Most of yesterday here, the sky was drab and we had rain. But just before sundown, the sun made itself known, bouncing beams off of dark clouds. Even the trees, their leaves turning, seemed to be set on fire by heaven. (Click to enlarge.)
Saturday, October 04, 2014
On a Fall Walk
Most of yesterday here, the sky was drab and we had rain. But just before sundown, the sun made itself known, bouncing beams off of dark clouds. Even the trees, their leaves turning, seemed to be set on fire by heaven. (Click to enlarge.)
'4 Reasons Christians Must Reject Islamophobia'
It's for the sake of love of God and neighbor and the mission of the Church. Read the whole thing.
John Mellencamp Meets Doctor Who Saved His Life 62 Years Ago
As a result, he says, he is "trying to have faith in something." Good idea.
If you'd like a suggestion as to what...or Who...to have faith in, John, I'd love to talk with you.
If you'd like a suggestion as to what...or Who...to have faith in, John, I'd love to talk with you.
Friday, October 03, 2014
Library of Congress Restoration of 1924 World Series Film is Beautiful
It's the same great game I enjoy today.
By the way, President Calvin and wife Grace Coolidge were big baseball fans. There's a fantastic display of the couple's baseball memorabilia at the president's boyhood home in Vermont. Coolidge attended the deciding game seen in the film.
The old Washington Senators, not to be confused with the later Washington Senators, who later became the Texas Rangers (or the current Washington Nationals, who used to be the Montreal Expos), won the Series in '24.
By the way, President Calvin and wife Grace Coolidge were big baseball fans. There's a fantastic display of the couple's baseball memorabilia at the president's boyhood home in Vermont. Coolidge attended the deciding game seen in the film.
The old Washington Senators, not to be confused with the later Washington Senators, who later became the Texas Rangers (or the current Washington Nationals, who used to be the Montreal Expos), won the Series in '24.
Thursday, October 02, 2014
This Is How Bad Things Are at the School Up North
At a recent rally on the campus of a school in Ann Arbor calling for the resignation of the athletic director, a law student wore Ohio State attire. He said until Dave Brandon is fired, he will not wear maize and blue.
The protests, it should be said, were not as much about the performance of the football team on the field, as about its handling of the concussion of a quarterback during Michigan's loss to Minnesota this past Saturday.
ESPN analyst and one-time OSU QB Kirk Herbstreit said on this morning's Mike and Mike radio show that he thought that some of the criticism falling on head coach Brady Hoke for allowing his QB to re-enter the game after sustaining a concussion, was unfair. He explained that on football sidelines, head coaches are dependent on training and medical staff to tap him on the shoulder and inform him that Player X can't return to the game. Herbtreit says that what happened on Saturday is the fault of the medical staff and of the university itself.
I don't know about that. But I do know that all of this is catching Hoke and his program in a perfect storm. At a moment when we're all growing increasingly concerned about the high incidence of life-altering head injuries in football and when the football program appears to be in an ongoing tailspin on the scoreboard, Hoke and his staff must feel like they're trying to wrestle alligators and shake hands with an octopus at the same time.
The more important issue...more important than winning and more important than saving the revenue stream of college athletics or the jobs of coaches and athletic directors...is first, finding out what happened during the Minnesota-Michigan football game. Who dropped the ball when considering the safety and health of a young man who, even on the field, evidenced not doing well after taking a hit on the chin at the end of a play? Who looked at him? Who certified that he was good to go back into the game and why? What policies need to be in place in such instances?
Secondly, and more broadly, we all need to know what can be done to make football a safer game?
The protests, it should be said, were not as much about the performance of the football team on the field, as about its handling of the concussion of a quarterback during Michigan's loss to Minnesota this past Saturday.
ESPN analyst and one-time OSU QB Kirk Herbstreit said on this morning's Mike and Mike radio show that he thought that some of the criticism falling on head coach Brady Hoke for allowing his QB to re-enter the game after sustaining a concussion, was unfair. He explained that on football sidelines, head coaches are dependent on training and medical staff to tap him on the shoulder and inform him that Player X can't return to the game. Herbtreit says that what happened on Saturday is the fault of the medical staff and of the university itself.
I don't know about that. But I do know that all of this is catching Hoke and his program in a perfect storm. At a moment when we're all growing increasingly concerned about the high incidence of life-altering head injuries in football and when the football program appears to be in an ongoing tailspin on the scoreboard, Hoke and his staff must feel like they're trying to wrestle alligators and shake hands with an octopus at the same time.
The more important issue...more important than winning and more important than saving the revenue stream of college athletics or the jobs of coaches and athletic directors...is first, finding out what happened during the Minnesota-Michigan football game. Who dropped the ball when considering the safety and health of a young man who, even on the field, evidenced not doing well after taking a hit on the chin at the end of a play? Who looked at him? Who certified that he was good to go back into the game and why? What policies need to be in place in such instances?
Secondly, and more broadly, we all need to know what can be done to make football a safer game?
TSUN law student wears #OhioState gear; won’t wear UM stuff until AD Brandon's fired http://t.co/YlpdPfVPN6. #GoBucks pic.twitter.com/4zym4X1QLu
— Buckeye Fans Only (@buckeyefansonly) September 30, 2014
Ickey Shuffles Again
OK, so it made its first appearance on TV on September 4, but I saw Ickey Wood's Geico commercial for the first time this morning while watching Sports Center on ESPN. The retired Bengals player does the Ickey Shuffle. Only this time, it isn't to celebrate scoring another TD as in his playing days, but after his number is called next in a super market deli department. Love it.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Give In by Lecrae
With help from Crystal Nicole on this love song of surrender to Christ from Lecrae's newest, Anomaly. Another lyric video.
Call Me Back Again by Paul McCartney and Wings
Always have loved this song from the early 70s and, just a few days ago, Paul McCartney's MPL Communications issued this fun lyric video for it.
By the way, I wondered about the telephone number in the video:
By the way, I wondered about the telephone number in the video:
Eagle-eyed fans may notice and wonder about the number on the phone in the video. It has now been disconnected but had you called GAR 6922 a few years back you would have reached the McCartney residence, it being the family's home number when Paul was growing up.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Where Real Pain and Real Pleasure Lead Us
"A heart that is broken is a heart that is open" (U2, Cedarwoode Road)
"One day you're waiting for the sky to fall,
"The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all" (Bruce Cockburn, Lovers in a Dangerous Time)
Through lots of my years, I've sought to live a placid life. I don't suppose that's so different from most people. We all want, in the words of another song, this one Paul McCartney's Too Much Rain, "a happy and peaceful life."
But I realize that much of the placid life I sought was actually a lifeless life.
I tried to avoid confrontation, often when it would have been best to take it on, because I didn't want upleasantness.
I held most people at arm's length, despite a surface friendliness, because, after all, I could be moving on and goodbyes to those you really care about hurt. Besides, some people turn on you and cause you pain.
I would even avoid things of great beauty for the grief I projected they would someday bring me when they were no longer there. ("You're gonna make me lonesome when you go," Dylan sang in his 1974 song.)
What I have come to realize--what I am still coming to realize--is that while a person may achieve a stale, lifeless placidity by staying away from the pains and pleasures of human existence, there is less of life, less of love, and less of God in a life of avoidance.
In his book, The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction that purports to be the correspondence of a senior tempter with a junior tempter, C.S. Lewis has his evil protagonist advise his charge to keep his patient--the human being the junior tempter is trying to dislodge from relationship with God--from experiencing any real pain or real pleasure.
Real pleasure only comes from God.
It's God Who created the gift of sex, for example. It can bring authentic pleasure to men and women committed to one another and respectful of one another: physical pleasure, emotional pleasure, a sense of being loved and accepted no matter what the rest of the world may think or say.
It's God Who created the gifts of food and taste. It's a wonderful pleasure to bite into an apple and taste its sweet tang, feel the crunch of of the fruit in your teeth. And it's good for us.
But pleasures like these can be marred by misuse or overuse or abuse.
Sex can be seen as an end in itself that doesn't bring the whole package of pleasure God intended it to bring.
Food can be candied and processed and perverted and overeaten, an object that results not in pleasure but dullness, addiction, and obesity.
Lewis' devil concedes that only God can create real pleasure and that hell has found no way to replicate it in its pure form.
Real pain, on the other hand, comes from really living in the depths of life.
There are some who manufacture faux pain in order to call attention to themselves or to invest their lives with drama that makes them feel as though they're living. ("Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive," Carly Simon sang in Haven't Got Time for the Pain.)
We live surrounded by such people: drama queens and drama kings. They parcel out gossip to make themselves seem important. They're people who are, if not in the center of some drama, real or imagined, in the know about it.
They crow about the offenses, real and imagined, perpetrated against them on Facebook, at the water cooler, in the packed dockets of courts, and in church fellowship halls.
But contact with real pain, a real consequence of this world's enslavement to sin, death, and darkness, is very different than contact with fake pain: The news that we've had a major heart attack, when we receive a diagnosis of cancer, when a loved one dies, when a friend deserts us, being physically abused, being persecuted. Those are occasions of real pain.
Real pleasure and real pain can have the same effect on us though, says Lewis. They can bring us back to reality, out of our dream worlds, away from our selfish attempts to insulate ourselves from reality, to deny our mortality, our finitude, and our need for the God Who made us and Who came to our world to save us from sin, death, and darkness and to give us the life with Him for which we were made.
In Psalm 8, King David sings: "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens." Pleasure in looking at the skies, which are only part of God's creation, led David to the truth that this amazing universe has a creator and He is to be praised. (I find myself looking at and taking pictures of the skies all the time these days.)
Then, David, considering God's goodness, is led later in the psalm to wonder: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"
Real pleasure often leads people to praise, even those who may not consider themselves especially religious. In his 1971 song, Duncan, Paul Simon has the lead character sing, "I was playing my guitar/Lying underneath the stars/Just thanking the Lord/For my fingers."
Praise, I believe, in fact, is the truest, most real thing that human beings can ever engage in because through it, we acknowledge the fundamental truth of the universe: God is God and I'm not and that's good.
Real pain too, will lead us into the precincts of real truth--and the author of truth, the One Who is truth Himself. This, as we've mentioned here many times before, was the experience of a first century Christian named Paul. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the many wonderful things God had shown him. But, he said, to keep him from getting too full of himself for being so blessed, God had allowed an unidentified thorn in the flesh to remain in his life. Paul asked for its removal three times. But God had told him no, "My grace is sufficient." "I'm all you need," God is telling Paul. "Your real pain will pass one day. But I love and am with you now. That's enough. Life with me is all there is of reality, now through the fog of pain and death, but one day in eternity, in its fullness and beauty and peace."
So long as we live in this world, we will be susceptible to real pain and real pleasure. We can't pretend they're not there. But I'm convinced that it's only in the midst of them that we can become either grateful enough or desperate enough to know God and experience His presence in our lives. Real pleasure and real pain break us open to His grace and love, if we will open the door from our sides. The risen Jesus says in Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."
Real pleasure and pain usher me into reality and truth, the place where I can most clearly see and know God.
That's because neither real pleasure nor real pain leave me feeling that I am in control.
And that's good, because, despite my efforts to create a false placidity, I never was in control in the first place.
"One day you're waiting for the sky to fall,
"The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all" (Bruce Cockburn, Lovers in a Dangerous Time)
Through lots of my years, I've sought to live a placid life. I don't suppose that's so different from most people. We all want, in the words of another song, this one Paul McCartney's Too Much Rain, "a happy and peaceful life."
But I realize that much of the placid life I sought was actually a lifeless life.
I tried to avoid confrontation, often when it would have been best to take it on, because I didn't want upleasantness.
I held most people at arm's length, despite a surface friendliness, because, after all, I could be moving on and goodbyes to those you really care about hurt. Besides, some people turn on you and cause you pain.
I would even avoid things of great beauty for the grief I projected they would someday bring me when they were no longer there. ("You're gonna make me lonesome when you go," Dylan sang in his 1974 song.)
What I have come to realize--what I am still coming to realize--is that while a person may achieve a stale, lifeless placidity by staying away from the pains and pleasures of human existence, there is less of life, less of love, and less of God in a life of avoidance.
In his book, The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction that purports to be the correspondence of a senior tempter with a junior tempter, C.S. Lewis has his evil protagonist advise his charge to keep his patient--the human being the junior tempter is trying to dislodge from relationship with God--from experiencing any real pain or real pleasure.
