[I try to keep a quiet time with God five days every week. Below is my journal entry for today. Here. I explain how I approach my quiet time with God.]
Look: “When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him [Joseph] from their hands. ‘Let’s not take his life,’ he said. ‘Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.’ Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.” (Genesis 37:21-22)
Reuben is a man in the uncomfortable middle. Nine of his brothers are intent on murdering their step-brother Joseph.
In these circumstances, nine people constitute a mob and Reuben is afraid to stand up to them. They want Joseph, the kid brother preferred by their dad in their dysfunctional extended family, gone. (This rings true: Extended families often behave exactly like willful, controlling mobs, anxious to keep its members in line.)
The nine want to murder Joseph. Reuben wants to rescue Joseph and take him back to their father. But, fearful of his brothers’ rage, sure that he can rescue Joseph later, he suggests that the mob simply throw Joseph into a cistern. Then he, Reuben, would go back, free Joseph, and return the kid to Jacob.
Compromise and calm can be good things. Shrewdness can be too. Jesus says that believers are to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). But when our shrewd acts are rooted in our own analysis and not in the mind and plans of God, they can backfire. “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 16:25).
Later, when Reuben returns to the cistern to rescue Joseph, he finds that his brothers have sold the younger brother to passing slave traders. He goes to his brothers and says: “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”
Reuben then acquiesces to the brothers’ plan of lying to their father about what had happened to Joseph. Joseph must have been killed by a wild animal, they intimate. Reuben may have rationalized being a party to this lie. “After all,” he may have thought, “better for my father to think that Joseph is dead than to learn he’s still alive and set us off to search for a brat nobody liked.”
Besides, the lie was now being enforced by the conspiracy that had been hatched at Dothan. The mob (the family) had proven ruthless enough to dispose of those who stood in their way; who was to say that they wouldn’t go after Reuben if he showed any inclination to break from the conspiracy?
Reuben had reason to feel guilty on multiple counts: (1) for not standing up to his brothers in the first place; (2) for hatching his own plan, relying on his own resources; (3) for not trying to find Joseph after he had been sold into slavery.
Listen: Peer pressure can a be a horrible thing, especially when the peers in question are one’s own family members. Families can have a brutal way of pigeonholing and suppressing their members.
This happens a lot when there are dysfunctionality and favoritism from parents. These spawn a kind of dog-eat-dog nastiness among siblings that remains into adulthood. I’ve observed this many times, making the story of Joseph and his brothers accessible and believable.
The basic problem, of course, is disconnectedness from God. When we remain connected to the God now revealed to everyone in Jesus, in faith buttessed by worship, prayer, receiving Holy Communion, and remaining in fellowship with God's people, the Church, God gives us the capacity to deal with things like family dysfunctionality, fear of the crowd, and our own limited thinking. As we pray to God in Jesus’ name, He supplies the Holy Spirit to give us faith, authentic repentance, guidance, a desire to do what God wills, love for God and for others, and courage.
These are all assets that Reuben could have used at Dothan and beyond.
Even his fear of death at the hands of his brothers in revenge for his helping Joseph would have been overcome. When we cultivate a close relationship with the God we know in Jesus, we know that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to us.
In fact, there is a kind of living death that Reuben must have endured all of those years.
Not all things that people know need to be revealed, of course. The Hebrew midwives were right to conceal the birth of Hebrew boys from the murderous Pharaoh (Exodus 1:19). Corrie ten Boom and her family were right to conceal the Jews they attempted to save from the murderous Nazis.
Sometimes, I think, it’s also best to conceal facts that would only hurt, disrupt, or kill relationships. Much of the Oprah-zation of America, our practice of spilling all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, is predicated on the idea that this is healthy for the one doing the revealing. But how healthy, how helpful, is it for the one to whom sinful thoughts and actions of which they had no knowledge of them are revealed? Jesus says that one day, all of our secret thoughts will be revealed, of course (Luke 8:17).
But God’s Word also tells us to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Some people speak the truth but without a hint of love, making others miserable. They speak it in order to shock, to elevate themselves, to bring others down. This is weaponizing truth, a bit like what the serpent did in the garden when he told Eve that if they ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, they wouldn't die. That was a true statement, in a way: Eve and Adam didn't die immediately after eating the fruit. But what the serpent concealed with his artful truth-telling was that because they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve would die, just not right away.
We should always, I think, prayerfully examine our motives before speaking truth to someone else. God, in fact, may sometimes call us to keep our traps shut and keep the misery to ourselves rather than unnecessarily spreading it to others.
This, in fact, maybe what Reuben thought he was doing by not telling his father all those years what had really happened to Joseph. On that then, we might want to give Reuben a pass and spare him our judgment. (This is an example of why I'm so happy not to be God!)
But since Reuben was complicit in so many ways with what happened to Joseph and he failed to do the right thing because he relied on himself rather than on God, it’s hard not to see him as a morally compromised person.
The question that remains, of course: Is God showing me some of myself in Reuben? Is there something in Reuben story indicating that God wants me to see or change my own behaviors?
I have to say yes. Like Reuben, I’m prone to stand down when I should stand up. Like Reuben, I can be fearful of what others might say or think of me rather than heeding God’s will. Like Reuben, I often busy myself with my own plans when I should be consulting with God regarding His plans for me.
Respond: Help me, Lord, in a tangible way, to stand with You today. And help me today to make plans in consultation with you and not with my own heart, mind, or preferences. In Jesus’ name I pray.
Monday, January 15, 2018
Proud and Happy to be associated with Haiti
I posted this three days ago over on Facebook. It came in response to comments attributed to a prominent public figure.
[SMI Haiti is the organization through which we work and minister in Haiti.]
Our congregation has an ongoing relationship with several Haitian churches and communities. Haiti does suffer from grinding poverty, ongoing government corruption, the effects of natural disasters, and the impact of voodooism and other superstitions.
But the people there inspire us with their amazing faith, resilience, love, commitment to education and mutual service. We love Haiti and God loves the Haitian people as surely God loves all people.
We are proud and happy to be associated with Haiti and all the other places we do ministry. In fact, I know I speak for the many people of our congregation who have been touched by our Haitian partnership that the Haitian Christians have given far more to us than we have given to them. They have taught us so much about Jesus and what it means to be His disciples.[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
[SMI Haiti is the organization through which we work and minister in Haiti.]
Tuesday, January 09, 2018
"He's probably brought it on himself..."
That line is from a recent Tracey Ullman sketch on the BBC. It features a stinging role reversal: A man is robbed at knifepoint and female cops suggest he was at fault for the event because he dressed in a way that signaled he liked people taking his possessions. It made me laugh...and think.
Women, of course, face this kind of absurd reasoning whenever they contemplate filing complaints for sexual assault or sexual harassment. The male-dominated world is often slow to accept that women are innocent victims of assault or harassment, that they didn't do something to "deserve" what happened to them. Some women even buy this nonsense.
I hope that events of recent months will encourage women to speak up when they're victimized by harassment or assault. And I'm praying that we males will believe them!
Women, of course, face this kind of absurd reasoning whenever they contemplate filing complaints for sexual assault or sexual harassment. The male-dominated world is often slow to accept that women are innocent victims of assault or harassment, that they didn't do something to "deserve" what happened to them. Some women even buy this nonsense.
I hope that events of recent months will encourage women to speak up when they're victimized by harassment or assault. And I'm praying that we males will believe them!
Monday, January 08, 2018
The Clash of Kingdoms
[This was shared yesterday morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Matthew 2:1-12
Our gospel lesson for this Sunday of the Epiphany presents us with a clash of kingdoms.
At one level, the clash is between the baby Jesus and Herod the Great.
But, more accurately it’s a battle--the battle--between God, on the one hand, and all the demonic kingdoms of darkness, sin, and death of this world.
Jesus, King of the Jews, came into the world to die and rise for a human race in need of saving, then to share His resurrection victory with all who believe in Him. From the moment of Jesus’ birth, the mission of the kingdoms of this world was to prevent Jesus from successfully completing His mission.
The clash of kingdoms began on the first Epiphany.
Matthew tells us about it in today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 2:1-12. Take a look at the first verse, please: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’”
When Jesus was born, most of His Judean homeland had no idea.
Think of that! The Messiah promised by God hundreds of years before showed up and the only ones to notice were a few shepherds and two old people in the temple--Simeon and Anna--eight days after Jesus’ birth.
Everyone else was oblivious.
But the Magi, these foreigners from the East, who held a superstitious belief in the power of stars had, back in their homeland, noted a strange astronomical phenomenon and, believing that such things indicated some important event on earth, then apparently rummaged through other people’s cultures and books to determine that this star was announcing the birth of the King of the Jews.
And then, they followed the star.
The Magi had more faith in the God first revealed to Israel than the people living in the holy land at that time!
They show us that just because you’re a member of the religious club--just because you’re a genetic descendant of Abraham or you take up a place on the membership rolls of a church--doesn’t mean you follow God or that you belong to God.
The key issue always is whether we trust God first revealed to Israel, now known definitively in Jesus. At some level, the Magi trusted in God.
And they cared about the birth of the King of the Jews because some of the prophecies of the King found in the Old Testament said that this Messiah would be more than a King to the Jewish people. He would bring God’s reign to the whole world. He would make God’s salvation available to all people.
For example, Isaiah 11, written about eight centuries before Jesus’ birth, says of this King: “He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.” (verses 4-5) And through Him, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (verse 9)
Back to our gospel lesson, verse 3: “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.”
