Thursday, August 02, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
"Recall Notice"
If you don't click on another link today, please click on this one.
It may mean the difference between life and death.
And be sure to pass it on to someone else.
It may mean the difference between life and death.
And be sure to pass it on to someone else.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Listening in on an Apostle's Prayers
This is a rather faint and scratchy recording of this Saint Matthew's Chapel Holy Communion worship service, held at 8:30 this morning. The Bible lesson was Ephesians 3:14-21.
We Need Never Be Afraid
[This was prepared to be shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
John 6:1-21
Did you notice anything strange in the gospel lesson from John?
The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over! It’s an incredible miracle, a sign of His authority over the elements of the world, of His compassion for people, of Jesus being more than just a good man.
The last six verses recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. And it’s here that something that may seem strange to us happens. Or, more accurately, something that, after reading the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we might expect to happen, but isn’t mentioned.
Turn please to John 6:16-21. We’re told: “...when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum...it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.” (Just imagine being in a boat out on Lake Erie facing a wind like some of those we’ve been experiencing around here lately.) “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat and they were afraid. But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.”
Neither John nor Mark, in their gospels, mention that after Jesus identified Himself, Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really You, call to me and let me walk on the water to you.” Matthew tells us about this and about how, having taken a few steps, Peter looked at the wind and the waves and lost his faith in Jesus to do the impossible and began to sink into the waters.
Now, these differences in detail shouldn’t rock our worlds! Each of the gospel writers tells us about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in his own way, touching on particular themes. John even tells us that he leaves out some details. Turn to John 20:30-31. These words come toward the end of the gospel and they constitute John’s “mission statement,” his reason for writing his gospel. He says: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples; but these [that is, the one John recounts in his gospel] are written than you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
Keep those two verses tucked in your mind as we look at another detail surrounding Jesus walking on the water that John doesn’t include, but which both Matthew and Mark mention.
Look first at Matthew 14:32. It says: “And when they [Jesus and Peter] got into the boat, the wind ceased.”
Now, please go to Mark 6:51: “Then He [Jesus] went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.”
Matthew and Mark both say that the moment Jesus got into the boat, the wind stopped. That’s a pretty amazing occurrence, isn’t it, another sign that Jesus is Lord and God of the universe? Wouldn’t you think that John, who shows us signs of Jesus’ identity so that we can believe in Him and have the forgiveness of sins and new life only Jesus can give, would mention it?
But John doesn’t mention it. All He says is that the disciples rode the waves through the storm, saw Jesus walking on the water, and that their boat landed safely on the other side after Jesus climbed into the boat.
So, why doesn’t John tell us about the calm that came to the Sea of Galilee?
Maybe because it isn’t really important. In fact, my guess is that John deliberately left out the detail about the becalmed wind to make a point. What do I mean?
You know, if I dared to let you listen in when I have my time of personal prayer each day, one minute would not have passed before I would begin to blush in embarrassment. That’s because, on reflection I realize that, more often than I like, my prayers can be so childish, immature. I run into a problem here, a challenge there, and instead of asking God for guidance, or courage, or wisdom, or faith, I ask God to just take away the problem.
Now, don’t get me wrong: God is so compassionate, He’s even willing to hear us when we pray the most childish, even selfish, things. For God, the fact that we pray to Him is a lot more important than what we pray. The God we know in Jesus Christ is a great artist: Our imperfect prayer petitions are like ill-formed messes of clay offered up to God, which God can turn into masterpieces of His design. But when we’re going through storms in our lives, as unpleasant and hard and sad as the storms that may afflict us can be, our ultimate concern shouldn’t be whether Jesus takes the storms away or not, but whether we’re riding the storm out while following Jesus.
I’ve known some people whose lives were mostly spent in pleasant circumstances whose faith in Christ was destroyed by the smallest hint of adversity. But I’ve also known people who have endured more tragedy than most of us can imagine. The storms were fierce in their lives. Yet their faith in Jesus, their belief in His presence with them now and in His promise of eternity to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, actually was strengthened during their storms.
Nobody wants to experience adversity or pain in their lives. But God can use life’s storms to strengthen our faith in Christ.
In fact, if we pay attention to the experiences of believers like Job in the Old Testament or Paul in the New Testament, we see that, while Satan is the ultimate author of all evil in the world, sometimes God allows adverse experiences to befall us in order to teach us to rely more deeply on Him and less so on ourselves.
There’s a story told a goldsmith. He was explaining what it takes to refine a piece of gold to turn it into something beautiful and useful. It all has to be done at a precise temperature, he explained. And the timing has to be just so. “How,” someone asked, “do you know when the gold has reached perfection?” “That’s easy,” he said, “when I can see my reflection in it.”
In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a compassionate miracle worker. Each of us can name experiences either in our own lives or in the lives of others where we know that Christ has intervened to give healing, strength, encouragement, or new starts in our personal lives, our jobs, our relationships.
But sometimes the winds still blow against us.
Sometimes things happen that we will not be able to understand or explain until, after our own deaths and resurrections, we see Jesus face to face.
In the meantime, God allows the circumstances of our lives to re-form our characters so that, one day, in eternity, when He looks at us, He will see Himself--His love, His perfection--reflected in us.
This is what John, the author of our gospel lesson, means when he writes to believers in Christ in another book of the New Testament: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus] is revealed [when we see Jesus on the Day of the Lord], we will be like Him...”
One of the biggest misconceptions into which Christians can fall is the notion that being part of the Church is like being a member of a civic club. You know: You join, throw some money into the till, and get goods and services for which you pay. “Membership has its privileges.”
That’s not what being a member of Christ’s eternal fellowship, the Church, is about!
You see, Jesus Christ has already paid our membership dues for the Kingdom of God. He did that when He died on a cross, taking our punishment for sins, and rising from the dead to give life to those who turn from sin as the ultimate authority over their lives and instead, entrust their lives to Jesus as their only God, King, and Savior.
The privilege of being part of Christ’s Church is the privilege of being remade in the image of Christ as we daily surrender our lives and wills to Him.
The privilege of being a Christian is knowing that the God Who, out of His amazing grace, saves from sin and death those who believe in Jesus, isn’t in the business of just getting us out of the pain we encounter in this life. He's playing for much higher stakes! He’s reshaping our characters for eternity!
We still have storms in this life. The adverse, painful winds still rage in this fallen world. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, face persecution for their loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God.
But there are two other things that the last six verses of our gospel lesson should teach us.
The first is this: When they received Jesus into the boat, they landed safely on the shore. When we take Jesus into every experience of our lives, whatever adversities we face, we can know that He is with us. Nothing can separate us from Him.
And finally this: The translations of John 6:20 in most English versions of the Bible aren’t good. Our translation says that Jesus told the frightened disciples: “It is I; do not be afraid.” That rendering really misses the point of Jesus’ words. In the Greek in which John wrote, he quotes Jesus as saying, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am." It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The name was "Yahweh," the Hebrew for I AM.
When storms hit in life, as they inevitably do, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, as the other gospel writers affirm, but the only One Who can give us strength during the storm and life beyond the storm: God, the great I AM, Who took on flesh and died and rose to give new life to all who believe in Him, Jesus Christ!
We need never be afraid.
John 6:1-21
Did you notice anything strange in the gospel lesson from John?
The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over! It’s an incredible miracle, a sign of His authority over the elements of the world, of His compassion for people, of Jesus being more than just a good man.
The last six verses recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. And it’s here that something that may seem strange to us happens. Or, more accurately, something that, after reading the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we might expect to happen, but isn’t mentioned.
Turn please to John 6:16-21. We’re told: “...when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum...it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.” (Just imagine being in a boat out on Lake Erie facing a wind like some of those we’ve been experiencing around here lately.) “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat and they were afraid. But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.”
