There probably hasn't been a year I can remember since I was conscious of the things people talk about, that there hasn't been some new prediction of the day on which the world will end.
As a Christian I know to disregard such talk even when it comes from misguided Christians.
Christians believe that there will be a day when the risen Jesus Christ will return to finally and fully establish His kingdom. The old creation will be brought to an end and Christ's new creation will bloom to full flower. Preparation for that day is, in fact, a key theme of the Advent season we celebrate before Christmas, a season that starts on December 25.
But we have it from Jesus Himself that speculation about when it will happen is pointless. Jesus says: "...about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son [Jesus Himself, God the Son], but only [God] the Father" (Mark 13:32).
This statement is mysterious on several levels, of course. Christians believe that God has revealed Himself to be one God in three Persons. The New Testament speaks of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit and Christians have come to use the shorthand term, the Trinity, to describe God's three-in-oneness. But in the words above, Jesus seems to be saying that there are some aspects of their work that each Person of the Trinity keeps to Himself.
Be that as it may, there is no mystery about Jesus' fundamental point, which is that to speculate about when this world will come to an end is pointless. That day is shrouded in a mystery we're not meant to know.
In the meantime, Jesus goes on to say, we have work to do. "Beware, keep alert," Jesus says, "for you do not know when the time will come...Keep awake!" (Mark 13:33-37)
Our work?
*To entrust ourselves--including our past sins, our present decisions, and our future destiny--to Jesus Christ alone. "This is the work of God," Jesus says, "that you believe in Him Whom He has sent" (John 6:29). Jesus is the One sent by God the Father (cf. John 3:16-18)
*To use our talents and gifts in ways that are productive, expressing love for God and love for others, including our families, and that glorify the One Who gives us our gifts. (Romans 12:1-2)
*To tell others about God becoming one of us in Jesus, Who died, taking the punishment for sin we deserve, and rose again in order to open up new, everlasting life with God to all who turn from sin and believe in Him. (Matthew 28:19-20)
The end--whether of this world or of our own lives--will come when it comes. When we follow Jesus, we're set free from trying to micromanage or control life, set free to live, not stew over what some dead civilization might seem to have predicted or what some new "wise man" may claim to know. If Jesus doesn't know the day, they don't know either.
An acquaintance from another part of the country wrote the other day to ask what she could tell her friends who wonder about where God was when the tragedy at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut unfolded last Friday.
Here's a response I shared with her. It was written "on the fly." If you find it helpful, that's great. If its rambling nature puts you off, I apologize. Like all of us, I am still reeling from this horrible tragedy and continue to pray that God will comfort and help the survivors and all who grieve.
Dear _____,
Your question and others associated with the Connecticut tragedies have been coming up in my interactions with people ever since Friday, as you can imagine. I don't have any easy "answers," but a few thoughts.
This tragedy has particularly struck us all because twenty of those who died were children. In a sense they, along with everyone who was at the Sandy Hook school last Friday and will be haunted by these events for the rest of their lives, were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. In this, they don't differ from the hapless victims of the Holocaust, of the bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the killer tsunamis of a few years ago.
It's heartbreaking!
When considered in this way though, I'm bound to conclude that in this fallen and imperfect world, unspeakable things can sometimes happen. In Romans, Paul talks about how, though through Christ, we have a certain hope that "creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay an will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God," right now all of creation and we ourselves groan, like women in labor, for that moment when Jesus returns and all who have trusted in Him will live in a new world, where suffering and tragedy are no more. (Romans 8:18-25)
Paul, a man well-acquainted with suffering and grief, starts out these thoughts by saying, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18).
Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble. But take courage; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). With these words, He encourages us to know that until we rise again with Him in eternity, we live in a place in which we are all subject to the possibility of such tragedies.
But we also have promises:
Jesus says, "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20).
Romans 8:31-39 contains the promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Hebrews 13:5 quotes the Lord as saying, "I will never leave you or forsake you."
And in John 14:8ff, Jesus told the disciples apprehensive about talk of Jesus' "departure," "I will not leave you orphaned."
He then goes on to promise that He will send His Holy Spirit to all who call on Him.
For me, the question of where God was last Friday when this tragedy occurred is wrapped up in the story of Christmas. The prologue to John's gospel (John 1:1-18) talks about the God of all creation Who entered into our lives, then suffered what we suffer so that, through His death and resurrection, He could buy us out of our slavery to suffering and death and decay and sin for new and everlasting life with God. All who are "in Christ" are part of His new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), but truly we only see it in this world through a mirror dimly right now (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Because of God's compassion for those who don't yet know Christ, God allows this imperfect world to continue to creak along. (2 Peter 3:9-10) This should incite us Christians to be about the business of sharing Christ and His love with everyone we know!