Herod wasn’t a Judean. He was an Edomite, a thug appointed to be king by the murderous Roman Empire. He was a puppet.
The Romans helped Herod spread the fake news that he was a descendant of King David.
In exchange, Herod was submissive to the Romans.
And the Empire didn’t care when Herod murdered people he feared would overthrow or undermine him. It's why Herod would later murder the baby boys in Bethlehem. It's why he murdered his own sons. It's why he arrested John the Baptist.
The Magi may have been “wise men.” But they were naive about Herod and the Judea into which Jesus was born.
The Magi thought that, as the king of Judea, Herod would already know about the birth of Jesus.
They thought too, that Herod would be as excited as they were about Jesus.
But Herod was disturbed, though he evidently hid it behind a poker face. Verse 4: “When [Herod] had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.”
A Jewish king would have known the answer to that question. Herod has to be told.
Verse 5: “‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” The priests and teachers were quoting Micah 5.
Matthew already told us that both Herod and Jerusalem’s elite were “disturbed” at the thought that the King of the Jews had been born. They had built comfortable lives in the kingdom of darkness. So had many people who depended on Herod’s puppet regime and the Roman government--merchants, farmers, craftsmen--for their wealth.
And, of course, the lion’s share of the Judeans would have found Jesus disturbing too, having no interest in the Kingdom Jesus came to bring, a kingdom that doesn’t promise wealth or ease, but forgiveness of sin--even for the sins we don’t want to give up.
Three decades after the events in today’s lesson, the Judean crowds, disappointed that Jesus wasn’t going to throw out the Romans and give them the goods and privileges of this world that they wanted, turned on Him. Herod then was just the first of many to be disturbed by Jesus.
Truth be told, Jesus can disturb us.
We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners in need of forgiveness.
We don’t like to think that our being all-around wonderful people isn’t what makes us fit for God’s kingdom.
And when we hear Jesus say things like, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24), we look for ways to hold back some parts of our lives for ourselves.
We’re still born wanting to “be like God.”
We want to be our own kings.
And so, Jesus is disturbing even to us.
But it’s only in giving up on the little kingdoms each of us try to build that we can take the free gift of new and everlasting life with God that Jesus offers. It was an offer in which Herod had no interest. Are we interested?
Verse 7: “Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.’”
Consider how evil Herod is. With murder in his heart, he claims he wants to worship Jesus. Lying comes naturally to people mired in the kingdoms of this world.
When life is all about yourself, anything you can do to promote the self, preserve the self, boost the self is fair game.
But Jesus tells us: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25).
Are we willing to lose our lives, including the dying comforts of this world, in order to gain life with God that never ends?
What are we willing to let go of in order to take hold of Jesus?
Verse 9: “After [the wise men] had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.”
They were ecstatic! They were in the presence of the King of the Jews, the object of their search, the hope of generations, the fulfillment of God’s great promise of grace!
When I considered these words this past week, I couldn't help recalling the words of the old spiritual: "Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble." That's how the Magi must have felt on seeing Jesus!
And so what did they do? Verse 11: “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”
Jerusalem didn’t worship the King of the Jews and on a Friday we now call Good, Jerusalem would, on behalf of the whole sinful human race, kill Jesus.
But these foreigners welcomed and worshiped Jesus!
Listen: God cares about you. But He doesn’t care who you are.
He doesn’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done.
He doesn’t care what your parents did, good or bad.
He doesn’t care where you’re from.
If you will welcome Jesus and His reign over your life, if you will submissively trust in Him, you will be part of His eternal kingdom.
Even Gentiles.
Even Americans.
Even Lutherans!
Verse 12: “And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”
One of the biggest takeaways from the first Epiphany for me is this: God will guide those who listen for His voice. (Even the naive!)
The Magi heard God’s call in a far-off land. They heard Him now as He pierced their naivete, allowing them to be instruments for protecting the Child and in protecting the Child, ensuring that Jesus would fulfill His mission of dying and rising.
Just as He did with the Magi, God gives each of us a part in Jesus’ mission in the world.
We are to be and to make disciples.
And He both calls and empowers each of us to do our part.
Our mission is best filled not with flashy programs or glitzy concerts or multimedia presentations, but as we allow ourselves to be the humbled and humble instruments of God’s grace, letting people encounter Jesus in the simplicity and authenticity of our faith in Him.
The most vivid and influential witnesses for Christ in my life haven’t been preachers, but laypeople who followed Jesus:
When you think about it, it was, ultimately, a simple personal encounter with the baby Jesus that caused the Magi to know that the needed to bow down and worship Him.
And because Jesus promises to be with us always (Matthew 28:20), He can also be present in our humble encounters with Him when we worship, pray, study His Word, and receive the Sacrament and in our humble encounters with others as we tell them, “We’ve met the King. He’s changed and is changing me forever. Come and see” (John 1:46).
Jesus is the winner in the clash of kingdoms.
Let the whole world know! Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Matthew 2:1-12
Our gospel lesson for this Sunday of the Epiphany presents us with a clash of kingdoms.
At one level, the clash is between the baby Jesus and Herod the Great.
But, more accurately it’s a battle--the battle--between God, on the one hand, and all the demonic kingdoms of darkness, sin, and death of this world.
Jesus, King of the Jews, came into the world to die and rise for a human race in need of saving, then to share His resurrection victory with all who believe in Him. From the moment of Jesus’ birth, the mission of the kingdoms of this world was to prevent Jesus from successfully completing His mission.
The clash of kingdoms began on the first Epiphany.
Matthew tells us about it in today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 2:1-12. Take a look at the first verse, please: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’”
When Jesus was born, most of His Judean homeland had no idea.
Think of that! The Messiah promised by God hundreds of years before showed up and the only ones to notice were a few shepherds and two old people in the temple--Simeon and Anna--eight days after Jesus’ birth.
Everyone else was oblivious.
But the Magi, these foreigners from the East, who held a superstitious belief in the power of stars had, back in their homeland, noted a strange astronomical phenomenon and, believing that such things indicated some important event on earth, then apparently rummaged through other people’s cultures and books to determine that this star was announcing the birth of the King of the Jews.
And then, they followed the star.
The Magi had more faith in the God first revealed to Israel than the people living in the holy land at that time!
They show us that just because you’re a member of the religious club--just because you’re a genetic descendant of Abraham or you take up a place on the membership rolls of a church--doesn’t mean you follow God or that you belong to God.
The key issue always is whether we trust God first revealed to Israel, now known definitively in Jesus. At some level, the Magi trusted in God.
And they cared about the birth of the King of the Jews because some of the prophecies of the King found in the Old Testament said that this Messiah would be more than a King to the Jewish people. He would bring God’s reign to the whole world. He would make God’s salvation available to all people.
For example, Isaiah 11, written about eight centuries before Jesus’ birth, says of this King: “He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.” (verses 4-5) And through Him, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (verse 9)
Back to our gospel lesson, verse 3: “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.”
Herod wasn’t a Judean. He was an Edomite, a thug appointed to be king by the murderous Roman Empire. He was a puppet.
The Romans helped Herod spread the fake news that he was a descendant of King David.
In exchange, Herod was submissive to the Romans.
And the Empire didn’t care when Herod murdered people he feared would overthrow or undermine him. It's why Herod would later murder the baby boys in Bethlehem. It's why he murdered his own sons. It's why he arrested John the Baptist.
The Magi may have been “wise men.” But they were naive about Herod and the Judea into which Jesus was born.
The Magi thought that, as the king of Judea, Herod would already know about the birth of Jesus.
They thought too, that Herod would be as excited as they were about Jesus.
But Herod was disturbed, though he evidently hid it behind a poker face. Verse 4: “When [Herod] had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.”
A Jewish king would have known the answer to that question. Herod has to be told.
Verse 5: “‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” The priests and teachers were quoting Micah 5.
Matthew already told us that both Herod and Jerusalem’s elite were “disturbed” at the thought that the King of the Jews had been born. They had built comfortable lives in the kingdom of darkness. So had many people who depended on Herod’s puppet regime and the Roman government--merchants, farmers, craftsmen--for their wealth.
And, of course, the lion’s share of the Judeans would have found Jesus disturbing too, having no interest in the Kingdom Jesus came to bring, a kingdom that doesn’t promise wealth or ease, but forgiveness of sin--even for the sins we don’t want to give up.
Three decades after the events in today’s lesson, the Judean crowds, disappointed that Jesus wasn’t going to throw out the Romans and give them the goods and privileges of this world that they wanted, turned on Him. Herod then was just the first of many to be disturbed by Jesus.
Truth be told, Jesus can disturb us.
We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners in need of forgiveness.
We don’t like to think that our being all-around wonderful people isn’t what makes us fit for God’s kingdom.
And when we hear Jesus say things like, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24), we look for ways to hold back some parts of our lives for ourselves.
We’re still born wanting to “be like God.”
We want to be our own kings.
And so, Jesus is disturbing even to us.
But it’s only in giving up on the little kingdoms each of us try to build that we can take the free gift of new and everlasting life with God that Jesus offers. It was an offer in which Herod had no interest. Are we interested?
Verse 7: “Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.’”
Consider how evil Herod is. With murder in his heart, he claims he wants to worship Jesus. Lying comes naturally to people mired in the kingdoms of this world.
When life is all about yourself, anything you can do to promote the self, preserve the self, boost the self is fair game.