Neither John nor Mark, in their gospels, mention that after Jesus identified Himself, Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really You, call to me and let me walk on the water to you.” Matthew tells us about this and about how, having taken a few steps, Peter looked at the wind and the waves and lost his faith in Jesus to do the impossible and began to sink into the waters.
Now, these differences in detail shouldn’t rock our worlds! Each of the gospel writers tells us about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in his own way, touching on particular themes. John even tells us that he leaves out some details. Turn to John 20:30-31. These words come toward the end of the gospel and they constitute John’s “mission statement,” his reason for writing his gospel. He says: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples; but these [that is, the one John recounts in his gospel] are written than you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
Keep those two verses tucked in your mind as we look at another detail surrounding Jesus walking on the water that John doesn’t include, but which both Matthew and Mark mention.
Look first at Matthew 14:32. It says: “And when they [Jesus and Peter] got into the boat, the wind ceased.”
Now, please go to Mark 6:51: “Then He [Jesus] went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.”
Matthew and Mark both say that the moment Jesus got into the boat, the wind stopped. That’s a pretty amazing occurrence, isn’t it, another sign that Jesus is Lord and God of the universe? Wouldn’t you think that John, who shows us signs of Jesus’ identity so that we can believe in Him and have the forgiveness of sins and new life only Jesus can give, would mention it?
But John doesn’t mention it. All He says is that the disciples rode the waves through the storm, saw Jesus walking on the water, and that their boat landed safely on the other side after Jesus climbed into the boat.
So, why doesn’t John tell us about the calm that came to the Sea of Galilee?
Maybe because it isn’t really important. In fact, my guess is that John deliberately left out the detail about the becalmed wind to make a point. What do I mean?
You know, if I dared to let you listen in when I have my time of personal prayer each day, one minute would not have passed before I would begin to blush in embarrassment. That’s because, on reflection I realize that, more often than I like, my prayers can be so childish, immature. I run into a problem here, a challenge there, and instead of asking God for guidance, or courage, or wisdom, or faith, I ask God to just take away the problem.
Now, don’t get me wrong: God is so compassionate, He’s even willing to hear us when we pray the most childish, even selfish, things. For God, the fact that we pray to Him is a lot more important than what we pray. The God we know in Jesus Christ is a great artist: Our imperfect prayer petitions are like ill-formed messes of clay offered up to God, which God can turn into masterpieces of His design. But when we’re going through storms in our lives, as unpleasant and hard and sad as the storms that may afflict us can be, our ultimate concern shouldn’t be whether Jesus takes the storms away or not, but whether we’re riding the storm out while following Jesus.
I’ve known some people whose lives were mostly spent in pleasant circumstances whose faith in Christ was destroyed by the smallest hint of adversity. But I’ve also known people who have endured more tragedy than most of us can imagine. The storms were fierce in their lives. Yet their faith in Jesus, their belief in His presence with them now and in His promise of eternity to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, actually was strengthened during their storms.
Nobody wants to experience adversity or pain in their lives. But God can use life’s storms to strengthen our faith in Christ.
In fact, if we pay attention to the experiences of believers like Job in the Old Testament or Paul in the New Testament, we see that, while Satan is the ultimate author of all evil in the world, sometimes God allows adverse experiences to befall us in order to teach us to rely more deeply on Him and less so on ourselves.
There’s a story told a goldsmith. He was explaining what it takes to refine a piece of gold to turn it into something beautiful and useful. It all has to be done at a precise temperature, he explained. And the timing has to be just so. “How,” someone asked, “do you know when the gold has reached perfection?” “That’s easy,” he said, “when I can see my reflection in it.”
In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a compassionate miracle worker. Each of us can name experiences either in our own lives or in the lives of others where we know that Christ has intervened to give healing, strength, encouragement, or new starts in our personal lives, our jobs, our relationships.
But sometimes the winds still blow against us.
Sometimes things happen that we will not be able to understand or explain until, after our own deaths and resurrections, we see Jesus face to face.
In the meantime, God allows the circumstances of our lives to re-form our characters so that, one day, in eternity, when He looks at us, He will see Himself--His love, His perfection--reflected in us.
This is what John, the author of our gospel lesson, means when he writes to believers in Christ in another book of the New Testament: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus] is revealed [when we see Jesus on the Day of the Lord], we will be like Him...”
One of the biggest misconceptions into which Christians can fall is the notion that being part of the Church is like being a member of a civic club. You know: You join, throw some money into the till, and get goods and services for which you pay. “Membership has its privileges.”
That’s not what being a member of Christ’s eternal fellowship, the Church, is about!
You see, Jesus Christ has already paid our membership dues for the Kingdom of God. He did that when He died on a cross, taking our punishment for sins, and rising from the dead to give life to those who turn from sin as the ultimate authority over their lives and instead, entrust their lives to Jesus as their only God, King, and Savior.
The privilege of being part of Christ’s Church is the privilege of being remade in the image of Christ as we daily surrender our lives and wills to Him.
The privilege of being a Christian is knowing that the God Who, out of His amazing grace, saves from sin and death those who believe in Jesus, isn’t in the business of just getting us out of the pain we encounter in this life. He's playing for much higher stakes! He’s reshaping our characters for eternity!
We still have storms in this life. The adverse, painful winds still rage in this fallen world. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, face persecution for their loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God.
But there are two other things that the last six verses of our gospel lesson should teach us.
The first is this: When they received Jesus into the boat, they landed safely on the shore. When we take Jesus into every experience of our lives, whatever adversities we face, we can know that He is with us. Nothing can separate us from Him.
And finally this: The translations of John 6:20 in most English versions of the Bible aren’t good. Our translation says that Jesus told the frightened disciples: “It is I; do not be afraid.” That rendering really misses the point of Jesus’ words. In the Greek in which John wrote, he quotes Jesus as saying, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am." It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The name was "Yahweh," the Hebrew for I AM.
When storms hit in life, as they inevitably do, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, as the other gospel writers affirm, but the only One Who can give us strength during the storm and life beyond the storm: God, the great I AM, Who took on flesh and died and rose to give new life to all who believe in Him, Jesus Christ!
We need never be afraid.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Mission Trip 2012 Video
From June 24 to 29, five youth and three adults from Saint Matthew participated in Group Workcamps' Week of Hope in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along with 58 other Christian youth and adults, we served others in Jesus' Name in Grand Rapids. We also worshiped together, prayed together, studied God's Word together, sweated a lot, and had tons of fun. We slept in sleeping bags on hard floors and church youth groups took turns fixing breakfasts and dinners and cleaning up the facility in which we stayed through the week, the church building of Zion Reformed Church in Grandville.
We had no idea before we left Logan, but when we arrived we learned that a group from Immanuel United Methodist Church, whose building is located just a few blocks from Saint Matthew's facilities, also were participants. It was great being in Grand Rapids with them!
Group Workcamps puts on lots of these camps across the country every year.
This video gives a flavor of what the week was like. The video portion was taken on my cell phone and the stills were taken by Week of Hope staffers.
Soul Man by Sam and Dave is the song to which one member of our group, along with friends from Logan, pantomimed during a talent show.
Get Down by Audio Adrenaline is a song with which we sang and danced during the programs each day. "Ev'rytime I'm down the Lord lifts me up, yeah!"
The theme of the week was Made and refers to Revelation 21:5, in which the risen and ascended Jesus proclaims, "See, I am making all things new!"
We had no idea before we left Logan, but when we arrived we learned that a group from Immanuel United Methodist Church, whose building is located just a few blocks from Saint Matthew's facilities, also were participants. It was great being in Grand Rapids with them!