The Old and New Testament refer to Jesus as, "Immanuel," "God with us." Evil happens in this world. Innocent children suffer. (I think of how Herod killed all the babies two years of age and younger after Jesus' birth.) But God is with the suffering in their suffering, I believe. The Lord Who wanted the children brought to Him and Who said that we adults needed to have the credulous trust of children, I believe is most especially with children, who aren't yet cynical enough to disbelieve, when they suffer. I have been with too many suffering children and watched how they have latched onto Christ and inspired others by their faith to believe otherwise.
The Bible also often described God as bearing "compassion" for people. This is a compound word meaning "to suffer with." God, I believe, suffers with us and that our suffering too is part of what He bore on the cross, its power to deny us life with God destroyed forever by His suffering and death. Hebrews 4:15 specifically refers to Jesus' ability to be compassionate toward us in our sins, but I think the passage also contains the promise of His "understanding" and presence with us when we suffer. It says: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin."
I guess what I'm struggling to say in all of this, is that there are no facile explanations of why God didn't miraculously intervene in the attack of last Friday morning. But I believe we aren't promised that this imperfect, sinful world is going to be easy: the innocent will suffer, marred minds will carry out evil deeds. These things have been ongoing realities in human history since Adam and Eve fell into sin and brought this alienation from God and neighbor into the human gene pool.
But I also believe that God is with those who suffer and grieve, giving them a peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:4-7).
And I also believe in the resurrection of the dead, that all who have trusted in Christ will be saved from sin and death and futility and live in the peaceable kingdom with God for which we were made.
In Matthew 24:12-13, Jesus says: "And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures [believing in Christ] to the end will be saved." Though the world is filled with mysteries beyond explanation, this is true: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will rise again. And Christ is with us.
I hope that these rambling words help in some way. God bless!
Ian McKellen reprises his role of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings films in The Hobbit, projected to be the first of three films chronicling the prequel time before the Rings adventures.
In an interview with TIME, McKellen pronounced that the one playright in whose plays he's acted that he hates to be Agatha Christie, the noted mystery writer. McKellen claims, "I've done a couple of plays--misery, rubbish. No sense of what human beings are at all."
Coincidentally, in a recent Twitter exchange with contemporary British mystery writer Michael Jecks, we agreed that Christie's characters are somewhat thinly developed. I tweeted Jecks:
...have you read much of Agatha Christie? I just finished one of hers. She writes puzzles...
...People seem more like caricatures. Yet I find her mysteries addictive.
In the meantime, Jecks wrote back:
Hah! You beat me to that one! Yes, but they are fun and entertaining. Turn off mind etc...
...Yes puzzles: no characterisation really, which is why actors love her. They can stamp their own mark very easily! I enjoy 'em...
Jecks and I may seem to be saying the same thing as McKellen about Christie's work. But I don't think that's entirely so.
You see, the lack of deep character development, at least in the supporting cast of characters--suspects, mainly--in Christie's stories doesn't necessarily denote "no sense of human beings at all."
Clearly, she had a tremendous understanding of the human beings for whom she wrote her novels, stories, and plays.
She understood that in a workaday world of confounding mysteries, there's nothing more appealing to our egos or to our desire for order than a mystery in which we join the hero in resolving matters and setting things right.
The proof of how well she understood these things about us is in the enduring popularity of her work, even though much of it takes place in a Jeeves and Wooster world long gone.
Christie, like Alfred Hitchcock, also understood something primal in all human beings: Our terror that, at any moment, our well-ordered world could come crashing down on us.
So, while Christie's characters may be plastic, her understanding of the characters of those who read or viewed her works was anything but. In this, she remains lastingly insightful.
And this is why her work is more vital, more infused with character, than McKellen's dismissal of Christie would have it.
Years ago, I remember reading an essay by Ralph Gleason in Rolling Stone about the music of Bob Dylan. Much of Dylan's work is filled with Dylan's penchant for, in a phrase by Joan Baez in a song about her relationship with Dylan, "keeping things vague." Cryptic language, the meaning of which is ambiguous, can initially drive a hearer away from Dylan, not to mention the thinness of Dylan's voice and the usual sparseness of his arrangements. But those who stick with listening to Dylan are rewarded richly. Dylan's music, Gleason said, represents a "democratic art," work to which each listener brings her or his experiences, fears, and hopes. Dylan, at his best, doesn't tell you what to feel. He takes you to a place and lets you feel what you feel. That, asserted Gleason, is democratic art.