But Jesus tells us: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25).
Are we willing to lose our lives, including the dying comforts of this world, in order to gain life with God that never ends?
What are we willing to let go of in order to take hold of Jesus?
Verse 9: “After [the wise men] had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.”
They were ecstatic! They were in the presence of the King of the Jews, the object of their search, the hope of generations, the fulfillment of God’s great promise of grace!
When I considered these words this past week, I couldn't help recalling the words of the old spiritual: "Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble." That's how the Magi must have felt on seeing Jesus!
And so what did they do? Verse 11: “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”
Jerusalem didn’t worship the King of the Jews and on a Friday we now call Good, Jerusalem would, on behalf of the whole sinful human race, kill Jesus.
But these foreigners welcomed and worshiped Jesus!
Listen: God cares about you. But He doesn’t care who you are.
He doesn’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done.
He doesn’t care what your parents did, good or bad.
He doesn’t care where you’re from.
If you will welcome Jesus and His reign over your life, if you will submissively trust in Him, you will be part of His eternal kingdom.
Even Gentiles.
Even Americans.
Even Lutherans!
Verse 12: “And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”
One of the biggest takeaways from the first Epiphany for me is this: God will guide those who listen for His voice. (Even the naive!)
The Magi heard God’s call in a far-off land. They heard Him now as He pierced their naivete, allowing them to be instruments for protecting the Child and in protecting the Child, ensuring that Jesus would fulfill His mission of dying and rising.
Just as He did with the Magi, God gives each of us a part in Jesus’ mission in the world.
We are to be and to make disciples.
And He both calls and empowers each of us to do our part.
Our mission is best filled not with flashy programs or glitzy concerts or multimedia presentations, but as we allow ourselves to be the humbled and humble instruments of God’s grace, letting people encounter Jesus in the simplicity and authenticity of our faith in Him.
The most vivid and influential witnesses for Christ in my life haven’t been preachers, but laypeople who followed Jesus:
- the house-painter who told me how good Jesus had been to him even as he grieved the wife he adored on the day we buried her;
- the nurse who took my face in her hands after my first sermon and said, “Mark, honey, I see the Holy Spirit in you. Don't ever lose Him!”;
- the mentor in the faith who put up with my immaturity because she saw in me someone Jesus had died for.
When you think about it, it was, ultimately, a simple personal encounter with the baby Jesus that caused the Magi to know that the needed to bow down and worship Him.
And because Jesus promises to be with us always (Matthew 28:20), He can also be present in our humble encounters with Him when we worship, pray, study His Word, and receive the Sacrament and in our humble encounters with others as we tell them, “We’ve met the King. He’s changed and is changing me forever. Come and see” (John 1:46).
Jesus is the winner in the clash of kingdoms.
Let the whole world know! Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Save me, Lord, from being a snob
This is the journal entry from my quiet time with God this morning. To see how I approach quiet time, go here.
Look: “Abraham replied, ‘I said to myself, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’” (Genesis 20:11)
For the second time since he and his household left Ur to go to the land that God would show him, Abraham lies to a local king about who his wife, Sarah, is.
While it’s true that Sarah is his half-sister, more significantly, she is his wife.
Here, the king in Gerar is warned in a dream that Sarah, who has been taken into his household to be one of his wives, is actually already married to Abraham. God warns him of dire consequences if he keeps Sarah. (In fact, already, the women of Gerar are unable to conceive children because of this un-consummated adultery.)
I know nothing about the religious life of Gerar. But it is clear that there were people there who had encountered the God of Israel (as the king’s dream demonstrates) and that they had some recognition of His power.
So, the king asks Abraham why he had lied about Sarah. This verse is the first part of Abraham’s “explanation.”
Listen: What strikes me about Abraham’s answer is his belief that no one in Gerar fears the God he knows so well. “There is surely no fear of God in this place…” he tells himself.
Abraham assumed that only he knew God. And while it is true that Abraham was to be the father of the nation of Israel and the spiritual father of all who come to know Israel’s God through Jesus, he should have known, of all people, that God was never completely unknown in the world.
Back in Genesis 14, after fighting in a war for the liberation of family members, Abraham met a man who seems to show up from nowhere. He wasn’t a kinsman. He was Melchizedek, who came from Salem (later renamed Jerusalem). Here’s what we’re told:
“Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’ Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” (Genesis 14:18-20)
(The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus Himself was a priest in the order of Melchizedek.)
My point is that Abraham underestimated both the power of God’s continuing presence to the people of the world and the fear of Him--awe, respect, and terror of His power--that existed among these “foreigners.”
He reminds me of the self-pitying Elijah, who told God: "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too." (1 Kings 19:14) I can hear the whininess in Elijah’s voice!
But God told him: “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel--all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him." (1 Kings 19:18)
In other words, God was saying, get over your self-pity and your self-righteousness. There are more around you who believe than you know.
And there are more who are willing to believe than we know, apparently. When Jesus gave the great commission (Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:14-18; Luke 22:44-49; John 20:19-23; Acts 1:8), commanding the Church to share the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, the underlying assumption was that even people who knew nothing about God would want to be reconciled to Him through God-enfleshed, Jesus. Jesus deemed all people worthy of, needy of, and susceptible to salvation by grace through faith in Him.
The apostle Paul understood the fact that he could find people open to the gospel wherever he went, even among non-Jews, Gentiles.
Acts 17 contains one of my favorite incidents from Paul’s life and ministry. He goes to Athens. Everywhere he looks there, he sees statues to various deities. This is an abomination to a Jew. To Christians too. For those of monotheistic faith, there’s only one God and to give credence to dumb idols is a violation of the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods.”
But the evidence of idolatry didn’t cause Paul to be dismissive of the Athenians. He didn’t think, as Abraham had, “there’s no fear of God here” and conclude that trying to fulfill the great commission there was a waste of time.
Instead, he went to the Areopagus, the center of town where people discussed ideas and issues. It was sort of like Twitter without the 280-character limit. Then this happened:
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said:
“Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:22-31)
Paul begins by commending the people for the desire they have for the “unknown God” and he shows them how even one of their own poets had some level of fear in the one true God of all creation.
Paul would suffer many times for his faith. But, unlike Abraham, he never disdained the possibility of faith in those around him. And he never lied to save his skin.
I confess that I can be an awful lot like Abraham and Elijah, men of faith who often yielded to their fears and self-righteousness.
Paul had his own faults (I think of him as prickly), but he seems never to have allowed fear of the world to trump his fear of the Lord or his faith in Christ.
And, following his conversion to Christ, Paul seems to have usually seen the possibilities in others. He never underestimated God’s love for those who didn’t know God fully. And He never underestimated God’s capacity to love them to life with Him through Jesus.
Respond: Today, Lord, help me to see people, all people, as You see them: As objects of Your love for whom Jesus died and rose; as susceptible, by the power of Your Holy Spirit to the proclamation of Jesus as Lord; as people to whom Your truth is owed. Save me from being a snob. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Friday, January 05, 2018
Choosing Christ and the cross over the easy lies I tell myself
I met the Lord today during my quiet time in Genesis 12-14. Below is my journal entry from that encounter. To see how I approach quiet time with God, see here.
Look: “When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, ‘I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is his wife.” Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.’” (Genesis 12:11-13)
Abram (later Abraham) is the patriarch of Biblical faith. Through the grafting of grace, God makes all who believe in His only Son Jesus spiritual descendants of Abraham (Romans 11:11-31). So, it’s instructive, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes uncomfortable to observe him.
In chapter 12, Abram is instructed by God to leave his home of Ur to a land that God would show him. This land was God’s pledge to Abram’s descendants. In obeying God, picking up stakes and moving his entire household, Abram exhibits faith, the kind of faith in God I would like to have.
Abram goes to the promised land, traveling around for a time. But when a famine hits the land, he books. He heads for Egypt.
A history of God’s people going to Egypt in times of crisis would later develop. The Israelites were more or less forced to go to Egypt during a later famine after God had placed Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, in a place of authority through which he could save the people.
In the New Testament, another Joseph, selected by God to raise Jesus in his home, is told by God to go to Egypt in order to save the Christ Child from the murderous intentions of King Herod.
Though Genesis records God’s command to Abram to go to the land He would show him, we have no indication as to whether God told him to go to Egypt when the famine hit. Abram may have just thought, “There’s no food here. I’ll go to Egypt.”
It’s plausible to believe that the trip to Egypt was all Abram’s idea when we see the plot he hatches just as he, Sarai (later Sarah), and their people and livestock are about to enter Egypt. He tells Sarai that he’s afraid that if the Egyptians think he’s married to Sarai, they’ll kill him so that one of them can have her for their wife.
Listen: There are several problems with this plan:
1. Abram is thinking instead of praying. Had he prayed instead of thought, allowing God to guide his thinking, he wouldn’t have suggested such a conspiracy to his wife. I think of Proverbs 14:12 (again!): “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
Certainly, we’re to think. God gave us our brains. But we need to let God lead our thoughts. If we don’t let God lead, we’re led into sin and into death, separation from God.
2. Abram is yielding to his fears, not following the God who had called him to faith. In this instance (and in another one when Abraham did the same stupid thing), fear beat out faith. Not good!
God had promised Abram: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3)
God had shown Abram the land that He was going to give to him. Abram knew that God was good for His promises and that in order for Abram to become the ancestor of a great nation, he would need to father a son. Inherent in that promise is another one, that Abram wouldn’t die before he had fathered a son.
