Palm Sunday: A Different Kind of King

[This was shared yesterday during Palm Sunday worship services with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

John 12:12-19
Palm Sunday isn’t an altogether happy day. While Sundays are always good days to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, there also is in Palm Sunday a foreshadowing of the suffering Jesus will undergo and die on a cross in the week that follows.

As Jesus prepares to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the religious leaders are hatching a plot to kill Jesus. The event that finally convinced them that Jesus had to die came when Jesus brought His friend, Lazarus, back from the dead. (Never mind that it would seem to be foolish to think that Someone with the power to raise a man from the dead would stay dead even if you killed Him.)

The religious leaders plotting Jesus’ demise had no idea that they were playing into the plan of God for Jesus. They were clueless about the the fact that, Jesus, “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world” was going to the holy city with the express intention, according to God’s plan, of sacrificing Himself on the cross in order to save the world from its sin and from eternal separation from God.

Ultimately, it would be neither Jewish leaders nor crowds nor the Romans who would take Jesus’ life, although their sins and ours made His cross necessary. As Jesus once said, foreshadowing both Good Friday and Easter Sunday, “I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again..." (John 10:17-18)

And so, at the time appointed by God the Father and not because of the wounds inflicted on Him by the world, Jesus would say from the cross: “‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ When he had said this, he breathed his last.” (Luke 23:46)

In our lives, we often think that we’re in control or must be. But, whether we perceive it or not, God is still in control.

We may endure tragedies and heartbreaks, as well as loves and loved ones lost, but God is bound, eventually and eternally, to bring His good out of bad. God will use Good Fridays to bring Easters for those who place their hope in Jesus Christ alone!

All of this looms in the background as Jesus and His disciples enter Jerusalem at the beginning of our gospel lesson.

Please go to it, John 12:12-19. Verses 12-13: “The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival [the festival is Passover] heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna!’ [meaning Save or rescue us, Savior] ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Blessed is the king of Israel!’”

The words and the palm branches used to welcome Jesus help us to see that the people see Jesus as a king who would use military might to save them from the oppression of the Romans. Their welcome of Jesus echoes the welcome given to a Jewish priest who had led an armed revolt against foreign conquerors who had prohibited Jews from worshiping at the temple in Jerusalem back in 167 BC. These events are celebrated in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

The Maccabean regime that came to power when the Jews through their foreign overlords out didn’t last long. No kingdom built on human force, human blood, or human logic can ever last. But the crowds who welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem forgot that lesson from their own history and were ready to take up arms to make Jesus their king.

Jesus is the King: the Messiah, Lord of heaven and earth. But He doesn’t conquer by force of arms or by using a democratic vote. Jesus' power isn't derived from any form of human power or manipulation. As Jesus told the Roman governor Pilate after He was arrested: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

Contrary to the dead-end thinking of this dying world, Jesus conquers by a servant love that compelled Him to die for us. And the enemies He conquers are the common enemies that live in every human soul: sin, death, darkness.

Jesus refuses to be our king on our terms.

We can’t come to Jesus and say, “Jesus, we’ll follow You if You do so and so.”

Nor can we say, “Jesus, we know that You believe in our preferred political philosophy. So, bless what we've already decided to do.”

We can’t approach him like the man profiled on 60 Minutes years ago, who ran a house of ill-repute in Las Vegas and told God that if God let him make a certain amount of money with his business, he would get out of it.

If we are to come to the God we know in Jesus, it will be on His terms or on no terms at all.

Jesus becomes our Lord when we daily yield control over our whole lives to Him, allowing Him to crucify our sinful selves so that our new selves, remade in Christ’s image, can rise.

We will never be fully remade in Christ’s image before our earthly lives come to an end; but Jesus’ disciples are those who willingly let Christ call them to repentance, trust, and renewal each and every day!

Verses 14 to 16: “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: ‘Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.’ At first his disciples didn’t understand all of this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.”

Jesus isn’t shy about claiming His kingship or His deity. He says, for example, “The Father and I are one.” (John 10:30)

But more than anything He says, what Jesus did on the first Palm Sunday also tells us about Who He is. For one thing, as prophesied by Zechariah, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9). This was a sure sign that He is the Messiah-King long promised to God’s people and to the people of the world.

But, as John tells us, not even Jesus’ closest disciples, the apostles, understood what was happening on the first Palm Sunday.

We shouldn't be too hard on them though. Today, I often find Jesus' ways and will difficult to understand. There have been times in my years of following Jesus when it has seemed to me that Jesus has blocked from my life the very things that I thought would bring me happiness, instead doing those things for me that will bring me life. Only in heaven will we fully understand Jesus and His mysterious ways.

But anyone, Christian or not, who tries to understand Jesus apart from His death and resurrection or apart from Jesus’ call to follow Him because He is the only way to life with God--if they try to see Jesus only as a great teacher or a kind man, or only as a religious leader, they will miss out on all that Jesus wants to give to us.

Verses 17-18: “Now the crowd that was with [Jesus] when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him.”

By much of the crowd who had seen what happened, Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead was an interesting display of power. It proved Jesus had power that others didn't possess. The crowds hailed Jesus as king because of a sign, not because of what the sign pointed to, but because of how they thought that they could manipulate Jesus for their own purposes. Within days, many of these same people would demand Jesus’ execution.

People can turn on God on a dime.

A woman I knew years ago became bitter with God because, after her mother, in her late eighties, had suffered a long train of illnesses in the final few years of her life, had died. “I’m mad at God for taking my mom from me,” she said. I tried tactfully to ask the woman if she would like it if her mother, a believer now free from suffering and in the presence of God, would be brought back to this earthly life by God just to make her happy. I was unable to get my question across to her. But it’s questions like these we need to ask ourselves when we feel that God has disappointed us. We think in the short term; God has an eternal perspective.

In the midst of the Palm Sunday joys and celebrations, our gospel lesson ends on an ominous note: “So the Pharisees said to one another, ‘See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!’”

The Pharisees see Jesus as a threat who had to be killed. And, in truth, Jesus is a threat to us whenever the things valued by this world--security, wealth, health, family, country, reputation, happiness--become more important to us than welcoming King Jesus to rule over our lives.

None of the things valued in this world can bring us what only Jesus can bring us: peace with God, the presence of God with us through all the times of this life, and life with God now and in eternity.

The call of Palm Sunday is to surrender to Jesus and to keep surrendering to Jesus every day, letting Him forgive us our sins, letting Him guard us from separation from God, and letting Him give us life everlasting.

I look forward to being with you on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday, so that, once again, we can celebrate Jesus, not as the king we want when sin has its way with us, but as the King we need when we let Him reign over us.

As we immerse ourselves deeply into the story of Christ's death and resurrection this Holy Week and remember that Christ did all of this for you and me and every other sinner in the world, God can incite us to sing the old Lenten hymn with a deeper sense of awe, gratitude, and faith: "Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble." Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Never Alone

This is the journal of my quiet time encounter with God in His Word today. I spent time in Psalm 42, two verses of which especially caught my attention.

