The Way of Life

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church on Sunday, December 6, 2015.]

Luke 13:1-14

Some of our vacations over the years have taken us through mountains in places like West Virginia and Colorado. Whenever we drive through mountains, I think about all that was involved in building the piece of highway we’re on. Mountains and foothills had to be blasted through and dug out, low areas filled in with concrete, dirt, and gravel. Road-builders create straighter, clearer paths to the places we want to go.

Our Gospel lesson for this morning tells us about a road-builder we call John the Baptist. According to Luke, the writer of the book from which our lesson is taken, John fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. Luke cites Isaiah 40:3-5; they make up verses 4-6 of our Gospel lesson. John the Baptist, Luke tells us, is “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation.’”

Long before John was born, God had defined John’s mission in life. He was to be a road builder who would create a clear pathway for “all flesh” to “see the salvation of God.” 

How did John do this? 

And what does it have to do with us?

This morning, we’re going to focus on just the first six verses of our Gospel lesson. We'll look at Luke 3:1-6. Luke writes: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, ...” 

From what Luke tells us with this list of kings and priests, scholars believe that John the Baptist’s ministry began in 28 or 29 AD.

But Luke wants us to know more than just when John the Baptist began his ministry. He wants us to know why John began his ministry. If we were reading Luke straight through, we already would have gotten a hint back in Luke 1:52. Mary, the virgin God chose to be the mother of Jesus, tells Elizabeth, then in the sixth month of her pregnancy for John that “[God] has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.”

The world kowtows to the Caesars, the kings, the wealthy, and the powerful, but people who believe in the God revealed to all the world through Jesus Christ know Who’s really in charge. They know too that God is at work even when most people think that God has disappeared. Even when terrorists, despots, and superstars are “getting away with murder,” God is still moving the world and all who trust in Him toward a certain destiny, ensuring that at a time both the Old and New Testaments call “the day of the Lord,” all will be made right. On that day, despots will get their comeuppance and those who trust in the Lord will step into the joy of their inheritance from God. Rulers will be brought down from their perches of power and the lowly will be lifted up.

Back in verse 2 of our Gospel lesson we’re told that: “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” These words are a clear signal that like Jonah, Hosea, and Joel, to whom God’s Word came in the Old Testament, John the Baptist was to be a prophet, a tough calling.

The word from God that the prophets were expected to spread was often a message that people didn't want to hear, but needed to hear if they were going to have right relationships with God. 

The lives of the prophets were, as a result, often difficult. Many were killed, just as John the Baptist would be, not because God had abandoned them, but because they were being faithful to the word God gave to them. 

And people then, no less than today, didn’t want a God Who told them what to do.

In Luke 3:3, we read, “[John] went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” 

Out in a wilderness like the one where God had spent forty years preparing His people to enter the promised land, John preaches the message that he’s been given by God. It’s simple: “Repent.” 

This is how John the Road Builder did his job of creating a pathway by which people could see God’s  salvation given in Christ. 

Repentance, to this day, remains the only roadway by which we can find salvation from sin and death, the only roadway by which we can have peace with God and peace within ourselves.

The Bible teaches that all of us are born in sin. That’s why God sent Jesus into the world. He took our sin on His own shoulders on the cross. He rose from the dead to tear down the walls of sin and death for us and to allow us to enjoy peace and intimacy with God. 

But sin can set us down pathways so far from Jesus that even if we’ve been churchgoers all our lives, regarded as “good people” by the rest of the world, we can get to the point where we can’t really see Jesus any more. 

To see Jesus, the arrogant must be laid low and the lowly must be lifted up. 

We need a straight, clear path to the salvation God wants to give to all people through Christ. John pointed people (he points us still today) to the pathway of repentance as the way to salvation through Jesus.

To many people today, repentance is a dirty word. A woman sent me an angry email a few years back complaining that in a message I’d shared on a Sunday morning, I’d intimated that all of us in church that day--including me--might have reason to be repentant. She didn’t like that at all. 

Truth is, we all recoil at accepting responsibility for our sinful thoughts and actions. This is why Jesus tells us that to be with Him, we must take up our crosses--that is, admit our sin--and follow Him. We must be honest: We cannot receive Jesus as the One Who saves us from our sins until we can acknowledge that we have sins from which we need to be saved.

For many people though, repentance is a great word, a joyful word! That’s because true repentance is made up of two elements. First: It means to be sorry for my sin. Second: It means to trust that when I confess my sins to God through Jesus, God will forgive me and I will be at peace with God. 