Group Workcamps puts on lots of these camps across the country every year.
This video gives a flavor of what the week was like. The video portion was taken on my cell phone and the stills were taken by Week of Hope staffers.
Soul Man by Sam and Dave is the song to which one member of our group, along with friends from Logan, pantomimed during a talent show.
Get Down by Audio Adrenaline is a song with which we sang and danced during the programs each day. "Ev'rytime I'm down the Lord lifts me up, yeah!"
The theme of the week was Made and refers to Revelation 21:5, in which the risen and ascended Jesus proclaims, "See, I am making all things new!"
Friday, July 27, 2012
Audio of 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion (John 19 to 21)
The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio are reading the New Testament together in a year's time. On Wednesdays, participants who are interested gather for weekly discussion groups at either 11AM or 7PM. This is audio of this past Wednesday evening's discussion (July 25). We discussed John, chapters 19 through 21, an account of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.
A source from which I read here is Craig Keener's outstanding reference book, The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament.
During the discussion of John 21:11, I mentioned that my seminary professor, the late Pastor Bruce Schein, said that the 153 fish of the miraculous catch was "the perfect catch." I couldn't then remember why Schein had said this. But this is what he says in in his wonderful book, Following the Way: The Setting of John's Gospel:
A source from which I read here is Craig Keener's outstanding reference book, The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament.
During the discussion of John 21:11, I mentioned that my seminary professor, the late Pastor Bruce Schein, said that the 153 fish of the miraculous catch was "the perfect catch." I couldn't then remember why Schein had said this. But this is what he says in in his wonderful book, Following the Way: The Setting of John's Gospel:
"There are 153 fish in the net, a perfect catch fishermen would say--a third always goes to the boat, a third to fishermen, and a third to the provider of nets."
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Ripley and the Underground Railroad
Ripley, Ohio is celebrating its bicentennial this coming week. An Ohio River town, Ripley was an important stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves seeking freedom from the pre-Civil War South. This release from the Ohio Historical Society has information not only on Ripley's planned celebrations, but also a few interesting looking books.
Welcome to Orwell's World: The Chick-fil-A Controversy
Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy recently underscored his belief, based on both the Old and New Testament, including the words of Jesus Himself, that the covenant of marriage is between a man and a woman (a husband and a wife), period.
A firestorm of protest ensued. The mayors of both Boston and Chicago have said they would like Chick-fil-A not to operate in their cities.
But the last time I checked, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion still are guarantees in the United States. Mr. Cathy's exercise of those freedoms in no way threatens the freedoms of others.
Personally, I believe that his position is the correct one. I also believe in full civil rights for all people, including those who are gay and lesbian.
These are not mutually exclusive positions. Indeed, both spring from the same place: a belief in the God of love revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.
Christians have no interest in coercing others to agree with every facet of Biblical morality. Indeed, it's only when people are free to disobey the will of God that confessions of repentance for sin and faith in Christ have any meaning.
Out of love for God and others, my call as a Christian is to speak God's truth in love. Fully cognizant of my own sinfulness and utter dependence on Christ's grace for forgiveness and life with God, I don't pretend to be better than others. I don't think Dan Cathy pretended superiority either. Nor did he express "homophobia" or hatred in the statement he made on God's will for marriage.
The Christian is free from the enslavement of sin and death, but not at liberty to say that God is wrong in His revealed will for the human race. When God and we disagree on something, the Christian is bound to admit that God is right and we are wrong. God clearly does not approve of some things. Injustice, prejudice, thievery, deception, gossip, using His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and worship, and sex outside of marriage are some of those things that displease God. Not to earn God's love in Christ, but to express gratitude for it, Christians seek to align their lives with God's revealed will.
And the Christian who is grateful for the undeserved gifts of Christ's grace is commissioned to speak the truth that God has revealed: the truth about what is sin and the truth about the forgiveness of sin and new life that belongs to all who repent and entrust their lives to Christ.
People may not like to hear what we believe are God's revealed truths, but no one is threatened by their expression. And it is sloppy, Orwellian thinking to describe sentiments that spring from love as "hate speech."
But in the United States of 2012, the intolerance exhibited by the mayors of Boston and Chicago and those who agree with them are seen as tolerance, while Christians who accept the rights of others to engage in behaviors God reveals to be sinful, while having the temerity to underscore what they believe God teaches, are called intolerant. That is Orwellian.
A firestorm of protest ensued. The mayors of both Boston and Chicago have said they would like Chick-fil-A not to operate in their cities.
But the last time I checked, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion still are guarantees in the United States. Mr. Cathy's exercise of those freedoms in no way threatens the freedoms of others.
Personally, I believe that his position is the correct one. I also believe in full civil rights for all people, including those who are gay and lesbian.
These are not mutually exclusive positions. Indeed, both spring from the same place: a belief in the God of love revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.
Christians have no interest in coercing others to agree with every facet of Biblical morality. Indeed, it's only when people are free to disobey the will of God that confessions of repentance for sin and faith in Christ have any meaning.
Out of love for God and others, my call as a Christian is to speak God's truth in love. Fully cognizant of my own sinfulness and utter dependence on Christ's grace for forgiveness and life with God, I don't pretend to be better than others. I don't think Dan Cathy pretended superiority either. Nor did he express "homophobia" or hatred in the statement he made on God's will for marriage.
The Christian is free from the enslavement of sin and death, but not at liberty to say that God is wrong in His revealed will for the human race. When God and we disagree on something, the Christian is bound to admit that God is right and we are wrong. God clearly does not approve of some things. Injustice, prejudice, thievery, deception, gossip, using His Name for anything other than prayer, praise, and worship, and sex outside of marriage are some of those things that displease God. Not to earn God's love in Christ, but to express gratitude for it, Christians seek to align their lives with God's revealed will.
And the Christian who is grateful for the undeserved gifts of Christ's grace is commissioned to speak the truth that God has revealed: the truth about what is sin and the truth about the forgiveness of sin and new life that belongs to all who repent and entrust their lives to Christ.
People may not like to hear what we believe are God's revealed truths, but no one is threatened by their expression. And it is sloppy, Orwellian thinking to describe sentiments that spring from love as "hate speech."
But in the United States of 2012, the intolerance exhibited by the mayors of Boston and Chicago and those who agree with them are seen as tolerance, while Christians who accept the rights of others to engage in behaviors God reveals to be sinful, while having the temerity to underscore what they believe God teaches, are called intolerant. That is Orwellian.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Should This Be Filed Under, "No Surprise"?
| JULY 24, 2012 |
| Many Financial Pros Feel Pressure to Compromise Ethics |
| 30% of financial services professionals say their compensation or bonus plans create pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law, according to a survey in the U.S. and UK conducted for the law firm Labaton Sucharow. 22% of female respondents say they'd face retaliation if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace, compared with 12% percent of male respondents. |
| Source: Professionals Feel Unethical Behavior May Be a Necessary Evil and Have Knowledge of Workplace Misconduct, According to Labaton Sucharow Survey |
This came in today's Daily Stat from the Harvard Business Review. Maybe the only shocking thing about the findings is that such a small percentage of financial services professionals feel pressured to play fast and loose with ethics or the law.
If that seems cynical, I hasten to add that feeling the heat to cheat isn't itself unethical, criminal, or sinful.
When internalized, the pressure to cheat may be described with the Biblical term, temptation. Being tempted to sin isn't to do wrong.
And, if we're honest, we've all been tempted to do wrong.
That's part of being human.
Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, experienced temptation, but unlike the rest of us, never sinned. Christ not only has conquered sin and death for those who repent for sin and believe in Him, He also understands what it's like to be tempted...to be human. Hebrews 4:15, in the New Testament, says, "[In Christ]...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin."