Look: “I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?...Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” (Psalm 42:9,11)

The psalmist recalls being among the crowds who went to the temple in Jerusalem for festivals, where he would join in the worship of God and offer sacrifices to Him.

But those happy times are, at this point, only memories. The psalmist is suffering oppression, unable to go to Jerusalem to praise God. The psalmist asks God why God has forgotten him.

Whether it’s through the dry spiritual patches that come to every believer or in those times when people are, in whatever ways, making our lives miserable, the honest question of the psalmist in verse 9 comes to the mind of every Christian. We may not be bold enough or honest enough to speak the question. But we all sometimes wonder, “God, why have you forgotten me?”

Jesus Himself asked this question when, at the very hour at which Psalm 22 would have been read in the temple, He cried out to God the Father from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34)

Even when we know intellectually that the God fully revealed in Jesus Christ never abandons us, there are times when we feel abandoned and alone. It would be a lie to not admit that to our heavenly Father. When we honestly admit our "issues" to God, issues like sins, fears, temptations, or the suspicion that God has abandoned us, that the God can help us. Owning our feelings of abandonment with God is as an honest prayer and a permission slip to God to intervene, assuring us that we aren’t alone!

As the psalmist continues to pray, to remember God’s past deeds of goodness to them, and, I assume, to consider God’s Word, he ends up in verse 11, talking not to God, but to himself. (I think of the line from the Bob Dylan song, “You’re gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to.”) The psalmist asks, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”

You know God, the psalmist was telling himself. You know that God always triumphs over the enemies of our soul: sin, death, and darkness. Given God’s track record of faithfulness and love, you know that nothing can separate His people from God. So, why are you so glum? Even if you die, God will not let you go.

We know that God won’t let an earthly death be the last word over the lives of those who trust in Him. God in the flesh, God the Son, Jesus, tells Martha, grieving over the death of her brother Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

As he finishes his prayer, the psalmist, having come again into the presence of the living God in whom he believes, reminds himself of a truth that belongs to all who today know and follow the God of Israel disclosed to the whole world in the crucified and risen Jesus: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God”!

Listen: In those times when I feel bleak, dry, or doubtful, I need to come into God’s presence again. Even when I don’t feel it's true, God is real and God is there, even when I’m conscious of walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Even when I feel far from God, His cross, His empty tomb, and His Word, not to mention all of the blessings, grace, and answered prayers I can look back on, show me that He is never far from those who call on Him. Facts are facts. God is never far from me. Never!

Respond: Lord, help me to place all my hope in You alone as I lift up my prayers to You today. Even when I can’t see how You will orchestrate things for my good, the good of my family and friends, the good of Your Church, or the good of Your creation, help me to trust that You have not forgotten us. You haven’t forgotten your promises. And remind me that because Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, You have already successfully accomplished everything needed to create an eternal fellowship with those who believe in Christ. Because of Jesus and my faith in Him, I know, with the psalmist, that I will again praise You, my God and my salvation. Help me to remember and live all of this today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Remembering Not to Forget

These are reflections on my morning quiet time with God for today.

Look: “...take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 6:12)

Moses is imparting God’s commands to ancient Israel as the people are about to enter the promised land. God is enjoining Israel not to develop amnesia. He wants them to remember that it’s by His grace that they’re about to take the land He was giving to them, by His grace that they escaped slavery in Egypt, by His grace that these faithless people had been forgiven by God and not given up as a bad “project” long ago. God was committed to Israel. He wanted them to trust in Him so that they could have His good blessings and not the pain that’s experienced when we try to build lives apart from the Great Life-Giver.

God was concerned that Israel might forget its relationship with God and their need of God for a good reason: He was about to shower them with undeserved blessings. Deuteronomy 6:12 completes a sentence that goes like this: “...when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

Listen: Material comforts can delude us. As we rely on them and they provide us with a level of ease, we’re tempted to think several things.

First, we’re tempted to think that this stuff comes from us. It doesn’t. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17) No matter how hard we’ve worked in life for the things that we have, they don’t come from us. Even our capacity to work hard with sound and patient minds or strong bodies is a gift from God.

Second, we’re tempted to think that our stuff will insulate us from the realities of our fallen world. Jesus told a parable about a man who stockpiled his wealth, thinking that he could then sit back and live in infinite ease. But after he built all of his self-storage units, God told the man, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” (Luke 12:20) In this parable, Jesus isn’t telling us not to save or plan. He’s telling us to hold onto the things of this world loosely and to be willing to part with them and to not make them or the ease they can buy our gods.

And our stuff can become our deities. But to worship anything but God is fatal to our eternal health. That’s why Jesus told His disciples after their encounter with a wealthy man, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:25)

Money, comfort, ease, and possessions aren’t the problem, though. The things of the world can’t make us forget God. The problem is our relationship with things like money, comfort, ease, and possessions, and how we use them.

The problem is the way, when we have the wrong relationship with these things, they can delude us into believing in our self-sufficiency or into thinking that these good things are the highest good in the universe, fogging our minds, cultivating forgetfulness of God and His goodness.

In a famous and famously-misquoted passage of Scripture, the apostle Paul doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil (no matter what the Pink Floyd song says). Paul actually says: “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:9-10)

Love for money and other things in the world can supplant love for God, even among those who know and repeat the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer and join in the Order for Confession and Absolution at worship each week.

One of my favorite psalms asks, “What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me?” (Psalm 116:12) The psalmist remembers the goodness of God.

I find myself, if not completely forgetting God, sometimes taking God and His grace for granted. I take the gift of life, an incredible gift, the scientific odds against which are so small that, when I remember it, I can’t help being overwhelmed and thankful. I take forgiveness from God for granted, sometimes ignoring the cost Jesus paid on the cross to give it to me. What can I give to God to show my gratitude for all that He has done for me?

The psalmist answers that question by saying, “I will lift up the cup of salvation [this refers to the “cup” of a saved life God gives to us; lifting it acknowledges it as a gift I can’t earn] and call on the name of the LORD, I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.” (Psalm 116:13-14)

In other words, I won’t forget what God has done and is doing for me. I’m called to do this not because God needs my worship, praise, or gratitude. God really is a self-sufficient Being. Though God wants me, God doesn’t need me or my gratitude. 

I’m called to remember and thank God for all that He does for me because when I forget God, I fall for the lie of my own self-sufficiency, wandering away from the only One Who can give me life, “to the full” (John 10:10), prone to forget that I can call on the name of the Lord and be saved (Joel 2:32, Romans 10:13, Acts 2:21). In a very real sense, ingratitude toward God is suicide; gratitude is the way of life.

Respond: God, if there are things of this world I need to get rid of because holding onto them makes me forget You, show me what they are and help me to act accordingly. Remind me daily, moment by moment, of my need of You so that I am always calling on the One Who can save me from myself, from my sin, and from the worship of anyone or anything but You. Thank You for all that You have done and are doing for me. Grant that today, my life will be lived in gratitude for You and Your grace. In Jesus’ name. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Puerto Rico Six Months After the Hurricane

A Vox podcast from two days ago. It's a complicated situation. As Americans, as part of our compact with each other through the United States Constitution, have roles to play when our fellow Americans are impacted by disaster. More than that, we have a private responsibility to care for our neighbors.