The believer in the God we know in Jesus is filled with the assurance voiced by King David in Psalm 103:12: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” They know the joy of repentance.

Imagine two people, each headed for the same destination. One takes a mountain path, following ever upward through switchbacks and hairpin curves, sure that she’s headed in the right direction, only to find herself at the pinnacle of a mountain, nowhere close to where she intended to go. 

The other person, with the same destination, descends into a deep valley, slogging through swamps and streams, equally certain that he’s going right, only to find himself mired in mud, his destination nowhere in sight.

These two people illustrate the lives of people who have lost their ways in life, far from the God we know in Christ. 

The only way off the mountain paths of egomania and selfishness that lead us away from Christ is through repentance. The selfish person must say, “You’re right, Lord. I’m not in charge. I’m not God. I’m not entitled. Forgive me and let me be Your child.”

Similarly, the only way off the lowly path of self-condemnation is through repentance. The lowly person says, “You’re right, Lord. I’ve been expecting too little of my character, I’ve thought too little of myself, and so, given myself a pass for engaging in sin that dehumanizes me. I thought that who I am and what I’ve done didn’t matter. But You died and rose for me. Because of that I know that I matter! Forgive me for denying the truth about myself and lift me up to live as Your child.”

And then the repentant person, whether they started from a position of lowliness or arrogance, trusts Jesus to be as good as His promise to give life, peace, hope, and the power to live with purpose to those who believe in Him.

Romans 8:1 says: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...” Let that sink in for a moment. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!

Those who repent--who own and regret their sins and trust Christ to forgive them--know what that passage is saying: Though we are sinners who deserve condemnation, Christ sets the repentant free to live as the human beings we were all meant to be!

Chances are that if you’re like other Christians (including me), you follow Jesus well sometimes. But sometimes, you lose your way. You sin and maybe you find, as I find, that the more you sin or ignore the will of God, the easier it becomes to sin again and the harder it can become to really worship God or to have peace with God or peace with yourself. 

This is why regular, daily repentance is so important. It clears away the blindness of our sin, helping us to see how deadly our sin is. It helps us to see the God we know through Jesus, the love He has for us, and the life He gives to those who turn their backs on sin and follow Him.

It was while repenting that David wrote in Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me,and lead me in the way everlasting.”

John the Baptist was a road-builder. But the road to life with God and the second chances of God are open even today to all. We travel the road of repentance when we turn from sin and trust in Christ alone for life. May this be the road we travel each day.

Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emanuel

This is one of my favorite versions of an Advent classic, sung by Bryan Duncan. It appeared on the Our Christmas collection by various artists released in 1990.

Emanuel (or Emmanuel or Immanuel) is one of the designations of Jesus, first appearing in Old Testament prophecy. It's a title that means, God with us. And that is what Jesus is, God in the flesh, who came into our world to be with us and to bear the punishment for sin we deserve and to set all who repent and believe in Him free to live with God for eternity.

One day, God with us will return to this world and all who have entrusted their lives to Him will live in the new creation that God gives as an act of grace to those who surrender to Emanuel, Jesus the Christ. Oh, come, oh, come, Emanuel.

The Biblical roots of Lutheran worship

A good overview who wonder why Lutherans worship as we do, whether in contemporary, traditional, freaked out, or blended settings.

God doesn't promise to make us happy

Nicole Cottrell identifies five lies that Christians believe. Number five is one to which I've been susceptible, the notion that God promises believers in Jesus that He will make us happy. But Cottrell is dead-on when she writes:

Happiness in scripture is usually mentioned in terms of a fleeting moment or a temporal, earthly event. Neither the scriptures or Christ (or anyone else for that matter) ever tell us that God wants us to “be happy.” He wants us to be a lot of things: righteous, holy, godly, pure, sanctified, etc … but “happy” ain’t in the list. 

It’s cliche, but man is it true: God is more concerned with our holiness than our happiness.

Read the whole amazing article.

Heirlooms by Amy Grant

A wonderful Christmas tune.

Can you identify?

Hope the cartoonist, whoever it is, won't mind my sharing this.

A good ambition to have...

...is to aim always at doing good for others and not getting caught at it...and not giving the good we do a second thought, as if to say, "What a great person I am."

Our giving should be a reflexive response to what a great God Who loves and saves those who trust in Christ to live as human beings made in God's image, has done for us.