When faced with temptation, the God revealed to us in Christ can help us. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone," 1 Corinthians 10:13, also in the New Testament, says, "God is faithful and he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
Of course, if we don't want to avoid sin or successfully elude the temptation to do so, there is no help to be had from God. While God wants to help us, He won't force His help on us.
But, honestly, it's better to run away from sin (and all its consequences) into the arms of God than to run to sin. Take it from one who knows.
Shepherd for the Harassed and Helpless
Here's the somewhat scratchy and hard-to-hear audio of this past Sunday's 8:30 AM Chapel Holy Communion Service at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.
The Biblical text used is Mark 6:30-34, 53-56:
The Biblical text used is Mark 6:30-34, 53-56:
30The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
53When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Barry Larkin Inducted Into Baseball Hall of Fame
Barry Larkin was a great hitting shortstop for my fave Cincinnati Reds for nineteen years. I am so glad that, yesterday, he was inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He had a true Hall of Fame career and is deserving.
Now, I hope that through the veterans committee, another Cincinnati shortstop, David Concepcion, will be admitted to the hall. Concepcion was the best shortstop of his era and deserves to be honored as a Hall of Famer.
Now, I hope that through the veterans committee, another Cincinnati shortstop, David Concepcion, will be admitted to the hall. Concepcion was the best shortstop of his era and deserves to be honored as a Hall of Famer.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
3 Things to Remember
[This was shared this morning during the 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
Ephesians 2:11-22
Our second Bible lesson for today, Ephesians 2:11-22, was written to a Gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christian community in the first century who lived in an area then called Asia Minor, which you and I know as Turkey.
But there is more than musty history to be found in these verses. In the midst of the demands and challenges of our everyday lives, these verses remind us to do three things:
Look first, please, at verses 11 to 13. We’re told, “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
To understand this passage, we must remember a simple Biblical truth: God is the giver of life. Without a connection to God, we are dead, even if we have a strong pulse and heartbeat. We are dead in our sins and we face an eternity divorced from life and an earthly lifetime of futility and meaninglessness without connection to God.
While the Bible tells us that there have always been people who have believed there was a God and who sought Him in their own ways, God first disclosed Himself and His nature to a single people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jews. The Jews were called by God to be His own people.
God evidently had His reasons for focusing His attention and energy on one people.
For one thing, the Jews were meant to be “a light to the nations,” showing the whole world the glory of God.
For another, the Jewish people became a laboratory showing the whole world how God’s law, grace, and forgiveness work, what repentance and faith are all about.
What we see when we read the Old Testament’s account of God’s interactions with the Jewish people is that He is no different from the God we encounter in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus. (See here and here.)
Look at Genesis 15:6. God has promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a son and become the ancestors of nations. It’s an outlandish promise--almost as outlandish as promising eternal life to those who repent and believe in Christ. Abraham and Sarah were old, well beyond child-bearing or child-rearing years. Yet look at Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
Now, flip back to Ephesians 2:8 and see the remarkably consistent way by which God brings salvation or righteousness to imperfect sinners like you and me: “For by grace [that’s God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
Verses 11 to 13 of our lesson tell us that the miracle of salvation, once a gift belonging only to the Jews now belongs to all who believe in Christ. As verse 13 says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
It used to be that only Jewish men who had been circumcised, along with their wives, daughters, and sisters, could claim to be God’s people, reconciled to God, one with God. Those who weren’t Jewish were aliens, foreigners, strangers to God. But God has brought all who believe in Jesus close to Himself.
It’s good though, to remember who we once were without Christ. It’s good to remember that, in spite of not being “members of the club” and in spite of our sin, Christ welcomes all who repent for sin and believe in Him with open arms.
Nobody I know is more critical of me than me. There are times when I get so angry at myself, thinking, “How many times do you have to commit the same sin before you learn your lesson? How many more times do you intend to disappoint God with your hard-headedness and hard-heartedness?” But then I go to God in prayer and I read His Word and I’m reminded of passages like Isaiah 1:18, where God says: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Or, Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
I remember who I once was: A sinner without hope. Through Christ, like all who believe in Him, I have been transformed: a forgiven sinner with an eternity of hope.
Look at the next section of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:14-18. It says: “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances [this refers to the Jewish ritual and civil laws, not to the moral laws, like the ten commandments, which still stand], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
I heard a man say of his son, “He came out of the womb, cigar in hand, barking out orders.” Truth is, we all came into the world that way, more or less. The Bible, in Psalm 139:14, tells us that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But, we also come equipped with an inheritance from our imperfect human parents: an insatiable commitment to having things our own way, a desire to “be like God.” King David speaks for us all in Psalm 51:5, when he writes: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
We are born at war with God. But Jesus Christ has come to make peace between God and us.
Peace with God is what Christ has come to give to us. But it’s a peace that can only be ours when we surrender to Christ!
Jesus wants us in His eternal kingdom. But we can’t get in if we insist on holding onto our sins, if we insist that our favorite violations of God’s will for human beings are “no big deal.”
To God, every sin--from taking His Name in vain to sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman, from murder to false witnessing (what we call gossiping)--every sin is an assault that disrupts and destroys the peace in which He wants His creation to live.
1 John 1:8-10 contains words familiar to most Lutheran Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us.”
The peace of God comes to those honest enough to admit their sin and honest enough to own their need of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to change their lives. In Romans 5:1-2, the apostle Paul writes: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
In Christ, repentant believers in Jesus have peace with God and even with those who hate us.
I once read about a Lutheran pastor and psychologist doing graduate work in a major US city in the east. We’ll call him Bill. Bill began attending a local congregation and made himself known to the pastor. The pastor was happy to have Bill in the congregation and took Bill up on his offer to help in any ways he could. Bill saw a few congregants in counseling situations and occasionally led worship and preached.
As time went on, Bill became aware that, to some parishioners, the pastor seemed like an angry person whose venom was creating a lot of ill-will. Bill initially discounted it until one Sunday, just before a service at which Bill was to preach, the angry pastor lit into Bill, accusing him falsely of all sorts of maliciousness.
The service began and, silently, Bill begged God to help him get through it, knowing that the entire time the pastor was staring at him with searingly angry eyes. Bill says that God not only gave him peace internally, but also peace in his relationship with that pastor. He was eventually able to get the pastor to the help he needed for healing.
In Christ, God makes peace with you and if you will let Him, He promises that--in the words of Philippians 4:7--”the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Remember by grace through faith in Christ who you are right now: a person at peace with God and with others.
Look, please, at the final verses of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
After remembering who we were without Christ and who we are with Christ, Ephesians reminds of who we are becoming through Christ. Once foreigners to God, now members of God’s own household, confident of God’s love for us and His presence with us right now, we also have a lot to look forward to.
Through the witness of the apostles and the prophets found on the pages of our Bibles, God is building us up to be part of a temple, the very place God lives. And, as much as we may like our church buildings, it isn’t in brick, mortar, or plaster that God lives, but in people who dare to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “Christians don’t go to Church. They are the Church.”
And it’s this Church into which you and I are being built for all eternity. It’s the Church in which sin, death, grief, and futile toil will come to an end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes and we will live with joy and purpose alongside all who have trusted in the Name of Christ.
The world has brought sad and tragic news to our doorsteps this past week. This life is fragile and fleeting. But when we who trust in Jesus, remember who we were, who we are, and who our God is making us to be, we do not despair.
This morning, we thank God for Christ and we recommit ourselves to that commission which Christ has given to every follower of Jesus. Turn to that commission, please, in Matthew 28:19-20. The risen Jesus commands all who have been saved by His grace:
Ephesians 2:11-22
Our second Bible lesson for today, Ephesians 2:11-22, was written to a Gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christian community in the first century who lived in an area then called Asia Minor, which you and I know as Turkey.