Yet, Abram decided to place greater faith in his own intellect, his own analysis, and his own plans than he placed in God.
3. Abram is essentially giving his wife permission to commit adultery in order to save his neck. Not even the Pharaoh thinks that this is a good idea! When Pharaoh finally learns that the woman he’s taken into his house for a wife is already Abram’s wife, he’s horrified. “What is this you have done to me?” he asks Abram. “Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” (Genesis 12:18-20)
Abram isn’t only sinning against God then, he’s encouraging his wife to do so and enticing the Pharaoh to do so.
To paraphrase C.S. Lewis’ observation in Mere Christianity, there have been cultures that have said that men should have only one wife and others that said they could have multiple wives. But no culture has ever said that it’s OK to take another man’s wife or another woman’s husband. This was true even before God gave the ten commandments to His descendants at Mount Sinai. So, Abram is skating on extremely thin ice.
Nonetheless, this third “problem” (read sin) with Abram’s plan is just the result of the fundamental sin: Failing to trust in God.
Like Abram, I sometimes fail to trust in God. I value my own thinking more than I value His. I value my fears more than my faith.
To trust in anyone or anything--even rational fears, even smart analysis, even feelings of love--more than we trust in God is idolatry.
Every sin, in fact, from taking God’s name in vain to murder, from gossip to theft, is idolatry.
Abram’s problem in the wilderness is that he was conflicted about who to worship: God or himself.
That’s what lay behind his other conflicts: God or his fears, God’s promises or the temptations and dangers of the current circumstances.
It’s amazing to me how often this conflict between following God, on the one hand, and following my thoughts, my fears, my plans, my reasoning, or my feelings, come into play in my life.
This conflict is caused by my resistance to the anvil of sanctification on which God wants to forge me and my character for faithful living with Him now and in eternity.
God is interested more in my eternal comfort and my having a God-seeking character than he is in me avoiding problems in this world. (And to God, even death is only a problem, one solved by the resurrection of Jesus in which those who repent and believe in Jesus have a share.)
It can be painful to opt for the eternal security of life with God over the immediate security of doing what we think is right, which is why I try so hard to avoid what God wants to tell me, why Abram concocted his lying conspiracy, and why the hardest petition of the Lord’s Prayer for me is, “Thy will be done.”
It is painful. Every day, Lord, I have to ask You repeatedly to make war on my penchant for comforting myself, for doing what I want to do, for ignoring Your gracious call to turn from temptation and sin and to turn to Christ with honesty and transparency.
It’s painful to heed Your words, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
The New Testament books of 1 Peter and Colossians, among others, promise that those who submit to this process will be transformed, becoming more like Christ, fit for eternity with God, fit as an instrument of God’s grace and love in this world.
But what Your Word tells me God is: It is through this painful process that You can set me free from fear and allows me to become my better self. It’s a process that will be incomplete before my time on earth is ended, I know, Lord. But I need the courage to stick with this process, to learn to yield to You, to ask You to guide my thinking and my living.
Abram was confused. He didn’t know what he wanted more, security or You. My desires get similarly muddled, Lord. I need to be unmuddled every single day.
Respond: God, in Jesus’ name, set me free from myself. Set me free from sin. Set me free to live for You with joyful abandonment. You know me: You know how relentlessly willful I can be. You know too how fearful I can become of offending someone. When sin or fear or idolatry tempt me this day, help me to resist. When tempted to act on a comforting lie rather than Your life-giving truth, help me to choose the truth. Help me to follow Jesus and live, no matter how others may judge or dismiss me as a fool or even hate me. No matter how hard following You may sometimes be. Let me opt for the pain of following You over the death that comes from following myself. Let me act on my faith today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, January 03, 2018
Noah, the Flood, Christ, and Baptism
This is from my quiet time journal. Quiet time is a period I try to spend with God about five days a week. To see how I approach it, read here.
If you haven't yet been baptized and would like for Christ to claim you in this way, I urge you to contact a local congregation close to you to set up a time to talk about the meaning of baptism and what faith in Jesus is all about. Here is a list of congregations in the denomination of which I'm a part; one may be close to me. (In sharing this list, I'm not insinuating that Lutherans are the only Christians around. It's just offered as a handy list for your convenience.)
If you haven't yet been baptized and would like for Christ to claim you in this way, I urge you to contact a local congregation close to you to set up a time to talk about the meaning of baptism and what faith in Jesus is all about. Here is a list of congregations in the denomination of which I'm a part; one may be close to me. (In sharing this list, I'm not insinuating that Lutherans are the only Christians around. It's just offered as a handy list for your convenience.)
Look: “And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.’” (Genesis 8:21-22)
After the world-destroying flood, Noah and his family worshiped God. They offered a sacrifice which we can infer was no pro-forma performance, but an act of true worship and gratitude to God for His grace.
In the Old Testament we see that God has no regard for “going through the motions” worship.
For example, God says through the prophet in Amos 5:21-24: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
And in his great prayer of repentance, King David notes: “...you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17)
In the New Testament, John recounts Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman by a well near the village of Sychar. Perceiving that Jesus is a prophet, the woman tells Jesus that His people (the Jews) saw Jerusalem as the proper place to offer worship to God, whereas her people thought it was properly offered in Samaria. But Jesus told her: “...the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him…” (John 4:23)
What God wants when we worship Him, pray to Him, and interact with Him is authenticity: authentic repentance, authentic praise and honor. No going-through-the-motions. No trying to find the right feelings or the right words or the perfect gestures. No desire to get what we “need” (read, want) out of it, whether it’s goosebumps or material well-being.
Noah’s worship pleased God. And it wasn’t because Noah was perfect or “religious,” whatever that means. Nothing had changed about Noah or Noah’s family or the human race of which they were a part.
Before the flood began, Genesis 6: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5) It was human evil that caused God to regret making human beings and to cause the flood (Genesis 6:6). After the flood, Genesis says, “... the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 6:21). Nothing had changed about the human race.
But God hadn’t changed either. I see from the verses that so struck me today how much God loves us, in spite of our evil. He doesn’t want to see us destroyed. He loves us and wants to spare us the consequences of our sinfulness (“the wages of sin is death”: Romans 6:23). God wants to extend His grace to us. When we meet His grace with our trusting faith, as Noah and his family did, God saves. God acts on our behalf.
Listen: God entered our world in the Person of Jesus Christ (John 1:1-2, 14; Colossians 1:15-20) in order to immerse His sinless life fully in the chaos of our sin and death and, after dying, rising in order to open up the only pathway to a resurrected life with God.
Jesus referred to His submersion into death and His rising to life as His baptism: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50)
And it is through baptism into Christ, the baptism of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19) that we are today spared the consequences of sin and death. The old self dies and the new self, the Christ self, rises.
First Peter talks about how Jesus’ accomplishment is sacramentally imparted to us. Recalling Jesus’ death and resurrection, Peter writes:
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because] they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Peter 3:18-22)
After this amazing action of God, giving us a share in Christ’s victory over sin and death through our Baptism, our call is just this: to trust, to believe, just as Noah and his family did.
As the apostles told their jailer: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household." (Acts 16:31)
Authentic faith in God as revealed to all the world in Jesus.
Authentic repentance in Jesus’ name.
This is what God asks of us whose hearts and minds are still soaked in evil. His promise of new life with Him will hold, overcoming our sin and death; our part is to trust in Him and His promises.
Respond: Today, Lord, help me to trust in You and not lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6).[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Tuesday, January 02, 2018
Politics aside...
...I feel sorry for young Barron Trump, being dragged in a tux to a New Year's Eve party with a bunch of old people. (At his age, anyone over twenty-five falls into the "old people" category.)
Monday, January 01, 2018
Another tune that starts as a love song...
...and ends as a political statement, this time one against war as a general proposition: Calico Skies by Paul McCartney.
"May we never be called to handle
"All the weapons of war we despise..."
"May we never be called to handle
"All the weapons of war we despise..."
New Year's Day by U2
It's a song that starts out sounding like a love song and reveals itself to ultimately be a political statement, born of the Troubles.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
For the Nobel Prize, I nominate...
The person who invented tabs for Ziploc bags is a genius. Is there a Nobel Prize for innovation in the realm of food storage containers?
Are We Listening?
[This message for the First Sunday after Christmas was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke 2:22-40
Today, as we continue to celebrate Christmas, I want to focus on a portion of just two verses from this morning’s gospel lesson. They’re words spoken by a man named Simeon to Mary, the mother of Jesus: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed…” (Luke 2:34-35)
Imagine the setting and context in which these words come to Mary. She and Joseph, fulfilling their calling as faithful Jews, have brought their eight-day-old Child to Jerusalem to be dedicated to God and to be initiated as a child of God through circumcision. Especially in light of Joseph’s and Mary’s harrowing trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be counted in a Roman census, their trip to the temple would have been a time of joy and thankfulness to God, a bit like what Christian parents today feel when bringing their children to be baptized.
Yet here comes this old man, a party-crasher disturbing their euphoria, giving a disturbing message.
Not everyone was going to love their baby, Simeon tells them.
Can you imagine a harder message for the mother of a newborn to hear?
But Luke explains that this isn't Simeon’s message.
Simeon, Luke tells us in verse 25, had the Holy Spirit upon him, the way every person baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does.
Verse 26 says that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die before seeing the promised King-Messiah.
