Before reading it, be sure to first read the powerful passage of Scripture on which today's installment of 'Our Daily Bread' is based, 1 Samuel 11:27-12:23. It's one of the most powerful, poignant, and instructive passages in all the Bible. It underscores that God is both gracious and just: God forgives the sin of the repentant; but sin can still have consequences for the forgiven.
When we genuinely pray for forgiveness of sin, we place ourselves under the authority of God, what some rightly call the sovereignty of God. Any time we repent for sin, we also implicitly place our lives in the hands of God.
David accepted God's forgiveness...and God's sovereignty.
The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, the congregation I serve as pastor, is reading the Bible together in a year's time. That's about three chapters each day. Once a week, groups of us get together to discuss the readings of the preceding seven days.
Tonight, we discussed the first fifteen chapters of Numbers.
I made several mistakes during the discussion--like not remembering the derivation of Hannukah and forgetting the exact calendar relationship between Passover and Easter. I drew a complete blank when it came to Hannukah. Here's the background.
I also erroneously said that Greek Orthodox Christians don't accept the Apocrypha as being canonical. They do.
I also said that I hadn't remembered that Moses had children. He did have two sons: Gershom and Eliezer (see Exodus 2:16-22 and Exodus 18:2-4).
What bugs me is that I knew these facts and just plum forgot every one of them.
"The more devoted you become to learning and living God's Word, the more you'll sense his divine voice in your life...You and I must be so saturated with the Word of God [here meaning the Bible] that when we're caught off-guard by life's circumstances, we reflexively hear his wisdom, his nudges, his whispers through his words that dwell within us." Bill Hybels, The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God. Having the Guts to Respond, 2010. (p.118 & pp.135-136)
God will never impart advice through a friend or give you a feeling that is inconsistent with His character and will as revealed on the pages of the Bible.
"Heaven, in the Bible, is not a future destiny but the other, hidden, dimension of our ordinary life--God's dimension, if you like. God mad heaven and earth; at the last he will remake both and join them together forever." N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 2008.
Significant for Christians' upcoming celebrations of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter--and significant for us at Saint Matthew, where as part of our reading of the Old Testament book of Numbers for Read the Bible in a Year--is that, on the Jewish calendar, Passover, the feast Jesus and the disciples celebrated when He instituted Holy Communion, began at sundown this evening.
In Numbers 9:1-5, we're told:
The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: 2Let the Israelites keep the passover at its appointed time. 3On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its regulations you shall keep it. 4So Moses told the Israelites that they should keep the passover. 5They kept the passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai. Just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so the Israelites did.
Passover begins on the 14th day of Nisan. Nisan is the first month of the Jewish calendar. By the reckoning of this calendar, new days begin at sundown. Today is the 14th of Nisan, 5771.
Passover, of course, remembers the events recorded in Exodus 12. There, we're told of what happened when God sent a tenth and final plague to Egypt designed to gain the freedom of His chosen people--the Hebrews or the Israelites--from slavery. They had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. The tenth plague came when God sent the angel of death to bring the deaths of all the first-born in Egypt.
The Israelites were spared though because, as God instructed them through Moses, they had previously smeared the blood of unblemished lambs on the doorposts of their dwellings. The lambs were offered to God in place of the firstborn Israelites. When the angel of death encountered the blood of the lambs, it passed over, ensuring that the first-born in those dwellings didn't die.
On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur on the Jewish calendar, in Temple times, an unblemished lamb was offered as sacrifice signaling repentance and bringing reconciliation (atonement) with God, on behalf of the people. Its blood covered the sins the people committed fin the preceding year. As part of the rite on this day, the priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the people. The blood of the lamb, in effect, called out to God and God passed over their sins. The significance of this can be seen when we consider the statement of a devout Jew who came to follow Jesus as Messiah, Lord, and God, the apostle Paul writing in Romans 6:23, "The wages of sin is death." By God's gracious intervention, the ancient Israelites were spared the proper "wages" for sin; God allowed the unblemished lamb to take the place of His people.
We Christians believe that just as the blood of unblemished lambs on the doorposts of the Hebrew dwellings in Egypt caused the angel of death to pass over God's people, leading ultimately to the Hebrews' liberation from slavery, the blood of Christ, covering the sins of repentant believers in Him, brings freedom from sin and death.