And it should be done as anonymously as possible, so that the beneficiaries of the good we do won't be made to feel they owe us and we won't get puffed up, failing to remember that "every good and perfect gift"--even those gifts for which we've used every ounce of our brain and brawn to earn--comes from God, not from us.

I pray that God will help me to live with such un-self-conscious gratitude and generosity.

The best Christian person I know is also the most generous person I know, who, at the very designation of "best person I know" comes at me with firm denials.

But then, you wouldn't expect a person who routinely lives with gratitude toward God and generosity toward others to be conscious of how exceptional they are.

If they were conscious of their exceptional characters, they couldn't be notable for their gratitude and generosity. In other words, if you think that you're "all that," you're clearly not.

The key, I suppose, is to keep turning to Christ in "daily repentance and renewal," giving Him carte blanche to change us from the inside out and to live in our attitudes, actions, and thoughts. (We need to become, in Martin Luther's phrase, "the Holy Spirit's workshop.") When that happens, the Holy Spirit lives more firmly in us and we fulfill the picture of gratitude and generosity Jesus paints in these words from His sermon on the mount: 

"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing..." [Matthew 6:1-3]

A prayer

God, end this scourge of violence. Bring us all into relationship with Your Son Jesus, the Prince of Peace, so that troubled souls will be brought under Your authority and grace. In Jesus' name.

'6 Ways to share your prayers with the sick'

Here. Thanks to a former parishioner who shared this piece on Facebook today.

'The San Bernardino shooting is the second mass shooting today and the 355th this year'

That's the headline for this piece from the Washington Post Wonkblog.

Lord, have mercy.

Oh! Darling by the Beatles

With Every Act of Love by Jason Grey

How to Use the Gift of Time

[This was shared this morning during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church.]

Luke 21:25-36

Today is the first Sunday of the first season of the Church Year, Advent. Advent means coming, as in “Christ came to us on Christmas day” and “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

When Christ comes back, He will finally and completely establish His kingdom with those of us who have, as the Bible says, “longed for His appearing” and have endured in faith in Him alone. Advent reminds us of this truth.

But when will Christ return? 

Under what circumstances? 

And what does it all have to do with you and me? 

Jesus addresses these questions in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 21:25-36. At the outset, Jesus says: “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world...”

We read these words and, being clever, we figure that the end of this world and the return of Jesus must be close at hand. And that’s true. An old friend approached me recently and asked, "So, do you think we're getting closer to the day of Jesus' return?" I told him yes, that every day since Jesus spoke the words in our gospel lesson for today, we've been getting closer to Jesus' return.

But a careful reading of the lesson shows us that Jesus doesn’t describe the so-called “signs of the times” so that clever people like us can make predictions about the future. In Acts 1:7, Jesus tells us, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority”

By talking about the signs of His coming back to the world with His kingdom, Jesus was not really making predictions about the future at all.

Slip down to verse 32 in our Gospel lesson. There, Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Jesus is saying that all of the drama, killings, terrorist attacks, damaging earthquakes, and wars that He said must precede His return would all take place within the lifetimes of the first people to whom He spoke these words in the first-century AD.  

It’s because all of the signs of the end that Jesus spoke about with His disciples had already taken place twenty centuries ago that many early Christians began doubting Jesus and their faith in Him. “If Jesus hasn’t come back yet, despite the mess the world is in,” they reasoned, “maybe He never will come back. Maybe Jesus isn’t good for His word.”

Peter wrote to Christians dealing with these kinds of doubts and questions in 2 Peter 3:9, where he says: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” “You Christians overcome by the hardships you undeniably endure in this life,” Peter was saying, “get over yourselves!” It's not bad advice for us either.

Today, on the authority of God’s Word, given through Peter, we know that Christ hasn’t come back to this world yet because He loves those who don’t know Him and need Him.

These people need time to hear the Gospel, the good news of new and everlasting life through Christ.

They need time to turn from sin, time to embrace the gift of faith in Christ. 

That group of people includes you and me, people who need to turn from the obsessions du jour and turn to Christ for grace and to ask Him to daily call the shots over our lives.

And here’s the key takeaway for you and me as Christians this morning: Christ has also delayed coming back in order to give you and me the time we need to share with our neighbors and world the message about Christ and the salvation that comes from having a relationship with Jesus Christ alone.

Our call as Christians is clear: By grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we know that we've been "justified," counted guiltless for our sins despite our guilt. By grace through faith in Jesus, you and I are OK with God. So now, we’re to love our neighbors enough to help them to follow Christ and to be OK with God, too.