Real pleasure only comes from God.
It's God Who created the gift of sex, for example. It can bring authentic pleasure to men and women committed to one another and respectful of one another: physical pleasure, emotional pleasure, a sense of being loved and accepted no matter what the rest of the world may think or say.
It's God Who created the gifts of food and taste. It's a wonderful pleasure to bite into an apple and taste its sweet tang, feel the crunch of of the fruit in your teeth. And it's good for us.
But pleasures like these can be marred by misuse or overuse or abuse.
Sex can be seen as an end in itself that doesn't bring the whole package of pleasure God intended it to bring.
Food can be candied and processed and perverted and overeaten, an object that results not in pleasure but dullness, addiction, and obesity.
Lewis' devil concedes that only God can create real pleasure and that hell has found no way to replicate it in its pure form.
Real pain, on the other hand, comes from really living in the depths of life.
There are some who manufacture faux pain in order to call attention to themselves or to invest their lives with drama that makes them feel as though they're living. ("Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive," Carly Simon sang in Haven't Got Time for the Pain.)
We live surrounded by such people: drama queens and drama kings. They parcel out gossip to make themselves seem important. They're people who are, if not in the center of some drama, real or imagined, in the know about it.
They crow about the offenses, real and imagined, perpetrated against them on Facebook, at the water cooler, in the packed dockets of courts, and in church fellowship halls.
But contact with real pain, a real consequence of this world's enslavement to sin, death, and darkness, is very different than contact with fake pain: The news that we've had a major heart attack, when we receive a diagnosis of cancer, when a loved one dies, when a friend deserts us, being physically abused, being persecuted. Those are occasions of real pain.
Real pleasure and real pain can have the same effect on us though, says Lewis. They can bring us back to reality, out of our dream worlds, away from our selfish attempts to insulate ourselves from reality, to deny our mortality, our finitude, and our need for the God Who made us and Who came to our world to save us from sin, death, and darkness and to give us the life with Him for which we were made.
In Psalm 8, King David sings: "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens." Pleasure in looking at the skies, which are only part of God's creation, led David to the truth that this amazing universe has a creator and He is to be praised. (I find myself looking at and taking pictures of the skies all the time these days.)
Then, David, considering God's goodness, is led later in the psalm to wonder: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"
Real pleasure often leads people to praise, even those who may not consider themselves especially religious. In his 1971 song, Duncan, Paul Simon has the lead character sing, "I was playing my guitar/Lying underneath the stars/Just thanking the Lord/For my fingers."
Praise, I believe, in fact, is the truest, most real thing that human beings can ever engage in because through it, we acknowledge the fundamental truth of the universe: God is God and I'm not and that's good.
Real pain too, will lead us into the precincts of real truth--and the author of truth, the One Who is truth Himself. This, as we've mentioned here many times before, was the experience of a first century Christian named Paul. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the many wonderful things God had shown him. But, he said, to keep him from getting too full of himself for being so blessed, God had allowed an unidentified thorn in the flesh to remain in his life. Paul asked for its removal three times. But God had told him no, "My grace is sufficient." "I'm all you need," God is telling Paul. "Your real pain will pass one day. But I love and am with you now. That's enough. Life with me is all there is of reality, now through the fog of pain and death, but one day in eternity, in its fullness and beauty and peace."
So long as we live in this world, we will be susceptible to real pain and real pleasure. We can't pretend they're not there. But I'm convinced that it's only in the midst of them that we can become either grateful enough or desperate enough to know God and experience His presence in our lives. Real pleasure and real pain break us open to His grace and love, if we will open the door from our sides. The risen Jesus says in Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."
Real pleasure and pain usher me into reality and truth, the place where I can most clearly see and know God.
That's because neither real pleasure nor real pain leave me feeling that I am in control.
And that's good, because, despite my efforts to create a false placidity, I never was in control in the first place.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Gratefully taking a place in the ranks of a forgiven murderer and adulterer...
...a coward, a persecutor of Christians, and a slave trader. Thank God that by His grace through faith in Christ, I'm in special company. You can be too.
'Left Behind' 'Theology' Isn't the Bible's Theology
With the release of a new movie version of Left Behind, it's important that Christians not get raptured from reality. The entire idea of "rapture" and of Christ returning three times, notions that have only been around for about two-hundred years, is un-Biblical:
When Paul refers to some being “caught up” (1 Thessalonians 4:17) he's not referring to a rapture which will precede a time of tribulation in the modern world: He is giving his audience hope in the midst of persecution and death and reminding them of the hope that all Christians share, that Christ will come again (just not again and then again!) When Jesus speaks of “one being taken” (Matthew 24:40) he is not referencing how Christians all across the world will escape from a period of trial; rather, he is referencing the Genesis flood story (vv 37-40) and, as the context makes clear, being “taken away” is actually unfortunate, as it is the one who is “taken away” that faces judgment.Read the whole thing.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Seeing What God Can Do
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, earlier today.]
Matthew 21:23-32
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen tells about receiving a telephone call one day at his office from a woman he’d never met. She was a member of a nearby church and wondered if she could share something with Stoffregen and get his opinion. For years, she’d been active in her church, she explained. Her husband hadn’t. In fact, he’d had little use for Christian faith.
Then, not long before the telephone conversation, the man lost his arm in a work-related accident. His life was actually endangered for a time. While at the hospital, the husband had an encounter with God. God gave him a choice to either remain on the earth, a choice that would impose pain, rehabilitation, relearning basic life skills, and numerous adjustments, or to leave the earth. He decided to stay. His encounter with God changed this man’s ideas about God, about Christ, about the Church, and about having life with God.
Now, this woman explained to Stoffregen, not long before the accident, she had felt led to tell her husband, for reasons she couldn’t explain: “When you see my mother [who was dead], don't go with her." Like her husband, this woman’s life and faith had been, as you can imagine, changed by what God had done and was doing in her husband’s life. But there was a problem.
It turned out that the people at church, even some of her closest friends, didn’t believe that the woman’s husband had really encountered God. They didn’t accept his change of heart. They refused to accept that God had really worked in this man’s life. "God wouldn't do something like that for someone who didn't believe in Jesus," some seemed to tell her. Or, "It must have been the devil speaking to him."
Here were people who regularly confessed that they believed that, in Jesus Christ and the faith in Christ created within them by the power of the Holy Spirit, God had saved them from their sins by His grace alone. Yet now, they refused to believe that God had worked a transformation in someone who, though he had probably heard the Gospel of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, had always lived apart from God. They refused to accept the evidence of what Christ had accomplished in the man and dismissed it all as a sham.
What can you say about people like these? That they were self-righteous, for sure. And I think that there’s good reason to suspect that they didn’t really believe in the gracious God they claimed had saved them.
Jesus encountered people like this in today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32. They refused to acknowledge what God was doing in Jesus‘ ministry, just as they had refused to acknowledge what had happened in the ministry of John the Baptist. Notorious sinners turned from their sin, leaving their sinful life practices behind--things like sexual intimacy outside of marriage and extorting money from others, and, instead, following God with faith and submission. The religious leaders couldn’t accept that God’s hand was in it.
The Gospel lesson, I think, is an important antidote for Christians to take regularly, for the simple reason that, after awhile, if we’re not careful, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves will snooker us into believing that our faith and our salvation result from our intrinsic goodness.
Jesus says in Matthew 9:13: “...I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." In truth, saving faith in Christ only comes to those who recognize that they’re sinners in constant and desperate need of the Savior God sent into the world to free them from sin and death for all eternity.
If we ever fall into the trap of thinking God is fortunate to have such good people like us on His side, we need to fall to our knees in repentance and ask God for trust in Christ’s perfect righteousness over against our prideful smugness.
Paul writes in Romans 3:28: “For we maintain that a person is justified [that is made righteous] by faith...” and not by their supposed merits. We need always to remind ourselves and each other of this truth.
Turn to our Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32, please. Just a little background is needed.
Previously in Matthew, chapter 21, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
He then threw the moneychangers out of the temple for turning God’s house into a place of extortionist commerce.
Jesus also healed the blind and lame in the temple that same day, signs of His being more than just a true man, but also true God. He also upheld the truth of what children were saying about him.
That night, on the way to Bethany where He would sleep, Jesus saw a fig tree that wasn’t producing fruit. And this is an important prelude to today's lesson.
Now, the ancient rabbis had always said that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which Adam and Eve at the forbidden fruit was a fig tree, not an apple tree as we often suppose. So, this fruitless fig tree was freighted with symbolism and allusions to human history.
Jesus caused the tree to wither, not because He was having a bad day or was in a bad mood, but because living things should bear evidence of the life within them.
Likewise, people who claim to believe in the God we know in Christ, who claim to be rooted in Him and to “live and move and have their being in” Him, should evidence the presence of God’s life in them by the lives they live, the ways they love.
It’s after all this that our lesson begins. We read:
Certain of their own goodness and status as godly people, the chief priests and elders refused to see God at work in the lives of those touched by Jesus.
The lesson goes on:
Besides, John’s authority for his ministry of preparation for the coming of the Messiah came from the same place that Jesus’ authority came from, God the Father. This the leaders wouldn’t acknowledge for fear that ultimately, they would lose their earthly authority.
I’ve known of some people--some pastors--who have refused to acknowledge that Jesus rose from the dead because they didn’t want to look bad to the sophisticates they knew who saw Jesus as nothing but a nice man. How sincere is our own faith when it crumbles in the face of popular opinion?
Jesus told the leaders that if they were unwilling to acknowledge that God was at work in John’s ministry, they wouldn’t be able to see that God was bringing salvation to the world through Himself. By being closed to what God was showing the world, they would never understand His answer to their question.
Jesus then told a parable to the leaders:
And the people who had always claimed to speak for God, were saying no to God in human flesh, refusing to accept that, with grace and power, God had broken into the lives of the unlikeliest of people. Faith and eternal life had come to those who laid down their pride.
Cynicism and death were evidenced in those whose pride was in themselves and their own confident self-righteousness.
Jesus‘ words for us today are a call for us to surrender to Him and with repentance and faith, let Him give us what we can never have when we’re turned in on ourselves.
When we turn our eyes to Jesus, we have hope, peace that passes human understanding, purpose for each day, charity for others and for ourselves, a sense that, despite our sins, we belong to God, and a commitment to daily laying our sinful selves on the cross, so that we may be crucified and rise to life with God alongside Jesus.
And, saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, we find it easy to believe that if Christ can save us, Christ can save anybody. Amen
Matthew 21:23-32
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen tells about receiving a telephone call one day at his office from a woman he’d never met. She was a member of a nearby church and wondered if she could share something with Stoffregen and get his opinion. For years, she’d been active in her church, she explained. Her husband hadn’t. In fact, he’d had little use for Christian faith.
Then, not long before the telephone conversation, the man lost his arm in a work-related accident. His life was actually endangered for a time. While at the hospital, the husband had an encounter with God. God gave him a choice to either remain on the earth, a choice that would impose pain, rehabilitation, relearning basic life skills, and numerous adjustments, or to leave the earth. He decided to stay. His encounter with God changed this man’s ideas about God, about Christ, about the Church, and about having life with God.
Now, this woman explained to Stoffregen, not long before the accident, she had felt led to tell her husband, for reasons she couldn’t explain: “When you see my mother [who was dead], don't go with her." Like her husband, this woman’s life and faith had been, as you can imagine, changed by what God had done and was doing in her husband’s life. But there was a problem.
It turned out that the people at church, even some of her closest friends, didn’t believe that the woman’s husband had really encountered God. They didn’t accept his change of heart. They refused to accept that God had really worked in this man’s life. "God wouldn't do something like that for someone who didn't believe in Jesus," some seemed to tell her. Or, "It must have been the devil speaking to him."
Here were people who regularly confessed that they believed that, in Jesus Christ and the faith in Christ created within them by the power of the Holy Spirit, God had saved them from their sins by His grace alone. Yet now, they refused to believe that God had worked a transformation in someone who, though he had probably heard the Gospel of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, had always lived apart from God. They refused to accept the evidence of what Christ had accomplished in the man and dismissed it all as a sham.
What can you say about people like these? That they were self-righteous, for sure. And I think that there’s good reason to suspect that they didn’t really believe in the gracious God they claimed had saved them.