[Please also read Ephesians 2:11-13. Without faith in Jesus Christ, we stand outside a relationship with God. But we are brought near "by the blood of Christ."]
A little mystery for your Monday here. Know that it will be solved by the time you finish reading.
But first a note: It was windy, overcast afternoon yesterday when the videos that tell our story were taken. I took them with my cell phone and the wind sounds really loud.
On Sunday, we decided to take a walk on a trail in one of the five areas that make up the Three Creeks Park.
Operated jointly by the Columbus and Franklin County Metropolitan Park District (Metro Parks) and the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department, Three Creeks is, as described here, "a major hub in the Franklin County Greenways program, an interconnected system of trails along the seven major streams in Central Ohio." All told, Three Creeks contains 1067-acres of scenic beauty and varied species habitat where three creeks converge: Alum Creek, Big Walnut, and Blacklick. Two areas in the park system are like conventional city parks with softball diamonds, soccer fields, play areas, and the like. The other three, operated directly by the Metro Parks, have walking trails through some beautiful scenes.
Last year, Ann and I walked through one area of the park, one affording gorgeous views of the creeks and surrounding wooded areas. But yesterday, with the sun on the wane as we headed back to Logan from visits with our families, we went to a relatively new and not-yet fully developed area called Heron Pond. It's sort of cool that this already interesting nature sanctuary sets astride busy roads so accessible and still is insulated by woods and grasses.
Chapter 1: The Mystery Presents Itself
Though only barely visible in this video, Ann and I saw strange birds we'd never seen before, lots of them. They had white bellies and black wings. (Later, we would learn that their necks are white, too.)
Their flight patterns were like those of bats. They swooped down close to the surface of the water. At first, I thought they might be like a gull, but they never dipped into the water. If fish had been their prey--and the pond apparently is home to quite a few fish, they would have seemed poor hunters.
Chapter 2: The Plot Thickens
On another side of the lake, hovering over a marsh area, along the walking trail, and near some feeding boxes set in a field, the mystery bird is more visible in this video. Like bats, they're either not intimidated or are just heedless of people being around. One bird in particular, allowed me to shoot video of it as I stood no more than ten feet away. (Sorry, I have no zoom on my cell's video function.)
At this close range, we also saw what appeared to be a bluish cast to the sides of the birds' heads. We were later told that this was merely a reflection of ultraviolet rays, similar to what you see with pigeons.
Chapter 3: That's How They Roll
Their crazy, bat-like flight patterns made Ann and me think that, like some other species of birds, these mystery birds weren't real accomplished fliers. But then we watched two of them take out over the lake, then swoop back toward us and we realized that they're versatile in their flight patterns. That's just how they roll.
Chapter 4: Mystery Solved
Even before we showed these videos to our ornithologically-informed friend, Jody, he had a good idea of who these white-bellied birds on Heron Pond were: tree swallows. The tree swallows swooped over the lake and marsh area because, like bats, they eat insects and just above the surface of the water, there's apparently a feast of gnats to be had. Unlike bats, which are mammals, of course, these birds aren't nocturnal hunters and they don't have built-in GPS systems. Somewhere along the line, God said, "OK, tree swallows you get the bugs during the day. Bats, you take the night shift."
Thanks, Jody, for solving that mystery for us.
Here is information on the tree swallow from the Audubon Society.
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church earlier today.]
Philippians 2:5-11 Matthew 21:1-11
Today, as we celebrate Palm Sunday, I want to talk with you about humility. Both our Gospel lesson from Matthew and our second lesson, written by the apostle Paul to the Christian church in the Greek city of Philippi, underscore that Jesus accomplished His mission of saving all who believe in Him from sin and death through His humble submission to the will of God the Father.
In recounting Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday when crowds hailed Jesus as a conquering king, our Gospel lesson remembers the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah:
Prophetic fulfillment or not, it may have been at this moment of seeming triumph that some in the crowd began to suspect that Jesus hadn’t come to be the sort of king for whom they were looking.
The people didn’t expect Jesus to be a humble Savior Who submitted to death on a cross as the ultimate and only atoning sacrifice for sin. They wanted Jesus to be a conquering king who fulfilled their expectations of Him, destroying their Roman conquerors, lining their pockets with money, and making their lives easy.