And how do we do that? By putting the faith we here confess into action seven days a week: 

• sharing Jesus with those who have nothing to do with Him or His Church; 
• inviting them to join us for worship or Sunday School or Bible study; 
• showing mercy and forgiveness to people who have hurt us (just like Christ did for us on the cross and does for us); 
• listening to the hurts of others and offering to pray with them and pray for them; 
• serving others in the Name of Jesus; 
• owning up to it when others confront us for the ways our words or actions or indifference have hurt them; 
• giving food to the hungry; 
• taking time each day to read God’s Word, offer prayer, and tell others about Christ;
• and, if you're a parent, sharing a prayer with your child every night before they go to bed. (This is a powerful witness, I have learned.) 

These action items for life aren't requirements for those who want life with God; they're ways for people grateful for Christ, His cross, and His empty tomb to express thanks for the life with God that Jesus has already given to us as a free gift of grace.
 
Jesus tells us in verse 34 “be careful” of ourselves, to stay awake, to stay alert, to what Christ may be calling us to do in any given second.

He tells us this not only so that we can resist temptations that could leave us trapped in sin and death when Christ returns or when we see Him face to face as the judge over our lives. Jesus also tells us to stay awake and alert so that, no matter what’s going on in our lives or in the world, we keep pursuing the commission He has given to us of making disciples of our unbelieving or spiritually-disconnected neighbors. To live as anything other than a disciple of Jesus in this troubling, challenging world is to follow a dead end street leading us to nowhere.

He was aimless and scattered, living on that dead end street. His only goals in life were to have fun and to be seen by others as the smartest guy in the room. A friend would tell him years later, “I worried about you. You just didn’t seem to have any focus, like any wind that came along would carry you to God-knows-where.”

By the grace of God, a wind did come along. It was the Holy Spirit Who carried that young man to a Lutheran church. 

There he found himself, inexplicably, being drawn to interact with a woman more than forty years his senior. 

She took this young man under her wing, put up with his immaturity and flippancy and self-regard, and taught him Who Jesus is and what it means to follow Him as your only God, King, and Savior. 

She taught him about the hope that belongs only to those who follow Christ. 

She taught him how to pray. 

By her words and her actions and her patience, she proclaimed Jesus to that young man. 

And to his amazement, he found that through the ministry of that nearly seventy year old woman and the other followers of Jesus he met in that Lutheran congregation, God had sparked the gift of faith in Jesus Christ within him.

That young man is not so young any more. 

And he’s still a sinner in daily need of the forgiveness and new life that comes to those who entrust themselves to Jesus Christ. 

He makes mistakes all the time. 

But my life has been changed forever. Like the prodigal son of Jesus’ story, I was dead and am alive again, was lost and have been found.

All because a group of Christ-forgiven sinners who made up Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus, including Martha Schneider, grateful for the grace of God given in Jesus Christ to them, shared the Word in its purity and administered Holy Baptism and Holy Communion rightly. 

And this is how the Church, Christ's body in the world, people like you and me, are used by God to make disciples.

Who will you share Christ with this week? 

The clock is ticking. 

We don’t know when Christ will return. We don't know how much time each of us personally has on this earth. 

But we do know that, as surely baby Jesus once came upon a midnight clear, the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus will return.

This time, His coming won’t come on a silent night. There will be nothing quiet about His judging “the living and the dead,” not on the basis of their works, or church membership, or popularity, or wealth, or power, but solely on the basis of whether we have trusted Him with our lives and let Him cover everything that is sinful and dying about us with His forgiveness and grace. Jesus will come in glory and, when that happens, time for the world and time for you and me will have run out. There will be no more chance for anyone to repent and believe in Him.

Make it your daily aim to share Christ in some way with those who, absent a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, will stand naked in their sins when they meet Jesus, eternally distant from Christ’s grace and forgiveness, facing a Christ-less eternity.

If you had the cure for cancer, you wouldn’t keep it to yourself. As a follower of Jesus, you have something that even the merged pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan don’t have: the cure for sin and death and meaningless life. That cure is Jesus Christ. 

Trust in Him. 

And then, in as many ways as you can every single day, share Him! 

Time is running out.

Stand Firm

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

Mark 13:1-13

What I know about birth pangs or labor pains is, as it can only be for any man, second-hand knowledge, from having seen my wife go through labor with our two kids. So I’m not an expert. I just know that labor is hard and I wonder if we men were the ones who gave birth whether the world’s population would be much smaller.

