked God in prayer to remove the thorn. And three times the answer came back (look, Paul records it in verse 9), “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” God refused to bring Paul the relief Paul sought, telling Paul that His grace was all Paul really needed.

Everybody here this morning knows what it is to experience thorns in the flesh. They’re the problems and heartaches that bedevil us and seem never to go completely away. They drive us to our knees and there, before God, we learn that all of the things we thought we needed—health, money, connections, the big house, the respect of others—are nice, but they're not what we need the most.

What we really need is the life-giving grace of God given through Jesus Christ. God's tough, incessant, faithful grace is the first thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ.

This leads to the second thing that proves the power of Jesus Christ: our weakness.

Listen: God gives those humble enough to admit their weakness the strength they need for living.

Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You were with a loved one as they were dying and you knew that on your own, you couldn’t do all that you needed to do, but, with God’s help, you did it.

You had to undergo one more round of medical treatments, one more battery of tests, and you knew that you just couldn’t take it, but with Jesus by your side, you did.

In order to graduate or be certified, you had to pass a class for which you knew you had no talent or ability and, after prayer in Jesus’ Name, God helped you study and to learn what you needed to learn to pass.

To pay your bills, you had to work double shifts for which you knew you didn’t have the energy, yet God’s Spirit filled you with the needed energy.

In each case, you called out to the God we know in Jesus Christ and confessed, “Lord, I can’t.” And in each case, God told you, “I know that you can’t. But I can! Lean on me."

God has more than enough grace to help us and it only comes to those weak enough to admit that they need the crucified and risen Jesus.

This was exactly what Paul experienced when he had asked God to remove the unidentified thorn in his flesh. “I’m not taking this adversity away,” God told Paul. “You’re going to have to go through it, leaning on my grace.”

Why?

Because, God says in verse 9: “...My grace is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s power is experienced only by people who admit that they’re powerless without Jesus Christ.

We’re powerless when, by ourselves, we try to make sound decisions, make our relationships work, be happy, deal with our sins, or face life and death.

But when we own our weakness and seek Christ’s help, we can face anything.

God’s power surges into us.

That’s what Paul means when he writes in verse 10: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

“I didn’t know if I could ever be happy again,” a woman told me years after her husband had died. There were dark days, pain interspersed with lifeless numbness. But there were things to be done—children to be raised, bills to be paid, errands to be run. “I was sure that I just couldn’t do it,” she said. But in the midst of it all, she prayed and learned what Paul underscores in today’s lesson.

Through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates His power by giving grace to the needy—and that’s all of us—and strength to the weak—that, too, is all of us.

If you’re feeling weak or powerless today, that’s a great sign!

It means you’re seeing life clearly.

You’re ready to give up on relying on yourself and start depending on Jesus Christ alone.

The Lord does not help those who help themselves; the Lord helps those who admit that they need the Lord’s help.

Call out to the God we meet in the crucified and risen Jesus and let God the Holy Spirit fill you with strength you can’t generate on your own.

Life in this world will not always make sense nor does God promise us that it will be easy. But He does promise to help us do all things when we place the full weight of our lives on the shoulders of Jesus Christ alone! Our strong God stands at the ready to give you grace and strength in all circumstances.

Unlike AEP, God’s power never gives out. And, if you let Him, God will see you through whatever you may face, all the way to eternity. Amen