"To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?"

From today's installment of the C.S. Lewis Daily:

Today's Reading I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, ‘because it must have been so easy for Him’. Others may (very rightly) rebuke the ingratitude and ungraciousness of this objection; what staggers me is the misunderstanding it betrays. In one sense, of course, those who make it are right. They have even understated their own case. The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because ‘it’s easy for grown-ups’ and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no ‘unfair’ advantage), it would not get on very quickly. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’? That advantage—call it ‘unfair’ if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself? From Mere Christianity Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Of course, it's also true that suffering and death were made more difficult for Jesus than it is for us because, from the evidence of the Gospels, He knew far in advance of the events just how horrible His death was going to be and exactly when it would happen. It was by His deity that Jesus knew these things and it was this fate He prayed to be spared and then accepted in His prayer in Gethsemane.

He forged ahead to the cross (Luke 9:51), despite. As God, He was, as Lewis says, armed with the foreknowledge that if He fulfilled His mission, dying and rising, He could offer new life to all who repent and believe in Him. Only God could save us from sin and death. We should be glad to accept this help from the one who is stronger than us.

What to Say, When to Say It, When to Shut Up

My French instructor at Ohio State once told me, diplomatically, that I was "loquacious." That was his kind way of saying that I needed to shut up and listen during class. I always appreciated the graciousness with which he phrased his criticism.

"Running off the head," as my friends in northwest Ohio style it, has long been one of my deficiencies, though I hope through the years, that I've learned to listen more. This ability--the ability to speak less and listen more, to speak the right word at the right time and nothing more or less--is an especially important attribute for a pastor. After all, we are allowed to "hold forth" for twenty minutes every week when we preach and to do so also for long stretches if we teach classes, as I do. It's only fair to give others more than equal time when we encounter them in hospitals, nursing homes, the grocery store, church hallways, at sporting events, during shared meals, or at the park during other times of the week.

Listening and knowing when to speak the right words are skills some people possess by inclination or patient application or both. I envy them. More than a few of my friends are "naturals" in these ways.

For others of us, those two abilities, if they ever come to us at all, are gifts of the Holy Spirit, acquired by experience, prayer, repentance, and renewal.

I'm not inclined to be silent and when I was younger, I sometimes set off bombardments of words when I was nervous, scared, or ignorant of what to say. It was as though I was trying to build a fortress of words that wouldn't allow the things I feared to touch me. Or, I confess, I wanted to show others how knowledgeable and informed I was.

Not a good strategy for either end.

And not particularly conducive to building relationships or to helping people who could use a listening ear more than they need word bombs. This is why I often pray, "Lord, give me the right words and the right silences."

I still can get in God's way, saying things I shouldn't, neglecting to say words that might be helpful, or forgetting to simply listen. But now, I usually know it when I do so. (More often than I like, this knowledge comes after the fact. But at least now I do see it.) The connection between my brain and my mouth is getting a bit stronger, though not as strong as I want it to be.

In today's installment of Our Daily Bread, based on Solomon's book of Proverbs, there are thoughts on saying the right things at the right times by being attentive to the promptings of God's Spirit. It's worth reading.

I especially like this part:

The Bible says that there is an appropriate time to speak (Eccl. 3:7). Solomon compared properly timed and well-spoken words with golden apples in a silver setting—beautiful, valuable, and carefully crafted (Prov. 25:11-12). Knowing the right time to speak is beneficial for both the speaker and hearer, whether they are words of love, encouragement, or rebuke. Keeping silent also has its place and time. When tempted to deride, belittle, or slander a neighbor, Solomon said that it is wise to hold our tongue, recognizing the appropriate time for silence (11:12-13). When talkativeness or anger tempts us to sin against God or another human being, resistance comes by being slow to speak (10:19; James 1:19).

That passage from James is particularly important for me to remember, I think:

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...

Lord, have mercy. 


 

The Post-Season Continues in the NL

Looks like neither the Cardinals or the Giants are going to run away with the National League crown and berth in the World Series. They're both digging in for what is proving an intriguing National League Championship Series (NLCS).

At this point, I'm pulling for another I-70 World Series, pitting the Kansas City Royals, already up two games to none over the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), against the Cardinals. The two teams met in 1985, winning the World Series four games to three.