I bring this up because, as New Testament scholar N.T. Wright points out, the key to understanding today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 13:1-13, is verse 8, where Jesus says, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.”

In the Old Testament, especially in the writings of the prophets, the imagery of labor pains coming before the birth of God’s kingdom in people’s lives was often used.

But here, Jesus uses the image of birth pangs in this passage differently. He’s not talking about the end of the world (He slides into a discussion of that seamlessly later on in Mark, chapter 13) or about the establishment of God’s eternal kingdom, but about the end of the temple in Jerusalem. That’s an event that happened in 70 AD, about forty years after Jesus spoke these words, when the Romans tore it down.

But, as we consider the news coming out of Paris this weekend, there’s a lot for us to learn as modern followers of Jesus from today’s Gospel lesson. It begins: “As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” “Wow!” the disciple is saying, “isn’t this a great place?”

But Jesus seems unimpressed with the temple. Look at verse 2: “‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ replied Jesus. ‘Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’”

Jesus is telling the disciple who remarked on the temple’s beauty to never confuse the eternal power of God with buildings, no matter how imposing or pretty. The worship of God cannot be confined to beautiful buildings made with human hands!

True worship is the offering of our whole lives to God everywhere we go.

Buildings crumble and fall or are brought down from explosions detonated by human sin and hatred. Only God and those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as their only hope, will endure, eternally, even after life on this fragile planet has ended.

Jesus was telling the disciples, including us, “Don’t put your trust in buildings, or traditions, or liturgies, or human beings or political or economic systems. Don’t even trust yourselves." Put your trust in Christ alone!

Go back to the lesson, to verse 3. Jesus is now sitting opposite the temple on the Mount of Olives and four of the apostles--Peter, James, John, and Andrew--have a question. Verse 4: “‘Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?’”

Notice this: In answering the four apostles' question, Jesus never actually answers their question.

Jesus isn't being evasive in not answering them. Rather, He has a more important point to make!

Verse 5: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.”

Every single thing Jesus describes as signs of the impending destruction of the temple are events that have been going on from the moment Adam and Eve rebelled against God and consigned all of us to our inborn bondage to sin. As Ecclesiastes 1:9, in the Old Testament, says: “..there is nothing new under the sun.” That verse doesn't say that history repeats itself. History doesn't repeat itself. One of the thing that sets Biblical faith apart from the ancient religions of the world is that, unlike them, it doesn't have a cyclical, but a linear view of history. The Bible doesn't teach that the same thing happens again and again a cycle of futility. Instead, Biblical faith believes that history is taking us somewhere. Rather, Ecclesiastes reminds us that the world is no more and no less sinful or foreboding today than it was the moment God banished Adam and Eve from the garden.

Different sins become more popular at different times. Or, as I sometimes put it, different specific sins go in and out of style. But the same old condition of sin, death, disasters, calamities, warring, and yes, even terrorism, have been going on for centuries. That reality isn't new.

The temple came down at the precise moment when Jesus foresaw that it would. But the disciples and no one else had any need to know when that would happen.

As hard as it is for we human beings to accept, there are some things we cannot know and never will know.

Actuarial tables may give us averages, but only God knows the exact moment He has appointed for the ends of our earthly lives. Psalm 31:15 says: "My times are in Your hand..."

Scientists may be able to make plausible guesses about the reasons for and the date when the destruction of the universe will happen.

But only God knows the time appointed for that to happen.

In fact, only God the Father knows when that moment will come. Jesus, God the Son, says, "...about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32).

So, Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples when the temple will fall or what the signs of its impending destruction will be.

His non-answer told them that they were asking the wrong questions.

What Jesus is telling them and us is that, no matter what painful or difficult things may come to us along life’s way, the future is ultimately in God’s hands. Our call is to trust in Him even in the midst of uncertainties and our own limitations.

He's also saying that all the painful things that happen in this world, no matter how calamitous are just the labor pains of God's new creation. That’s why Jesus says in verse 8: “These are the beginning of birth pains.”

Fact is, our entire life on this earth constitutes the labor pains of the new heaven and the new earth all who believe in Christ will live in and enjoy after this entire universe has fallen down, Christ returns, and the dead who have died believing in Him will rise again.

Romans 8:22 says that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” for that moment when, finally and fully, sin, death, and futility are put under Christ’s feet and the pain and tears of this fallen world will be things of the past. This should give us hope! Our job is to keep focused on that hope, no matter what.