Jesus encountered people like this in today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32. They refused to acknowledge what God was doing in Jesus‘ ministry, just as they had refused to acknowledge what had happened in the ministry of John the Baptist. Notorious sinners turned from their sin, leaving their sinful life practices behind--things like sexual intimacy outside of marriage and extorting money from others, and, instead, following God with faith and submission. The religious leaders couldn’t accept that God’s hand was in it.
The Gospel lesson, I think, is an important antidote for Christians to take regularly, for the simple reason that, after awhile, if we’re not careful, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves will snooker us into believing that our faith and our salvation result from our intrinsic goodness.
Jesus says in Matthew 9:13: “...I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." In truth, saving faith in Christ only comes to those who recognize that they’re sinners in constant and desperate need of the Savior God sent into the world to free them from sin and death for all eternity.
If we ever fall into the trap of thinking God is fortunate to have such good people like us on His side, we need to fall to our knees in repentance and ask God for trust in Christ’s perfect righteousness over against our prideful smugness.
Paul writes in Romans 3:28: “For we maintain that a person is justified [that is made righteous] by faith...” and not by their supposed merits. We need always to remind ourselves and each other of this truth.
Turn to our Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32, please. Just a little background is needed.
Previously in Matthew, chapter 21, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
He then threw the moneychangers out of the temple for turning God’s house into a place of extortionist commerce.
Jesus also healed the blind and lame in the temple that same day, signs of His being more than just a true man, but also true God. He also upheld the truth of what children were saying about him.
That night, on the way to Bethany where He would sleep, Jesus saw a fig tree that wasn’t producing fruit. And this is an important prelude to today's lesson.
Now, the ancient rabbis had always said that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which Adam and Eve at the forbidden fruit was a fig tree, not an apple tree as we often suppose. So, this fruitless fig tree was freighted with symbolism and allusions to human history.
Jesus caused the tree to wither, not because He was having a bad day or was in a bad mood, but because living things should bear evidence of the life within them.
Likewise, people who claim to believe in the God we know in Christ, who claim to be rooted in Him and to “live and move and have their being in” Him, should evidence the presence of God’s life in them by the lives they live, the ways they love.
It’s after all this that our lesson begins. We read:
“And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’” These were the gatekeepers of first century Judean religious life. They had the authority that goes with human status and human credentials. What they were really saying to Jesus was, “We’re in charge around here. And we didn’t give you the authority to raise the dead, heal the sick, forgive the sins of the repentant, promise life to those who believe in You, or cut into the temple revenue by overturning the tables of thieves who possessed authorized franchises here in the temple mall.”They said this as though they actually possessed the authority to grant such ministries to Jesus. Yet these were things they’d never shown an interest in doing, let alone evidencing a capacity to do them!
Certain of their own goodness and status as godly people, the chief priests and elders refused to see God at work in the lives of those touched by Jesus.
The lesson goes on:
“Jesus answered them, ‘I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?’ And they discussed it among themselves, saying, ‘If we say, “From heaven,” he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” But if we say, “From man,” we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.’” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.’”Jesus really wasn’t trying to trap the leaders. It was common for rabbis to answer questions by asking questions that would, in honest students really seeking the truth, result, with the rabbi’s guidance, in their own seeming discovery of the truth.
Besides, John’s authority for his ministry of preparation for the coming of the Messiah came from the same place that Jesus’ authority came from, God the Father. This the leaders wouldn’t acknowledge for fear that ultimately, they would lose their earthly authority.
I’ve known of some people--some pastors--who have refused to acknowledge that Jesus rose from the dead because they didn’t want to look bad to the sophisticates they knew who saw Jesus as nothing but a nice man. How sincere is our own faith when it crumbles in the face of popular opinion?
Jesus told the leaders that if they were unwilling to acknowledge that God was at work in John’s ministry, they wouldn’t be able to see that God was bringing salvation to the world through Himself. By being closed to what God was showing the world, they would never understand His answer to their question.
Jesus then told a parable to the leaders:
“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.”Jesus wasn’t being PC in telling this parable. The meaning was clear. All the people who had once said no to God were, through Jesus, now saying yes to Him. It was evidenced in their changed lives.
And the people who had always claimed to speak for God, were saying no to God in human flesh, refusing to accept that, with grace and power, God had broken into the lives of the unlikeliest of people. Faith and eternal life had come to those who laid down their pride.
Cynicism and death were evidenced in those whose pride was in themselves and their own confident self-righteousness.
Jesus‘ words for us today are a call for us to surrender to Him and with repentance and faith, let Him give us what we can never have when we’re turned in on ourselves.
When we turn our eyes to Jesus, we have hope, peace that passes human understanding, purpose for each day, charity for others and for ourselves, a sense that, despite our sins, we belong to God, and a commitment to daily laying our sinful selves on the cross, so that we may be crucified and rise to life with God alongside Jesus.
And, saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, we find it easy to believe that if Christ can save us, Christ can save anybody. Amen
Saturday, September 27, 2014
What Happened to the Posts?
You may notice that two posts from yesterday were deleted. There's nothing wrong with your computer and Google isn't gobbling up posts. I just woke up this morning and thought, "I don't like what I wrote." So, I deleted the two posts, something that probably slightly improves the Internet.
Sometimes, you just have to flush the junk and move on.
Sometimes, you just have to flush the junk and move on.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Song-by-Song Guide for U2's 'Songs of Innocence'
I love the new release from U2. Here's a bit about each track.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Living in An Unfair World
On Sunday, I presented a sermon on Matthew 20:1-16, in which I said that God isn't fair, but gracious. If God were fair, judging us according to what we deserve, none of us would merit His forgiveness.
Or the opportunity to know God's love given in Christ.
Or the chance to spend eternity with God.
We could never be part of God's kingdom.
That's why, Jesus shows in the parable contained in those verses, we should never begrudge the forgiveness and patience God gives to others. He grades the lives of repentant believers in Christ on the same grace curve He employs with all repentant believers in Christ. Only Jesus Christ makes it possible for the human race to experience the unfairness of God's grace and favor and eternity.
But there's another sense in which God may seem unfair and, to tell you the truth, after nearly thirty-five years as a Christian and almost thirty years as a pastor, I can't explain it away. Only try to deal with it.
I'm talking about the seeming unfairness God allows to be visited on those who experience horrible tragedy, despite their faithfulness to Him. Despite their prayers. Despite their desire to live for God and to put God first in their lives.
Their loved ones die too early. Or suffer over long years of pain.
Their grown children turn from parents, God, and the values they've been taught from birth, seeming to mock the words of Proverbs 22:6. ("Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.")
Their marriages become battle zones or somber theaters of quiet sadness and resignation and some Christians in these circumstances feel themselves "trapped" by promises made to God and their mates, although their mates have proven to be far from the loving, committed people they promised they would be.
Their friendships die under the weight of life's numerous obligations and accelerated mobility.
Their careers abruptly end as corporations downsize, relocate, or seek ways to cut their costs.
I don't know why God, Who I have seen intervene in many circumstances that were, from every rational, empirical perspective, completely hopeless, doesn't choose to intervene in more situations. It doesn't seem fair.
I don't have any answers. And it would be presumptuous for me to think that I do.
When Job, in the Old Testament, challenged God to tell him why he, a man whose faith and virtue God Himself had bragged about, had lost all his children, all his property, and all his livestock (and heard his wife advise him to throw in the towel: "Just curse God and die."), God ended up telling Him, in essence: "It is what it is. You wouldn't understand it if I explained it to you."
God didn't deny the unfairness to which Job was subjected. And the unfairness seems to continue. And it can't be explained.
But I am comforted (sometimes) by the following thoughts. Maybe they'll help you too.
First: When we trust in Jesus Christ, we never experience unfairness alone. (Though it can seem that way.)
No one has suffered greater unfairness than Jesus Christ. True God and true man, Jesus was sinless. Yet He suffered and endured a horrible death. He did it voluntarily so that a perfect human being could bear the guilt of us all, killing the power of death over all who turn from their own sins and believe in Him.
Through that act of love and empathy, we can be certain, God gets unfairness. He's been on the receiving end. And this is the God Who promises, "I will be with you always."
Second: It's OK to get mad at God for the unfairness of things. The supposedly patient Job was so angry at the unfairness to which he'd been subjected that he challenged God to a kind of trial in which both would present their cases. Though God ultimately put Job "in his place," He didn't withhold His love or grace from Job for being angry.
You never get mad at a God you don't believe is there. Anger at God is never displayed by an atheist (at least not consciously). Only people who believe in God get mad at God.
God is a good listener. And as long as you're talking to God, even if your words and sentiments are filled with anger at Him. you're giving Him access to your life, an invitation to bring you His peace in the midst of your storms. Romans 8:26-27 says: "...we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints [saints are what the Bible calls repentant believers in Christ] according to the will of God."
Third: When we suffer life's unfairness, we find ourselves equipped to listen to, pray for, and befriend other people, Christians and others, who have experienced that same unfairness. We can, if we allow God's Spirit to soften our hearts, become the empathetic hand and voice of Christ for those whose hurts we more clearly understand because we ourselves have "been there."
A friend of mine has suffered many losses, losses so unfair that I have complained to God about it more than once. She doesn't claim to have made sense of any of it or to not sometimes feeling God has been unfair. But she makes a point of reaching out to others suffering at the hands of life's unfairness. It's become a ministry from God for her and she doesn't really understand how powerful it is.
Fourth: This world is and will remain unfair to all people until the day Christ returns. It's part of the landscape of earthly experience. The universe groans under the weight of sin, death, and darkness. That's why good news of any kind--a kid volunteering at a homeless shelter, a billionaire spending millions to educate young people, a priest starting a community garden that feeds poor people and gives others a sense of purpose--comes as such a surprise to us. We live in a bad news world.
In our bones, we know that we can never count on this world to be fair or to make sense. Especially for those who know the gracious, loving God of the world Who has come to us in Christ. We know that all have been made for more and that only in eternity will we experience all for which we were made.
When our time on earth is done, we can count on God to treat all who have endured in following Christ to the ultimate unfairness: A life of perfect peace, joy, and purpose lived with God and all the saints for all eternity.
That truth, that secure promise, ultimately, is the only thing that enables me to plunge into each day with hope and purpose while living in this unfair world.
Or the opportunity to know God's love given in Christ.
Or the chance to spend eternity with God.
We could never be part of God's kingdom.
That's why, Jesus shows in the parable contained in those verses, we should never begrudge the forgiveness and patience God gives to others. He grades the lives of repentant believers in Christ on the same grace curve He employs with all repentant believers in Christ. Only Jesus Christ makes it possible for the human race to experience the unfairness of God's grace and favor and eternity.
But there's another sense in which God may seem unfair and, to tell you the truth, after nearly thirty-five years as a Christian and almost thirty years as a pastor, I can't explain it away. Only try to deal with it.
I'm talking about the seeming unfairness God allows to be visited on those who experience horrible tragedy, despite their faithfulness to Him. Despite their prayers. Despite their desire to live for God and to put God first in their lives.
Their loved ones die too early. Or suffer over long years of pain.
Their grown children turn from parents, God, and the values they've been taught from birth, seeming to mock the words of Proverbs 22:6. ("Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.")
Their marriages become battle zones or somber theaters of quiet sadness and resignation and some Christians in these circumstances feel themselves "trapped" by promises made to God and their mates, although their mates have proven to be far from the loving, committed people they promised they would be.
Their friendships die under the weight of life's numerous obligations and accelerated mobility.
Their careers abruptly end as corporations downsize, relocate, or seek ways to cut their costs.
I don't know why God, Who I have seen intervene in many circumstances that were, from every rational, empirical perspective, completely hopeless, doesn't choose to intervene in more situations. It doesn't seem fair.
I don't have any answers. And it would be presumptuous for me to think that I do.
When Job, in the Old Testament, challenged God to tell him why he, a man whose faith and virtue God Himself had bragged about, had lost all his children, all his property, and all his livestock (and heard his wife advise him to throw in the towel: "Just curse God and die."), God ended up telling Him, in essence: "It is what it is. You wouldn't understand it if I explained it to you."
God didn't deny the unfairness to which Job was subjected. And the unfairness seems to continue. And it can't be explained.
But I am comforted (sometimes) by the following thoughts. Maybe they'll help you too.