Pulling for the Cardinals doesn't exactly set right with me. As a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, I view the Cards as kind of the death star of the National League's Central Division. I like the graphic my son posted on Facebook earlier this baseball season that carried the simple message, "Friends don't let friends root for the Cardinals."

But just as I would love to see an all-Ohio Reds versus Cleveland Indians (with a new team name, one would hope) World Series and just as a Mississippi State-Ole Miss college football championship sort of appeals to me (if Ohio State can't make the playoff), I'd like to see an all-Missouri World Series this year.

And even though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool National League fan, always rooting for the NL squad in the All Star Game and almost always pulling for the NL entrant in the World Series, I'd have to make an exception this year if the Royals win the AL crown. It would be a great feel-good story if they won the World Series after the franchise's twenty-nine year absence from post-season play.

Who are you rooting for?

It's the @Cardinals. They love drama. Hello, @KoltenWong: http://t.co/zK8sU2pUc3 #Walkoff pic.twitter.com/F8aBVt1Bez
— MLB (@MLB) October 13, 2014

Thomas Jefferson's Recommended Reading List

From George Washington, my favorite founder, we turn to Thomas Jefferson, my least favorite. A recent post in the sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes interesting, The Art of Manliness, contained the third president's recommended reading list.

While Jefferson was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a backstabber, manipulator, hypocrite, and weasel, he was well-read, with an admirable commitment to learning. His personal library was the original Library of Congress, after all. (I wonder if Jefferson underlined passages in his books or talked back to the authors in the books' margins like I do. I would love to know.)

The post points out that:

...in 1819, at the ripe age of 76 years old, he founded the University of Virginia as a secular institute. At the center of this undertaking — quite literally — was the library. Traditionally, the chapel would be at the center of campus. At UVA, though, Jefferson put the library in the center of campus, thereby signaling his belief that books were central to one’s education.

This last sentence is true as far as it goes. But I also think that the library at the center of the Jefferson-designed campus was meant to say that, in Jefferson's world view, human beings are at the center of the universe, masters of their own fates, with no need of God. This perspective shouldn't surprise coming from the intellectual gadfly who decided that the miracles recorded in the Bible couldn't have happened, he needed to produce a more accurate account of things. (And you thought that Bill O'Reilly and the Jesus Seminar were the first people to pull that crap.) (By the way, I mention Jefferson's belief in a human-centered universe, very popular today, here.) Jefferson's philosophy is what some today would call, secular humanism, which is a fairly accurate and non-pejorative label, I think.

I have to confess that Jefferson's reading list is daunting. I haven't read most of the books, though I have read lengthy excerpts from some, have read Canterbury Tales, The Bible (many times), and lots of the plays of William Shakespeare. (But like Dylan in Idiot Wind--the second mention of that song in recent days here, I have to tell Jefferson across the mists of time, "I can't even touch the books you've read.")

It's a good list though, worth exploring by some ambitious readers with some time on their hands. So, get to it and report back here sometime next week on your progress. (I'll gladly grant extensions, if you feel the need.)

 

Speaking of George Washington

Here's a collection of posts I've written about the first president over the years.

Another Book Goes Onto the Amazon Wish List

It's this one. George Washington is one of my heroes and the story of his coming out of his "retirement" from public life in order to preside over the Philadelphia convention that hammered out the U.S. Constitution is a story worth telling. I'll have to wait awhile before reading it though.

(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for mentioning that he had just ordered the book. That's not an endorsement of Reynolds' quirky politics, by the way. I read a bit of everything when I have the chance. Reynolds has been kind in linking to some of my blog posts in the past.)

"Car Stops In North Columbus After Striking Pedestrian"

That's the headline for this story appearing on the web site of Columbus station, WBNS 10TV. Has the headline writer seen so many hit-skip incidents that the notion of a driver who actually stops after hitting a pedestrian seems novel? That's sort of a chilling idea.

Invitation to Life

[This was shared during the morning worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 22:1-14
As Christians, we cherish what's called the grace of God.

And we should! Grace is God’s charitable offer of new and everlasting life for everyone who repents for sin and follows Jesus.

In fact, in the original Greek in which the New Testament was written, the word we translate as grace is charitas, which we’ve carried over into English as charity.

Charity, like grace, can be given. It can be received. It can be rejected and thrown away. But grace, like charity, cannot be earned.

