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