First: When we trust in Jesus Christ, we never experience unfairness alone. (Though it can seem that way.)
No one has suffered greater unfairness than Jesus Christ. True God and true man, Jesus was sinless. Yet He suffered and endured a horrible death. He did it voluntarily so that a perfect human being could bear the guilt of us all, killing the power of death over all who turn from their own sins and believe in Him.
Through that act of love and empathy, we can be certain, God gets unfairness. He's been on the receiving end. And this is the God Who promises, "I will be with you always."
Second: It's OK to get mad at God for the unfairness of things. The supposedly patient Job was so angry at the unfairness to which he'd been subjected that he challenged God to a kind of trial in which both would present their cases. Though God ultimately put Job "in his place," He didn't withhold His love or grace from Job for being angry.
You never get mad at a God you don't believe is there. Anger at God is never displayed by an atheist (at least not consciously). Only people who believe in God get mad at God.
God is a good listener. And as long as you're talking to God, even if your words and sentiments are filled with anger at Him. you're giving Him access to your life, an invitation to bring you His peace in the midst of your storms. Romans 8:26-27 says: "...we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints [saints are what the Bible calls repentant believers in Christ] according to the will of God."
Third: When we suffer life's unfairness, we find ourselves equipped to listen to, pray for, and befriend other people, Christians and others, who have experienced that same unfairness. We can, if we allow God's Spirit to soften our hearts, become the empathetic hand and voice of Christ for those whose hurts we more clearly understand because we ourselves have "been there."
A friend of mine has suffered many losses, losses so unfair that I have complained to God about it more than once. She doesn't claim to have made sense of any of it or to not sometimes feeling God has been unfair. But she makes a point of reaching out to others suffering at the hands of life's unfairness. It's become a ministry from God for her and she doesn't really understand how powerful it is.
Fourth: This world is and will remain unfair to all people until the day Christ returns. It's part of the landscape of earthly experience. The universe groans under the weight of sin, death, and darkness. That's why good news of any kind--a kid volunteering at a homeless shelter, a billionaire spending millions to educate young people, a priest starting a community garden that feeds poor people and gives others a sense of purpose--comes as such a surprise to us. We live in a bad news world.
In our bones, we know that we can never count on this world to be fair or to make sense. Especially for those who know the gracious, loving God of the world Who has come to us in Christ. We know that all have been made for more and that only in eternity will we experience all for which we were made.
When our time on earth is done, we can count on God to treat all who have endured in following Christ to the ultimate unfairness: A life of perfect peace, joy, and purpose lived with God and all the saints for all eternity.
That truth, that secure promise, ultimately, is the only thing that enables me to plunge into each day with hope and purpose while living in this unfair world.
Not Just Smart...
...but degreed. This is a time of consolidation, predictably following a time of innovation. So, this study's findings make sense.
Speak Less. Listen More.
Here.
I particularly like the point that in the Old Testament, when friends visited an aggrieved man, Job, they did a wise thing. They just listened to him.
What the piece doesn't mention is that after seven days, they made a mistake. They started talking, offering explanations as to why Job had so much pain in his life. Most of what we palm off on others as wisdom is baloney and, sometimes, hurtful.
Listening is almost always more helpful than speaking. (God, help me to remember that!)
I particularly like the point that in the Old Testament, when friends visited an aggrieved man, Job, they did a wise thing. They just listened to him.
What the piece doesn't mention is that after seven days, they made a mistake. They started talking, offering explanations as to why Job had so much pain in his life. Most of what we palm off on others as wisdom is baloney and, sometimes, hurtful.
Listening is almost always more helpful than speaking. (God, help me to remember that!)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
A Lot More Than Fair
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio on Sunday, September 21, 2014.]
Matthew 20:1-16
Once, like I’m about to do this morning, I preached on today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 20:1-16. There, as we’ve seen, Jesus tells a parable--a story--about what one Bible scholar called "the eccentric employer" who pays the people who worked just one hour for him the exact same amount of money that he pays those who spend the whole day working in his fields.
After the service that day, a lifelong Christian and member of that church waited until I had shaken everybody’s hand, then approached me. “That Gospel lesson has always bothered me,” he said. “It’s not fair! Is Jesus saying that a mass murderer who repents and trusts in Him just before the executioner flips the switch is on an equal plain with someone like me? I’ve been a Christian all my life.”
I tried to tell the man: “It’s hard for us to accept, but no, God isn’t fair in that we can never earn what He gives to us. We can earn no more and no less of the grace He gives to those with faith in Christ.
"And, yes, the mass murderer who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith is every bit as much a part of the kingdom of heaven as any other sinner who repents and believes.”
Our conversation started there and didn't get any better, frankly.
Few sayings of Jesus more reliably offend many faithful Christians than those found in these verses from Matthew. Yet, if we only stop to think, we realize that this isn’t the only time Jesus has delivered the same message.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son. In it, a good-for-nothing son returns home to his father, begging for a job as a hired hand and is instead, welcomed home with a feast of forgiveness and welcome, assured that He is an heir once more. The message is clear: Even the worst sinner can, with repentance and faith in Christ, receive all the perks of eternity that Jesus died and rose to give repentant believers in Him.
But sometimes overlooked in the parable is the older brother, a guy who had always obeyed his father, always towed the line, and so resented his father’s grace toward the prodigal son that he refused to come into the party, representing those who resent God’s grace and forgiveness for those they deem beneath them on the righteous-meter. He reminds me of Christians and non-Christians I've known through the years who have refused the grace of God or the fellowship of the Church out of the same sense of self-righteousness.
Later, on the cross, Jesus would demonstrate the very things He proclaims in these parables. A thug hung on the cross next to Him. He acknowledged His sins and Jesus’ kingship and Jesus promised this undeserving man, who came to repentance as he was breathing his last, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.”
The God we know in Jesus Christ is not fair. He forgives sinners who will turn from sin and trust in Him no matter when they do that in their lives.
But there’s more to this parable than giving hope to johnny-come-latelies. Let’s take a few minutes to unpack Jesus’ parable to find that something more.
By way of background, turn please, in the sanctuary Bibles, to Matthew 19:27-29. Jesus has just encountered a rich young man who wanted entry into God’s kingdom. Jesus could see that the man’s wealth was his god, the most important thing in his life. After Jesus tells the man that he clearly must sell everything he has and give to the poor, then follow Him, the man walks away from Jesus, sorrowful. The rich man's identity was too wrapped up in wealth to let go of it, even if doing so meant taking hold of eternal life with God.
Jesus mourned the man’s decision. Just as He mourns it today whenever we turn from Him and His grace. He talks about how hard it is for those with wealth to follow Him, how we must divest ourselves of our dependence on anyone or anything other than God if we are to have life with God.
Defensively, Peter asks Jesus: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”
Can you hear the pathetic tone in Peter’s words? “We’re good guys, right, Jesus? We checked off that box, right? We gave up everything to follow You.”
Jesus doesn’t answer Peter’s question directly. Instead, He speaks words that challenge Peter to some prayerful reflection (maybe they challenge us similarly): “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”
Tough words! Those who follow Jesus--who repent and believe in Him and keep believing in Him--will reign with God over the new creation that will come about on His return.
But He defines those who follow Him as all who are willing to rid themselves not just of their dependence on wealth, but also dependence on their closest kin, even their spouses, if those dependencies prevent them from following Him.
Followers of Jesus must be willing to lose what the world counts important in order to gain eternity. The last will be first. The first will be last. God isn’t fair. He’s gracious.
Jesus then tells the parable that makes up today’s Gospel lesson. You know the story well. A wealthy landowner goes to a public square at about 6am, 9am, Noon, 3pm, and even 5pm, just one hour before the end of the workday in order to hire people to take care of his harvest.
It was common for landowners to go out to such places at the beginning of workdays to hire laborers. But no landowner would keep going out every several hours through a workday in the way the owner in Jesus‘ fictional parable did.
In verse 6, we’re told that the owner went to the square at 5:00 and asks why no one has yet hired the men still there. It’s a good question. At harvest time, there should have plenty of jobs for willing workers.
In verse 7, the men reply: “Because no one has hired us.” The owner doesn’t stop to think, “Are these guys loafers? Are they troublemakers? Did other landowners let them go because they're unreliable?” He simply hires the men on the spot. He has a whole harvest field and he needs more harvesters.
At the end of the parable, as we’ve seen, those sketchy latecomers get the same pay as the ones who toiled all day long in the sun. Because God isn’t fair, but gracious, as long as there is breath, there is hope that those who don’t believe in Christ will turn to Him and live. And their place in eternity will be as secure and as joyous as the places of people like Paul and Peter and Stephen and Martin Luther and Billy Graham and Mother Teresa. That gives us a great hope, not only for ourselves, but for those loved ones for whom we pray Christ will become Lord.
But the parable is about much more than that. Remember that this is a parable about the “kingdom of heaven.” “...the kingdom of heaven is like...” Jesus begins. The laborers are saved not by what they do but by their trust in the landowner.
Yet, the landowner doesn’t call them to a life of ease.
Being citizens of the kingdom of heaven is not about strumming harps and hangin’. The God we follow in Christ intends to put us to work on the same saving mission that God was on when Jesus was born, when He died, and when He rose again.
When we sign on for salvation through Christ, we also sign for holy assignments from God.
In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus tells the disciples: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
Jesus was saying that there are lots of people in the world who need the good news of John 3:16. And people really only come to know and follow Jesus Christ--people only come to know Jesus as their God and Savior and Lord--in life-to-life encounters with Christians who have been sent out into the harvest by Christ.
And the New Testament makes clear that that is every Christian, not just the people wearing collars. The apostle writes in 1 Peter 2:9: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
Every Christian has been entrusted with the great commission to go into the harvest and make disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you...”
But even though Jesus couples the commission to make disciples with a promise--”...I am with you always, even to the end of the age”--I find the whole idea of living life-to-life with other people in order to help them become disciples of Christ intimidating.
I love the idea of being part of Jesus’ kingdom. I’m really shaky on being someone who tries to go harvesting for disciples among skeptical family members, cranky neighbors, or hostile strangers.
“I want to be in your vineyard, Lord. But instead of being a harvester, could I just be an encourager of harvesters? A spectator of harvesters?”
Maybe you have similar feelings. But according to Jesus, we don’t have those options. To be all in with Jesus is to receive all of His grace and all of partnership in His mission to win all the world to faith in Him.
Fortunately, for we squeamish disciples, help is on the way. Your church council has recently voted to sign on to a three year process of the North American Lutheran Church called Congregational Discipleship Ministry.
Not a program, this ministry teaches us--first the pastors, then a group of about twelve people called the life and learning team, then more and more people of the congregation--how to live as disciples, how to harvest the vineyard, how to make new disciples.
The focus is on being not members of the Church, but disciples within the body of Christ, empowered by God to reach those who, without saving faith in Christ, will be lost for all eternity.
For the first nine months or so, you’ll hear little about this discipleship ministry. A coach will be working with Dan Mershon and me, helping us learn how, using the gifts, abilities, experiences, and personalities God has given to us as individuals to share our lives and Christ’s life with others, so that we can help you to do the same.
This is precisely how Christ envisioned the Church to work. In the Church, Christ created the first pyramid scheme, disciples multiplying by one-to-one contact with the Gospel present in the lives of of believers in Christ.
This is the life to which the One Who bought us out of slavery to sin and death has called us to live.
We are called, no matter when Jesus Christ calls us to faith in Him, to be Christ’s harvesters.
Pray everyday, please, that the Holy Spirit will teach us how to fulfill that call. Nothing is more important. Amen
Matthew 20:1-16
Once, like I’m about to do this morning, I preached on today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 20:1-16. There, as we’ve seen, Jesus tells a parable--a story--about what one Bible scholar called "the eccentric employer" who pays the people who worked just one hour for him the exact same amount of money that he pays those who spend the whole day working in his fields.
After the service that day, a lifelong Christian and member of that church waited until I had shaken everybody’s hand, then approached me. “That Gospel lesson has always bothered me,” he said. “It’s not fair! Is Jesus saying that a mass murderer who repents and trusts in Him just before the executioner flips the switch is on an equal plain with someone like me? I’ve been a Christian all my life.”
I tried to tell the man: “It’s hard for us to accept, but no, God isn’t fair in that we can never earn what He gives to us. We can earn no more and no less of the grace He gives to those with faith in Christ.