The athlete who keeps her focus firmly on her goal of winning  the prize endures all sorts of difficulties--arduous training, endless practice, injuries and physical rehabilitation--in order to attain her goal. When we live each day in the certainty that God saves from sin and death all who retain their faith in Christ and have eternity with God as the prize for which they race, we can say with the apostle Paul, “ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” when, in the resurrection, we who believe in Jesus Christ will see Him face to face!

 (Romans 8:18)

But faith isn’t fatalism.

We’re not to sit around, letting life wash over us while waiting for Jesus to show up with a bunch of angels playing harps. (I personally hate harps, by the way!)

In fact, throughout Mark 13, where Jesus does go on to talk about the end of the world, Jesus tells us what we’re to do as we await the unfolding of God’s plans for our world and for our lives.

In Mark 13:5; Jesus says, “Watch out that no one deceives you.” Don’t let others tell you they know some truth about God not revealed in the Bible!

In verse 9, Jesus warns Christians to “You must be on your guard,” so that we do not give up on trusting in Him.

Then, in verse 23, Jesus tells us to watch out for people who point us to false Christs or to false versions of the real Jesus Christ and lead us away from eternal life with God.

And in verse 33, Jesus says to “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.”

Assured of our eternal futures, God sets us free to be about the business Christ has given us to do.

We're to reach up, worshiping and praying to God.

We're to reach in, giving and deriving support for our faith journey from other believers in Christ's Church as we study God's Word and pray together.

And we're to reach out, sharing the good news of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ with others.

When Jesus offered Himself on the cross, He was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Then He rose from the dead, opening up eternity to all who trust in Him. We don’t know what may happen to us or to the world in whatever time passes between this moment and the moment when the risen, ascended Jesus returns to bring judgment on this old world and bring the fullness of His kingdom to all who have believed in Him. But we do know that there is no safer place we can be in this world (and the next) than in the hands of the God Who holds the future of this world and of eternity itself in His hands.

A new world is being born in this messy world in which we live.

The labor pains we endure in this world are painful, even, as we saw again this past Friday night in Paris, deadly.

But if we will be patient and hold on tightly to Christ, we’ll have strength for the journey and an eternity of joy with Christ and all who, like us, have trusted in Him.

As Jesus promises at the end of today’s Gospel lesson: “...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” Stand firm!

Amen

It looks brand new!

Today, the one-time call committee--Lutheran churches elect call committees to interview and recommend candidates for pastorates when they have openings--at Living Water Lutheran Church surprised me.

Shocked me, is more like it.

The group, which now calls itself the "Blame Us Committee" got my car, cleaned it, and detailed it as a birthday gift.

It looks brand new!

Thanks so much to all of this group...I really appreciate it.

God told me to go to McDonald's...Well, sorta

God didn't exactly tell me to go to McDonald's.

But He did tell me to view every person in need as Jesus.

That means that, out of gratitude for God's undeserved gifts of forgiveness and new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus, I'm called to love others as God has loved me.

And I'm to do it with practical gestures, not just hollow words.

A few weeks ago, I was in Columbus' Short North district for a concert. Before the show began, we decided to walk along North High Street, in a stretch once blighted, but now filled with new bustle and vibrance. But, while there, I encountered several people who asked for money to eat.

At the time, contrary to my usual practice, all I had was a twenty. I usually only care a few ones.

To my embarrassment, I was loathe to part with the twenty.

And, of course--or, at least it's an "of course" to me, every time I was approached by one of these folks, I kicked into rationalizations for why I shouldn't give them any money.

"How do I know that they won't use the money on drugs or booze?" I asked myself.

"How do I know if this these people aren't lazy and this is just their way of generating income?" I wondered.

Well, of course--there's that phrase again, I don't know if the people I encounter on city streets or at the lights of freeway off ramps aren't druggies, boozers, or users.

And even if they are any of those things, there's a good chance that they still get hungry.

Besides, those words of Jesus were haunting me: "Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one  the least these, you did not do for Me" (Matthew 25:45).

So, I prayed. "God," I asked. "How can I be responsive to these people, without judging them, leaving that to You alone?"

Then, it occurred to me that I could honor such folks' professed request by giving them a gift card to a fast food place that doesn't sell alcohol. Voila: McDonald's.

Yes, people can sell the cards I give to them and use the cash to buy drugs or drink. They can ditch them, too.

But I'm not responsible for what people do with the gifts from God that we share with them. I'm only responsible for what I do with God's gifts to me.

Everything else is up to God.

So, I bought some gift cards from McDonald's as a way to be obedient to the God of love Who, through Christ, has changed from His enemy to His friend. I plan to keep a few of the cards with me all the time.