You can imagine why, within a few days’ time, disappointed and angry that Jesus wasn’t the king they wanted Him to be, many in this same crowd who hailed Jesus as king would, by Thursday, call for His execution.
They wanted Jesus to exhibit humility, alright: a humble submission to their wants and whims and not to God the Father Whose intention it was (and is) to offer us much more than ease in this world.
He offers instead, an eternity of life with Him. And that eternity with God begins in this life, where God refashions us, sometimes in ways that bring us pain and humiliation, into the people God wills us to be, the people we were made to be.
Jesus was humble before the Father and so not only fulfilled His mission of dying and rising for us, but also reclaimed His rightful place as King of all creation, as your King and my King.
Look at the hymn to Jesus Paul quotes in our second lesson. You can find it on our Celebrate insert. Paul writes:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Just as Jesus, Who never knew sin, had to humbly submit to the will of the Father in order to claim new, everlasting life for all who believe in Him, we who are sinners must humbly submit to God so that our old sinful selves can be crucified day by day and God can give us the life Christ has won for us.
That entails submission to Jesus Christ and His Word, the Bible, as the final authority over our lives.
It also means confessing our sins and humbly seeking and accepting His forgiveness.
And it means submitting to the death of the arrogant presumption we all inherited from Adam and Eve, that we can turn our backs on God's will and “be like God.”
The apostle Peter, who knew a thing or two about repenting for his sins and swallowing his pride, writes in 1 Peter 5:6, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time.”
Now, please look at the very first verse of our processional Gospel, Matthew 21:1-11. That verse establishes this theme of humility. Look at what it says:
When they [that is, Jesus and His disciples] had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage [a town close to Jerusalem], at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples…
Then Jesus gives instructions on how they’re to prepare for their celebration of the Passover.
The other day while preparing for this sermon, I noticed something in that first verse that I’d never seen before: The two disciples Jesus sent aren’t named.
Think about that! These two disciples are sent on one of the most important missions in human history and Matthew doesn’t see fit to give us their names. They aren't given any credit.
You already know why: Because who Jesus sent wasn’t important; Who sent them—Jesus—was everything.
All the credit and the glory go to God. Those who humbly trust in Christ have the simple and awesome privilege of living as God made human beings to live, imperfectly now and fully in eternity! “Have this mind you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes. Be humble as your King is humble.
The question which all this talk of humble submission to Christ lays before me anyway, is, “How humble am I willing to be for Christ?” How low am I willing to go in order to place myself completely under Jesus' Lordship?
During worship, right after I delivered that sermon, I prayed silently, telling God, “I try to share Jesus with people in my ministry all the time. But unlike the other people in this sanctuary, who don't have credentials, titles, or clerical collars standing as walls between them and other people, I don’t always have the opportunity to share Jesus personally with others. Please give me that privilege, Lord.”
As I told the church council this past Tuesday, "Be careful what you pray for." Within minutes of my offering that prayer, a member of this congregation told me about someone who needed to hear about Jesus. On the following Monday, I got a call from a member telling me about someone else who needed the same thing. I went to both of those people, in absolute awe of the ways in which God answers our humble prayers. Later that week, I was able to share the Good News of Jesus with the family and friends of that second person when I was asked to preside at her funeral.
In the face of these answered prayers, all I could do was thank God and express my awe of His greatness and of His willingness to allow an imperfect sinner like me to play some small role in bringing Jesus to others. It was amazing!
Be in awe of God. But, please, do not be impressed with me! You see, this past week, I fell off the humility wagon.
Another phone call. Another person from outside of the congregation in need. But this time, like the priest and levite in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, I was preoccupied with my own agenda, bothered by this inconvenient interruption. I was curt with the person who made the request for help. “I can’t do everything,” I said. But, of course, God hadn’t asked me to do everything. He asked me to do just one thing…and that one thing was something I had actually asked Him to send my way!
Now, I can be thick-skulled. It can take me awhile to figure things out…or as Ann might put it, it takes some time before God’s two-by-four penetrates my consciousness. But yesterday, as I kneeled by my bed for my daily devotional and prayer time, I found it hard to pray. I sensed God telling me, “Don’t even think of praying right now. You have business to attend to.”