"And, yes, the mass murderer who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith is every bit as much a part of the kingdom of heaven as any other sinner who repents and believes.”
Our conversation started there and didn't get any better, frankly.
Few sayings of Jesus more reliably offend many faithful Christians than those found in these verses from Matthew. Yet, if we only stop to think, we realize that this isn’t the only time Jesus has delivered the same message.
In Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son. In it, a good-for-nothing son returns home to his father, begging for a job as a hired hand and is instead, welcomed home with a feast of forgiveness and welcome, assured that He is an heir once more. The message is clear: Even the worst sinner can, with repentance and faith in Christ, receive all the perks of eternity that Jesus died and rose to give repentant believers in Him.
But sometimes overlooked in the parable is the older brother, a guy who had always obeyed his father, always towed the line, and so resented his father’s grace toward the prodigal son that he refused to come into the party, representing those who resent God’s grace and forgiveness for those they deem beneath them on the righteous-meter. He reminds me of Christians and non-Christians I've known through the years who have refused the grace of God or the fellowship of the Church out of the same sense of self-righteousness.
Later, on the cross, Jesus would demonstrate the very things He proclaims in these parables. A thug hung on the cross next to Him. He acknowledged His sins and Jesus’ kingship and Jesus promised this undeserving man, who came to repentance as he was breathing his last, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.”
The God we know in Jesus Christ is not fair. He forgives sinners who will turn from sin and trust in Him no matter when they do that in their lives.
But there’s more to this parable than giving hope to johnny-come-latelies. Let’s take a few minutes to unpack Jesus’ parable to find that something more.
By way of background, turn please, in the sanctuary Bibles, to Matthew 19:27-29. Jesus has just encountered a rich young man who wanted entry into God’s kingdom. Jesus could see that the man’s wealth was his god, the most important thing in his life. After Jesus tells the man that he clearly must sell everything he has and give to the poor, then follow Him, the man walks away from Jesus, sorrowful. The rich man's identity was too wrapped up in wealth to let go of it, even if doing so meant taking hold of eternal life with God.
Jesus mourned the man’s decision. Just as He mourns it today whenever we turn from Him and His grace. He talks about how hard it is for those with wealth to follow Him, how we must divest ourselves of our dependence on anyone or anything other than God if we are to have life with God.
Defensively, Peter asks Jesus: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”
Can you hear the pathetic tone in Peter’s words? “We’re good guys, right, Jesus? We checked off that box, right? We gave up everything to follow You.”
Jesus doesn’t answer Peter’s question directly. Instead, He speaks words that challenge Peter to some prayerful reflection (maybe they challenge us similarly): “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”
Tough words! Those who follow Jesus--who repent and believe in Him and keep believing in Him--will reign with God over the new creation that will come about on His return.
But He defines those who follow Him as all who are willing to rid themselves not just of their dependence on wealth, but also dependence on their closest kin, even their spouses, if those dependencies prevent them from following Him.
Followers of Jesus must be willing to lose what the world counts important in order to gain eternity. The last will be first. The first will be last. God isn’t fair. He’s gracious.
Jesus then tells the parable that makes up today’s Gospel lesson. You know the story well. A wealthy landowner goes to a public square at about 6am, 9am, Noon, 3pm, and even 5pm, just one hour before the end of the workday in order to hire people to take care of his harvest.
It was common for landowners to go out to such places at the beginning of workdays to hire laborers. But no landowner would keep going out every several hours through a workday in the way the owner in Jesus‘ fictional parable did.
In verse 6, we’re told that the owner went to the square at 5:00 and asks why no one has yet hired the men still there. It’s a good question. At harvest time, there should have plenty of jobs for willing workers.
In verse 7, the men reply: “Because no one has hired us.” The owner doesn’t stop to think, “Are these guys loafers? Are they troublemakers? Did other landowners let them go because they're unreliable?” He simply hires the men on the spot. He has a whole harvest field and he needs more harvesters.
At the end of the parable, as we’ve seen, those sketchy latecomers get the same pay as the ones who toiled all day long in the sun. Because God isn’t fair, but gracious, as long as there is breath, there is hope that those who don’t believe in Christ will turn to Him and live. And their place in eternity will be as secure and as joyous as the places of people like Paul and Peter and Stephen and Martin Luther and Billy Graham and Mother Teresa. That gives us a great hope, not only for ourselves, but for those loved ones for whom we pray Christ will become Lord.
But the parable is about much more than that. Remember that this is a parable about the “kingdom of heaven.” “...the kingdom of heaven is like...” Jesus begins. The laborers are saved not by what they do but by their trust in the landowner.
Yet, the landowner doesn’t call them to a life of ease.
Being citizens of the kingdom of heaven is not about strumming harps and hangin’. The God we follow in Christ intends to put us to work on the same saving mission that God was on when Jesus was born, when He died, and when He rose again.
When we sign on for salvation through Christ, we also sign for holy assignments from God.
In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus tells the disciples: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
Jesus was saying that there are lots of people in the world who need the good news of John 3:16. And people really only come to know and follow Jesus Christ--people only come to know Jesus as their God and Savior and Lord--in life-to-life encounters with Christians who have been sent out into the harvest by Christ.
And the New Testament makes clear that that is every Christian, not just the people wearing collars. The apostle writes in 1 Peter 2:9: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
Every Christian has been entrusted with the great commission to go into the harvest and make disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you...”
But even though Jesus couples the commission to make disciples with a promise--”...I am with you always, even to the end of the age”--I find the whole idea of living life-to-life with other people in order to help them become disciples of Christ intimidating.
I love the idea of being part of Jesus’ kingdom. I’m really shaky on being someone who tries to go harvesting for disciples among skeptical family members, cranky neighbors, or hostile strangers.
“I want to be in your vineyard, Lord. But instead of being a harvester, could I just be an encourager of harvesters? A spectator of harvesters?”
Maybe you have similar feelings. But according to Jesus, we don’t have those options. To be all in with Jesus is to receive all of His grace and all of partnership in His mission to win all the world to faith in Him.
Fortunately, for we squeamish disciples, help is on the way. Your church council has recently voted to sign on to a three year process of the North American Lutheran Church called Congregational Discipleship Ministry.
Not a program, this ministry teaches us--first the pastors, then a group of about twelve people called the life and learning team, then more and more people of the congregation--how to live as disciples, how to harvest the vineyard, how to make new disciples.
The focus is on being not members of the Church, but disciples within the body of Christ, empowered by God to reach those who, without saving faith in Christ, will be lost for all eternity.
For the first nine months or so, you’ll hear little about this discipleship ministry. A coach will be working with Dan Mershon and me, helping us learn how, using the gifts, abilities, experiences, and personalities God has given to us as individuals to share our lives and Christ’s life with others, so that we can help you to do the same.
This is precisely how Christ envisioned the Church to work. In the Church, Christ created the first pyramid scheme, disciples multiplying by one-to-one contact with the Gospel present in the lives of of believers in Christ.
This is the life to which the One Who bought us out of slavery to sin and death has called us to live.
We are called, no matter when Jesus Christ calls us to faith in Him, to be Christ’s harvesters.
Pray everyday, please, that the Holy Spirit will teach us how to fulfill that call. Nothing is more important. Amen
Friday, September 19, 2014
Getting Confused by the Bible
Mark Twain, an atheist, said, "It ain't those parts of the Bible that
I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do
understand." As a Christian, I agree. Usually, the Bible speaks with
crystal clarity, calling me to align myself with God, His will, and His
grace given in Christ. The Bible's clear calls to action and changes of
mind, will, and heart can be really disturbing, demanding that we either
heed them or ignore God altogether
But as my study of the background of this Sunday's Gospel lesson, has proven once again, sometimes it really is the stuff I don't understand as I read Scripture that flummoxes me.
Suffice it to say that I ran across something in Matthew's gospel which, over the years, I had never noticed before. And it has flummoxed me.
I may write about it here sometime...but I still have some studying and praying to do before that.
But that's the way it is with the Bible. It's God's Word, holy and amazing. The Bible is, as I often say, God communicating in "baby talk" to us. It contains dense truths from God Himself that we don't always get or that it takes years for us to get.
It only makes sense then that, despite how God deigns to make Himself known to us in the Word that, as we dig into it, it brings new surprises...some immediately liberating, others thought- and prayer-provoking.
Right now, I'm a bit confused.
But as my study of the background of this Sunday's Gospel lesson, has proven once again, sometimes it really is the stuff I don't understand as I read Scripture that flummoxes me.
Suffice it to say that I ran across something in Matthew's gospel which, over the years, I had never noticed before. And it has flummoxed me.
I may write about it here sometime...but I still have some studying and praying to do before that.
But that's the way it is with the Bible. It's God's Word, holy and amazing. The Bible is, as I often say, God communicating in "baby talk" to us. It contains dense truths from God Himself that we don't always get or that it takes years for us to get.
It only makes sense then that, despite how God deigns to make Himself known to us in the Word that, as we dig into it, it brings new surprises...some immediately liberating, others thought- and prayer-provoking.
Right now, I'm a bit confused.
Risking Being Known
From today's installment of Our Daily Bread:
One reason we are unwilling to risk being known is that we fear rejection and ridicule. But when we discover that God knows us, loves us, and is willing to forgive even the worst thing we have done, our fear of being known by God begins to fade away. And when we find a community of believers who understands the dynamic relationship between forgiveness and confession, we feel safe confessing our sins to one another (James 5:16).Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
So does this mean you can trust an artist or writer more than you can a mathematician or accountant?
Of course not.
But this is interesting.
But this is interesting.
September 17, 2014
People Are More Selfish and Dishonest After Doing Math
Research participants who had spent 15 minutes solving math problems were 4 times
more likely to lie for personal gain in an ethics game than those who
had answered randomly selected verbal questions from a standardized
test, says a team led by Long Wang of the City University of Hong Kong.
The act of calculating appears to crowd out people’s social and moral
concerns, resulting in behavior that is more self-interested and even
immoral. Stimuli such as family photos that prompt thoughts about social
values appear to diminish these negative effects, the researchers say.
SOURCE:
The social and ethical consequences of a calculative mind-set
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Mountaintops and Troughs
The Screwtape Letters purports to be a series of letters written by a senior tempter, Screwtape, part of the demonic corporation directed by the devil, to a junior tempter named Wormwood. We're reading and discussing this book in light of the witness of the Bible right now at Living Water.
In one of the "letters" that we'll be discussing today, Screwtape describes something that he calls, "the law of undulation," that series of troughs and mountaintops every Christian experiences as they seek to follow Christ.
The mountaintops are easy times, times when the risen Christ's presence seems palpable, when a person's every holy or happy desire seems to be met, and when praying, worshiping, serving in Christ's Name, telling others about Christ, and receiving Holy Communion are rich and full and immediate.
As Luke's account of Jesus' transfiguration, when three of His disciples were dazzled by the reality of Jesus' deity, power, and love clearly shown to them, we Christians prefer staying in this mountaintop phase."Master, it is good for us to be here," Peter said, then proposed building three "booths" to capture the moment forever. Peter wanted to move in and live on the mountaintop.
But in this life, lived in a fallen and imperfect world, the troughs must inevitably come.
The troughs are those periods when God seems distant, our prayers appear to fall back to the ground after we've lifted them to heaven, and when reading God's Word, worship, service in Christ's Name, and even receiving the Bread and the Wine, feel like tiresome, pointless chores.
The junior tempter Wormwood observes a dry trough period in a man he's charged with tempting away from God, from the Christ-like character, and from the freedom God gives us to be our true selves when we follow Christ. He thinks that this dry period must necessarily be a sign that the man is turning from Christ and is bound for hell, separation from God.
But Screwtape warns:
"I don't feel like worshiping or praying or serving others for Christ's sake, but I'll do it anyway." The person who makes a statement like that is likely closer to Christ than he or she ever was when the Christian life seemed easy.
God's aim for us in this life isn't comfort. Believers in Christ will be comforted by His presence and His love, of course. But it's in the midst of adversity, when we maintain the habits of seeking God out and praising Him and loving and serving others in Christ's Name, despite how we feel, that we grow closer to Christ.
It's only after the bottom falls out that we reach our feet a little lower and find that the God we know in Christ was there all along, our solid ground. Our faith grows. Our character is forged. And God continues to make us and our characters over in His image, His real goal for us.