But there is more than musty history to be found in these verses. In the midst of the demands and challenges of our everyday lives, these verses remind us to do three things:
- Remember who we were.
- Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are.
- Remember who, by grace through faith in Christ, we are to be.
Look first, please, at verses 11 to 13. We’re told, “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
To understand this passage, we must remember a simple Biblical truth: God is the giver of life. Without a connection to God, we are dead, even if we have a strong pulse and heartbeat. We are dead in our sins and we face an eternity divorced from life and an earthly lifetime of futility and meaninglessness without connection to God.
While the Bible tells us that there have always been people who have believed there was a God and who sought Him in their own ways, God first disclosed Himself and His nature to a single people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jews. The Jews were called by God to be His own people.
God evidently had His reasons for focusing His attention and energy on one people.
For one thing, the Jews were meant to be “a light to the nations,” showing the whole world the glory of God.
For another, the Jewish people became a laboratory showing the whole world how God’s law, grace, and forgiveness work, what repentance and faith are all about.
What we see when we read the Old Testament’s account of God’s interactions with the Jewish people is that He is no different from the God we encounter in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus. (See here and here.)
Look at Genesis 15:6. God has promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a son and become the ancestors of nations. It’s an outlandish promise--almost as outlandish as promising eternal life to those who repent and believe in Christ. Abraham and Sarah were old, well beyond child-bearing or child-rearing years. Yet look at Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
Now, flip back to Ephesians 2:8 and see the remarkably consistent way by which God brings salvation or righteousness to imperfect sinners like you and me: “For by grace [that’s God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
Verses 11 to 13 of our lesson tell us that the miracle of salvation, once a gift belonging only to the Jews now belongs to all who believe in Christ. As verse 13 says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
It used to be that only Jewish men who had been circumcised, along with their wives, daughters, and sisters, could claim to be God’s people, reconciled to God, one with God. Those who weren’t Jewish were aliens, foreigners, strangers to God. But God has brought all who believe in Jesus close to Himself.
It’s good though, to remember who we once were without Christ. It’s good to remember that, in spite of not being “members of the club” and in spite of our sin, Christ welcomes all who repent for sin and believe in Him with open arms.
Nobody I know is more critical of me than me. There are times when I get so angry at myself, thinking, “How many times do you have to commit the same sin before you learn your lesson? How many more times do you intend to disappoint God with your hard-headedness and hard-heartedness?” But then I go to God in prayer and I read His Word and I’m reminded of passages like Isaiah 1:18, where God says: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Or, Jesus’ words from the cross, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
I remember who I once was: A sinner without hope. Through Christ, like all who believe in Him, I have been transformed: a forgiven sinner with an eternity of hope.
Look at the next section of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:14-18. It says: “For He [Christ] Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances [this refers to the Jewish ritual and civil laws, not to the moral laws, like the ten commandments, which still stand], so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
I heard a man say of his son, “He came out of the womb, cigar in hand, barking out orders.” Truth is, we all came into the world that way, more or less. The Bible, in Psalm 139:14, tells us that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” But, we also come equipped with an inheritance from our imperfect human parents: an insatiable commitment to having things our own way, a desire to “be like God.” King David speaks for us all in Psalm 51:5, when he writes: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
We are born at war with God. But Jesus Christ has come to make peace between God and us.
Peace with God is what Christ has come to give to us. But it’s a peace that can only be ours when we surrender to Christ!
Jesus wants us in His eternal kingdom. But we can’t get in if we insist on holding onto our sins, if we insist that our favorite violations of God’s will for human beings are “no big deal.”
To God, every sin--from taking His Name in vain to sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman, from murder to false witnessing (what we call gossiping)--every sin is an assault that disrupts and destroys the peace in which He wants His creation to live.
1 John 1:8-10 contains words familiar to most Lutheran Christians: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar and His word is not in us.”
The peace of God comes to those honest enough to admit their sin and honest enough to own their need of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to change their lives. In Romans 5:1-2, the apostle Paul writes: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
In Christ, repentant believers in Jesus have peace with God and even with those who hate us.
I once read about a Lutheran pastor and psychologist doing graduate work in a major US city in the east. We’ll call him Bill. Bill began attending a local congregation and made himself known to the pastor. The pastor was happy to have Bill in the congregation and took Bill up on his offer to help in any ways he could. Bill saw a few congregants in counseling situations and occasionally led worship and preached.
As time went on, Bill became aware that, to some parishioners, the pastor seemed like an angry person whose venom was creating a lot of ill-will. Bill initially discounted it until one Sunday, just before a service at which Bill was to preach, the angry pastor lit into Bill, accusing him falsely of all sorts of maliciousness.
The service began and, silently, Bill begged God to help him get through it, knowing that the entire time the pastor was staring at him with searingly angry eyes. Bill says that God not only gave him peace internally, but also peace in his relationship with that pastor. He was eventually able to get the pastor to the help he needed for healing.
In Christ, God makes peace with you and if you will let Him, He promises that--in the words of Philippians 4:7--”the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Remember by grace through faith in Christ who you are right now: a person at peace with God and with others.
Look, please, at the final verses of our second lesson, Ephesians 2:19-22: “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
After remembering who we were without Christ and who we are with Christ, Ephesians reminds of who we are becoming through Christ. Once foreigners to God, now members of God’s own household, confident of God’s love for us and His presence with us right now, we also have a lot to look forward to.
Through the witness of the apostles and the prophets found on the pages of our Bibles, God is building us up to be part of a temple, the very place God lives. And, as much as we may like our church buildings, it isn’t in brick, mortar, or plaster that God lives, but in people who dare to give their lives to Jesus Christ. As someone has said, “Christians don’t go to Church. They are the Church.”
And it’s this Church into which you and I are being built for all eternity. It’s the Church in which sin, death, grief, and futile toil will come to an end. Every tear will be wiped from our eyes and we will live with joy and purpose alongside all who have trusted in the Name of Christ.
The world has brought sad and tragic news to our doorsteps this past week. This life is fragile and fleeting. But when we who trust in Jesus, remember who we were, who we are, and who our God is making us to be, we do not despair.
This morning, we thank God for Christ and we recommit ourselves to that commission which Christ has given to every follower of Jesus. Turn to that commission, please, in Matthew 28:19-20. The risen Jesus commands all who have been saved by His grace:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”God has given us His peace through Christ. Share that peace with others by sharing Christ with them. That’s the work to which you and I are called while on earth. May it be our way of life. Amen!
Friday, July 20, 2012
After Aurora: What the World Needs Most
As Alan Knox rightly points out, every Christian is called to "preach" the gospel. This fact is part of what it means to be a member of what Martin Luther called, "the priesthood of all believers."
And, given the frail and fleeting nature of life on this earth we have seen underscored in the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, every person on earth needs to hear the gospel.
And what is the gospel? It's "the good news" that Jesus receives sinful human beings who repent and believe in the power of His death and resurrection to transform them from enemies of God to God's friends for eternity. Jesus summed up how the gospel is activated in our lives in a short sermon found in the gospel of Mark:
That's the power of the gospel we Christians ought to proclaim (preach) with love and consideration, without coercion or apology. Every Christian should be able to affirm with the apostle Paul:
And, given the frail and fleeting nature of life on this earth we have seen underscored in the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, every person on earth needs to hear the gospel.
And what is the gospel? It's "the good news" that Jesus receives sinful human beings who repent and believe in the power of His death and resurrection to transform them from enemies of God to God's friends for eternity. Jesus summed up how the gospel is activated in our lives in a short sermon found in the gospel of Mark:
"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."By a sheer act of charity (what the Bible calls grace), God creates faith in Christ in those who are willing to believe and by that same grace, God counts our faith in Christ as rightness with God.