I remembered Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:23-24: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.“ I realized that I couldn’t offer my praise (or my requests) to God until I had done what I could to set things right with this person I had wronged.
So, I rummaged through my trash (that's humbling) until I found the discarded paper on which was written the telephone number of the person with whom I felt I’d been so short. I called. There was no answer. But thankfully, there was an answering machine on the other end of the line. I mentioned who I was and apologized for my wrong.
I don’t know if they’ve gotten the message yet. But I can tell you that I sensed a wall between God and me had been torn down. I was actually able to pray. I was able to come into God’s presence with joy once again. Remember what Peter wrote: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time.”
We can’t manufacture humility. We can’t resolve to be humble. Humility is a gift we may not always want, but which truly is a gift. God will give us humility only as we submit to Jesus Christ, asking the Father and the Holy Spirit to give us the same humble spirit that caused Jesus to willingly ride a donkey into Jerusalem, knowing full well what horrors lay ahead of Him in the next few days.
As we prepare for Holy Week and Easter, pray that God will fill you with the humble spirit of Jesus.
If you pray that prayer, there will be times, I suspect, when you too will fall off the humility wagon.
But it is the humble, those who willingly lay their whole lives under the authority of the God made known in Jesus Christ, who experience oneness with God.
They know the exhilaration of being part of God’s holy plans and work in the world.
They have the privilege of seeing what happens as they fulfill the great commandment to love God and neighbor and the great commission to make disciples in their neighborhood and in the world.
And it’s those who humbly surrender to Jesus Christ, believing in Him, who can look forward to a day when they will be exalted and hear those words of Jesus, which, as I’ve told you before, I long to hear more than any others: “Well done, good and trustworthy slave…enter into the joy of your master.”
Here's Psalm 32, as rendered by the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation:
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3
While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. 4
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer... 5
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin... 6
Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. 7
You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance... 8
I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 9
Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. 10
Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. 11
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
True, challenging, and freeing all at the same time:
"Nothing that we despise in others is entirely absent from ourselves. We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to weaker brethren - is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men's sake."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer "After Ten Years: A Reckoning made at New Year 1943"
At Saint Matthew, the congregation I serve as pastor, we're spending a year reading the Bible together. This week, we'll be starting on the Old Testament book of Numbers. It's a tough read! As my colleague and seminary classmate, Ken Pollitz, once told me, "You have to bear down pretty hard to get through Numbers." But it has real value and contains the Word of God.
One of the lessons of Numbers is that encountering God and the things of God is no light thing. God desires to bring blessing to his chosen people, to all nations, and to all creation, and central to this blessing is the gift of God's presence. For us sinful mortals, however, the warmth of God's life-giving presence is also a burning fire that tests us and ultimately cleanses us to make us holy. All this, in fact, is blessing.
"Sin detected can contrive all manner of veils to cover its nakedness." (Edith Pargeter, writing as Ellis Peters in The Holy Thief)
Peters' (Pargeter's) Brother Cadfael mysteries, set in twelfth century Shrewsbury, England, is brain candy, but good diversionary reads. She was a beautifully descriptive writer and along the way often shares little gems of insight like the one above.
Our small town has been shocked and saddened by the kidnapping and murder of a young woman, the mother of three small children. Charges of kidnapping have been lodged against her estranged husband, William Inman, Jr., and his parents, William, Sr. and Sandra. Since Sandra was the one who told authorities where the young woman's body could be found, it's widely expected that murder charges will be brought against at least the two men. Sandra, it's expected, will face a lesser charge as part of a plea bargain.
The body of Summer Inman, who was kidnapped on March 22 outside of a local bank where she worked as a janitor, was found little more than a week later in the septic tank of the church building where her husband's parents were married in 2004. She had been strangled.
Evil is real.
The evil that led to Summer Inman's murder was of a particular kind and it grew for a particular reason.
A story from WBNS TV in Columbus presented these facts about the family with which Summer had lived before moving out and filing for divorce:
Neighbors said Sandra and Summer Inman were rarely seen outside of the home, and when they were, they were both dressed entirely in black.
A close friend said it became clear to her "that the men had taken over the women" in the family.
Those who knew them said William A. Inman considered himself a religious leader and conducted church services in an outbuilding at their home.