And verse 27 says that Simeon was moved by the Holy Spirit to go to the temple that day.
It’s no stretch to say that it was the Holy Spirit Who also incited Simeon to praise God and, taking the Child from Mary, to say that in Jesus, he saw the promised Messiah, Who would come to be light to people from all nations. The King had come and having seen Him, Simeon said, he could now die in peace.
And it was also the Holy Spirit Who prompted Simeon to deliver His hard message to Mary.
But look here, you might say, guided by the Holy Spirit, messaged by the Holy Spirit, incited by the Holy Spirit...it seems like a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo.
When I hear the power of the Holy Spirit like that, I feel that we’re living in a time like the one in which the boy Samuel, whose story is told in the Old Testament, lived.
One night, Samuel heard God speaking to him in much the same way that Simeon must have heard God. But young Samuel wasn’t sure what to make of it because “in those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1).
Why was the Word of the Lord rare in those days?
If you read what precedes that verse in 1 Samuel, you realize that God’s people were in the habit of living as though God didn’t exist or that if God did exist, He was some distant, impersonal, and mute deity.
But that isn’t the God revealed to Israel and then, to the whole world, in Jesus Christ.
The God we know in Jesus is a God Who seeks community and to communicate with those who want Him in their lives. God wants to speak to you and have community with you.
“Here I am!” says the God we know in Jesus Christ. “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20) God wants to talk with you. He wants to spend your whole life with you.
This God speaks to us, of course, in His Word in the Bible, in His Word as proclaimed by those who know and follow Him.
He speaks to us in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
He speaks to us in His Law, where He tells us that when worship anything besides God, take God’s name in vain, dishonor our families or those in authority, commit adultery, gossip about others, steal what belongs to or covet what others possess, we show ourselves to be sinners in need of the Savior.
He speaks to us in His gospel in which He assures us that sinners can be made new each day and for all eternity when they repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.
But God can also be heard His gentle whispers (1 Kings 19:12) into our spirits as we seek to daily walk with Him.
The other night, after I’d brushed and flossed my teeth and before I tossed myself into bed, suddenly, out of the blue, a name crossed my mind. It was the name of a once-prominent person whose name I wouldn’t have remembered if you’d shown me their picture. In fact, after I heard this name in my spirit, I had to look them up on my smartphone to remember what they looked like.
Why had I thought of this person? After a time, it dawned on me (I can be kind of slow): This person may have needed prayers and God was calling me to pray. I didn’t need details; I simply needed to pray for them.
Someone has said that God the Holy Spirit is a Gentleman: He won't go where He's uninvited. But He will pester God's people--we disciples of Jesus Christ--to issue our prayerful invitations in Jesus' name to intercede in the people's lives for whom we pray. And so, I believe that God was telling me the other night, "Pray for this person, Mark!"
It reminds me of a story that Billy Graham tells of a Christian man who was awakened one night by the thought of a single word, a word from some other language, one that he'd never heard nor read. The man was sure that he had to offer up urgent prayers about this word, whatever it was. And so, he did. Then, when he felt at peace that he'd done what God had called him to do, he went to bed. Months later, a missionary on furlough visited the church of which that man was a part. He stood bolt upright when the missionary mentioned the place where he and his family did their work; its name was the same mysterious word that woke the man up one night. He later spoke with the missionary and learned that there had been a terrible crisis at the moment when the Holy Spirit had prompted that man to pray!
I know well the power of the Holy Spirit! When I was a little boy, I was close with my great-grandmother. She lived across the street from us and I would visit her every day. She spoke with me as if I were a grown-up, talking with me about politics and history and the God we know in Jesus. Once, when I was about six, she and I stepped outside after a spring rain so that she could check on her flowers. Out on her front walk, she looked to the southeast and saw, over what was then called Jet Stadium, a rainbow. She proceeded to tell me the story of Noah, the ark, and the rainbow of covenant God created to assure the human race that He would never again destroy the earth by water.
Years later, I learned that my grandmother's nickname for me was my little preacher. She had neber told me that. But I am sure that as a devout disciple of Jesus who I often found sitting in her rocker reading the Bible, she had sicced the Holy Spirit on me...and here I am today.
These are examples of the kinds of things God wants to do through those who seek to dial into Christ, something I don’t do nearly often enough.
God wants to use believers as conduits of grace, whether it’s through our prayers in Christ’s name or our witness for Christ’s gospel or our proclamation of Christ’s uncomfortable truth.
Simeon was so dialed into God and His promise of a Savior that the Holy Spirit rested on him, leading him as he patiently waited for years to see the Christ, then causing him to give voice to what God wanted to tell Joseph and Mary that day in the temple.
It was a message they needed to hear lest they fall into the trap of thinking that the baby in their arms was just another baby.
Look at Simeon’s words again: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel…” (Luke 2:34)
A baby, a helpless little baby, would grow to become the cause of falling and rising of many.
What does this message from the Holy Spirit mean exactly?
It describes two different reactions elicited by Jesus.
Some stumble over Jesus and His call to trust in Him so that we can receive forgiveness and life in His name.
In Isaiah 8:14, the prophet says: “He [God] will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.”
Some refuse the God they meet in Christ, saying, “I’m saved by God’s grace and not by anything I do? That’s too good to be true.”
Others refuse Jesus because of their desire to “be like God.”
Others turn Jesus down because they can’t imagine anyone overcoming death and rising again.
For many people, Jesus and His gospel are a stumbling block.
They refuse to believe in Him.
They refuse to be willing to believe in Him. They trip over Jesus and fall away from God for eternity.
Our job--our only job as disciples of Jesus--is to keep sharing Him and His good news with people so that they don’t fall.
That’s because the God we meet in Jesus doesn’t want any of His children to fall away from Him. God loves every child of earth and wants each one of them to experience the victory over sin, death, decay, suffering, and futility He won for us when Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead. Jesus wants us to rise!
As Jesus says of us in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Jesus has come to give us life: full, extravagant, eternal, fulfilling.
Jesus has come to give us reconciliation with God, with ourselves, and with those around us.
It is all a matter of believing in Him, surrendering in Him, trusting Him to take our sins off of our shoulders when we repent and to set us free when we believe in Him, building our lives on Him alone.
This past week, a friend of ours, husband to one of Ann’s childhood friends, died after a painful battle with cancer. We were with his wife on Thursday, about eight hours after he'd passed.
Our friend had been through a lot of other painful experiences in life.
With those in his background, sometimes, he would ask me tough questions that showed he was wrestling with God.
But his wife told us on Thursday, “He’d made his peace with God.”
Peace with God.
That’s what Jesus Christ was born into this world to give to us.
That’s what Simeon had in anticipation of the Savior he saw with his own eyes at the temple.
That’s what we can share with others when, like Simeon, we open ourselves to the direction of the Holy Spirit, proclaim Christ, and let Him use us for God’s purposes.
The God we know in Jesus is speaking to us; He wants to raise us up, filling us with His life in every aspect of our lives, now and in eternity.
The question is, “Are we listening?” Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke 2:22-40
Today, as we continue to celebrate Christmas, I want to focus on a portion of just two verses from this morning’s gospel lesson. They’re words spoken by a man named Simeon to Mary, the mother of Jesus: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed…” (Luke 2:34-35)
Imagine the setting and context in which these words come to Mary. She and Joseph, fulfilling their calling as faithful Jews, have brought their eight-day-old Child to Jerusalem to be dedicated to God and to be initiated as a child of God through circumcision. Especially in light of Joseph’s and Mary’s harrowing trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be counted in a Roman census, their trip to the temple would have been a time of joy and thankfulness to God, a bit like what Christian parents today feel when bringing their children to be baptized.
Yet here comes this old man, a party-crasher disturbing their euphoria, giving a disturbing message.
Not everyone was going to love their baby, Simeon tells them.
Can you imagine a harder message for the mother of a newborn to hear?
But Luke explains that this isn't Simeon’s message.
Simeon, Luke tells us in verse 25, had the Holy Spirit upon him, the way every person baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does.
Verse 26 says that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die before seeing the promised King-Messiah.
And verse 27 says that Simeon was moved by the Holy Spirit to go to the temple that day.
It’s no stretch to say that it was the Holy Spirit Who also incited Simeon to praise God and, taking the Child from Mary, to say that in Jesus, he saw the promised Messiah, Who would come to be light to people from all nations. The King had come and having seen Him, Simeon said, he could now die in peace.
And it was also the Holy Spirit Who prompted Simeon to deliver His hard message to Mary.
But look here, you might say, guided by the Holy Spirit, messaged by the Holy Spirit, incited by the Holy Spirit...it seems like a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo.
When I hear the power of the Holy Spirit like that, I feel that we’re living in a time like the one in which the boy Samuel, whose story is told in the Old Testament, lived.
One night, Samuel heard God speaking to him in much the same way that Simeon must have heard God. But young Samuel wasn’t sure what to make of it because “in those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1).
Why was the Word of the Lord rare in those days?
If you read what precedes that verse in 1 Samuel, you realize that God’s people were in the habit of living as though God didn’t exist or that if God did exist, He was some distant, impersonal, and mute deity.
But that isn’t the God revealed to Israel and then, to the whole world, in Jesus Christ.
The God we know in Jesus is a God Who seeks community and to communicate with those who want Him in their lives. God wants to speak to you and have community with you.