That's the power of the gospel we Christians ought to proclaim (preach) with love and consideration, without coercion or apology. Every Christian should be able to affirm with the apostle Paul:
"...I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith [in Christ], to the Jew first and also to the Greek [non-Jews or Gentiles]. For in it the righteousness [rightness] of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written [in the Old Testament book of Habakkuk], 'The one who is righteous will live by faith.'" (Romans 1:16-17)More than ever, the world needs the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's the call of every Christian to pass it on!
Prayers and Thoughts for the Colorado Tragedy
Today, we need to be in prayer for all the victims of the Colorado movie theater tragedy.
From eleven years ago, here is a column I wrote for the Press Community newspapers in Cincinnati in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks that might have some relevance today: Four Things to Tell Children After 9/11. (One of the points made is so specific to the 9/11 attacks as to be irrelevant. But you can judge for yourself whether the other three points are helpful.)
From eleven years ago, here is a column I wrote for the Press Community newspapers in Cincinnati in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks that might have some relevance today: Four Things to Tell Children After 9/11. (One of the points made is so specific to the 9/11 attacks as to be irrelevant. But you can judge for yourself whether the other three points are helpful.)
Doubt in the Life of the Christian
Recently, talking with friends, one asked me if I ever doubted Jesus' resurrection or the resurrection from the dead that Jesus promises all who turn from sin and believe in Him.
I had to answer honestly that the resurrection isn't something I doubt.
The facticity of Jesus' resurrection is supported by another fact, it seems to me: That the very first followers of Jesus were emphatic that Christ's death and resurrection were central to their proclamation about Christ. Something like 500 people staked their lives on the claim that they had seen the resurrected Jesus.
There was nothing in it for them financially.
There was nothing in it for them socially or politically.
In fact, by insisting that, as Jesus had taught during His pre-crucifixion and pre-resurrection ministry, Jesus
To confess all these things, was to subject themselves to ridicule, rejection, and persecution.
If they were all guilty of hysteria, you would have imagined that at some point in their lives--and some apparently lived a long while after Jesus' death and resurrection--the hysteria would have broken.
If they were involved in some financial conspiracy--and there is no record intimating that anywhere that I know of--that too, would have broken down.
In fact, if history, even recent history, shows us anything, it's that conspiracies almost inevitably break down, especially under the force of the kind of political and religious persecution to which Christians were subjected in the earliest years of the movement.
Of course, the weight of facts can't get you to faith. Faith comes to those able to say, "Lord, I don't understand it all. But I trust Jesus. I find Him credible. I want to turn away from a life without Christ and live with Him as the center of my life. I want to believe. Help me do that."
Faith, as I've said before, comes to those willing to believe.
But, that doesn't mean that doubts ever go completely away. We are human, after all.
For me, the doubts never revolve around Jesus' resurrection or His promise to raise me and all those who have believed in Him at "the last day."
Instead, the doubts that sometimes accost me revolve around today.
Despite a thirty-five year track record in which the risen and living Jesus has sustained, encouraged, and empowered me, I sometimes wonder whether He's going to sustain me in the next challenge.
The God I know in Jesus Christ has been so powerful in my life through the years and yet, when facing new challenges or hurdles, I wonder, "Are you with me, Jesus? Have you had enough of me?"
Just last week, I was facing a hurdle. I was feeling distant from Jesus.** But here's what happened: In prayer, I owned my feeling of distance with Jesus. The simple sharing of that reality in my life with Christ was the opening Jesus took to assure me of His presence and our intimacy.
Whatever our doubts about Christ or the new life He offers to those who surrender to Him, the antidote is always the same: To come to Him honestly. To surrender to Him again each day. When we do, we learn the truth of the New Testament when it tells us that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:31).
*And, by the way, recent studies indicate that the so-called diversity of Christianities of the early Church, in which it's supposed that the first followers of Christ had more diverse proclamations about Jesus than what are found in the New Testament, have proven false. The proclamation about Jesus clearly incorporated the above elements from the outset. Groups and documents claiming contrary things about many of the above points came later.
**It's important to remember that faith isn't contingent on our feelings or on our rationality. Christ is alive and the gracious Lord and refuge for sinners, whether, at any given moment, we don't feel or think those realities.
I had to answer honestly that the resurrection isn't something I doubt.
The facticity of Jesus' resurrection is supported by another fact, it seems to me: That the very first followers of Jesus were emphatic that Christ's death and resurrection were central to their proclamation about Christ. Something like 500 people staked their lives on the claim that they had seen the resurrected Jesus.
There was nothing in it for them financially.
There was nothing in it for them socially or politically.
In fact, by insisting that, as Jesus had taught during His pre-crucifixion and pre-resurrection ministry, Jesus
- was born of a virgin,
- was both fully God and fully human,
- was sinless,
- suffered and died for sinful humanity, and
- was raised by God the Father in order to open a new, eternal relationship with God to all who died to self (repented) and entrusted their lives to Christ,
To confess all these things, was to subject themselves to ridicule, rejection, and persecution.
If they were all guilty of hysteria, you would have imagined that at some point in their lives--and some apparently lived a long while after Jesus' death and resurrection--the hysteria would have broken.
If they were involved in some financial conspiracy--and there is no record intimating that anywhere that I know of--that too, would have broken down.
In fact, if history, even recent history, shows us anything, it's that conspiracies almost inevitably break down, especially under the force of the kind of political and religious persecution to which Christians were subjected in the earliest years of the movement.
Of course, the weight of facts can't get you to faith. Faith comes to those able to say, "Lord, I don't understand it all. But I trust Jesus. I find Him credible. I want to turn away from a life without Christ and live with Him as the center of my life. I want to believe. Help me do that."
Faith, as I've said before, comes to those willing to believe.
But, that doesn't mean that doubts ever go completely away. We are human, after all.
For me, the doubts never revolve around Jesus' resurrection or His promise to raise me and all those who have believed in Him at "the last day."
Instead, the doubts that sometimes accost me revolve around today.
Despite a thirty-five year track record in which the risen and living Jesus has sustained, encouraged, and empowered me, I sometimes wonder whether He's going to sustain me in the next challenge.
The God I know in Jesus Christ has been so powerful in my life through the years and yet, when facing new challenges or hurdles, I wonder, "Are you with me, Jesus? Have you had enough of me?"
Just last week, I was facing a hurdle. I was feeling distant from Jesus.** But here's what happened: In prayer, I owned my feeling of distance with Jesus. The simple sharing of that reality in my life with Christ was the opening Jesus took to assure me of His presence and our intimacy.
Whatever our doubts about Christ or the new life He offers to those who surrender to Him, the antidote is always the same: To come to Him honestly. To surrender to Him again each day. When we do, we learn the truth of the New Testament when it tells us that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:31).
*And, by the way, recent studies indicate that the so-called diversity of Christianities of the early Church, in which it's supposed that the first followers of Christ had more diverse proclamations about Jesus than what are found in the New Testament, have proven false. The proclamation about Jesus clearly incorporated the above elements from the outset. Groups and documents claiming contrary things about many of the above points came later.
**It's important to remember that faith isn't contingent on our feelings or on our rationality. Christ is alive and the gracious Lord and refuge for sinners, whether, at any given moment, we don't feel or think those realities.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Foodie Alert: Calling All Arteries
7-11 stores in Singapore are serving up this delectable delight. But it can't be long before it will be clogging arteries in the good old USA, can it?
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Why Resist Evil?
[This is the sermon prepared for delivery at this morning's 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. You are invited to worship with us any time.]