If you'd like to give to relief efforts in Puerto Rico, you might want to consider Lutheran World Relief. It's an organization highly respected for its work and efficiency. Your money will be well spent.

Seeing with the Eyes of Faith

Some reflections on my Wednesday morning quiet time with God.

"See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them.” (Deuteronomy 1:8)

These are the words that Moses reports God gave to His people, the ancient Israelites, in the wilderness. What strikes me is how God begins this directive: "See, I have given you this land."

Had an Israelite responded that they, in fact, didn't see that God had given God's people this land, their response would have been understandable.

After all, the land was occupied by other peoples: Amorites, Canaanites, the peoples of Arabah, and others.

"No," an Israelite might have felt tempted to say to God, "I don't see that You've given us this land."

But God was telling His people--commanding them, really--to see with the eyes of faith.

There would be obstacles.

There would be struggles, conflict, difficulties, and sacrifices.

Those facts didn't alter God's promise nor His command.

"This is the land I promised you," God is saying. "Go, occupy it."

I wonder how many of God's gifts I have failed to claim because I failed to see through the eyes of faith what God was giving to me?

How many of God's gifts have I failed to claim because all I saw were obstacles, risks, dangers, challenges, or sacrifices?

How often have I forgotten Jesus' words, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God”? (Mark 10:27)

And I wonder how often people refuse to turn from sin and embrace God's forgiveness because owning up to our deficiencies and sins and owning up to our need of God is hard?

How often do we (how often do I) hold onto easy sins rather than plunging forward into the hard grace that, freely offered through Christ though it is, asks me to leave behind the comfortable certainties of a me-centered wilderness for the God-given life that I can't control, that I am simply called to trust?

Prayer: God, in Jesus' name and by the power of Your Holy Spirit, today help me to trust You more and doubt You less. Today, when Your Word tells me to go--go to serve my neighbor, go to share Your good news--help me not to stick to safe, riskless, challenge-less places. Today, when Your Word tells me to repent, help me to take strength to obey from You and not to remain inert in the sins that comfort me. When Jesus calls me to follow, help me to do just that. Today, when Your Word assures me that my sins are forgiven for the sake of Jesus and my faith in Him, help me not to wallow in shame, but to live in Your grace and in the true wonder of forgiven sin. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Walk in the Spirit (Part 5, The Disciple's Life)

[This was shared tonight during midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Galatians 5:16-25
1 John 2:15

Tonight, as we complete our look at The Disciple’s Life, we come to an element of being a disciple that's probably discussed too little and misunderstood a lot, particularly in Lutheran circles.

It’s walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

What on earth does that mean and what do we have to do to walk in the fullness of the Spirit?

If we approach this subject with that question though, we’ll come out all wrong. As with everything else in the life of a Christian disciple, walking in the Spirit has to do with what God does for us and not what we do for ourselves.

Remember these words in Ephesians: “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast…” (Ephesians 2:8-9)? The whole life of a Christian disciple is from God, not from us. That’s true even of the good works we may do in the name of God the Son, in response to God’s call, and in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. As Ephesians goes on to say: “...we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Yesterday, a man called me here at the church and asked for $22. He said that he needed that amount to complete what he needed for airfare to Florida, where his mother just died. I couldn’t verify that he was telling the truth, of course. But I looked in my wallet and saw that I only had $16. So, I called Ann; she swung by here with the other six bucks.

When the man came here, he thanked me profusely and asked if I could take him to the bus hub in Miamisburg. I was leaving anyway, so I did.

I am not telling this story to boast. I mean, it was only $22 and a ride that was on my way to where I was going anyway!

What I’m saying is that I had prayed about how I should respond to this man and I just did what I thought God was telling me to do. If a stranger asks me for money, my first impulse is to say no. Sometimes I do say no. And sometimes after saying yes, I realize that I’ve been “had.” But that doesn't matter.

Here’s the deal: I felt called and led by God to give away the money. With something as small as this, I feel no need or compulsion to use the pastor’s discretionary fund. God seemed to say to me that the money should come from my pocket. After all, if I'm going to ask others to give to God's work in the world, to respond to the needs of strangers, I need to be willing to do the same thing!

God was teaching me two things yesterday, I think. First, that my money isn’t my money; it’s God’s money! James 1:17 tells us: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” I sensed God telling me, “I want you to give this stranger some of My money, Mark.”

Second, God was telling me, “This is one of those good works I prepared long ago for you to walk in. You don’t need to know whether the request is legit or not. I’m planting seeds here. Give the man $22!” Walking in the Spirit can be scary, but as Saint Paul shows in Galatians, walking in the Spirit is the way of life with Jesus.

Take a look at what Paul says in Galatians 5:16: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Older translations have Paul saying “walk by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” But that’s a bad translation of--you’re going to have to take my word for this--the aorist subjunctive active second person plural verb, will gratify.

In other words, Paul is not laying down the law here. He’s not issuing an imperative. He’s not saying, “Do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” He’s saying that when we walk by the Holy Spirit, when we let God be our guide--not our consciences, not our instincts, not our hearts, not our guts, we will be walking in line with the Holy Spirit and not our own selfish desires.

Paul is not barking orders; he’s making an observation about two different kinds of lives.

One life is spent gratifying the desires of the flesh, flesh here meaning life spent pursuing those things that align with what I want to do.

The other is life in the Spirit, in which our primary aim becomes walking in the direction in which the Holy Spirit, given to us at our Baptism, leads us.

Life lived in response to the flesh is lived under the condemnation of God’s law, because it’s a life lived according to our own standards with no reference to God.

The life of the Spirit is one set free of the law because, as Paul writes elsewhere, “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1)!

In the rest of the passage from Galatians, which we read earlier, Paul helps us to see the profound difference between a life in which we call the shots and a life in which we follow where Christ’s Spirit leads us.

Verse 19: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality [The word Paul uses in the original Greek is porneia, from which we get the word, pornography. It means any and all sexual intimacy outside of marriage.], impurity and debauchery [The word Paul uses here means unrestrained, unrepentant lewdness.]; idolatry and witchcraft [Putting anything ahead of God.]; hatred, discord [This refers to the practice of creating divisions.], jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. [Paul goes on:] I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Let’s be clear: Any human life lived apart from the saving grace of God granted to all who repent and believe in Jesus will manifest one, some, or all of these characteristics. We who are born in sin are all inclined to live in these ways. But when, by water and the Word in Holy Baptism, we born from above (John 3:3), God gives us a share in the victory over sin and death Jesus earned for us through His death and resurrection and makes it possible for us as disciples of Jesus, to walk differently, to live differently, to live by faith in Him and in His way.