“Here I am!” says the God we know in Jesus Christ. “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20) God wants to talk with you. He wants to spend your whole life with you.
This God speaks to us, of course, in His Word in the Bible, in His Word as proclaimed by those who know and follow Him.
He speaks to us in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
He speaks to us in His Law, where He tells us that when worship anything besides God, take God’s name in vain, dishonor our families or those in authority, commit adultery, gossip about others, steal what belongs to or covet what others possess, we show ourselves to be sinners in need of the Savior.
He speaks to us in His gospel in which He assures us that sinners can be made new each day and for all eternity when they repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.
But God can also be heard His gentle whispers (1 Kings 19:12) into our spirits as we seek to daily walk with Him.
The other night, after I’d brushed and flossed my teeth and before I tossed myself into bed, suddenly, out of the blue, a name crossed my mind. It was the name of a once-prominent person whose name I wouldn’t have remembered if you’d shown me their picture. In fact, after I heard this name in my spirit, I had to look them up on my smartphone to remember what they looked like.
Why had I thought of this person? After a time, it dawned on me (I can be kind of slow): This person may have needed prayers and God was calling me to pray. I didn’t need details; I simply needed to pray for them.
Someone has said that God the Holy Spirit is a Gentleman: He won't go where He's uninvited. But He will pester God's people--we disciples of Jesus Christ--to issue our prayerful invitations in Jesus' name to intercede in the people's lives for whom we pray. And so, I believe that God was telling me the other night, "Pray for this person, Mark!"
It reminds me of a story that Billy Graham tells of a Christian man who was awakened one night by the thought of a single word, a word from some other language, one that he'd never heard nor read. The man was sure that he had to offer up urgent prayers about this word, whatever it was. And so, he did. Then, when he felt at peace that he'd done what God had called him to do, he went to bed. Months later, a missionary on furlough visited the church of which that man was a part. He stood bolt upright when the missionary mentioned the place where he and his family did their work; its name was the same mysterious word that woke the man up one night. He later spoke with the missionary and learned that there had been a terrible crisis at the moment when the Holy Spirit had prompted that man to pray!
I know well the power of the Holy Spirit! When I was a little boy, I was close with my great-grandmother. She lived across the street from us and I would visit her every day. She spoke with me as if I were a grown-up, talking with me about politics and history and the God we know in Jesus. Once, when I was about six, she and I stepped outside after a spring rain so that she could check on her flowers. Out on her front walk, she looked to the southeast and saw, over what was then called Jet Stadium, a rainbow. She proceeded to tell me the story of Noah, the ark, and the rainbow of covenant God created to assure the human race that He would never again destroy the earth by water.
Years later, I learned that my grandmother's nickname for me was my little preacher. She had neber told me that. But I am sure that as a devout disciple of Jesus who I often found sitting in her rocker reading the Bible, she had sicced the Holy Spirit on me...and here I am today.
These are examples of the kinds of things God wants to do through those who seek to dial into Christ, something I don’t do nearly often enough.
God wants to use believers as conduits of grace, whether it’s through our prayers in Christ’s name or our witness for Christ’s gospel or our proclamation of Christ’s uncomfortable truth.
Simeon was so dialed into God and His promise of a Savior that the Holy Spirit rested on him, leading him as he patiently waited for years to see the Christ, then causing him to give voice to what God wanted to tell Joseph and Mary that day in the temple.
It was a message they needed to hear lest they fall into the trap of thinking that the baby in their arms was just another baby.
Look at Simeon’s words again: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel…” (Luke 2:34)
A baby, a helpless little baby, would grow to become the cause of falling and rising of many.
What does this message from the Holy Spirit mean exactly?
It describes two different reactions elicited by Jesus.
Some stumble over Jesus and His call to trust in Him so that we can receive forgiveness and life in His name.
In Isaiah 8:14, the prophet says: “He [God] will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.”
Some refuse the God they meet in Christ, saying, “I’m saved by God’s grace and not by anything I do? That’s too good to be true.”
Others refuse Jesus because of their desire to “be like God.”
Others turn Jesus down because they can’t imagine anyone overcoming death and rising again.
For many people, Jesus and His gospel are a stumbling block.
They refuse to believe in Him.
They refuse to be willing to believe in Him. They trip over Jesus and fall away from God for eternity.
Our job--our only job as disciples of Jesus--is to keep sharing Him and His good news with people so that they don’t fall.
That’s because the God we meet in Jesus doesn’t want any of His children to fall away from Him. God loves every child of earth and wants each one of them to experience the victory over sin, death, decay, suffering, and futility He won for us when Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead. Jesus wants us to rise!
As Jesus says of us in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Jesus has come to give us life: full, extravagant, eternal, fulfilling.
Jesus has come to give us reconciliation with God, with ourselves, and with those around us.
It is all a matter of believing in Him, surrendering in Him, trusting Him to take our sins off of our shoulders when we repent and to set us free when we believe in Him, building our lives on Him alone.
This past week, a friend of ours, husband to one of Ann’s childhood friends, died after a painful battle with cancer. We were with his wife on Thursday, about eight hours after he'd passed.
Our friend had been through a lot of other painful experiences in life.
With those in his background, sometimes, he would ask me tough questions that showed he was wrestling with God.
But his wife told us on Thursday, “He’d made his peace with God.”
Peace with God.
That’s what Jesus Christ was born into this world to give to us.
That’s what Simeon had in anticipation of the Savior he saw with his own eyes at the temple.
That’s what we can share with others when, like Simeon, we open ourselves to the direction of the Holy Spirit, proclaim Christ, and let Him use us for God’s purposes.
The God we know in Jesus is speaking to us; He wants to raise us up, filling us with His life in every aspect of our lives, now and in eternity.
The question is, “Are we listening?” Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Friday, December 29, 2017
A Japanese Christian Who Survived the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb
This is an outstanding documentary from NHK, Japan's public television station. It revolves around Koko Kondo, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb drop of August 6, 1945. Kondo was eight months old when that happened. A Christian, Kondo was the daughter of a pastor. She is the wife of a pastor.
She is a thoughtful woman who lives with a hard-earned cheerfulness.
Her perspective on nuclear weaponry and her personal journey to forgiveness, reconciliation, and love moved me.
By the way, for those who may be interested: I am aware that the Japanese military under Emperor Hirohito initiated the Pacific Theater of World War 2. That notably began with Japan's invasion and brutal rule over China, even before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The record also includes the savage treatment to which American POWs were routinely subjected by their Japanese captors.
Little of that is mentioned here. But I still think it's worth watching and that you'll find it interesting.
This was released a few weeks ago and appeared on NHK World-English.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
She is a thoughtful woman who lives with a hard-earned cheerfulness.
Her perspective on nuclear weaponry and her personal journey to forgiveness, reconciliation, and love moved me.
By the way, for those who may be interested: I am aware that the Japanese military under Emperor Hirohito initiated the Pacific Theater of World War 2. That notably began with Japan's invasion and brutal rule over China, even before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The record also includes the savage treatment to which American POWs were routinely subjected by their Japanese captors.
Little of that is mentioned here. But I still think it's worth watching and that you'll find it interesting.
This was released a few weeks ago and appeared on NHK World-English.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Are you welcoming the stranger?
A woman who, before moving to another community, was a member of a church I once served as pastor, told me that she, her children, and her grandchildren worshiped with a Lutheran congregation in the town where they now live on Christmas Eve. She said that it was wonderful to once more sing Silent Night by candlelight. But she also said that nobody greeted her or her family or asked anything about them.
Reading that broke my heart.
It's sad and ironic that on a night when we remember that the Savior of the world had to be born in a barn "because there was no place for" Him or Mary or Joseph (Luke 2:7), we Christians can forget to be hospitable. (Not to mention forgetting plain good manners.)
If there's any group of people who should be committed to welcoming strangers on Christmas Eve, it ought to be Christians who confess a Savior who had "no place to lay his head" (Luke 9:58) and who themselves are told by God to see themselves as strangers just passing through this world (1 Peter 2:11).
God's Word is clear that, in response to God's gracious acceptance of us in Christ, disciples of Jesus are to practice hospitality toward others.
Referring to an Old Testament visitation experienced by Abraham and Sarah, Hebrews 13:2 tells Christians: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
Jesus takes this command of hospitable behavior even further when He says in Matthew 25:31-46, that when we serve the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, or imprisoned, we really serve Him. We are then, as Martin Luther put it, to be "little Christs" who serve Christ in others.
The Savior Who welcomes us into His kingdom simply because we trust Him to renounce our sins and place our faith in Him, a gracious welcome we don't deserve and can't earn, commands that, in return, we welcome and reach out to the stranger with His good news.
Of course, many Christians fail to welcome those who are "strangers" to them for fear that they might be embarrassed before people they feel they should have known. I've heard this excuse many times.
But tell me: Before who would you prefer to suffer embarrassment, a person to whom you may have to admit a faulty memory or the God Who calls you to love your neighbor as you love yourself?
Better to suffer a little embarrassment in telling people you encounter, "I'm sorry if I've met you before and can't remember, but Merry Christmas." (Or, "Happy Sunday." Or, "How are you today?")
It's always best to err on the side of love, of grace, of welcome.
It's always best to get over yourself enough to not be afraid of being embarrassed by your humanity.
If you seek to live in daily repentance and faith in Jesus, you belong to God's eternal kingdom. What's a little embarrassment compared to that?
So Christians, greet those who are strangers to you when you see them in worship.