Mark 6:14-29
With its account of John the Baptist’s execution, our gospel lesson from Mark for today is so laced with evil that it’s disturbing. I’d rather just close the Bible on this passage today and move on to Holy Communion.
But that’s no way to treat the Bible, God’s revealed Word. Second Timothy 3:16, in the New Testament, says that, “all scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” That’s true even of the disturbing parts.
And when I think of it, what I see in today’s Gospel lesson is a lot like what I see in life on Monday through Saturday. As wonderful as this life can be, there are things I would rather not face. These are the evils—like the inhumane things that human beings sometimes do to one another—that, when you learn of them, make you wonder, “How could this have happened? How can people be so cruel or sadistic?”
And I’m not talking just about murders or holocausts. I’m thinking also of the everyday evils, the cutting, harsh ways in which we all can diverge from the clear will of God to love God and love neighbor:
The husband or wife who ignores the spouse.
The parent who discourages a child.
The child who is disrespectful to the parent.
The customer who berates the clerk at the store.
None of us wants to be mistreated. Yet, often we can find ourselves subjecting others to the very disrespect or callous disregard that we hate to receive!
We all are sinners, of course. That’s the burden that the sinless Jesus came to take from us, the weight He took on His own shoulders on the cross so that all who repent for sin and trust in Him will have life with God forever.
As Christians, we’re called to do daily battle with our sin, which, if ignored, acts as a wall between God and us, between life and death.
We’re called to keep grabbing the strong, outstretched hand of Jesus Christ so that the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed by God’s powerful grace and deathless love.
That isn’t always as easy to do as it seems it should be.
You’ve heard me speak before about the frog in the kettle. A frog haplessly plopped himself into a kettle full of water that set on a stove top. Shortly after he got there, someone turned on the burner underneath the kettle. The frog, being a cold-blooded animal, adaptable to the world around him, didn’t realize he was being boiled to death.
Only insane people set out to be evil. Yet, like the frog in the kettle, sometimes people who should know better, are capable of evil, of cruelty to others. We allow our kettles--our environments, the world and the people around us--to dictate how we will act and react in everyday life. We adapt ourselves so well to the world around us that we boil ourselves in our own sin.
Herod Antipas was a man who should have known better than to fall into evil. He had been schooled in God’s will through a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. On top of that, Herod had good political reasons for avoiding evil: Though his family had no legitimate claim on the honor, they had for generations held themselves to be Israel’s royal family. It was so important to Herod Antipas to be seen as the “king of the Jews” that he had undertaken to build a new temple on Mount Zion, the same spot in Jerusalem where, a thousand years before, King Solomon had built the first temple. Both spiritual training and political common sense should have kept Herod from evil.
But our Gospel lesson for today tells us that Herod perpetrated a horrible evil: Ordering the execution of John the Baptizer, whose crime was speaking the Word of God.
How that happened, a story you know well, comprises most of the lesson. Please turn to it, Mark 6:14 to 29. The stotry comes in what the moviemakers would call a flashback. Herod gets reports about the miracle-working ministry of Jesus and is convinced that John, whose beheading he had ordered, has come back from the dead. The memory of his evil clearly haunted Herod.
We’re then told about the night Herod threw a birthday party for himself, how the daughter of his wife—the wife he had stolen from his brother--had danced for him, pleasing Herod a lot, how—probably a little more than drunk—Herod had promised the girl anything in exchange for the dance, how she had asked her mother what to ask for and was given the chilling reply (in verse 24), “The head of John the Baptist,” and how, in spite of what Herod knew to be right, he complied with the girl’s wish.
It was an act of evil equal to anything you might hear about tonight on the Eleven O’Clock News. But I believe that our gospel lesson can help us to avoid falling into evil ourselves.
It does this by helping us to see that evil happens, first of all, when we want what we want more than we want what God wants. Herod wanted his wife’s daughter. He let himself be led by his lust and not by God.
That sort of thing can happen to us, too.
It may not be lust that leads us.
It might be materialism or acceptance or even a competitive spirit grown out of right proportions.
A woman, upset with herself, once told me, “I don’t know what happens to me at work. It’s like I’m a different person. I say and do things to get by or get what I want that, a few years ago, I could never have imagined myself doing.”
This woman was a frog in a kettle and she didn’t know how to get out! She was being led by things other than God.
Evil also happens when we’re more concerned with how we appear than we are with who we are. Herod kept his vow to his wife's daughter because he didn’t want to seem like a welcher to his guests. He didn't want to seem incapable of or unwilling to keep his word. He let the opinions of others lead him into evil.
Years ago, a pastor I know taught me a valuable lesson. One week, he made a mistake, one that the congregation needn’t have known about, not a sin, but a failure to make a deadline which cost the church some money. The first thing that pastor did the following Sunday morning during the announcements was stand up and apologize. If he had worried about appearances, he wouldn’t have said a word. But he was willing to admit his imperfections and gained credibility for it.
Evil also happens when we ignore the Word of God. Herod, in spite of the judgment against his actions he could hear in John’s preaching, liked to listen to John. He knew that John’s words were from God. Yet, at his birthday party, Herod turned a deaf ear to God’s Word and he ordered the execution of a man whose crime had been clearly speaking God’s Word.
It’s clear that to avoid evil, we need to:
But that still leaves us with a question: What’s in it for us? At the end of our Gospel lesson, after all, Herod was still alive, still on his throne, and John’s body was taken away by his disciples for burial. Herod had caved into evil. John had remained faithful to God. So, does it really pay off for us to resist evil?
Of course, there’s the obvious answer to that question: Those who faithfully seek to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ will, in spite of our sins and failings, spend eternity with God. Jesus promises: “the one who endures to the end will be saved” from sin, death, and separation from God.
But there are more immediate rewards for those who commit themselves to keeping hold of Christ’s hand and resisting the temptation to sin. They’re mentioned in our lesson from Ephesians for today. We’re given, we’re told “every spiritual blessing.” Herod went to bed on the night he killed John the Baptizer knowing that he had done evil and that barring a renewal of his relationship with God, on a collision course with hell.
Unlike Herod Antipas, John the Baptist lived and died with the certainty that, even in the midst of things he couldn’t and didn’t fully understand, in resisting evil, in seeking to follow God faithfully, he had a Lord, a Friend, and an Advocate Who would never desert him, not even at the gates of death. Who, do you suppose, died a happier man: Herod Antipas or John the Baptist?
Sometimes, people ask me, “Where is God?” The simple truth is that God is present for all who want God around. God is present for all who call on the Name of Jesus Christ. If you want Jesus in your life, you can find Him in the Word of God, in prayers in Jesus’ Name, in the fellowship of the Church, in the Sacraments, in the neighbor you’re called to serve and share the gospel with each day.
And having Jesus Christ at the center of our lives makes all the difference in this life and in the one to come. And, finally, gloriously, eternally, joyfully, having Jesus Christ at the center of your life makes resisting evil worth all the trouble it can bring to our lives. Amen
Mark 6:14-29
With its account of John the Baptist’s execution, our gospel lesson from Mark for today is so laced with evil that it’s disturbing. I’d rather just close the Bible on this passage today and move on to Holy Communion.
But that’s no way to treat the Bible, God’s revealed Word. Second Timothy 3:16, in the New Testament, says that, “all scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” That’s true even of the disturbing parts.
And when I think of it, what I see in today’s Gospel lesson is a lot like what I see in life on Monday through Saturday. As wonderful as this life can be, there are things I would rather not face. These are the evils—like the inhumane things that human beings sometimes do to one another—that, when you learn of them, make you wonder, “How could this have happened? How can people be so cruel or sadistic?”