Paul explains, beginning at verse 22: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Notice again what Paul doesn’t say here. He does not tell Christians: You'd better live in love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He says that these behaviors are “fruit of the Spirit.” These wonderful attributes aren’t the cost of admission into the kingdom of God. These attributes aren’t the fruit of our work. They’re the fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit working in a life surrendered to Jesus Christ. They’re what happen, often without our even knowing it, when we daily yield our lives to Christ, examine our lives in the light of God’s Word, repent for sin, and receive the renewing Word of forgiveness that comes to all who humble themselves before the mighty grace of Jesus!

By faith, we open ourselves to the work of God’s Spirit within us and the Holy Spirit goes to work, working intimacy between God and us, scrambling our priorities, using us to accomplish the good works God prepared for us before we were even born. All we must do is take a step in faith, a step toward Jesus. When we do this, we are walking in the fullness of the Spirit.

How can we do this?

How can we dare to do things that seem frightening or not in our best interest, but that respond to the will of God?

Paul explains in Galatians 5:21: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

When we are linked with Christ through Holy Baptism and the faith to which Jesus calls us, our old selves are crucified.

And as we keep our eyes on Jesus, the old self with all its selfish, sinful desires is crucified.

The new us rises every time we repent, every time we receive God's grace in Christ with faith, every time we respond in faith to God’s call in our lives.

And our new selves, knowing that we belong to God forever, are set free to live the lives of love, joy, peace, and selfless that are the hallmarks of Christ’s presence in us.

Only Jesus Himself has walked in the complete fullness of the Holy Spirit, of course. But the more we move toward Him, the more of Him will be evident in our lives, the more fruit of the Spirit will be apparent in us.

This is why Paul says in Galatians 5:25: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Disciples

• believe and follow Jesus, 
• love God and neighbor, 
• live as the Church, and 
• pray. 

In so doing, God makes it possible for us to walk in step with the Spirit.

You could say that Christ sets us free to walk the beat of God’s drum.

If you want the simplest definition of the disciple’s life and of walking in the Spirit, it might be this: Disciples walk where Jesus leads them. 

Let’s do that together. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Jesus: High Priest, King of Kings (AUDIO)

Here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Jesus: High Priest and King

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

Hebrews 5:1-10
The name of Melchizedek isn’t often mentioned among Christians. And there’s no mystery about that. Melchizedek makes only one actual appearance in the Bible, in Genesis 14:18-20.

After Israel’s patriarch Abraham, then called Abram, alongside allies, fought and won a battle, we’re told: “Then Melchizedek king of Salem [Salem means “peace.” The city bearing that name later became the site of Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Melchizedek] 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.”

[Portrayed here is a the scene from Genesis 14:18-20. Melchizedek brings bread and wine to Abraham.]

Think about this. Before God had begun to fulfill His first covenant (or first testament) by making Abraham and Sarah the parents of Isaac, the foundation on which God would build His people Israel, there already was, at Jerusalem, a king and priest of God.

Now, this is interesting. Among the descendants of Abraham, there were priests and then there were kings. While Israel’s kings were called to be submissive and trusting toward God and to honor the priests, except in the case of pretenders later in ancient Israel’s history, Israel never had people who were priests and kings.

Such a combination of eternal and earthly power could only be handled by someone who, because of their humble trust in God, would resist the temptation to be an autocrat, a dictator, or self-glorifying conqueror. Melchizedek apparently was the kind of person who could resist those temptations.

When Abraham met Melchizedek, he clearly understood himself to be in the presence of someone who was a priest of the very God Who had called him from the comforts of his home in Ur, willing to wander to the new home that God promised to show to him.

That’s why he humbly received bread and wine from this priest and king and, in response to God’s grace, gave Melchizedek a tithe, ten percent “of everything” he owned.

This is the last known appearance by Melchizedek on the earth.

So, what happened to his royal house?

What happened to his priesthood?

And what difference does it make for you and me?

Our second lesson for this morning, Hebrews 5:1-10, provides some answers.

Hebrews, you'll remember, is a book of unknown authorship. We do know that it’s a sermon by a Jewish-Christian to a congregation of Jewish-Christians who are being tempted, under pressure of Roman persecution, to renounce Christ.

The preacher of Hebrews encourages his fellow Jewish-Christians to not desert the hope they have in Christ. Christ, he says, is the culmination of all of God’s promises of forgiveness and new life given to their ancestors and through them, to the world.

Let’s take a look at what he has to say today.

Verse 1 (He's talking about priesthood.): “Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people. And no one takes this honor on himself, but he receives it when called by God, just as Aaron [the brother of Moses] was.”

The high priest of Israel, who had been at the temple in Jerusalem before the temple was destroyed and the priesthood decimated in 70 AD, several decades before this sermon was given, acted as a mediator between God and God’s people.

The high priest was called to make sacrifices for their sins and to gently counsel people with God’s Word. He was able to do this because, as a human being himself, he understood the pressures, joys, and temptations that we human beings face.

But the high priest could only do this because he acknowledged his own sins before God and offered sacrifices for them.

The preacher in Hebrews says that anyone who would presume to take the office of high priest would not be qualified for it; it had to be conferred on them by God.

I think that even today, there’s a principle for us: Anyone who wants to have a position of authority or power in the Church--be it pastor, bishop, church council president, congregational officer, church council officer--ought to be viewed with a certain amount of skepticism. When the people of the Church, after a season of prayer, felt led to ask an often reluctant but faithful person to respond to God’s call, that’s the person God is likely calling.

One of the things I love about this congregation is that we don’t ask any elected person to serve in positions of responsibility unless there has been prayer and a discernment of their call from God. We don’t use the spaghetti method to recruit candidates for church council, for example: We don’t just throw up a name and see which one sticks. Like the high priests, those who hold responsibility in today’s Church need to be believers who live in daily repentance and renewal, who have no notion that they’re anything other than sinners made saints by God’s grace through their faith in Christ. We are blessed to have elected leaders like that at Living Water. And it’s my observation that we take the same care in selecting people for appointment to positions in the congregation.

The preacher goes on to say that Jesus Christ’s claim to be our great High Priest, King, and Lord is not contingent on His taking the reins of ultimate power by force. Jesus too was called by His Father in heaven. Verses 5 and 6: “In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ [This is from Psalm 2. More on that in a second. And he says in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’”

Here, the preacher of Hebrews cites two different psalms. There are different kinds of psalms. Psalm 35, for example, is an imprecatory psalm in which the psalmist asks God to go after his tormentors. In Psalm 51, David confesses his sin and asks God to give him a clean heart. In our lesson from Hebrews, two psalms, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, are cited. These are both royal psalms. They were written to celebrate the anointing of God's king in Israel. royal pslams. A king of Israel was referred to as the Anointed One, in the Hebrew, Meshiah, Messiah and in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, Christos, Christ.

So, what’s the point? Jesus isn’t a successor to the priesthood of the Levites in the temple, who were descendants of Aaron. Instead, Jesus is, like Melchizedek, anointed directly by God the Father. And like Melchizedek

Jesus is also a king, the King of kings.