And I want to say to those who aren't church regulars or who are non-believers who may have come to a church worship service and been treated like you weren't there: I beg you to forgive us and to give a church near you another chance sometime soon. We aren't perfect, although we follow a Savior Who is. We're a fellowship of recovering sinners. We pray that you'll worship God with us sometime soon.
And Christians, if you've neglected to greet those who are strangers to you not because you failed to recognize those strangers, but just because you didn't want to talk to someone you didn't know, repent of this failure to love neighbors as you love yourself and ask God to help you to be a loving, welcoming disciple of Jesus the next time you encounter a stranger.
We all fail to do God's will in different ways in our lives. But the Lord Who judges the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (Hebrews 4:12) bears grace for those who seek to love as they've been loved by God.
So, welcome the stranger.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Reading that broke my heart.
It's sad and ironic that on a night when we remember that the Savior of the world had to be born in a barn "because there was no place for" Him or Mary or Joseph (Luke 2:7), we Christians can forget to be hospitable. (Not to mention forgetting plain good manners.)
If there's any group of people who should be committed to welcoming strangers on Christmas Eve, it ought to be Christians who confess a Savior who had "no place to lay his head" (Luke 9:58) and who themselves are told by God to see themselves as strangers just passing through this world (1 Peter 2:11).
God's Word is clear that, in response to God's gracious acceptance of us in Christ, disciples of Jesus are to practice hospitality toward others.
Referring to an Old Testament visitation experienced by Abraham and Sarah, Hebrews 13:2 tells Christians: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
Jesus takes this command of hospitable behavior even further when He says in Matthew 25:31-46, that when we serve the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, or imprisoned, we really serve Him. We are then, as Martin Luther put it, to be "little Christs" who serve Christ in others.
The Savior Who welcomes us into His kingdom simply because we trust Him to renounce our sins and place our faith in Him, a gracious welcome we don't deserve and can't earn, commands that, in return, we welcome and reach out to the stranger with His good news.
Of course, many Christians fail to welcome those who are "strangers" to them for fear that they might be embarrassed before people they feel they should have known. I've heard this excuse many times.
But tell me: Before who would you prefer to suffer embarrassment, a person to whom you may have to admit a faulty memory or the God Who calls you to love your neighbor as you love yourself?
Better to suffer a little embarrassment in telling people you encounter, "I'm sorry if I've met you before and can't remember, but Merry Christmas." (Or, "Happy Sunday." Or, "How are you today?")
It's always best to err on the side of love, of grace, of welcome.
It's always best to get over yourself enough to not be afraid of being embarrassed by your humanity.
If you seek to live in daily repentance and faith in Jesus, you belong to God's eternal kingdom. What's a little embarrassment compared to that?
So Christians, greet those who are strangers to you when you see them in worship.
And I want to say to those who aren't church regulars or who are non-believers who may have come to a church worship service and been treated like you weren't there: I beg you to forgive us and to give a church near you another chance sometime soon. We aren't perfect, although we follow a Savior Who is. We're a fellowship of recovering sinners. We pray that you'll worship God with us sometime soon.
And Christians, if you've neglected to greet those who are strangers to you not because you failed to recognize those strangers, but just because you didn't want to talk to someone you didn't know, repent of this failure to love neighbors as you love yourself and ask God to help you to be a loving, welcoming disciple of Jesus the next time you encounter a stranger.
We all fail to do God's will in different ways in our lives. But the Lord Who judges the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (Hebrews 4:12) bears grace for those who seek to love as they've been loved by God.
So, welcome the stranger.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Christmas: For You! (AUDIO)
Here's the audio for the message shared during the Christmas Eve candlelight services, which happened at 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00pm in the building of Living Water Lutheran Church this past Sunday night. (We also had a Family Christmas Eve service, featuring the Christmas story for children, at 3:00pm that day.)
Below are the pictures that are referenced in the message.
Below are the pictures that are referenced in the message.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, December 28, 2017
The Best Movies About...Being a Pastor?
Althouse links to a Washington Post article that's based on the response of twenty-four people to the question, "What's the best film about your profession?"
That got me to thinking about movies that depict my own work as a pastor.
Film pastors seem mostly to fall into several categories:
Some of my favorite portrayals of clergy appear in:
1. The Keys of the Kingdom starring Gregory Peck. Peck plays a priest packed off to China as a missionary who remains faithful despite the suspicion among his superiors that he's a failure. Thomas Mitchell plays Peck's spiritually skeptical friend, a relationship that's portrayed without a hint of heavy-handedness or sentimentality.
2. Bishop's Wife with David Niven as the spiritually-struggling bishop. This is one of the best Christmas films of all time. The movie isn't entirely satisfying though, ending with a Christmas Eve sermon that's more American civil religion than it is Christian.
3. Alias Nick Beal, with the aforementioned Mitchell as a district attorney standing off against an evil Ray Milland. George Macready turns in an interesting performance as a clergyperson who helps call a friend who has lost his spiritual compass to account and to renewal. Released in 1948, I had never seen Beal until this year. It's a great film, a seemingly forgotten classic. (The film's title song is an embellishment on Martin Luther's most famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God.)
4. Luther with Joseph Fiennes in the title role. Martin Luther, of course, was a theological genius, but he was, at heart, a pastor. He was also imperfect. That complexity of character comes across in this movie.
On television, Father Mulcahy of MASH is a variant of the clueless innocent type. Over the course of the series, Mulcahy's character was given greater depth than in the early seasons. (This is the opposite of what was done with Radar O'Reilly, who moved from the early episodes in which he was portrayed as sort of a sly conman to being an Iowa naif.)
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
That got me to thinking about movies that depict my own work as a pastor.
Film pastors seem mostly to fall into several categories:
- clueless innocents
- fire-breathing moralists (who are unrepentant hypocrites)
- sociopaths
- money-grubbing manipulators
- sexual predators
Some of my favorite portrayals of clergy appear in:
1. The Keys of the Kingdom starring Gregory Peck. Peck plays a priest packed off to China as a missionary who remains faithful despite the suspicion among his superiors that he's a failure. Thomas Mitchell plays Peck's spiritually skeptical friend, a relationship that's portrayed without a hint of heavy-handedness or sentimentality.
2. Bishop's Wife with David Niven as the spiritually-struggling bishop. This is one of the best Christmas films of all time. The movie isn't entirely satisfying though, ending with a Christmas Eve sermon that's more American civil religion than it is Christian.
3. Alias Nick Beal, with the aforementioned Mitchell as a district attorney standing off against an evil Ray Milland. George Macready turns in an interesting performance as a clergyperson who helps call a friend who has lost his spiritual compass to account and to renewal. Released in 1948, I had never seen Beal until this year. It's a great film, a seemingly forgotten classic. (The film's title song is an embellishment on Martin Luther's most famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God.)
4. Luther with Joseph Fiennes in the title role. Martin Luther, of course, was a theological genius, but he was, at heart, a pastor. He was also imperfect. That complexity of character comes across in this movie.
On television, Father Mulcahy of MASH is a variant of the clueless innocent type. Over the course of the series, Mulcahy's character was given greater depth than in the early seasons. (This is the opposite of what was done with Radar O'Reilly, who moved from the early episodes in which he was portrayed as sort of a sly conman to being an Iowa naif.)
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Not enough faith to be an atheist
A colleague of mine shared the quote cited below from Lee Strobel over on Facebook.
As a former atheist whose struggle against Christian faith led me to believe in Christ, I can identify with Strobel's thought processes as he engaged in a similar struggle.
In the end, as was true for Strobel, after considering the evidence, from the Scriptures, from reason, and from the sciences, I simply didn't have enough faith to be an atheist.
Strobel's quote:
As a former atheist whose struggle against Christian faith led me to believe in Christ, I can identify with Strobel's thought processes as he engaged in a similar struggle.
In the end, as was true for Strobel, after considering the evidence, from the Scriptures, from reason, and from the sciences, I simply didn't have enough faith to be an atheist.
Strobel's quote:
To continue in atheism, I would need to believe that nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I simply didn't have that much faith.[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Christmas: For You
[This was shared during four Christmas Eve worship services with the people, family, and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke 2:1-20
Have you ever had this experience?
You go somewhere special or spend special time with someone you love, then later regretted that you hadn’t really taken the time to savor it?
Hadn’t taken the time to just let the moment penetrate the recesses of your memory?
Or allowed yourself to think, “This is so special, I need to always remember exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and doing”?
Life tears by and we often fail to mark the special times in memory and reflection.
The next-to-last verse in tonight’s Christmas gospel lesson tells us, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
The word translated as treasured is, in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, a compound word that means gathered together. Mary gathered together the events of that night and pondered or, in Luke’s original words, threw them together.
In other words, Mary made a point of noting and remembering everything that happened on the first Christmas.
Then she threw them together in her mind, turning them over, seeking to see what they all meant, how what was happening all jibed with God’s centuries-old promise of a Savior-Messiah and with the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would give birth to that Messiah.
Mary collected her memories and thought about their significance.
This is what I want to ask you to do over the next few minutes.
The Christmas story, as recorded by Luke and Matthew, is so familiar to us that we forget not only the details, but also their meaning.
We take Christmas for granted.
This Christmas, I beg you to not do that.
Christmas is one of the most important events in human history--and in our personal histories, surpassed only by Good Friday and Easter Sunday, neither of which could have happened had Christmas not happened.