And I’m not talking just about murders or holocausts. I’m thinking also of the everyday evils, the cutting, harsh ways in which we all can diverge from the clear will of God to love God and love neighbor:
The husband or wife who ignores the spouse.
The parent who discourages a child.
The child who is disrespectful to the parent.
The customer who berates the clerk at the store.
None of us wants to be mistreated. Yet, often we can find ourselves subjecting others to the very disrespect or callous disregard that we hate to receive!
We all are sinners, of course. That’s the burden that the sinless Jesus came to take from us, the weight He took on His own shoulders on the cross so that all who repent for sin and trust in Him will have life with God forever.
As Christians, we’re called to do daily battle with our sin, which, if ignored, acts as a wall between God and us, between life and death.
We’re called to keep grabbing the strong, outstretched hand of Jesus Christ so that the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed by God’s powerful grace and deathless love.
That isn’t always as easy to do as it seems it should be.
You’ve heard me speak before about the frog in the kettle. A frog haplessly plopped himself into a kettle full of water that set on a stove top. Shortly after he got there, someone turned on the burner underneath the kettle. The frog, being a cold-blooded animal, adaptable to the world around him, didn’t realize he was being boiled to death.
Only insane people set out to be evil. Yet, like the frog in the kettle, sometimes people who should know better, are capable of evil, of cruelty to others. We allow our kettles--our environments, the world and the people around us--to dictate how we will act and react in everyday life. We adapt ourselves so well to the world around us that we boil ourselves in our own sin.
Herod Antipas was a man who should have known better than to fall into evil. He had been schooled in God’s will through a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. On top of that, Herod had good political reasons for avoiding evil: Though his family had no legitimate claim on the honor, they had for generations held themselves to be Israel’s royal family. It was so important to Herod Antipas to be seen as the “king of the Jews” that he had undertaken to build a new temple on Mount Zion, the same spot in Jerusalem where, a thousand years before, King Solomon had built the first temple. Both spiritual training and political common sense should have kept Herod from evil.
But our Gospel lesson for today tells us that Herod perpetrated a horrible evil: Ordering the execution of John the Baptizer, whose crime was speaking the Word of God.
How that happened, a story you know well, comprises most of the lesson. Please turn to it, Mark 6:14 to 29. The stotry comes in what the moviemakers would call a flashback. Herod gets reports about the miracle-working ministry of Jesus and is convinced that John, whose beheading he had ordered, has come back from the dead. The memory of his evil clearly haunted Herod.
We’re then told about the night Herod threw a birthday party for himself, how the daughter of his wife—the wife he had stolen from his brother--had danced for him, pleasing Herod a lot, how—probably a little more than drunk—Herod had promised the girl anything in exchange for the dance, how she had asked her mother what to ask for and was given the chilling reply (in verse 24), “The head of John the Baptist,” and how, in spite of what Herod knew to be right, he complied with the girl’s wish.
It was an act of evil equal to anything you might hear about tonight on the Eleven O’Clock News. But I believe that our gospel lesson can help us to avoid falling into evil ourselves.
It does this by helping us to see that evil happens, first of all, when we want what we want more than we want what God wants. Herod wanted his wife’s daughter. He let himself be led by his lust and not by God.
That sort of thing can happen to us, too.
It may not be lust that leads us.
It might be materialism or acceptance or even a competitive spirit grown out of right proportions.
A woman, upset with herself, once told me, “I don’t know what happens to me at work. It’s like I’m a different person. I say and do things to get by or get what I want that, a few years ago, I could never have imagined myself doing.”
This woman was a frog in a kettle and she didn’t know how to get out! She was being led by things other than God.
Evil also happens when we’re more concerned with how we appear than we are with who we are. Herod kept his vow to his wife's daughter because he didn’t want to seem like a welcher to his guests. He didn't want to seem incapable of or unwilling to keep his word. He let the opinions of others lead him into evil.
Years ago, a pastor I know taught me a valuable lesson. One week, he made a mistake, one that the congregation needn’t have known about, not a sin, but a failure to make a deadline which cost the church some money. The first thing that pastor did the following Sunday morning during the announcements was stand up and apologize. If he had worried about appearances, he wouldn’t have said a word. But he was willing to admit his imperfections and gained credibility for it.
Evil also happens when we ignore the Word of God. Herod, in spite of the judgment against his actions he could hear in John’s preaching, liked to listen to John. He knew that John’s words were from God. Yet, at his birthday party, Herod turned a deaf ear to God’s Word and he ordered the execution of a man whose crime had been clearly speaking God’s Word.
It’s clear that to avoid evil, we need to:
- keep God’s will foremost in our priorities,
- be focused on our character than our status, and
- remain attentive to God’s Word.
But that still leaves us with a question: What’s in it for us? At the end of our Gospel lesson, after all, Herod was still alive, still on his throne, and John’s body was taken away by his disciples for burial. Herod had caved into evil. John had remained faithful to God. So, does it really pay off for us to resist evil?
Of course, there’s the obvious answer to that question: Those who faithfully seek to follow the God we know in Jesus Christ will, in spite of our sins and failings, spend eternity with God. Jesus promises: “the one who endures to the end will be saved” from sin, death, and separation from God.
But there are more immediate rewards for those who commit themselves to keeping hold of Christ’s hand and resisting the temptation to sin. They’re mentioned in our lesson from Ephesians for today. We’re given, we’re told “every spiritual blessing.” Herod went to bed on the night he killed John the Baptizer knowing that he had done evil and that barring a renewal of his relationship with God, on a collision course with hell.
Unlike Herod Antipas, John the Baptist lived and died with the certainty that, even in the midst of things he couldn’t and didn’t fully understand, in resisting evil, in seeking to follow God faithfully, he had a Lord, a Friend, and an Advocate Who would never desert him, not even at the gates of death. Who, do you suppose, died a happier man: Herod Antipas or John the Baptist?
Sometimes, people ask me, “Where is God?” The simple truth is that God is present for all who want God around. God is present for all who call on the Name of Jesus Christ. If you want Jesus in your life, you can find Him in the Word of God, in prayers in Jesus’ Name, in the fellowship of the Church, in the Sacraments, in the neighbor you’re called to serve and share the gospel with each day.
And having Jesus Christ at the center of our lives makes all the difference in this life and in the one to come. And, finally, gloriously, eternally, joyfully, having Jesus Christ at the center of your life makes resisting evil worth all the trouble it can bring to our lives. Amen
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Turning a Deaf Ear to God's Word (from the Pastor's Cutting Room Floor)
This didn't make it into tomorrow's sermon. But I thought that I'd share it here:
When we turn a deaf ear to God’s Word, ignoring either God’s Law or God’s promise as revealed in the Old and New Testaments, it’s like driving another nail into Jesus’ scarred flesh all over again.
It’s like joining the Good Friday conspirators who thought that by killing Jesus, they could throw off the lordship of God and, like Adam and Eve at the dawn of human history, make their play to “be like God.”
This comes through clearly in a passage in the New Testament, Acts 9:4. A man named Saul had been deputized to seek out Jews who were following Jesus and bring them back to Jerusalem, bound as prisoners. On his way to Damascus, Saul (who would later become Paul, a great preacher of faith in Jesus) encounters the risen and ascended Jesus, Who asks, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
Whenever we turn our backs on the Word of God as revealed in the Bible, we persecute Jesus and distance ourselves from Him.
God forbid that we should do that! God forbid that we should turn our backs on the One Who says, "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30) and "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know My Father also" (John 14:6-7).
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Wednesday Evening's 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion at Saint Matthew
This is our oft-interrupted discussion of John 8 through 11 in 'Read the New Testament in a Year,
from the evening of July 11.
from the evening of July 11.
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