You never can tell where life with God may lead you. Maybe even to McDonald's.

Starbucks

This photo, shared by Charlie Lehardy, cracks me up.

I don't know what makes some Christians think that it's Starbucks' job to share Christ with the world. It's ours as Christians.

And I'm sure that in places where Christians actually are persecuted, like Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations, China, and parts of Africa, our fellow believers shake their heads at silliness like this coming from American Christians.

Dad

For Veterans' Day, here's a picture of my dad, taken when he was in the Air Force.

A thought

Much of what happens in this broken world is meaningless, even tragic. It falls to us then, by the grace and power of God, to imbue our lives here with meaning and to help others do the same.

Morality v. Christian Faith

This Spurgeon quote, shared today by Depraved Wretch on Facebook, surfaces the difference between civil righteousness and true righteousness.

Civil righteousness categorizes the behaviors in which we engage to stay on the right side of earthly authority.

True righteousness is that perfect shalom righteousness that characterizes life lived in loving community with God and others.

True righteousness is required of anyone who would be part of the eternal kingdom of God.

It's also, unlike civil righteousness unattainable by human effort or will power.

This latter righteousness is a gift of grace which God grants to those who trust in Jesus, God in the flesh.

To trust or to believe in Jesus is to seek, by God's power, to turn from our sin--our failure to love God or to love others--and follow Christ as our King and Savior.

Civic righteous is all about shame and coercion. It has its place in an imperfect world: Not all people live voluntarily in God's kingdom of love. That's why we need governments, armies, police forces, FDAs, EPAs, and taxing authorities.

The righteousness from God is conferred by grace on those who let Christ save them from sin, death, and hell in order to live in peace with God, others, and ourselves.

This righteousness gives the peace of God that passes all understanding for living today and the certainty of perfect life and peace in eternity with God.

The God we know in Christ is our peace (1 Corinthians 1:30).

You've Got a Friend by James Taylor

Love, love, love Taylor's version of this Carole King song.

What happens in those who receive God's Word

"The one who finds the way of God must first lose all his own riches [not just money, but everything by which we measure our value or in which we take self-centered pleasure] in order to find all manner of riches. God's word creates joy and delight in the one who receives it. It is delight about restored fellowship with God. It is delight about deliverance from fear and sin. It is the joy of the one who had gone astray and, after a long night, has found the right way again." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his meditation on Psalm 119:14)

First verse of a new song

As I've mentioned here before, I write songs and have done so since I was about eight. Not all my songs are rooted in personal experience or, if they are, in deflected ways. (I'm protecting the innocent and the guilty, including myself.)

Here's the first verse of a little bluesy thing I'm working on. It affirms that Jesus, as C.S. Lewis writes of the Christ-figure in his Narnia novels, isn't a tame lion...though He is good.

Jesus saves those who follow Him from sin and death. But when you surrender to Him, you never know what He may call on you to do.

Feeling fine
Drinking wine
Talking with my friends
Dreaming dreams
Seeing scenes
I thought it would never end
But when you're talking with the Holy Spirit
He may give you a call and you'd better fear it
Following Jesus is a Jenga game
He's gonna tear down your bricks
He cannot be tamed
(c) Copyright, Mark Daniels 2015

What God Wants

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday, November 8.]

Mark 12:38-44
“All she had to live on.” 

That’s what Jesus and the disciples witnessed the poor widow put into the temple offering a few days before Jesus was crucified. 

And, this is no exaggeration on Jesus’ part, by the way. When you read the Greek in which Mark originally quotes Jesus, Jesus says of the woman’s offering: “ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς,” literally all her life or her whole life, she placed in that offering box.

Now, let’s be clear. In the Old Testament God only called His people to give a tithe, the first ten percent of their income, to the temple. 

And that same Old Testament law would have exempted a poor widow from giving anything. 

But here is this woman giving all she has to live on. 

Was she crazy? 

Was she imprudent? 

Was she trying to make deals with God? 

Jesus doesn’t seem to think that there's anything wrong with this woman. 

In fact, he commends the woman as an example of faithfulness for His disciples, for you and me. 

But before you put your money over your wallets to protect them, let me just tell you that our Gospel lesson for this morning is about a lot more than money. 

It’s about our whole lives and how we will spend them.