It was in a trough period he describes in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, that the apostle Paul learned from God that, it's only when we perceive ourselves as being weak and helpless that we become open to the reality that to become who God made me to be (and who, deep down, I want to be), that the strength and power of God become fully manifest.
If you're in a trough right now, keep holding onto God--through things like prayer, regular worship attendance, receiving the Sacrament, studying God's Word, serving and fellowshiping with Christian believers. Even when you don't feel like doing any of these things. You will find again that He's there. Always. He hasn't forgotten you. Never. And your faith will grow. You will grow.
Mountaintops are nice. And in eternity, all who have believed in Christ will live securely on the mountaintop as we live in God's direct presence and find ourselves empowered to do all the work God will give us to do. There, we won't be wearied by the troughs. We will be wholly ourselves for all eternity and it will be amazing!
God gives us mountaintop experiences to let us know that the eternal mountaintop is real and it awaits all who believe. But He gives us troughs so that we know for sure, this life isn't all He has in mind for us.
In one of the "letters" that we'll be discussing today, Screwtape describes something that he calls, "the law of undulation," that series of troughs and mountaintops every Christian experiences as they seek to follow Christ.
The mountaintops are easy times, times when the risen Christ's presence seems palpable, when a person's every holy or happy desire seems to be met, and when praying, worshiping, serving in Christ's Name, telling others about Christ, and receiving Holy Communion are rich and full and immediate.
As Luke's account of Jesus' transfiguration, when three of His disciples were dazzled by the reality of Jesus' deity, power, and love clearly shown to them, we Christians prefer staying in this mountaintop phase."Master, it is good for us to be here," Peter said, then proposed building three "booths" to capture the moment forever. Peter wanted to move in and live on the mountaintop.
But in this life, lived in a fallen and imperfect world, the troughs must inevitably come.
The troughs are those periods when God seems distant, our prayers appear to fall back to the ground after we've lifted them to heaven, and when reading God's Word, worship, service in Christ's Name, and even receiving the Bread and the Wine, feel like tiresome, pointless chores.
The junior tempter Wormwood observes a dry trough period in a man he's charged with tempting away from God, from the Christ-like character, and from the freedom God gives us to be our true selves when we follow Christ. He thinks that this dry period must necessarily be a sign that the man is turning from Christ and is bound for hell, separation from God.
But Screwtape warns:
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will [for Screwtape, the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the enemy], looks round upon the universe from which every trace of [God] seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.It's in the trough periods when, despite everything within us screaming that God doesn't care or that, if He does, He must be indifferent to us, and when we want to chuck the whole Christian thing, and yet we try to keep following Christ and maintaining the Christian disciplines that allow God to communicate with us and work in our lives, that God can do His real work in believers.
"I don't feel like worshiping or praying or serving others for Christ's sake, but I'll do it anyway." The person who makes a statement like that is likely closer to Christ than he or she ever was when the Christian life seemed easy.
God's aim for us in this life isn't comfort. Believers in Christ will be comforted by His presence and His love, of course. But it's in the midst of adversity, when we maintain the habits of seeking God out and praising Him and loving and serving others in Christ's Name, despite how we feel, that we grow closer to Christ.
It's only after the bottom falls out that we reach our feet a little lower and find that the God we know in Christ was there all along, our solid ground. Our faith grows. Our character is forged. And God continues to make us and our characters over in His image, His real goal for us.
It was in a trough period he describes in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, that the apostle Paul learned from God that, it's only when we perceive ourselves as being weak and helpless that we become open to the reality that to become who God made me to be (and who, deep down, I want to be), that the strength and power of God become fully manifest.
If you're in a trough right now, keep holding onto God--through things like prayer, regular worship attendance, receiving the Sacrament, studying God's Word, serving and fellowshiping with Christian believers. Even when you don't feel like doing any of these things. You will find again that He's there. Always. He hasn't forgotten you. Never. And your faith will grow. You will grow.
Mountaintops are nice. And in eternity, all who have believed in Christ will live securely on the mountaintop as we live in God's direct presence and find ourselves empowered to do all the work God will give us to do. There, we won't be wearied by the troughs. We will be wholly ourselves for all eternity and it will be amazing!
God gives us mountaintop experiences to let us know that the eternal mountaintop is real and it awaits all who believe. But He gives us troughs so that we know for sure, this life isn't all He has in mind for us.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us
[This is the script for a sermon shared with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio earlier today.]
Genesis 50:15-20
Matthew 18:21-35
In today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew, Jesus was asked by His disciple Peter, how often he should forgive others, “as many as seven times?” Peter thought that he was being very liberal in couching his question in this way. To forgive someone as many as seven times, Peter felt, along with the people of his day, was the height of patience and kindness.
But Jesus answers that we're to forgive others not seven times, but “Seventy-seven times.” Jesus’ answer is not a mathematical formula, but a teasing parody of the question posed by His disciple. Peter wanted to limit how forgiving followers of Christ needed to be. Jesus was telling Peter (and us), “Just as there’s no limit to how much I, God in human flesh, forgive all who repent and believe in Me, there should be no limit to your forgiveness of others.”
This teaching should come as no surprise to us. In Matthew 6:14-15, after teaching the disciples what we call The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said: “...if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Jesus says that we actually block His forgiveness and life with Him from our lives by failing to forgive. I find Jesus’ words terrifying, frankly. But we should remember them whenever we feed condemnatory feelings toward others.
Yet Jesus’ command that we forgive is more than a stern dictate. Forgiving others is also a gift from God that can set us free for living life to the full.
Our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 50:15-21, shows us how this is so. You know the story of Joseph well, part of whose life our lesson tells us about today. This Joseph, of course, isn’t the one who, nearly two-thousand years later, would be chosen by God to be the earthly father of God the Son, Jesus of Nazareth. This Joseph is the great grandson of Abraham, grandson of Isaac, son of Jacob, the patriarchs of Biblical faith.
At an early age, this Joseph angered his brothers because their father Jacob so favored Joseph and because Joseph reported dreams that God had given to him indicating that one day, his brothers would bow down to him.
The brothers’ resentments toward Joseph simmered until they reached a boiling point: They sold Joseph into slavery and when they came back home from the fields where they’d been tending the family’s sheep, without Joseph, they convinced Jacob that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.
From there, Joseph’s circumstances went from bad to worse.
He became the slave and eventually, the supervisor of all the holdings of Potiphar, one of Egypt’s most powerful generals, only to be falsely accused of attempting to rape Potiphar’s wife, who had been disappointed when Joseph refused to have an affair with her. Joseph languished in prison.
Eventually, Joseph was freed and, gifted by God with both the ability to interpret dreams and lead an organization, he undertook a massive rationing program that saved millions from death by starvation when a famine hit.
You remember how his brothers, not knowing who Joseph was, came to Egypt seeking to buy food and how eventually, Joseph was reunited with his father and how God used Jacob to save God’s people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jewish people, from extinction.
This, of course, is important for all of us because it was through the Messiah Jesus Who was given to God’s people, that salvation would become possible for all who repent and believe in Jesus.
But our lesson takes place well after Joseph’s reunion with his father. Jacob and all of his sons and their families had lived in Egypt with Joseph for some time when Jacob died.
There are two scenes recounted in the lesson. Scene #1 comes in verse 15. Jacob has died and Joseph’s brothers are in a panic. They wonder, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” Joseph’s brothers could be cynical, self-centered men and they couldn’t imagine that Joseph was any different.
They projected their own cynicism and selfishness onto Joseph. Afraid for their lives, the brothers concoct a phony story to tell Joseph.
We read about that story in Scene #2 of our lesson, verses 16 through 21. The brothers tell Joseph that, just before he died, their father Jacob had directed them to tell Joseph not to exact vengeance on them for their sins against him.
Our lesson tells us that when Joseph heard his brothers' story, he wept. Joseph's brothers found it hard to believe that a believer in God like Joseph could possibly forgive them. That's why they wept.
They clearly didn't know nor understand the relationship with God that Joseph had. And that’s what made Joseph weep, filled with sorrow for their disbelief and their fear of him.
Joseph says in verses 19 and 20 of our first lesson: “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
Though I’ve read them many times, I always find Joseph’s words here breathtaking! And they often choke me up.
Joseph is saying that God can make something of the most sinful actions people may perpetrate against us.
Notice several things about what Joseph says. First: Joseph sees his brothers kneeling before him and, even though this was exactly what God had revealed would happen in the dreams he’d had as a boy, he didn’t like it.
Joseph believed God’s words in Isaiah 42:8: “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.” Joseph insisted that he wouldn’t take God’s place. He wouldn’t take God’s glory and he wouldn’t do God’s job.
When someone hurts us, we may be inclined to think that it’s only our due that the offending party should, in some way, come crawling to us for forgiveness. Joseph knew that no matter what sins others perpetrate against us, God is really the One most hurt and offended by human sin. When we are offended, it’s good to remember God’s words in Deuteronomy 32:35 “It is Mine to avenge; I will repay.”
Though today, Jesus entrusts the Church with the responsibility of declaring God’s forgiveness to the repentant and the opposite to the unrepentant, when others hurt us, we aren’t in the vengeance business. We must trust God to sort things out.
The second thing to notice is that Joseph could see God at work even in the midst of his pain. He saw that God had used the adversities he experienced to save whole nations, including the small band of people who would become the ancestors of Israel and through Christ, the ancestors of all who confess Christ as their God and Lord.
Joseph’s connection with God allowed him to forgive his brothers. None of us can forgive others and be free of the resentments that can destroy our happiness, without God’s help and empowerment. It’s impossible to live the Christian life without a connection to the God of the universe definitively revealed to us in Jesus Christ! We can forgive only if Jesus Christ lives within us.
As Christians, we confess that God does live and work within us. As Paul puts it in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” You can't forgive others their trespasses against you. But Christ in you can!
Christ lives in you when you are a baptized believer in Him. Think of what that means for your everyday life! Even on the cross, Jesus Christ was able, we see from Luke 23:34, to pray for those who were killing Him and crying for His blood, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” That Christ lives within every baptized believer in Christ!
We see how Christ lives in believers in a man named Stephen. Five years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Acts 7:60 tells us that Stephen, a mere human being who, through Holy Baptism, had Christ living within him, could pray as he was being stoned to death for his faith in Christ, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
When you believe in the God revealed in Jesus—the God of the Old and New Testaments, you can forgive others because you know that in Jesus, nothing can separate you from God and His love for you. Christians know the freedom that comes to us when God empowers us to forgive others as God has forgiven us because of the cross and resurrection of Christ.
The most common New Testament Greek work for forgive, aphiemi, literally means, release. Forgiveness is releasing, letting go of all pretense of being God, letting go of having any right or responsibility for holding the sins of others ocer their heads, and instead, trusting God to deal with whatever punishments need to meted out against those who sin against us. When we forgive others, God releases us to live with Him always.
Holding a grudge is like holding your breath for an extended period of time. As long as you do it, you can’t expel the toxins of bitterness and anxiety and you can’t breathe in the fresh air of God’s Holy Spirit. If Joseph hadn’t trusted in God to release His grudges and hold onto God through bad and good times, there is no way God could have fulfilled the good purposes that God had revealed to Joseph when Joseph was just a little boy that God wanted to fulfill in Joseph’s life. When we fail to forgive, there are good things that God intends to do through us that just don’t happen. And that is a tragedy.
As Jesus showed us in last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, there are times when we must lovingly confront those we feel have sinned against us. It’s right that we do so. But God can do so much in the lives of people who surrender everything, even their anger and sorrow over the hurts, insults, slights, and horrible injuries others have inflicted on them.
God will do nothing in the lives of people who block His grace by refusing to forgive others. But God releases us from our sins when we forgive others as He forgives us through Christ. If you’ve come here this morning holding a grudge against anybody, I invite you (I beg you) to attempt to work things out starting now. Release those against whom you have a grudge. Release yourself. Above all, I invite you to lay your grudge at Jesus’ cross right now and to let God set you free to live the life you were made for!
Genesis 50:15-20
Matthew 18:21-35
In today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew, Jesus was asked by His disciple Peter, how often he should forgive others, “as many as seven times?” Peter thought that he was being very liberal in couching his question in this way. To forgive someone as many as seven times, Peter felt, along with the people of his day, was the height of patience and kindness.