God has made Jesus both our High Priest, able to understand our weaknesses because He’s withstood every test and temptation that we have in life, and our King, Who has conquered death, darkness, and the devil to give all who let Him be their Priest and King, life with God that never ends.

And how has Jesus achieved this for us? Verse 7: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death [Remember Jesus in Gethsemane, Who prayed in submission to the Father’s will that He become the perfect sacrifice for our sins even as He asked if there might be a way for Him to avoid the cup of wrath for human evil that He was about to drink full-up on the cross?], and he was heard because of his reverent submission. [He was heard even though the Father didn’t take away the cross. He was heard because God gave Christ the strength to endure the cross for us, the greatest act of love in the history of the universe. And He was heard too because, having faithfully endured the cross, the Father raised Him on the third day, allowing Christ to exert an eternal priesthood and an eternal kingship for you and me.] Son though [Jesus] was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect [The word in the original Greek doesn’t mean perfect, but complete. Jesus uses a form of the same word when, with His dying breath on the cross, He says, “It is fulfilled,” more literally, ‘It is completion. Having completed His mission], [Jesus] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”

[A portrayal of Jesus, high priest and King of Kings.]

All of this Jesus did for you and me so that, even now, at this very moment, sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is able to be our understanding priest and the King Who has conquered our darkness and death by giving His life for us.

What does Jesus ask of us in return?

What can we do?

What should we do?

"The work of God is this,” Jesus tells us, “to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29) 

Everything you and I might be tempted to put our trust in in this world--kings and presidents, money, security, and possessions, health and success, the power of every bit of it will give out at the grave. 

Jesus, our High Priest and King of kings, Who comes to us amid the battles of our lives with bread and wine, His body and blood, has conquered this dying world and its futile ambitions for us. 

He and those who trust in Him and His high priesthood of love are all that will survive and thrive for all eternity. 

May we always be counted among those who trust in Christ alone.

Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Pray (Part 4, The Disciple's Life)

[This is the fourth of a five-part series, The Disciple's Life, being shared on Wednesday nights with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during Lent.]

1 Thessalonians 5:17
Luke 11:1-4

In Luke’s gospel, we’re told, “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’”

This is a strange passage for several reasons, I think.

One strange element is that, as faithful Biblical Jews, you’d think that Jesus’ disciples would need no instruction on prayer.

Another odd element here is the reason the unnamed disciple gives for asking Jesus to give instruction on prayer: because John the Baptist had taught his disciples, his students, how to pray.  Did the disciple think that Jesus had been remiss in not teaching them about prayer? Or was he motivated by competitive desire to keep up with John’s disciples?

Or was he simply impressed by the amount of time Jesus spent in prayer?

Or did he have a rising understanding of the fact that a disciple of Jesus should be a person of prayer?

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions, really.

But we do know that Jesus took the question seriously. The disciple invited Jesus to teach them on prayer and Jesus did.

Luke tells us: “He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” (Luke 11:2-5)

We commonly use variants of these words of Jesus in our public prayer. And that’s a good thing because, as Luther observed, if we genuinely pray the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, we will have prayed everything we are called to pray as Christians.

But I think that, as Christian disciples, we should also look at the Lord’s Prayer as a model for how a Christian is to pray, whenever we pray.

Often, we view prayer as presenting lists of requests to God. And God does want to hear our requests. That’s why, after teaching the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus goes on to say, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9) We should never be afraid of bringing anything to God.

But the prayer Jesus teaches also shows us that God doesn’t want just our prayer lists. The God we know in Jesus Christ wants a relationship with those who confess that Jesus is Lord. Through Jesus, God gives us the privilege of knowing Him as our Father.

God wants to do something else in our praying. Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian pastor and Old Testament scholar who created The Message translation of the Bible, has written of prayer: “Prayer is the way we work our way out of the comfortable but cramped world of self and into the spacious world of God.”

When we reach up to God in worship, praise, and thanksgiving--when we reach up to our Father in prayer, when we truly pray, God alters our perspectives on life, death, the world, eternity, ourselves, our sin, our sisters and brothers in Christ, and everything else.

In prayer, God seeks to change us. Prayer is a two-way street. In response to God’s accessibility to us purchased by Christ’s death on the cross, we reach out to Him. But, as we move toward God, He moves toward us.

And when that happens, those who are desperate enough, helpless enough, and trusting enough will find themselves changed by God. As Christians “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), even when they offer up the same prayer petitions repeatedly, as we do when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, God will change what they mean when they pray them.

The more that we interact with God in authentic, humble, submissive prayer, the more God’s viewpoint and our viewpoint will meld.

God will use the prayer of faithful Christian disciples to stretch us toward heaven so that God’s basic project in our lives--making us more like Christ--will be advanced.

So, be careful how much you pray, how earnestly you pray. God may turn your world upside down.

You may become less concerned about your own desires and more concerned with God’s will.

You may become less afraid of what this life and this world may throw at you and more sure that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

You may find yourself less impressed by the baubles of this world and more enamored with the riches of God’s gracious kingdom.

You may start letting go of your stranglehold on this world and instead, hold onto Christ with everything in you.

The petitions Jesus urges on us in His prayer are, if we let them do their work on us, bound to blow our cramped little worlds to bits.

Consider the petitions that Jesus teaches us in the Lord's Prayer.

“Hallowed be your name.” So much of our lives is about getting ahead in the world, about having good credit, about having a good reputation. But our greatest concern, Jesus says, should be honoring God’s name. Jesus implores us to ask God to set us free of our worry over “I, me, mine.”

Then Jesus says to pray, “Your kingdom come.” In this petition, we ask that the God we know in Christ would rule over us, that He would call the shots in our lives. Here, we give God the keys to our lives and we become passengers, not drivers.

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us each our daily bread.” You have to get to the third petition before Jesus tells us to pray for ourselves. And even then, He doesn’t teach us to pray for security, ease, happiness, or wealth; He says to pray only for what we need to live today. This is a declaration of complete trust in the God. What would our lives be like if we prayed that God would give us only what we need and free us from worrying about everything else? We would worry less, enjoy our blessings more, and be, in Saint Paul’s phrase, “hilarious givers.”*

Jesus then teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4) Prayer without confession of sin is as meaningless as prayer without faith in Christ or an awareness of our utter need of God. Jesus warns us elsewhere, “...every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:31) To blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to ignore Him when He is convicting us of a sin, to change the subject when, during our times of prayer, God is impressing upon us our need to repent. If we refuse to repent when the Holy Spirit is calling us to repent, we’re calling God a liar and we erect a wall between the grace of God and our lives. We must not take this petition lightly if we are to be Christ’s disciples. If the Holy Spirit convicts us for our sin, we need to repent.

Finally, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” James 1:13 warns us, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” So, what is Jesus teaching us to pray in this petition? Martin Luther says that Jesus is telling us to pray that God will “guard and protect us” from temptation, that we won’t be deceived by the temptations of “the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.” And, Luther says, in this petition we also ask God to prevent us from being deceived or led into “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.”