Our lesson, Mark 12:38-44, takes place in the temple during Holy Week. Just before where our lesson picks up, Jesus has had another confrontation with the scribes, the experts in Biblical and Jewish law. They’ve said that the Messiah Whose coming they anticipated would be a “son of (or a descendant of”) David," Israel’s greatest king, who lived about a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. 

The claim is true enough, but they seem to think that the Messiah will be inferior to David. 

Jesus though, quotes Psalm 110, written by David, where it says: “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ Here, Jesus says, the great King David called the Messiah--Jesus Himself--Lord. 

As our lesson begins, Jesus talks about the scribes: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Jesus is warning us against people and warning us against being people who like to look like super pious believers, but are really looking out for number one. 

Today, they’re people who like to have titles, to have people bow and scrape to them and honor them. They’re hung up on status and hierarchy. 

You find them still in the Church today. 

We were invited to a dinner with a prominent man and just before dinner started, a local pastor was invited to offer the prayer. It went on forever, certainly what Jesus would call a “long prayer.” And, I hope I wasn't judging unfairly, but it certainly seemed that the man was praying less to God than to the prominent man visiting our town.

Jesus says that our aim shouldn't be to pray impressive prayers, but to pray honest prayers, humble prayers.

Jesus is also warning us against people and warning us against being people who crave money and the status it can confer on us. He said that the scribes found ways to extort money from widows because of their love of position. 

Of course, the particularly slimy thing about the scribes as Jesus describes them here is that they want, with their elevated status, to look like pious servants of God, men who are close to God, holier than others. 

In fact, how they looked was of paramount importance to them. It was all about the show. 

They’re like pastors and church people who focus on the performance of liturgy with elaborate exactness, but don't believe that Jesus was God. Or that He was born of a virgin. Or that He rose from the dead. Or that He was (and is) “the way and the truth and the life,” the only Lord by Whom we can be saved from sin and death. Or that the Bible is the Word of God. 

Like the scribes’ friends, the Pharisees, who Jesus once described as “whitewashed tombs,” the scribes were spiritually empty suits. But for as long as they lived on this earth, they were, if I can mix my metaphors, the big dogs. Jesus says though that beyond the gates of death, people like them will be condemned by God.  

Then, we’re told this, starting in verse 41: “And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”

The widow wasn’t trying to be seen by anyone. She didn’t make a show of her appearance at the temple. She simply--almost furtively, it seems--gave everything she had. 

She believed that the God Who gave her life would either sustain her in this life or give her new life beyond the grave. 

She didn’t worry about sacrificing herself in this way because she knew that the God Who gives life has plenty more to give away. 

Jesus says that this gift of her whole self exceeded the value of all the fat offerings by the “look at me” crowd.

To me, it’s instructive to consider when this incident took place. 

Just a few days later, Jesus Himself would give His whole life on the cross. 

Repeatedly, Satan and the world had striven to tempt Jesus, to divert Him from His mission of dying as the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that all who believe in Him can live with God and share in His resurrection life. But He was intent on giving His whole life for us so that He could give new life to us.

And in fact, the only way you and I can share in the life that God gives exclusively through Jesus Christ is to for us give our whole lives to Jesus. That’s what it means to believe in Jesus: To trust Him with our whole lives. 

Thirty-nine years after coming to faith in Christ, I realize that I am only now beginning to understand that truth.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:25: “...whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” This isn’t legalism. God doesn’t require our lives in a legal transaction to claim the salvation He gives in Jesus. 

Rather, it’s a simple fact that until we empty ourselves of all thought of needing earthly power or comfort, we can’t be free to take Christ’s outstretched hand of forgiveness, life, and love. 

Again, after all these years of being a Christian, I feel that I am only now beginning to learn this.

All the scribes, obsessed with earthly comfort and status, were slaves to this world, weighed down with concerns over what people thought of them, how others saw them, whether they were happy. 

The widow cared only about what God thought of her. 

And she already knew that God cared very deeply for all people, even poor, powerless widows. 

That’s why her offering was so valuable: It came from an authentically surrendered believer putting her surrender into practice.

What are you willing to give to the Lord? 

Of course, every Christian will see it as an appropriate expression of our faith to give of our finances to the mission of Christ’s Church. 

But even more than your money, God wants you. 

He wants you because He loves you. 

He wants you so that He redeem and make new every part of your life: your mind and emotions, your work, your friendships, and your marriage, your present and your eternity. 

God wants you because He’s given His all--even death on a cross--to make you His own. 

And He wants you for all eternity. 

May we, like the widow, learn what it means to give our whole selves to the God we know in Jesus. Amen