But Jesus answers that we're to forgive others not seven times, but “Seventy-seven times.” Jesus’ answer is not a mathematical formula, but a teasing parody of the question posed by His disciple. Peter wanted to limit how forgiving followers of Christ needed to be. Jesus was telling Peter (and us), “Just as there’s no limit to how much I, God in human flesh, forgive all who repent and believe in Me, there should be no limit to your forgiveness of others.”
This teaching should come as no surprise to us. In Matthew 6:14-15, after teaching the disciples what we call The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said: “...if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Jesus says that we actually block His forgiveness and life with Him from our lives by failing to forgive. I find Jesus’ words terrifying, frankly. But we should remember them whenever we feed condemnatory feelings toward others.
Yet Jesus’ command that we forgive is more than a stern dictate. Forgiving others is also a gift from God that can set us free for living life to the full.
Our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 50:15-21, shows us how this is so. You know the story of Joseph well, part of whose life our lesson tells us about today. This Joseph, of course, isn’t the one who, nearly two-thousand years later, would be chosen by God to be the earthly father of God the Son, Jesus of Nazareth. This Joseph is the great grandson of Abraham, grandson of Isaac, son of Jacob, the patriarchs of Biblical faith.
At an early age, this Joseph angered his brothers because their father Jacob so favored Joseph and because Joseph reported dreams that God had given to him indicating that one day, his brothers would bow down to him.
The brothers’ resentments toward Joseph simmered until they reached a boiling point: They sold Joseph into slavery and when they came back home from the fields where they’d been tending the family’s sheep, without Joseph, they convinced Jacob that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.
From there, Joseph’s circumstances went from bad to worse.
He became the slave and eventually, the supervisor of all the holdings of Potiphar, one of Egypt’s most powerful generals, only to be falsely accused of attempting to rape Potiphar’s wife, who had been disappointed when Joseph refused to have an affair with her. Joseph languished in prison.
Eventually, Joseph was freed and, gifted by God with both the ability to interpret dreams and lead an organization, he undertook a massive rationing program that saved millions from death by starvation when a famine hit.
You remember how his brothers, not knowing who Joseph was, came to Egypt seeking to buy food and how eventually, Joseph was reunited with his father and how God used Jacob to save God’s people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jewish people, from extinction.
This, of course, is important for all of us because it was through the Messiah Jesus Who was given to God’s people, that salvation would become possible for all who repent and believe in Jesus.
But our lesson takes place well after Joseph’s reunion with his father. Jacob and all of his sons and their families had lived in Egypt with Joseph for some time when Jacob died.
There are two scenes recounted in the lesson. Scene #1 comes in verse 15. Jacob has died and Joseph’s brothers are in a panic. They wonder, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” Joseph’s brothers could be cynical, self-centered men and they couldn’t imagine that Joseph was any different.
They projected their own cynicism and selfishness onto Joseph. Afraid for their lives, the brothers concoct a phony story to tell Joseph.
We read about that story in Scene #2 of our lesson, verses 16 through 21. The brothers tell Joseph that, just before he died, their father Jacob had directed them to tell Joseph not to exact vengeance on them for their sins against him.
Our lesson tells us that when Joseph heard his brothers' story, he wept. Joseph's brothers found it hard to believe that a believer in God like Joseph could possibly forgive them. That's why they wept.
They clearly didn't know nor understand the relationship with God that Joseph had. And that’s what made Joseph weep, filled with sorrow for their disbelief and their fear of him.
Joseph says in verses 19 and 20 of our first lesson: “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
Though I’ve read them many times, I always find Joseph’s words here breathtaking! And they often choke me up.
Joseph is saying that God can make something of the most sinful actions people may perpetrate against us.
Notice several things about what Joseph says. First: Joseph sees his brothers kneeling before him and, even though this was exactly what God had revealed would happen in the dreams he’d had as a boy, he didn’t like it.
Joseph believed God’s words in Isaiah 42:8: “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.” Joseph insisted that he wouldn’t take God’s place. He wouldn’t take God’s glory and he wouldn’t do God’s job.
When someone hurts us, we may be inclined to think that it’s only our due that the offending party should, in some way, come crawling to us for forgiveness. Joseph knew that no matter what sins others perpetrate against us, God is really the One most hurt and offended by human sin. When we are offended, it’s good to remember God’s words in Deuteronomy 32:35 “It is Mine to avenge; I will repay.”
Though today, Jesus entrusts the Church with the responsibility of declaring God’s forgiveness to the repentant and the opposite to the unrepentant, when others hurt us, we aren’t in the vengeance business. We must trust God to sort things out.
The second thing to notice is that Joseph could see God at work even in the midst of his pain. He saw that God had used the adversities he experienced to save whole nations, including the small band of people who would become the ancestors of Israel and through Christ, the ancestors of all who confess Christ as their God and Lord.
Joseph’s connection with God allowed him to forgive his brothers. None of us can forgive others and be free of the resentments that can destroy our happiness, without God’s help and empowerment. It’s impossible to live the Christian life without a connection to the God of the universe definitively revealed to us in Jesus Christ! We can forgive only if Jesus Christ lives within us.
As Christians, we confess that God does live and work within us. As Paul puts it in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” You can't forgive others their trespasses against you. But Christ in you can!
Christ lives in you when you are a baptized believer in Him. Think of what that means for your everyday life! Even on the cross, Jesus Christ was able, we see from Luke 23:34, to pray for those who were killing Him and crying for His blood, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” That Christ lives within every baptized believer in Christ!
We see how Christ lives in believers in a man named Stephen. Five years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Acts 7:60 tells us that Stephen, a mere human being who, through Holy Baptism, had Christ living within him, could pray as he was being stoned to death for his faith in Christ, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
When you believe in the God revealed in Jesus—the God of the Old and New Testaments, you can forgive others because you know that in Jesus, nothing can separate you from God and His love for you. Christians know the freedom that comes to us when God empowers us to forgive others as God has forgiven us because of the cross and resurrection of Christ.
The most common New Testament Greek work for forgive, aphiemi, literally means, release. Forgiveness is releasing, letting go of all pretense of being God, letting go of having any right or responsibility for holding the sins of others ocer their heads, and instead, trusting God to deal with whatever punishments need to meted out against those who sin against us. When we forgive others, God releases us to live with Him always.
Holding a grudge is like holding your breath for an extended period of time. As long as you do it, you can’t expel the toxins of bitterness and anxiety and you can’t breathe in the fresh air of God’s Holy Spirit. If Joseph hadn’t trusted in God to release His grudges and hold onto God through bad and good times, there is no way God could have fulfilled the good purposes that God had revealed to Joseph when Joseph was just a little boy that God wanted to fulfill in Joseph’s life. When we fail to forgive, there are good things that God intends to do through us that just don’t happen. And that is a tragedy.
As Jesus showed us in last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, there are times when we must lovingly confront those we feel have sinned against us. It’s right that we do so. But God can do so much in the lives of people who surrender everything, even their anger and sorrow over the hurts, insults, slights, and horrible injuries others have inflicted on them.
God will do nothing in the lives of people who block His grace by refusing to forgive others. But God releases us from our sins when we forgive others as He forgives us through Christ. If you’ve come here this morning holding a grudge against anybody, I invite you (I beg you) to attempt to work things out starting now. Release those against whom you have a grudge. Release yourself. Above all, I invite you to lay your grudge at Jesus’ cross right now and to let God set you free to live the life you were made for!
Thursday, September 11, 2014
A Prayer for September 11
Prepared this for the electronic version of the church newsletter going out today:
Almighty God, on this anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we ask You to help us remember the sense of vulnerability and desperation for You with which many reacted on that day and to live all our days similarly. Teach us what it means to trust in You, knowing that neither perfect safety nor perfect ease are promised to us in this world. But in Christ, You promise to be with all who trust in Him until the close of this age and that, through His resurrection, You have totally and eternally conquered sin, death, and darkness. We pray Your continuing comfort for those who lost loved ones on that grim September morning, as well as for the families whose loved ones have died in battle since. We ask that You would give Your Church--all of us who trust in Jesus Christ as God and Savior--a renewed and constantly renewing passion for sharing the good news of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and believe in Christ. Christ and His Gospel are the only antidote to human sin, including our own sin; by Your Holy Spirit, empower us to humbly and boldly share Christ in our words and through our lives. In the Name of Christ we pray. Amen
"Servant Leadership" in Christ's Church
Good thoughts on this subject from John Schroeder. The greatest aspiration any Christian can have isn't top status or being the center of attention, but being useful in the hands of the God to Whom she or he owes eternal life. That is a very chastening and humbling thought for me.
So Far, So Great
Learned from a friend earlier today that U2's latest LP, Songs of Innocence, could be downloaded free at iTunes. Grabbed it quick. So far, so great. My recommendation? Get it!
Tuesday, September 09, 2014
Super Moon Sky
The Moon is lighting up the sky and everything beneath it after midnight on Tuesday morning. Last night for the current Super Moon, I hear. Far more amazing than this video can display.
Monday, September 08, 2014
Sunday Afternoon Sky
Just a smattering of clouds could be seen in Sunday afternoon's deep blue sky here.
Saturday, September 06, 2014
Antidote for Lots That Ails Us
"Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." (Psalm 150:6)
I've been doing quite a bit of navel gazing lately. So this is a good reminder.
While praising God and worshiping God is about God and not about us, about remembering God's goodness and His acts, a byproduct is that when we focus on Him, we focus less on ourselves. The less self-centered we can become--the more focused on God and on others, the more joy we experience. Joy isn't happiness. Happiness is fleeting. Joy is that sense of being in sync with God and His will for me.
Joy is the default mode in which God created all human beings to live. We were made to live for God and His glory, not because God is an egomaniac Who needs us, but because God is our lifeline and we need Him.
Sin though, the state of self-absorption and self-will into which we're all born, robs us of joy. But the more we consciously surrender to the God we know in Christ, the more we turn to Him for forgiveness, new life, and direction, the more joy we can experience, irrespective of the circumstances of our lives.
Praise lifted to God in our hearts when we're by ourselves and when we're in the company of other believers is the antidote for much of what ails us.
I only wish I remembered that more. Praying that God will keep reminding me.
I've been doing quite a bit of navel gazing lately. So this is a good reminder.
While praising God and worshiping God is about God and not about us, about remembering God's goodness and His acts, a byproduct is that when we focus on Him, we focus less on ourselves. The less self-centered we can become--the more focused on God and on others, the more joy we experience. Joy isn't happiness. Happiness is fleeting. Joy is that sense of being in sync with God and His will for me.
Joy is the default mode in which God created all human beings to live. We were made to live for God and His glory, not because God is an egomaniac Who needs us, but because God is our lifeline and we need Him.
Sin though, the state of self-absorption and self-will into which we're all born, robs us of joy. But the more we consciously surrender to the God we know in Christ, the more we turn to Him for forgiveness, new life, and direction, the more joy we can experience, irrespective of the circumstances of our lives.
Praise lifted to God in our hearts when we're by ourselves and when we're in the company of other believers is the antidote for much of what ails us.
I only wish I remembered that more. Praying that God will keep reminding me.
Friday Was Bill Mazeroski's Birthday
Who is Bill Mazeroski?
He was the unlikely hero of the 1960 World Series. In the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh and deciding game of the series, Maz, the Pittsburgh Pirates' capable second baseman, never known for his home run acumen, jacked one out over the left field fence to beat the New York Yankees.
It's the only time in baseball history that feat has been accomplished.
On Friday, Mazeroski turned 78. I'm sure that the man has led a rich and interesting life. But for many people, he will always be remembered for that one amazing moment at Forbes Field in 1960.
By the way, as I understand it, the only recording made of the entire game appeared on the MLB Network a few years ago. The recording had been made for singer/actor Bing Crosby, then a part-owner of the Pirates. Crosby, I've been told, was so nervous about the Series that he escaped to Europe to await news of the outcome. But he had someone record the Series. It was only years later that the recording was discovered somewhere in the late Crosby's archives.
If Bill Mazeroski happens to read this: Happy belated birthday, sir.
[Thanks to Howard Wilkinson for linking to this video over on Facebook.]
He was the unlikely hero of the 1960 World Series. In the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh and deciding game of the series, Maz, the Pittsburgh Pirates' capable second baseman, never known for his home run acumen, jacked one out over the left field fence to beat the New York Yankees.