Romans 5:8 says: “...God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In the Person of Jesus Christ, God the Son, God gave up everything for us in order to bring us God’s invitation of new life, a life free of sin and free of death. That’s grace. And it's worth cherishing!

But grace is not and never has been everything you and I need to know about God. According to the Bible, grace brings God's gift of new life to all with faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to receive God’s saving grace but through faith in Christ. And faith in Jesus Christ entails trusting Him enough to turn from our sins—that is, to repent—and to turn to Him alone for life.

Believing in Christ means being committed day-in and day-out to laying aside our sin and trusting our whole lives to Christ.

You can accept God’s invitation to His heavenly party that never ends or you can turn it down. You can grasp Christ's hand of grace or you can pass it by.

All of this is what Jesus is talking about today in the Gospel lesson. Please go to the Gospel lesson, Matthew 22:1-14 (page 691 in the sanctuary Bibles) and let’s consider it verse-by-verse.

Jesus is once more telling a parable. The word, parabolos, the Greek New Testament word from which we get our word, parable, literally means to throw or roll along side. In His parables, Jesus told stories. But rolling alongside the stories were other stories, of deeper significance.

In this parable, like others that Jesus tells, Jesus describes what the kingdom of God, the reign of God, is like.

Jesus says in verses 1, 2, and 3, that a king, a stand-in for God the Father, decides to throw a party for his son, who is getting married. In the parable, Jesus is the bridegroom and the banquet is the Kingdom of God.

Now, it's no accident that Jesus here portrays Himself as the groom. You'll remember that in the Old Testament, the prophets often portrayed God as the husband to His chosen people, Israel, and Israel was portrayed as the adulterous bride who was unfaithful to her husband, worshiping false deities. In the Gospels, Jesus portrays Himself as the groom and John the Baptist as His best man. In Revelation, Jesus is once more portrayed as the groom and the Church, His redeemed people, are seen as the Bride of Christ.

By the custom of those days, the invitation that the king in Jesus' parable issues at the beginning would actually have been the second invitation the guests received. A first would have been issued simply informing the guests that a wedding was in the offing and to be prepared when the second invitation, issued just as the ceremonies and celebration were to begin, would arrive.

Guests, under these customs, had to be ready to drop everything as soon as they were summoned to a wedding, especially, you would think, when the king was asking them to his son’s wedding banquet.

As Christians, you and I are called to be willing to drop everything--all our sins, the worldly props we hold onto to prove our significance, even to make our livings, and all our own priorities in order to follow Jesus. To grasp God’s grace necessitates dropping everything that keeps us from living the life to which He’s called us. Otherwise, His amazing grace is lost to us.

In casting Himself as the bridegroom, Jesus was also clearly laying His claim to be the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed king, the One appointed to bring God’s grace to the nations. God the Father had already confirmed this about Jesus, first at Jesus’ baptism and later at His transfiguration. “This is My Son, the Beloved,” God’s voice had called out from heaven then.

But the leaders of God’s people, as we’ve seen before, wanted nothing to do with Jesus. That would mean signing over their power and influence to God. That’s why the invitees in the parable “refused to come” to the wedding banquet. They refused the invitation to the banquet just as, within the week of Jesus telling this parable, Jerusalem and Rome would refuse to heed Jesus’ invitation to repent and believe in Him. Instead, they would put Him to death.

Yet the king, like God, was “compassionate and gracious...slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” He wanted His invitees to be part of the banquet for his son.

For centuries, God had used His prophets to call His people to repent and believe in Him. God wants everyone at His banquet.

But the prophets and messengers God has sent to issue His invitation to people, in Old Testament times and today, have often been ignored and worse.

In verse 4, the king in Jesus’ parable sent out servants who told his invited guests to come to the party. Everything was ready!

Look at verse 5, though: “But they paid no attention and went off--one to his field, another to his business.” Another translation says that the invitees “made light” of their invitation. These two takes at the passage translate the Biblical Greek word, amaleo, which means to treat with apathy or indifference.

These invitees didn’t care about the invitation. And they didn’t care about the king who issued it. Their world revolved around themselves, their paychecks, their desires.

People can be that way toward the invitation of God to follow Jesus today. They think--we may often think--that God isn’t needed.