Neighbors said he would often go door-to-door, soliciting donations for what he called "Mercy Ranch," a plan to turn his home into a place for the wayward and homeless.
It appears that the older William Inman had set himself up as a religious dictator overseeing his own misogynist kingdom.
Two particular forms of evil seem to have caused the years of hellish living and horrible end to which Summer Inman was subjected.
First, there is the evil represented by the presumption of anyone announcing on they have a call from God. This is what William (Bill) Inman did.
Nobody is authorized to hang up a holy shingle on their own initiative. An individual can swear up and down that she or he has a call from God to pastoral ministry, or any other ministry, but swearing won't make it so.
Recently, the members of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, have begun a venture of reading the Bible in the course of a year. We have daily readings and once a week, folks get together to discuss the readings. During the week after the discovery of Summer Inman's body, we read portions of the Old Testament book of Exodus in which God calls Moses to act as intermediary between God and the people and then, the people call Moses to act to this same role. The will of God about Moses' role was confirmed by believing people. The will of God as to whether a person is to be a leader among His people will always be reflected among His people.
Lutherans have always believed in this "dual nature" of the call. A potential pastor's sense of call must be affirmed by the Church. Otherwise, it's just a feeling on the part of a would-be pastor and feelings are never a sufficient basis for Christian decision-making.
There's a lot of authority associated with being a pastor. It's not like the authority of a political or military leader or a business executive. It's the authority associated with God's Word and God's Sacraments and no one should dare to enter this ministry unless the call from God is confirmed by the Church. That never happened with Bill Inman. He simply took what wasn't his to take.
That in itself is a flashing light signaling possible trouble. If someone is that presumptuous with God, it's hardly a stretch to think that he will be at least that presumptuous in claiming authority over people that is not theirs.
The second evil in this case is the utterly un-Biblical and un-Christian male domination practiced by the two Inman men.
From the beginning, Scripture makes clear the utter equality of women and men. When Genesis recounts the creation of humanity, it says:
So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Both the man and the woman were created in God's image, each in equal relationship with their Creator.
Later, in the New Testament, Paul, often wrongly accused himself of being a sexist, says plainly that, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28).
When Paul first came to faith in Christ, a woman was among those who "catechized" him in the faith. Where the culture allowed it, women served as leaders in churches founded by Paul.
Even passages in the New Testament sometimes trotted out by those who try use Christianity to justify sexism backfire in their faces. For example, Ephesians 5:21-33, which some claim commands husbands to be lords over their wives, actually, on a close reading, can be seen to command husbands and wives to live in mutual submission. Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, which, is a clear call for the husband to give himself utterly and sacrificially to their wives. After all, Christ went to a cross for His Church.
People who fail to maintain their connection to Christ's Church, who are accountable to nobody, can rationalize anything: misogyny and kidnapping and, if the hints and allegations prove true, even murder.
It's evil and you can be sure that, barring some uncharacteristic repentance (and, at the prompting of God's Holy Spirit, such miracles can happen), there will be a horrible reckoning because the God revealed first to ancient Israel and ultimately, in Jesus Christ, is a consuming fire.* To trifle with Him, to claim His authority without His permission, is a fearful thing.
I've heard from reliable sources just how committed Michelle Obama is to providing support to America's military families, people we should never forget, people who make extraordinary sacrifices each and every day.
During our congregation's Sunday worship services, we have a group of military personnel we frequently hold up in prayer and we encourage our members to pray for them by name each day. That's a good start.
But there's so much more that all of us can do to support military families. Go to the linked site to learn more about what we can do.
We live in a time when we resent being told what we should and shouldn't do, even when the one doing the telling is the sovereign God of the universe. We need to get over that!
Actually, it's a used car. (Or, as they like to say, a "pre-owned" car.) But you couldn't sing any of that like James Brown: "Papa's got a brand new bag." This is a post title you can sing.
A few days ago, I shared about our most recent trip to Columbus' Short North. Here's a bonus video, showing the randomly arranged wares (mostly chairs) at one store there, complete with two Hitchcockian cameos by yours truly, along with a terrible videographic faux pas at the end.
"Trusting God," or maybe more imperatively, "Trust God!," is the theme that emerges from several inspiring things I've read over the past week or so.
First, there's today's installment from Our Daily Bread, called The Penny Syndrome. Never underestimate what God can and will do through you when you trust Him!