Disciples pray.

Continually.

But as they do, they don’t try to change God.

Disciples pray, above all, to ask God to change them. To change us.

That takes courageous faith. May we never be afraid to truly, humbly, openly, expectantly pray.

More next week.

*Most English translations render the phrase in 2 Corinthians 9:7, as "cheerful givers." This is a good translation. But the Greek word translated as cheerful is ἱλαρός (hilaros) from which we get the English word hilarious.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You're invited to worship with us on Sunday mornings at 8:45 am and 11:00 am. We're located at 667 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Centerville, Ohio 45459.]

Please pray for and give help to Puerto Rico

Please pray for the people of Puerto Rico, especially those in rural areas and small towns.

Please also pray for success for the efforts of those working to restore to some semblance of normalcy to that island.

Over the weekend, our daughter shared a conversation she'd had earlier in the week with a utility worker who had just returned from Puerto Rico. He was among the mainland crews working to restore power to that US territory.

While there, he and other crew members slept in tents on a beach. His report: Much of Puerto Rico is still without power or potable water.

I know that many of the resorts and restaurants in San Juan have been up and running for a while. But in the countryside, in small towns and villages, much remains to be done.

This article, from USA Today, which appeared about six months after Hurricane Maria decimated the island, gives a picture of where things stand right now in Puerto Rico. Progress has been made but it isn't pretty.

Please keep Puerto Rico in your prayers. Please contribute to your favorite relief organizations working there. Thanks.

If you're looking for a relief agency to whom you can contribute, you may want to prayerfully consider Lutheran World Relief, still at work there.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Turning to Jesus (AUDIO)

Here.

Spring-Ahead Monday: National Napping Day

I'm a big fan of Daylight Savings Time. I like having more daylight in the evenings.

But, of course, when we spring ahead, especially after a busy weekend, the first Monday after under DST can be tough. That's why this is National Napping Day. If you weren't able to observe the day, try it another time this week.

I liked this graphic from the US Department of Defense. It makes me wonder: Are there any metrics showing the number of bad decisions made on the spring-ahead Monday? This would be interesting to know.

I know that worship attendance, generally, is impacted by spring-ahead Sunday. (Although our congregation's attendance, especially at the second service, was very good.) But I wonder if there are other ways springing ahead may affect congregations, as well as weekend activities like sporting events and so on.

And what about accidents: traffic accidents, accidents in the home? How do the numbers of these events on the first Monday after going to DST stack up to most Mondays?

One thing suggested by this graphic: Congress should never make the decision to declare war on spring-ahead Monday unless all of the members have gotten their 75-minute naps.

Turning to Jesus

[This was shared yesterday morning during both worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
When our kids were small, the one thing we didn’t abide as parents was whining. Whiners, whether they’re children or adults, are telling the world: “I want to be the most important person in this relationship, this family, this business, this world.” “I want life to go the way I want it to go.” Or, like Adam and Eve in the garden: “I want to be like God.”

Whining is especially galling when it comes from people who repeatedly go down destructive pathways in life, then complain that the rest of the world hasn’t been fair to them. A man I know has been married many times and complains that women are impossible to get along with, not once wondering whether the source of at least half of his marital problems might be found by looking in a mirror.

Today’s first Bible lesson recounts God’s reaction to the whining of His people Israel during their wilderness wanderings from Egypt. They had been slaves there. God miraculously freed them so that they could go to the land He had promised them. Throughout their forty year journey to the promised land, the people repeatedly caved into the common human temptation of wanting to do things their own way and to ignore the will of God.

In Numbers 21:4, we’re told: “They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way…” The Israelites are whining, “Are we there yet?”

Verse 5: “...they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?...’” Talk about gall! Here, in effect, the Israelites were saying, “God, why did you answer our prayers and set us free from slavery in Egypt? Why did you take us from a place where we did back-breaking labor for masters who whipped us, beat us, and owned us?” And they’re saying, “Moses, why did you lead us as God directed you to lead us?”

We Christians can be like this. “Yeah, God,” we seem to say, “I know that Jesus died on a cross because of my sins. I know that through baptism and my belief in Christ, You are saving me for eternity. I know that You’ve given me a new life and that nothing can separate me from Your love. But, really God, when are you going to let me call the shots?”

Even we who bear the Name of Jesus and have the free gift of new life through Him, can be world class whiners!

When we whine it’s because we tend to forget two things in our daily lives. First, we forget that we aren’t God. We didn’t invent this amazing thing called life. We aren’t in charge and never should be! The other thing we forget is that, like the Israelites, you and I haven’t yet reached our promised land. Today, we’re in the wilderness. 1 Peter 2:11, tells we Christians: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”

Christians are foreigners and exiles. We’re not “there,” not in our real home, yet. So, we shouldn't put too much stock in the things has to offer. Everything that we may want that is in this world has an expiration date.

Until we get to our real home, things won’t be perfect. The moment we are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are no longer citizens of this world. We're just passing through. We can expect to be attacked by the tests and temptations that come from, as Martin Luther puts in The Small Catechism, “the devil, the world, and our sinful selves.” This world isn't perfect and never will be.

Thankfully. our ultimate destination is not in this wilderness. Our destination as believers in Jesus is what the New Testament book of Hebrews calls “a better country,” the eternal kingdom of God. This fallen world, wonderful though it can be, is a faint hint of the perfect, sinless, eternal new creation God is preparing for us. I often think of (and quote) Jesus’ words in John 16:33: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Now, go back to Numbers 21:5. The people are still whining: “...There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’”

The “miserable food” they’re talking about is the manna that God had been giving them virtually every day of the forty years they were in the wilderness.

To get the manna, they never had to plant a single seed, water a single sprout, or remove a single weed.

Like every blessing that God gives to us and that we take for granted--from breathing all the way to everlasting life for those who trust in Christ--the manna was simply there for the taking. It was a gift of grace.

The Israelites wanted more! In itself, there’s nothing wrong with wanting more good in our lives. But in our wilderness, in this life, God wants to teach us to not let our desires supplant God in our priorities. God wants to show us that nothing this world may offer us can match the gifts God wants to give to those willing to receive them by faith in Him.

God wasn’t happy to hear His people whining yet again. It was a sign of faithlessness and sin. Numbers 21:6-7: “Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you...’”

The people had broken God’s commandments. I can think of at least three: They failed to honor God as God (first commandment). They had used His Name for whining, rather than for its intended use in prayer, praise, or thanksgiving (second commandment). They had borne false witness against both God and Moses (eighth commandment). And they had broken these and other of God’s commands repeatedly. That's why God allowed the serpents in the desert to be so deadly to the Israelites.

But the people were awakened by God’s action. In verse 7 says that the people asked Moses to pray for them. Moses did. Now, look at verse 8: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’”

What a weird prescription!

Why was this God’s fix?

In the hymn Amazing Grace, we sing, “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.”