This isn't a new attitude. And God's Word repeatedly warns us against the sort of apathy and indifference toward God rooted in the belief that we don’t really need God.

In Deuteronomy 8:17-18, God tells His people through Moses: “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’  But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth...”

And in Acts 17:28, the apostle Paul, preaching in first century Athens, quotes one of the Greek poets that in God, “we live and move and have our being.”

Everybody needs God, whether they know it or not.

In verse 6, we’re told that some invited to the banquet went beyond ridiculing the slaves and the king they served. They seized, mistreated, and killed the slaves.

Verse 7 says that the king was “enraged” by this behavior. He sent soldiers to destroy that city that had chosen to ignore His invitation.

God allows everyone the freedom to turn down the invitation to join Him in the kingdom. And that means God will also let those who pay no heed to him to live eternally with the consequences of their refusal to follow Him. In John 3:18, Jesus tells Nicodemus: “Whoever believes in him [that is, whoever accepts the invitation and follows Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

In verses 8 and 9, Jesus says that the king in His parable does a stunning thing. He sends more slaves into the streets to “invite everyone to the wedding banquet.” He wanted to invite people who had never been invited before! Even today, God invites all the riff-raff of the world, including you and me, to be part of His kingdom.

For Jesus’ original hearers, arrogant in their spiritual pride, these words would have been scandalous! But God nonetheless invites everyone to His kingdom. God wants everyone to experience His grace. Everyone. No exceptions.

Our commission as Christians and church members is to share God’s incredible invitation to His kingdom with everyone, no exceptions, so that they can be part of God’s kingdom too.

The last part of Jesus’ parable, beginning at verse 11, should have special meaning for those of us who are part of His Church today. The king in Jesus’ parable sees a man at the wedding banquet not dressed in wedding clothes. The king is offended.

Now, Jesus isn’t saying that we’ve got to wear our Sunday best to be in His kingdom. Those in tattered jeans and those in three-piece suits have an equal place at His table.

And, you should know that in the first century world, there was no specific article of clothing for weddings.

The guests at such a feast were simply expected to wear clean clothes. Similarly, in the heavenly banquet enjoyed by God’s people in eternity, only those made clean by Christ will be in the presence of God the King.

While on earth, as Jesus points out in His parable of The Wheat and the Weeds, God will allow the weeds to live among the wheat in His Church. The weeds are the fake Christians, the go-through-the-motions Christians, the ones who talk a good game on Sunday but don’t even get suited up on Monday.

Galatians 3:27 says that, “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

And in Romans 13:14, Paul urges believers to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”

To clothe ourselves in Christ, to follow Christ, is to seek to do His will and not our own, even when everything in us wants to do things our way.

If we willfully soil ourselves in the dirt and sin of the world--selfishness, greed, lust, envy, gossip--we choose those idols over Christ and we refuse to be part of God’s kingdom! This is why daily repentance and renewal was identified by Martin Luther as the ongoing theme of the Christian's life.

The man in Jesus’ parable not clothed in his wedding garb was thrown “into the outer darkness, where there [was] weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The same fate awaits those who think they deserve to be in God’s kingdom just for having their name in a church directory.

This isn't said enough in the Church these days, nor certainly as much as Jesus Himself said it. But hell is the fate of all who reject the grace of God in Christ by refusing to turn from their sins and believe in Jesus Christ. These are people who faked living for Christ, while holding onto death, instead of the saving, sensible grace of God given in Christ.

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis writes: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy [the joy of belonging to God through Christ] will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”

This is why clothing ourselves in Christ is so important.

In James 4:10, we’re told: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

We seem to spend so much time in this life trying to lift ourselves up. “Pull yourself by your own bootstraps,” we’re told. We're told that, even though it's physically impossible!

But God invites us to let Him pull us out of the slime of sin and death and fear and futility into His kingdom, the heavenly banquet, which we can just start to taste now in His Word, the sacraments, and the fellowship of the Church. His kingdom is a place where we will know forgiveness, life, peace, and purpose for all eternity. But it isn't just about the sweet by-and-by: God lifts us up every time we choose to follow Jesus and only Jesus and lay everything else aside. May God give us the grace to do just that. Amen

Change Agent

Here.

The Motorcycle of Youth?