Tonight, we consider and praise God for the moment when God the Son took on human flesh and took up residence in this world, not as a king or a president, not as a celebrity or a tycoon or a general, but as a baby born in a barn to an impoverished and unmarried couple who hadn’t yet consummated their union.
If you want a picture of just how much God loves you, Jesus in the manger will do.
It says even more than what we might think at first, in fact. Take a look at verse 7 of our gospel lesson, please.
The stage had been set by God. God had revealed through the prophets more than seven centuries earlier that the Messiah, the Son of God, God-enfleshed, would be raised in a home of descendants of King David, and that He would be born in Bethlehem, David’s city. God had orchestrated events so that Mary and Joseph would be in Bethlehem when the baby was born. God had even put it into the head of the Roman emperor to order a census in Judea so that Joseph and Mary would have to be in Bethlehem, their ancestral home, to be counted.
And then, the birth happens. Verse 7: “...and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”
What must Mary have thought when she placed her newborn in that manger?
For sure, one thing that she must have thought about was the depths of God’s love, the lengths He was willing to go to in order to rescue you and me from sin and death. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” Jesus would tell Nicodemus decades later. And this Son would die and rise to set all who trust in Him free of the shackles of sin and death, to set you and me free to be the people God made us to be when He lovingly formed us in our mothers’ wombs. All of this had to be have been part of Mary’s pondering.
But she must also have considered the significance of the fact that her son’s first crib was an animal feeding trough.
In the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, there were two words that could be translated as manger, table, or crib. One of those words was παχνί. The other was φάτνῃ (phantne).
When the second word, phantne, is used, it seems to usually refer to a certain kind of manger. Let me show you a few pictures ancient phantnes.
As you can see, these mangers were hewn stone, not comfortable surfaces to sleep on.
With hay in the manger and the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, it may have been a bit more comfortable.
Still, Mary would have known that this Child did not come into this world to be comfortable. He came to bring comfort, the comfort of God to a human race fallen into sin and its consequences, death.
Maybe Mary thought of words she often heard read in the Nazareth synagogue, Isaiah 40:1-2: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for…”
This baby came to pay for our sins, yours and mine, with His shed blood and His earthly life, on the cross.
And maybe Mary thought of something else as she saw her first-born in that hard manger, of something else hewn from stone.
It may have been dawning on her that the only way Israel and the rest of the human race could be saved from sin and death was for an innocent human being, also God, to bear our punishment for sin, to die, so that when God raised Him from the dead, He could raise all who repent and believe in Jesus, would have everlasting life with God.
Jesus had come to die and rise in order to be our advocate in the halls of heaven. As God’s Word says: “...this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).
Mary may have begun to understand all of this. And if the idea was just dawning on her that night in Bethlehem, it would have been made clearer to her in a short time. Eight days after Jesus’ birth, Simeon, an old man who identified Jesus as the Messiah warned Mary of the suffering her Son would endure and the stone tomb in which He would be laid, when he told Mary: “...sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.” (Luke 2:35, Good News Translation)
As I told the Church Council this past week, there is a whiff of Good Friday in that stone manger, a foreshadowing of the tomb where Jesus’ lifeless body would be lain.
But, listen: There’s also the scent of Easter because the tomb of stone couldn’t contain Jesus and His grace for sinners any more than the news of His birth, His death, and His resurrection could have been contained these past two-thousand years.
Thank God that sin and death met their Conqueror that night in Bethlehem!
The Child has come to rescue you from sin, death, and purposeless living.
He’s come to cover your sins in His amazing grace and make you new.
He’s come to stand with you, by you, and for you as you trust in Him and call on His name.
He’s come to make sense of your living and give you life beyond your dying.
Jesus came into our world, precisely and specifically, because He loved not just the human race as a whole, but because He loved and loves you in particular.
His birth, death, and resurrection all happened for you.
And one day, He will raise all who trusted in Him from the dead. I pray that includes you and everyone whose lives we touch with the good news of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter.
This is the Christmas truth that I hope you will ponder and savor tonight and tomorrow as you celebrate the miracle of this night: This Child, the Savior of humanity, has come for you.
For you.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke 2:1-20
Have you ever had this experience?
You go somewhere special or spend special time with someone you love, then later regretted that you hadn’t really taken the time to savor it?
Hadn’t taken the time to just let the moment penetrate the recesses of your memory?
Or allowed yourself to think, “This is so special, I need to always remember exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and doing”?
Life tears by and we often fail to mark the special times in memory and reflection.
The next-to-last verse in tonight’s Christmas gospel lesson tells us, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
The word translated as treasured is, in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, a compound word that means gathered together. Mary gathered together the events of that night and pondered or, in Luke’s original words, threw them together.
In other words, Mary made a point of noting and remembering everything that happened on the first Christmas.
Then she threw them together in her mind, turning them over, seeking to see what they all meant, how what was happening all jibed with God’s centuries-old promise of a Savior-Messiah and with the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would give birth to that Messiah.
Mary collected her memories and thought about their significance.
This is what I want to ask you to do over the next few minutes.
The Christmas story, as recorded by Luke and Matthew, is so familiar to us that we forget not only the details, but also their meaning.
We take Christmas for granted.
This Christmas, I beg you to not do that.
Christmas is one of the most important events in human history--and in our personal histories, surpassed only by Good Friday and Easter Sunday, neither of which could have happened had Christmas not happened.
Tonight, we consider and praise God for the moment when God the Son took on human flesh and took up residence in this world, not as a king or a president, not as a celebrity or a tycoon or a general, but as a baby born in a barn to an impoverished and unmarried couple who hadn’t yet consummated their union.
If you want a picture of just how much God loves you, Jesus in the manger will do.
It says even more than what we might think at first, in fact. Take a look at verse 7 of our gospel lesson, please.
The stage had been set by God. God had revealed through the prophets more than seven centuries earlier that the Messiah, the Son of God, God-enfleshed, would be raised in a home of descendants of King David, and that He would be born in Bethlehem, David’s city. God had orchestrated events so that Mary and Joseph would be in Bethlehem when the baby was born. God had even put it into the head of the Roman emperor to order a census in Judea so that Joseph and Mary would have to be in Bethlehem, their ancestral home, to be counted.
And then, the birth happens. Verse 7: “...and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”
What must Mary have thought when she placed her newborn in that manger?
For sure, one thing that she must have thought about was the depths of God’s love, the lengths He was willing to go to in order to rescue you and me from sin and death. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” Jesus would tell Nicodemus decades later. And this Son would die and rise to set all who trust in Him free of the shackles of sin and death, to set you and me free to be the people God made us to be when He lovingly formed us in our mothers’ wombs. All of this had to be have been part of Mary’s pondering.
But she must also have considered the significance of the fact that her son’s first crib was an animal feeding trough.
In the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel, there were two words that could be translated as manger, table, or crib. One of those words was παχνί. The other was φάτνῃ (phantne).
When the second word, phantne, is used, it seems to usually refer to a certain kind of manger. Let me show you a few pictures ancient phantnes.
As you can see, these mangers were hewn stone, not comfortable surfaces to sleep on.
With hay in the manger and the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, it may have been a bit more comfortable.
Still, Mary would have known that this Child did not come into this world to be comfortable. He came to bring comfort, the comfort of God to a human race fallen into sin and its consequences, death.
Maybe Mary thought of words she often heard read in the Nazareth synagogue, Isaiah 40:1-2: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for…”
This baby came to pay for our sins, yours and mine, with His shed blood and His earthly life, on the cross.
And maybe Mary thought of something else as she saw her first-born in that hard manger, of something else hewn from stone.
It may have been dawning on her that the only way Israel and the rest of the human race could be saved from sin and death was for an innocent human being, also God, to bear our punishment for sin, to die, so that when God raised Him from the dead, He could raise all who repent and believe in Jesus, would have everlasting life with God.
Jesus had come to die and rise in order to be our advocate in the halls of heaven. As God’s Word says: “...this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).
Mary may have begun to understand all of this. And if the idea was just dawning on her that night in Bethlehem, it would have been made clearer to her in a short time. Eight days after Jesus’ birth, Simeon, an old man who identified Jesus as the Messiah warned Mary of the suffering her Son would endure and the stone tomb in which He would be laid, when he told Mary: “...sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.” (Luke 2:35, Good News Translation)
As I told the Church Council this past week, there is a whiff of Good Friday in that stone manger, a foreshadowing of the tomb where Jesus’ lifeless body would be lain.
But, listen: There’s also the scent of Easter because the tomb of stone couldn’t contain Jesus and His grace for sinners any more than the news of His birth, His death, and His resurrection could have been contained these past two-thousand years.
Thank God that sin and death met their Conqueror that night in Bethlehem!
The Child has come to rescue you from sin, death, and purposeless living.
He’s come to cover your sins in His amazing grace and make you new.
He’s come to stand with you, by you, and for you as you trust in Him and call on His name.
He’s come to make sense of your living and give you life beyond your dying.
Jesus came into our world, precisely and specifically, because He loved not just the human race as a whole, but because He loved and loves you in particular.
His birth, death, and resurrection all happened for you.
And one day, He will raise all who trusted in Him from the dead. I pray that includes you and everyone whose lives we touch with the good news of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter.
This is the Christmas truth that I hope you will ponder and savor tonight and tomorrow as you celebrate the miracle of this night: This Child, the Savior of humanity, has come for you.
For you.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
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