Before we’re ready to receive the undeserved grace of God and the forgiveness of our sins, we have to be aware that we have sin that needs to be forgiven.

Before we can have our relationship with God restored, we need to know that we’re separated from God.

As you've heard me say before, God doesn’t force forgiveness and new life on us. We must receive it by faith. When the Israelites turned to the bronze serpent, they were reminded that their sin was what triggered their situation. Forgiveness, healing, and life could only come to them when they acknowledged their sin and trusted in God.

Now look, please, at John 3:14-15, from today's Gospel lesson. Some 1500 years after the incident in our first lesson, Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

In the wilderness, the bronze serpent became the repository, the scapegoat, for the rebellion and sin of God’s people and through their honest repentance, the means God uses to turn their attention and allegiance back to Him so that they could be restored.

In our own wilderness, it’s easy for us to wander away from God, to get caught up in our own agendas, to think that God has wandered from us. It’s easy for Christians to say, “I know what God says about sexuality, or covetousness, or loving others, or trusting alone, but I just don’t agree with Him.” (As though anyone can disagree with God!)

That’s where the Savior on a cross comes in. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says of Jesus: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus volunteered to be the repository, the scapegoat, for our sin.

He calls us to turn our eyes away from the wilderness and turn instead to Him.

Every time we picture Jesus on the cross and remember again that He had no sin, but that our sin--your sin and my sin--put Him there, we’re forced to acknowledge our need of Him.

We confess our sin and we put our trust in Him alone. When that happens, our faith in Him is renewed and the life and forgiveness that only Jesus can give floods us once again!

The wilderness in which you and I live each day can be hard. But God lets us decide whether he or our sin have the last word over our lives. Look at Jesus‘ words to Nicodemus in John 3:16 to 18:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

While we’re here in the wilderness we will never have all of life’s answers. But it’s clear to me that life without Jesus leaves us with nothing to hope for, while life with Jesus is filled with God’s presence now and with hope for eternity with God.

A man rode a unicycle on a taut rope above Niagara Falls. “I couldn’t have done it,” a friend told him. “Every time I pedaled, I’d see 167-feet of churning water below me.”

“If that’s what I’d looked at, I couldn’t have made it across, either,” the unicyclist said. “But I was focused on the solid ground ahead.”*

Keep your focus on Jesus, our solid rock.

He will forgive your sin.

He will stand by your side.

He will lift you up.

And He will give you life, here, now, in the wilderness...and beyond. Amen

[This sculpture, conflating the bronze serpent on a pole about which we read in Numbers 21, with Jesus' crucifixion, is a memorial to Moses on Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is the place in the last book of Deuteronomy from which Gods allowed Moses to see the promised land before he died.]

*This story is fictional, although several people have walked or taken wheelbarrows on tightropes above Niagara Falls and others have ridden unicycles on ropes strung between skyscrapers. The words of the fictional unicyclist are consistent with what such daredevils often say.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Being Church (Part 3, The Disciple's Life) AUDIO

Here.

Being Church (Part 3, The Disciple's Life)

[This was shared this evening during midweek Lenten worship with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

John 13:34-35
Matthew 28:19-20
You hear people say it all the time: “I don’t need to be part of a church to be a Christian.” People say this because they don’t like...

• the messy business of being in relationship with others, 
• being accountable to others, or 
• being committed to working at making relationships grow. 

But when they say this to me, I don’t go into all of that. I simply tell them that while it may be theoretically possible to be a Christian without Christ’s Church, the Bible knows of no such possibility.

When Jesus and the New Testament writers speak of discipleship, the life of faith, it’s never as a solo proposition.

Even if, as Jesus says, we may have to choose Him over family members and friends, He does not call us to a “Jesus and me” relationship. Jesus calls us to a "Jesus and us" relationship. Jesus always calls us to be part of His body, the Church. He calls His disciples to be the Church.

Being the Church doesn’t mean that we’re part of a pack of automatons who think alike and never disagree. The New Testament has many examples of how the early Christians argued and disagreed with each other, even while Jesus lived and walked among them.

Remember how Jesus once caught the twelve apostles arguing over who among them was the greatest? (I can't imagine being caught having an argument over who's the greatest by Jesus!)

Or how James and John ticked off the other apostles by asking for special places in Jesus’ kingdom?

And how, after Jesus had dies, risen, and ascended into heaven, the Greek-speaking Christians and the Jewish Christians got into a dispute over whether one set of widows was being better treated than another?

Or how Paul and Barnabas split up their ministry team when Paul wouldn’t agree to take along a young pastor Barnabas wanted to take who Paul thought was unreliable?

And who can forget Paul reminiscing about a long-previously-resolved argument that he’d had with Peter? “When Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch,” Paul remembered, “I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” (Galatians 2:11) (Way to let go of things, Paul!) While the two did resolve their dispute, there’s no record of Paul saying that later, he and Peter sang Kumbaya together.

When Jesus established His eternal salvation community, the Church, He fully anticipated that His people would sometimes disagree or even disappoint each other.

If the Church is Christ’s designated means for turning imperfect sinners into sanctified saints, you can bet that those people who, while on this earth, are simultaneously saints and sinners, will sometimes rub each other the wrong way.

That’s OK. That’s how we grow. “As iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “so one person sharpens another.”

Do you know what you call a couple or a family in which there is never disagreement? Dysfunctional.

The absence of disagreement in a church or the absence of a capacity to deal with disagreement in a healthy way indicates not that the people of a church love each other, but that they don’t care about the common life to which they have been called by the Holy Spirit. Who do you get angriest with: people you don't know or people you love?

A couple that refuses to deal healthfully with disagreements in their marriage demonstrates that they really don’t care about their marriage or each other.

The life of a disciple is other-minded. Within the fellowship of the Church, Christ seeks to set us free from all obsessions with ourselves--our desires, our will, our fears, our pride--to focus entirely on the God we know in Christ and His will for our lives and on others.

And so, Ephesians 4:6 urges Christian disciples, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger…”(ESV)

Love, the love of God appropriated through daily reflection on God’s Word, daily prayer, and daily application of God’s Word to our lives, is the way to healthfully work out potential conflicts and to do the will of God. 1 John 4:20 puts it bluntly and truthfully: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

The bottom line is this: The Church, with its imperfect members and its imperfect pastors, is the indispensable means by which Christ brings His perfect, eternal kingdom to the world.

The Church is the people of God in and for the world who, through the power of God’s Word, the power of God’s Spirit, and the power of the Sacraments, are enabled to live for more than themselves to live:

• for God, 
• for sister and brother in Christ, 
• for the spiritually disconnected of the world. 

The only way to be disciples is to be the Church.

This is why the words of Jesus that we read a few moments ago are so important. They give us our marching orders as disciples and as the Church.

In John 13:34-35, Jesus gives a new commandment, new because in it, He doesn’t just command Christians to love others as we love ourselves. He says that our love for the sisters and brothers who make up the Church should go way beyond that low standard. Look at what Jesus says: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We are to love our fellow Christians the way Christ loved us: with suffering, self-sacrifice, and commitment.