I love the simple posts on the blog, Jungle Jot, presented by an "accidental missionary" in the Philippines. Here, an enticing bit about a seemingly magical motorcycle. Feel free to theorize on the source of the renewed beard.

"I'm so lonely, wanna die..."

Remembering John Lennon on what would have been his seventy-fourth birthday.

The lyrics above are what I automatically, first-reflex think of when I think of Lennon. I don't know why. The song? Yer Blues.

According to Lennon's famous 1970 interview with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, the rest of the Beatles told Lennon that the name of the song should be My Blues, to be honest. But he couldn't quite admit to being "blue" so publicly, he said.

I'm more than blue that John Lennon was killed at the age of forty and that he apparently never got to know Jesus Christ.

Pray for the artists whose work touches you, Christians and not. Fame is a corrupting state of being that can destroy a person's soul. So, pray for those who have been gifted by God with the ability to create and perform music--hip hoppers, rockers, country crooners, techno poppers, dubbers, whatever. You may never meet them; but you could change their lives (and their art) for eternity by lifting them up to the throne of God.

(By the way, I still love the Beatles.)

Hard Pill to Swallow

Jesus doesn't promise that we'll be happy when we follow Him.

He doesn't even promise that, despite the fact that God never leaves us alone, we won't sometimes feel lonely. (Also here.) We most certainly will.

Jesus isn't some motivational speaker or religious guru.

He's God in the flesh. He died to overcome our unhappiness and our loneliness, along with our sin, death, and darkness.

This isn't heaven. And it never will be. "In this world you will have trouble," Jesus says. "But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

For now, we hobble on with no promise of an easy way (or, as the apostle Paul put it, we see through a glass darkly or a mirror dimly), but we hobble and we see vaguely with the joy of knowing that as long as we keep following Christ, we're never alone and that we have access to the "peace that transcends all understanding."

That can be a hard pill to swallow. If you're looking for easy answers, don't look for them in the Christian faith. But if you're looking for real answers from the real God Who has experienced and overcome all we deal with in the real world, check out Jesus Christ.

Patience in Prayer

Although the little story at the beginning of today's installment of Our Daily Bread seems trite and unnecessary, the point is a good one.

Our prayers often revolve around asking God to hurry up and bless what we want to do. What if God’s answer to us is simply, “Be patient. Wait upon Me”? We can pray with David: “Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly” (Psalm 5:3).

Patience in prayer is difficult. (Really, patience in anything is difficult, isn't it?) And no matter how many times I have seen God work in me and in circumstances for which I've prayed for long periods of time, I still find patience in prayer difficult. God seems to need to teach me the same lessons repeatedly, including this one about waiting for Him and His timing and His will. Thankfully, He's more patient than I am!

By the way, I'm often asked by people, "What if I'm not certain that what I'm asking for in prayer is pleasing to God?" And, "When should I stop praying for something?" (In other words, "When should I accept that God has told me no and move on?")

In his book on prayer, Ole Hallesby gives great advice on the first question. If we're uncertain about the advisability of the thing for which we're praying, we should own our uncertainty and just tell God, in our own words and from the heart, "Grant this request only if it will bring You glory." God isn't a Ouija board we manipulate to get to where we want to go. He's not an ATM. To pray to the God we know in Jesus Christ is to submit to His will. But there is nothing wrong with asking...ever.

When I pray in this way, I also ask God to demonstrate so clearly that, if He is saying no to my request, even I can understand that I need to stop bringing that prayer to Him.

Until I have that clear sense, I don't stop praying. In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells a parable, the purpose of which was, Luke says, to tell His followers, "...that they should always pray and not give up." 

When I pair this persistence in prayer with a persistent desire that God only answer the prayer positively if it will bring Him glory, I feel that I have God's permission to keep on praying.

And I do. 

Read the whole thing.

[Also: Check out Ole Hallesby's Prayer. ]

'Only a Ride' by Steve Taylor

This was the opening song of Steve Taylor's concert in Columbus on May 1. I was able to enjoy seeing my favorite Christian artist for the first time ever with great friends from Logan on that night! I'm thankful that someone caught his performance on video. The song is on Taylor's newest LP.