It's the only time in baseball history that feat has been accomplished.
On Friday, Mazeroski turned 78. I'm sure that the man has led a rich and interesting life. But for many people, he will always be remembered for that one amazing moment at Forbes Field in 1960.
By the way, as I understand it, the only recording made of the entire game appeared on the MLB Network a few years ago. The recording had been made for singer/actor Bing Crosby, then a part-owner of the Pirates. Crosby, I've been told, was so nervous about the Series that he escaped to Europe to await news of the outcome. But he had someone record the Series. It was only years later that the recording was discovered somewhere in the late Crosby's archives.
If Bill Mazeroski happens to read this: Happy belated birthday, sir.
[Thanks to Howard Wilkinson for linking to this video over on Facebook.]
Friday, September 05, 2014
Aaron Hill's Just Filling In
He hadn't played third base since 2005, but recently, Aaron Hill treated playing the position like just another day at the office. Wow!
Thursday, September 04, 2014
Check It Out
Musically adventurous. Challenging. Inspiring.
What warrants all those descriptors? Lecrae's about-to-be-released, Anomaly. Listening to it through 'First Play' on iTunes.
What warrants all those descriptors? Lecrae's about-to-be-released, Anomaly. Listening to it through 'First Play' on iTunes.
Joanne Freeman on 'Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Honor'
"A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." (Proverbs 22:1)
The Bible acknowledges that a good reputation is a good thing, although when God came into the world in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, He was willing to take on a bad reputation, enduring the form of execution reserved for Rome's worst criminals, in His mission of saving all who repent and believe in Him from eternal separation from God.
For this, Philippians 2:9-11, tells us, Jesus achieved supreme honor, the highest reputation one can have:
Then, the only question will be, "Have we emulated Christ and humbled ourselves by trusting in Him and what He achieved for us on the cross and from the empty tomb?"
To look for honor anywhere else but in humble submission to Christ is pointless. "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it," Jesus says, "but whoever loses their life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:25)
All of which helps explain why I listened to Yale historian Joanne Freeman's lecture on Alexander Hamilton's idea of honor so intently. (That and the fact that Freeman is a terrific historian and lecturer.)
Other than Washington, Hamilton is my favorite figure from the American Revolution. But his idea of "honor," shared by many of his contemporaries, is self-driven, futile, and ends in death...physical as well as eternal.
In the end, we can't earn honor. All of us are ordinary sinful human beings. Honor must be conferred on us. It's only conferred on those who did what Hamilton refused to do on the fateful day when Aaron Burr killed him in a duel, surrender.
But our call isn't to surrender to just anyone or anything...it's to Christ alone.
Alexander Hamilton was a good man, in many ways a great man. But his guiding principle in life led him to a tragic, early, and ultimately, stupid death. Hamilton, always the young man in a hurry. While his achievements had already been enormous, his death at age 47 denied the country he loved his services far too early. It all could have been avoided if he had only looked for honor in the right place.
[Here's a sampling of Alexander Hamilton blogging I've done here.]
The Bible acknowledges that a good reputation is a good thing, although when God came into the world in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, He was willing to take on a bad reputation, enduring the form of execution reserved for Rome's worst criminals, in His mission of saving all who repent and believe in Him from eternal separation from God.
For this, Philippians 2:9-11, tells us, Jesus achieved supreme honor, the highest reputation one can have:
...God exalted him to the highest placeThose of us who are only human, and not like Jesus, both human and divine, may attain respect and honor from others, but it won't be any good to us when we face God in eternity.
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Then, the only question will be, "Have we emulated Christ and humbled ourselves by trusting in Him and what He achieved for us on the cross and from the empty tomb?"
To look for honor anywhere else but in humble submission to Christ is pointless. "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it," Jesus says, "but whoever loses their life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:25)
All of which helps explain why I listened to Yale historian Joanne Freeman's lecture on Alexander Hamilton's idea of honor so intently. (That and the fact that Freeman is a terrific historian and lecturer.)
Other than Washington, Hamilton is my favorite figure from the American Revolution. But his idea of "honor," shared by many of his contemporaries, is self-driven, futile, and ends in death...physical as well as eternal.
In the end, we can't earn honor. All of us are ordinary sinful human beings. Honor must be conferred on us. It's only conferred on those who did what Hamilton refused to do on the fateful day when Aaron Burr killed him in a duel, surrender.
But our call isn't to surrender to just anyone or anything...it's to Christ alone.
Alexander Hamilton was a good man, in many ways a great man. But his guiding principle in life led him to a tragic, early, and ultimately, stupid death. Hamilton, always the young man in a hurry. While his achievements had already been enormous, his death at age 47 denied the country he loved his services far too early. It all could have been avoided if he had only looked for honor in the right place.
[Here's a sampling of Alexander Hamilton blogging I've done here.]
Wednesday, September 03, 2014
Death: Weapon of Satan, Weapon of God
From today's C.S. Lewis Daily (I love the very last sentence.):
On death
On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptised into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.
Satan produced human Death. But when God created Man He gave him such a constitution that, if the highest part of it rebelled against Himself, it would be bound to lose control over the lower parts: i.e., in the long run to suffer Death. This provision may be regarded equally as a punitive sentence (“In the day ye eat of that fruit ye shall die”), as a mercy, and as a safety device. It is punishment because Death—that Death of which Martha says to Christ, “But . . . Sir . . . it’ll smell”—is horror and ignominy. (“I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed of it,” said Sir Thomas Browne.) It is mercy because by willing and humble surrender to it Man undoes his act of rebellion and makes even this depraved and monstrous mode of Death an instance of that higher and mystical Death which is eternally good and a necessary ingredient in the highest life. “The readiness is all”—not, of course, the merely heroic readiness but that of humility and self-renunciation. Our enemy, so welcomed, becomes our servant: bodily Death, the monster, becomes blessed spiritual Death to self, if the spirit so wills—or rather if it allows the Spirit of the willingly dying God so to will in it. It is a safety device because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him. Aided to the surrender that he must make by no external necessity of Death, free (if you call it freedom) to rivet faster and faster about himself through unending centuries the chains of his own pride and lust and of the nightmare civilisations which these build up in ever-increasing power and complication, he would progress from being merely a fallen man to being a fiend, possibly beyond all modes of redemption. This danger was averted. The sentence that those who ate of the forbidden fruit would be driven away from the Tree of Life was implicit in the composite nature with which Man was created. But to convert this penal death into the means of eternal life—to add to its negative and preventive function a positive and saving function—it was further necessary that death should be accepted. Humanity must embrace death freely, submit to it with total humility, drink it to the dregs, and so convert it into that mystical death which is the secret of life. But only a Man who did not need to have been a Man at all unless He had chosen, only one who served in our sad regiment as a volunteer, yet also one who was perfectly a Man, could perform this perfect dying; and thus (which way you put it is unimportant) either defeat Death or redeem it. He tasted death on behalf of all others. He is the representative “Die-er” of the universe: and for that very reason the Resurrection and the Life. Or conversely, because He truly lives, He truly dies, for that is the very pattern of reality. Because the higher can descend into the lower He who from all eternity has been incessantly plunging Himself in the blessed death of self-surrender to the Father can also most fully descend into the horrible and (for us) involuntary death of the body. Because Vicariousness is the very idiom of the reality He has created, His death can become ours. The whole Miracle, far from denying what we already know of reality, writes the comment which makes that crabbed text plain: or rather, proves itself to be the text on which Nature was only the commentary. In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.
From Miracles
Compiled in Words to Live By
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
On death
On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptised into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.
Satan produced human Death. But when God created Man He gave him such a constitution that, if the highest part of it rebelled against Himself, it would be bound to lose control over the lower parts: i.e., in the long run to suffer Death. This provision may be regarded equally as a punitive sentence (“In the day ye eat of that fruit ye shall die”), as a mercy, and as a safety device. It is punishment because Death—that Death of which Martha says to Christ, “But . . . Sir . . . it’ll smell”—is horror and ignominy. (“I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed of it,” said Sir Thomas Browne.) It is mercy because by willing and humble surrender to it Man undoes his act of rebellion and makes even this depraved and monstrous mode of Death an instance of that higher and mystical Death which is eternally good and a necessary ingredient in the highest life. “The readiness is all”—not, of course, the merely heroic readiness but that of humility and self-renunciation. Our enemy, so welcomed, becomes our servant: bodily Death, the monster, becomes blessed spiritual Death to self, if the spirit so wills—or rather if it allows the Spirit of the willingly dying God so to will in it. It is a safety device because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him. Aided to the surrender that he must make by no external necessity of Death, free (if you call it freedom) to rivet faster and faster about himself through unending centuries the chains of his own pride and lust and of the nightmare civilisations which these build up in ever-increasing power and complication, he would progress from being merely a fallen man to being a fiend, possibly beyond all modes of redemption. This danger was averted. The sentence that those who ate of the forbidden fruit would be driven away from the Tree of Life was implicit in the composite nature with which Man was created. But to convert this penal death into the means of eternal life—to add to its negative and preventive function a positive and saving function—it was further necessary that death should be accepted. Humanity must embrace death freely, submit to it with total humility, drink it to the dregs, and so convert it into that mystical death which is the secret of life. But only a Man who did not need to have been a Man at all unless He had chosen, only one who served in our sad regiment as a volunteer, yet also one who was perfectly a Man, could perform this perfect dying; and thus (which way you put it is unimportant) either defeat Death or redeem it. He tasted death on behalf of all others. He is the representative “Die-er” of the universe: and for that very reason the Resurrection and the Life. Or conversely, because He truly lives, He truly dies, for that is the very pattern of reality. Because the higher can descend into the lower He who from all eternity has been incessantly plunging Himself in the blessed death of self-surrender to the Father can also most fully descend into the horrible and (for us) involuntary death of the body. Because Vicariousness is the very idiom of the reality He has created, His death can become ours. The whole Miracle, far from denying what we already know of reality, writes the comment which makes that crabbed text plain: or rather, proves itself to be the text on which Nature was only the commentary. In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.
From Miracles
Compiled in Words to Live By
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Copyright 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1947 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Revised 1960, restored 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Tuesday, September 02, 2014
Last Night's Amazing Sunset
Taken while walking with son Philip and his girlfriend in the James M. Cox Arboretum in Dayton. It's a beautiful place, an oasis--combining planned gardens with a largely untouched forest--in the midst of he city.
Last night, God was painting with light that Maxfield Parrish himself could never have duplicated on canvas.
Last night, God was painting with light that Maxfield Parrish himself could never have duplicated on canvas.
Monday, September 01, 2014
When Does a Bad Video Nearly Ruin a Good Song?
Do I Wanna Know? is an infectious tune by the Arctic Monkeys. The lyrics well express the feelings of a person who's in love but uncertain of the other's feelings: They "wanna know," but they're afraid of what they'll learn.
Having said that, the official video looks like a sexist tire commercial. Thumbs down!
Having said that, the official video looks like a sexist tire commercial. Thumbs down!
It must be true...
...it was cited in an amicus. That appears now to be the moral equivalent of, "It's a fact. I read it on the Internet."
Evidently, justices of the US Supreme Court have, on at least several occasions, buttressed their opinions with assertions passed off as facts in friend-of-the-court briefings. The problem is, no one seems to know where the supposed "facts" come from.
A few examples:
Evidently, justices of the US Supreme Court have, on at least several occasions, buttressed their opinions with assertions passed off as facts in friend-of-the-court briefings. The problem is, no one seems to know where the supposed "facts" come from.
A few examples:
In a 2011 decision about the privacy rights of scientists who worked on government space programs, Justice Alito cited an amicus brief to show that more than 88 percent of American companies perform background checks on their workers.
“Where this number comes from is a mystery,” Professor Larsen wrote. “It is asserted in the brief without citation.”
In a 2012 decision allowing strip searches of people arrested for even minor offenses as they are admitted to jail, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy cited an amicus brief to show that there are “an increasing number of gang members” entering the nation’s prisons and jails. The brief itself did little more than assert that “there is no doubt” this was so.
And in a 2013 decision, Justice Stephen G. Breyer cited an amicus brief to establish that American libraries hold 200 million books that were published abroad, a point of some significance in the copyright dispute before the court. The figure in the brief came from a blog post. The blog has been discontinued.
Read the whole thing.
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