But Jesus is clear that our fellowship as Christian disciples is not to be a closed circle.

Our love shouldn’t be confined to those who like us or we find companionable. (As Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? [Matthew 5:46]) And by the way, how companionable do you think the apostle Paul was sometimes? Or Martin Luther?

Our love shouldn’t be confined to the fellowship of the Church. Jesus says that our love must incorporate those who aren’t yet His disciples. Matthew 28:19-20: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Disciples, members of Christ’s body, the Church, refuse to withhold the gospel of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ from the world. Pastor Rick Warren memorably says that the church that cares nothing about making disciples is really telling the world to go to hell. May we never be that church!

If being the Church sounds daunting, good. It is. One day, by the grace of God, I hope to learn this truth.

Being part of Christ’s Church isn’t like being a member of the local wholesale club in which you pay your dues to derive benefits.

It’s not like joining the National Geographic Society where all you do is send them some money and get twelve months of glossy pictures from around the world.

To be the Church is to be a community of disciples called to a way of life that is impossible apart from the God we know in Jesus Christ: a life of love for God, fellow disciples, and the world, come what may.

Just as it’s impossible for a couple to fulfill their marriage vows apart from the help of the God we know in Jesus, it is equally impossible for us to be Christians without the grace of God we receive in Jesus.

To live this impossible life together, Christ has given us means of grace: repentance, the Word of God read, pondered, shared, savored with others, and proclaimed, and the Sacraments. And He's given us something else. Do you know what it is? He's given us one another. He's given us each other. Christ has given us His Church.

To be disciples, we must be the Church. More next week.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

What's Most Important to Jesus

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

John 2:13-22
Imagine for just a moment that you’re the parent of a young family. You’ve spent a rare evening out with your husband or wife. It’s about midnight. As you get closer to your house, you hear sirens. Then, you see flashing lights. A block from your home, you see that your cul de sac has been blocked off by emergency vehicles. Terrified, you pull your car off to the side of the road and run toward your house. Within seconds, you see that your house is engulfed in flames, destroyed. But you don’t care about that. When a second later, you see your kids huddled with the babysitter and some neighbors, you fall on your children with tearful embraces.

The house is just a building. What matters is the people inside it.

In today’s gospel lesson, John 2:13-22, we see that God feels the same way.

Let’s take a look at the lesson: “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’ His disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’”

That last line quotes Psalm 69:9. On the face of it, the verse would seem to say that Jesus is protective of the temple, like the member of one of my previous parishes who was upset that I wasn’t upset when people brought coffee to worship.

In fact, Jesus is upset by the extortionists preying on the faith of those who have traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the temple. Many of these pious Jews came from long distances, many for the only time in their lives. It was impractical for them to bring sheep or pigeons from Spain or Italy or Egypt, or wherever they lived. So, once they got to the temple in Jerusalem, they exchanged their gold or local currencies for temple cash, the only stuff they could use to buy animals for sacrifice there.

Jesus didn’t like it that people who came to worship God were gouged for the privilege! It would be like Living Water charging admission to people who came to worship God on Sunday mornings. It was out of zeal for His fellow Jews, the household of God, that Jesus became angry.

And this is important to note. Jesus’ zealous ire is aroused against those who would stand between God and people who need God.

This reminds me of something Jesus said when His disciples tried to keep children away from Him: “Let the little children come to me [Jesus said], and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14)

Listen: The only thing that seems to ever have made Jesus angry was when someone--be it the Pharisees, the religious authorities, the devil, the demons--got in the way of people who wanted to know God.

That’s because for the God we know in Jesus, nothing is as important as people.

All people.

Including you and me.

Jesus’ fellow Jews who made up the temple leadership were upset by what Jesus did. He was cutting into their revenue, disrupting their routine! So, they ask Jesus in verse 18 of our gospel lesson: “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

Jesus proves His authority with these words: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (v.19)

“I’m going to give an evil, cynical world a sign of my authority,” Jesus is saying. “My Body is the temple of God’s Holy Spirit, as is the body of every person who confesses faith in Me (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19). And if you cut this body down, if you kill Me, I will be raised again on the third day.”

The sign of Jesus’ authority is His resurrection.

It isn’t just the sign that He had the authority to throw the money-changers out of the temple, though.

It’s the sign too that He has authority over all that keeps people made in the image of God from experiencing life with God.

Jesus has authority over the sin that blackens your conscience, the public disclosure of which would mortify you, the sin that makes you sick to remember.

Jesus has authority over death.

He has authority over your heartaches and sadness.

He has authority over your deepest regrets and your most earnest desires.

Because of His resurrection, Jesus can erase the power of sin, death, heartaches, and disappointments over your life.

Because of His resurrection, Jesus can give life--abundant, never-ending life with God--to all who dare to daily turn from their sin and daily trust in Him.

But is it true? Did the resurrection, this sign of Jesus’ authority over everything in heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18) really happen?

An Israeli scholar, rabbi, historian, and diplomat of the last century wondered the same thing: Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

This scholar, Pinchas Lapide, set out to learn the truth. Lapide looked at the witness of the early church--of Peter, who had spinelessly denied knowing Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest; of the other apostles who had run away from trouble when Jesus was executed; of the 500 or so early Christians who had made themselves scarce on the first Good Friday.

He saw how these same once-gutless people, after they’d received the gift of the Holy Spirit, had staked their lives on proclaiming that Jesus was risen from the dead.

He considered how a rational scholar like Paul, a hard-headed businessman like Peter, and all the other first followers of Jesus Christ faced death and persecution and refused to renounce what they knew to be true: Jesus Christ of Nazareth, true God and true man, crucified, dead, and buried, was also risen from the dead and now seated at the right hand of the Father, offering new and eternal life to all who believe in Him.

Lapide looked at how the resurrection had changed these people’s lives and said that the resurrection of Jesus must be true.

As He put it: “I accept the resurrection of Jesus not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as an historical event." We can accept that too!

The resurrection of Jesus is the sure and certain sign of what Jesus bore witness to on that day in the temple: People, people made in the image of God, people lovingly formed in their mothers’ wombs, people for whom Jesus died on the cross, people, all people, including you and me, are what matters most to God.

It is people--your friends, your enemies, your family, your neighbors, YOU--that Jesus came to this world came to save, to gift new life, to know God for eternity.

And it is this resurrection that Jesus came to share with you and me if we will follow Him, day in and day out.

As Jesus promises: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (John 11:25)

Houses and skyscrapers will crumble.

Empires and fortunes will be lost.

But the God we know in the risen Jesus and all who trust in Him will live forever.

It is on this fundamental truth--and nothing else--that we baptized believers in Jesus are called to live our lives.

May we always do just that. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

"Animated Unsatisfying Situations" by Parallel Studio

Animated Unsatisfying Situations in Video (by Parallel Studio) pic.twitter.com/LQxrt4z6s2

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