'You've Been Bought' by Steve Taylor

This great song from the 80s by Steve Taylor sings the truth to which Jesus' words in this morning's Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:33-46, points. Taylor particularly has in mind words of Paul's:

"...You are not your own;  you were bought at a price." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

A Way of Saying We Know We've Been Bought

The classic hymn, We Give Thee But Thine Own.

Caring for the Greatest Gift of All

[This was shared during worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 21:33-46
To begin, please turn to 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, page 794 in the sanctuary Bibles. It says: “This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

Some of you may have been trustees of the estates of loved ones or friends. You know that your responsibility is to see to it that the estate is cared for or distributed with wisdom and in accordance with the wishes of the one who conferred the responsibility of trusteeship on you. It’s a big job, not to be taken lightly.

In this passage, the apostle Paul wrote to show that his ministry was from the risen Jesus Christ. Christ had conferred it upon him.

But in writing this, Paul also taught an important truth for every baptized believer in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It’s this: All believers are caretakers, stewards, trustees of the mysterious gifts God gives to all who trust in Christ. We’re to tend the gift of faith within us--through things like worship, Bible study, receiving the Sacrament, fellowship with other believers, and prayer--so that our faith continues to grow and continues show and to bring glory to God in lives of practical acts of service and love and witness for Christ.

Without careful stewardship of the mysteries of our relationship with Christ, Christians risk losing our own faith connection to God and fail to fulfill our life’s calling from God, which is to commend the hope that we have in Christ to other people.

When Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, he wasn’t presenting a new idea. It’s an idea that goes all the way back to the garden of Eden, the home of the first human beings.

Adam and Eve were given the undeserved gifts of life, relationship with God, and relationship with each other, the very gifts we receive when we are baptized into Christ and confess faith in Him. Adam’s and Eve’s task was to gratefully tend their garden, their lives, and their relationships. You’ll remember how that all turned out.

But God didn’t give up on the human race after the fall into sin!

Nor did He ever give up on the idea of having a loving partnership with us, of providing us with a “garden” or a "vineyard" in which, in response to His grace and love, we were to be good stewards of life and our relationships with God and others we were made for.

God’s passion for the human race led Him to call Israel into being, a nation that was to be “a royal priesthood, God’s own people, a holy nation,” trustees of God’s love for humanity, who by their faithful stewardship would act as “a light to the nations,” so everyone could know and have a new, eternal relationship with the God of the universe.

All of which leads us to today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 21:33-46, page 691 in the sanctuary Bibles. This passage continues a confrontation between Jesus and the leaders of the Jewish faith that we looked at last Sunday. In last Sunday’s lesson, Jesus made clear that His authority to forgive sin, perform miracles, and call His own people, the heirs of ancient Israel, to repentance and faith in Him came from God the Father. Today, Jesus talks about how essential it is to receive Him God and Savior of the world. 



It starts: “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.”

The religious authorities to whom Jesus told this parable would have immediately understood what Jesus was talking about. As our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah 5 exemplifies, God often spoke of Israel as a garden or a vineyard. God gave His people a promised land in which the mysteries of His grace and the gifts of relationship with God and others were to be celebrated, respected, and tended. (Are you detecting a pattern?)

Their “vineyard,” their very lives, were to bear fruit: the power of God’s life, as they cultivated relationship with God, was to be visible in their lives, not in some calculated way but as the inevitable result of living in a relationship of daily repentance and renewal with God.

In the parable, the landowner--clearly a stand-in for God--who has invested everything in the lives of the tenants, sends his servants--representing God’s prophets--to collect the owner’s cut of the fruits, just as the prophets were repeatedly sent to Israel by God to seek out the fruits of faith and repentance--lives turned to God as their only hope--as freewill offerings to God.

Read on, please: “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way.”

The tenants--God’s own people--were indebted to the landowner--God--for everything. God sent His prophets. But the people, the caretakers of God’s mysteries, turned their backs on God and, in a bid to “be like God,” killed the prophets, imprisoned them, ignored them. Jesus lamented in Matthew 23:27: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” I wonder how often He utters the same lament over His Church today?

True story: There were two men who went to the same church, participated in the same small group Bible study, and worked at the same business. One guy learned that his Christian friend had found a way to siphon money from accounts he had charge of. But, the monthly accounts hadn’t been settled yet.

So, the guy went to his friend, confronted him with the facts, and asked him to make things right so that he wouldn’t have to report his friend. He assured the friend that God could forgive him.