My colleague and friend, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, in his daily devotional, shared thoughts from John Ortberg's fantastic book, The Me I Want to Be. You can find them here. God has an adventure planned for you; live it!
Also, inspired by the Bible, Bill Hybels' book The Power of a Whisper, the experiences of many faithful Christians, and his own walk with Christ, Glen has been sharing a sermon series on the power of God's communication with His people. I've linked to previous installments. Here is the link to the sermon of April 3.
And here is Glen's sermon from yesterday, April 10. As you read it, put aside your skepticism and world-weary wariness. Glen is an intelligent, knowledgeable man who trusts in Jesus Christ with every fiber of his being. I'm excited by the vision for his congregation that Glen here shares! As many of us were reminded by the first Bible lesson for worship yesterday, Ezekiel 37:1-14, by the power of His Word, God can give new life to dead, dry bones. Pray for Glen and for Faith Lutheran Church of Springfield, Illinois as God brings the vision of renewal into being!
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Ezekiel 37:1-14
In his book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins, tells about his interview with the late Admiral James Stockdale.
Stockdale, unfortunately, got pegged for an oaf after his 1992 run as Ross Perot’s vice presidential running mate. It’s an undeserved reputation, though.
While being held as the the highest-ranking US officer in the so-called Hanoi Hilton prisoner-of-war camp during the War in Vietnam, where he was tortured more than twenty times in eight years, Stockdale applied his brilliance and self-discipline and courage to survive and to help others do the same.
When Jim Collins met Stockdale, the Admiral was doing some studies in the field of Philosophy at Stanford University, where Collins taught. In preparation for their meeting, Collins read Stockdale’s memoirs of his POW experiences. “As I moved through the book,” writes Collins, “I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak.” And then he thought, “If it feels depressing for me [to read about it], how on earth did [Stockdale] deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”
When Collins met Stockdale, he asked the admiral about that. “I never lost faith in the end of the story,” Stockdale replied. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
Collins let that astounding statement sink in for a while and then asked Stockdale who, of his fellow prisoners, didn’t make it out. “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.” That seemed to contradict what Stockdale had just said about never doubting the end of the story. Confessing his confusion, Collins asked Stockdale to explain.
Said the admiral: “The optimists...They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Writes Collins: “Another long pause...Then he turned to me and said, ‘This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end--which you can never afford to lose--with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.’” I’m going to repeat that last sentence: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end--which you can never afford to lose--with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Here’s the point of my sermon this morning: The primary privilege and the primary responsibility of every person who claims to follow Jesus Christ is to hope.
You see, God has come into our lives in the Person of Jesus Christ, shared human life with us, gone to a cross where He took death, the rightful punishment for our sins, and then rose from the dead, promising that all who turn from their sin and hold onto Him as their only God and Savior will live in joy with Him forever.
Twice this past week, I presided over funerals—one for my uncle and another for a woman who lived just a few doors from this church, who I had never met until this past Monday in the intensive care unit of Hocking Valley Community Hospital but, as a housebound person who listened to our worship service every single Sunday, considered Saint Matthew her church. At both gravesite ceremonies, a benediction reminded the grieving of the hope that believers in Jesus Christ have: “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God our brother, we commend our sister…”
Following Jesus brings hope because, through Him, through what He has done for us and through our belief in Him, we live in the certainty that we know how the story ends. And it doesn’t end at the grave!
But that doesn’t mean that we’re called to be what Stockdale called optimists.
In my thirty-five years as a Christian and nearly twenty-seven years as a pastor, I’ve seen those kinds of Christians--the optimists--come and go. They’re like fireworks. When fireworks are first lit, they're beautiful. The colors and the noise and the spectacle are dazzling. And you think, “Wow!” But they always burn out as quickly as they ignite.
Christian firecrackers are those people who get all excited about having God in their lives and love the warm and fuzzy feelings they get as they first fall in love with Jesus. They feel like they could climb the highest mountains without rest stops. But then they hit snags. The snags can be as small as “not getting anything out of worship today,” as though worship was about them. Or another snag may be feeling that God isn’t there because He doesn’t give them what they want when they want it, as though a Savior Who, the Garden of Gethsemane, begged that He wouldn’t have to drink from the cup of crucifixion yet prayed, “Not My will, but Thine be done,” would turn the sovereign and almighty God of the universe into a cosmic kewpie doll.