But his friend was unmoved: “What’s God got to do with it? This is business.” Initially, like the tenants in Jesus’ parable, this man refused God’s authority over his whole life.

Happily, after prayer with his friend, he repented and didn’t follow through on his scheme.

For the Christian, all of life is God’s vineyard, a gift from God. That's to be remembered and relished and celebrated not just on Sunday mornings or when Bible studies are happening, but all week long.

The parable goes on: “Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

After centuries in which God sent prophets to call His people Israel back to Him, He sent His Son to call not just Israel but all who would believe in Him back into relationship with Him, so that through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, people could have a life with God that never ends.

But much of Israel--the Judea of Jesus’ first century world--wasn’t interested in repenting for sin and believing in Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life.” 

Like us, they wanted to do with God’s vineyard what they wanted to do.

Today, people say that their lives and their bodies and their time are theirs to do with what they will. But that isn’t true. Our lives (and our bodies and our time) have come from God.

And the new life we can have with Christ is not ours either. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

Jesus Christ spent His body and blood on the cross to buy us out of slavery to sin and death. As Christians, we know that our lives are not our own. Our lives, our bodies, our minds, our time, our possessions are all sacred trusts from God to be used in ways that honor the Lordship of Jesus Christ and lift Him up as the only hope for this dying, violent world.

Jesus’ parable makes it clear, I think, that the religious leaders weren’t ignorant of Who Jesus was. They knew that He was (and is) God the Son. That’s why they wanted to remove Him from this world.

It’s why people to this day want to remove Jesus and His claims of ultimate authority from the life of the world.

It’s why when any of us allow our sinful selves to call the shots over our lives, we’d rather not think about Jesus.

We know we’ve been bought; but we’d rather forget that.

As John 1:11 notes: “He [Jesus] came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

You and I are more subtle about deflecting Christ and His rightful claims over our lives than the first-century Judean religious leaders were.

Our favorite method of deflection is through busy-ness. We respond to the clamor of things we think we have to do and want to do, rather than the things we need to do.

We’re modern day Marthas, so busy doing that we fail to heed the one thing that’s needful, tending our relationship with Jesus Christ, being attentive to Him.

When Jesus asks the leaders what they would do to anyone who would spend their lives rejecting an owner’s rightful claims over his tenants (in other words, anyone who would reject God, the giver of life), they say: “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’[? “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

Jesus was telling the leaders that they were so hung up on maintaining their status--and the whole human race remains hung up on having what we think is ours when, in fact, every good and perfect gift comes from God--that their very salvation was going to be taken from them.

The world--even the Church of today--is complacent. We’re running the vineyard and we don’t want to cede control to God. We want to be in control.

Besides, we tell ourselves, Jesus walked the earth so long ago. And it’s been so long since He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

But we must not be complacent! Nor egotistical! Our lives can come to an end in a flash and the course of our time on this earth can change more quickly than we can fathom.

When I woke up on one June morning in 2014, I had no idea that later that night, I would have a heart attack that would destroy 40% of my heart, that I would require not just a stent, but also a pacemaker and defibrillator. When I get out of the shower each morning and catch sight of the outlines of this machine in my chest, I remember that I'm just a tenant, that real life doesn't issue from being in control here, but in giving control to the One Who still has the whole world in His hands.

We must remember always that real hope comes from Jesus Christ alone.

God is still in control.

This vineyard will one day pass from existence and Christ will establish His new kingdom for eternity and those who have steadfastly followed Him will, by His grace, be part of it.

Jesus Christ is the sign and seal that God and His promises can be trusted.

And that this world is still His vineyard. We are still His tenants.

And if we will hold onto Christ, we will bear the good fruit of a life lived for Him and we will live in His good kingdom now and forever. Amen

On a Fall Walk 2

More of last night's sunset. (Click to enlarge.)

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.

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.

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?

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.

President Obama's Next Secret Service Director

Anthony Schliegel...

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:

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.

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.

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.

Recovering 'Rapturist' Shows New Testament Doesn't Talk About Rapture

What the New Testament says about the rapture is, "No, that's not going to happen."

'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.

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:

“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



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.

Song-by-Song Guide for U2's 'Songs of Innocence'

I love the new release from U2. Here's a bit about each track.

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.

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!)

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