Authentic followers of Jesus Christ—Christian disciples—are more like the fire in a winter fireplace. They may burn with varied intensity over time and they may sometimes need to be stoked. But unlike the firecracker Christians who act as the source of their own flames, authentic, maturing Christians know that it is Jesus Christ Who sets their faith on fire and keeps it going.
The Christians who keep on living with the hope that is the right of every follower of Jesus are the ones who understand that life on this planet may sometimes be brutal, but still are focused how the story ends. And that knowledge imbues their lives with peace and certainty even in the face of the chaos and uncertainty that can befall each and every one of us!
Our Old Testament lesson for today records a vision God gave to the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s ministry as a prophet took place from 597 to 571 B.C. Long before Ezekiel was born, God’s nation of Israel had torn itself in two. The northern kingdom, called Israel or also Samaria, for its capital city, had long ago been conquered by the Babylonians, a people who lived in what is today Iraq. Then, in about 587 B.C., the nation of Judea, the southern kingdom, with its capital city of Jerusalem, and the nation from which Jesus would come many centuries later, was also conquered by the Babylonians.
The common practice in those days was that a conquering nation would capture the conquered country’s ablest and most prominent citizens and send them back to the conquering nation to be slaves. This is what happened to Ezekiel.
It’s difficult for us to imagine how shattering this experience was for the people of Judea. Judea was more than just their homeland. It was also the center of their worship. They always believed that God’s presence on earth was to be found in the Holy of Holies tabernacle at the Temple in Jerusalem. When they prayed to God, they did so facing that tabernacle wherever they were in Judea or in their synagogues.
Now that the Temple was all-but-destroyed and they were far from it in an unholy land, they wondered if God could hear their cries?
Did God care what happened to them?
Was God out of their lives forever?
Could God reach out to them with His compassion and power?
The optimists of Ezekiel’s day all died of broken hearts. They didn’t remember that they belonged to the God Who has charge and always has had charge of the ends of our stories, even in the bleakest of passages. Like us, the people of Ezekiel’s day needed to be reminded of that.
So, God showed Ezekiel a vision. In a valley, God put Ezekiel in the midst of dead, dry bones. “Okay, Zeke,” God said, “start reminding these people of how the story ends for people with faith in Me. Remind them that death and humiliation are not the ends for those who follow Me. Proclaim My Word of hope to them!” You know how the story ends: “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones” sprang to life again.
God is still in the hope-giving business. A man I’ve told some of you about came to my house in Cincinnati one evening. We’d been acquainted, but I didn’t really know him. Nor did I know what he wanted to see me about. He was successful, financially well-off, handsome, articulate.
But as we spoke, he began to weep. “Three weeks ago,” he told me, “I watched my sister nearly die. She thinks she was saved by the medicine. They helped, I’m sure. But that wasn’t all. I watched my parents and others pray. I listened to them read the Bible in the hospital room. For the first time in my life, I really saw God.”
He’d seen the end of the story and so, been given an inexplicable hope even as he acclimated himself to the possibility that his sister’s earthly life would soon end.
My heart pounded in my chest as I listened to this man’s story. “What do you want now?” I asked him. “I want to give my life back to Christ,” he told me. And in the living room of my house, the two of us kneeling together, this man who had been baptized as a child and like a prodigal son, had wandered from God, surrendered to Christ once again. God gave new life and new hope to dry bones.
Christians still weep as Jesus did that day in Bethany recorded in today’s Gospel lesson. They wrestle with the seeming absence of God as surely the people of Judah did during their Babylonian exile.
But they have a hope that allows them to face life--and death--with hope. The day before he died, my uncle was visited by a friend at the hospital. The friend wanted to know how Uncle Jim was. My uncle lifted his hand and said several times, "I'm going up. I'm going up."
Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, Who went to a cross and rose from the dead is our surety that we have a hope that can never be destroyed. Jesus is “the resurrection and the life” and all who believe in Him, even if they go down to the dust in this world, will never die. No matter what, we know that the direction of our lives is up to God.
The primary privilege and the primary responsibility of every person who claims to follow Jesus Christ is to hope.