In a way, this is precisely what Christie did and still does. Actors in Christie plays or in scripts based on her stories, as Jecks pointed out, love the freedom of infusing the characters with whatever meaning or quirks they can. Readers are given the same freedom when they sit down to read a mystery by Christie.
In essence, Christie invites us to become her co-authors, to flesh out the characters she trots before us in our imaginations.
I read other authors to find fully realized characters in more realistic life situations. But that doesn't mean, as McKellen says, that Agatha Christie had no sense of human beings at all.
I find, in fact, that she knows me, anyway, very well.
Luke 3:7-18
We have all been disturbed by the events that took place in Newtown, Connecticut this past Friday.
And many of us in this sanctuary, I know, have been moved to pray God’s comfort for the families of the victims, for an end to the scourge of senseless violence that afflicts our country, and for the mental health of persons who would contemplate such terrible acts.
In the days and weeks ahead, there will likely be renewed debates about things like mental health spending, school security, and guns. And I hope that as Christian citizens, we all will inform ourselves and pray God’s guidance and wisdom for our leaders and for ourselves in these debates.
But all of the issues I just mentioned are topics for political discussions and as one called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, I have no call from God to say what God wants governments to do or not to do about these matters.
However, I do know and I can say with the absolute authority of God’s Word and in the power of the Holy Spirit what God wants every human being to be about today, tomorrow, and every day they have life on this earth.
It’s summarized in the words of an old Impressions song written by Curtis Mayfield that Bruce Springsteen sang during this past Wednesday’s 121212 Concert for the victims of Hurricane Sandy: People Get Ready!
That, in fact, is what this season of Advent is all about. It’s not just about getting ready for Christmas. After all, there are twenty sets of parents and grandparents and families who thought when they sent their little ones off to school on Friday morning that they were ready for Christmas. But no Christmas plans, no treasure picked up at ToysRUs, no planned holiday vacation could be preparation for what they faced this past Friday or what they will, in some ways, face every day for the rest of their earthly lives.
Advent is a reminder each year to get ready for the coming of Jesus because, whether at the moment of our own deaths or, should we still be around when it happens, at the moment when the risen Jesus returns to the earth to finally and fully establish His eternal kingdom, each of us has a rendezvous, an appointment, with Jesus.
Are you ready?
This is NOT a sweet by-and-by kind of question. God isn’t interested in creating porcelain saints who are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good.
In the face of the kind of evil we saw this past Friday, in fact, no person is likelier to have a practical impact on everyday living than the believer in Jesus Christ prepared to meet their Lord in eternity.
This world needs people whose minds and lives are set on Christ and eternity.
That is the theme of today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 3:7-18.
The lesson picks up where last Sunday’s Gospel lesson left off, with John the Baptist preaching repentance.
Repentance, as mentioned last Sunday, has (or at least starts with) two components.
First, sorrow for sin.
Second, trust that, because of what Christ accomplished for us by His death and His resurrection, the sins for which I’m sorry are forgiven.
You aren’t really repenting from God’s point of view unless both elements are present. Judas, for example, clearly was sorry for having betrayed Jesus‘ innocent blood. But his suicide bore clear witness that he didn’t trust the gracious God he knew in Jesus to forgive him.
On the other hand, there are no doubt Christians who, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, subscribe to “cheap grace”: “the grace we bestow on ourselves...forgiveness without...repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession...”
Look at our lesson. In verse 7, John sees all the people who are coming out to be baptized as a sign of their repentance. He doubts their sincerity. “Brood of vipers!” he calls them.
Sounds like, “Children of serpents!” to me and we know about the serpent, the embodiment of evil who, in the garden tempted Adam and Eve into sin.
John goes on, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
We think of wrath as an Old Testament word and words like grace and faith as New Testament words. Not true.
The Old Testament tells us, for example, that Abraham, the very first member of God’s chosen people, the Jews, was saved by God’s grace through his faith in God. It also says that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
In the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and even the book of Revelation, with its visions of the eternal future that belongs to all who trust in Jesus, speak about wrath.
Wrath is the anger and punishment God metes out against those who willfully violate His will by sin. Wrath isn’t irrational or irresponsible on God’s part, as though it describes God being out of control. Quite the contrary! Read the ten commandments and you’ll find that there is no mystery about what behaviors God calls sin.
But just as God’s mercy and grace can come upon people suddenly so, both Testaments say, can His wrath. When you and I come face to face with Jesus at a moment over which we have no control or say, we will, as I’ve mentioned before, either stand naked in our sin, susceptible to the rightful wrath of God, or we will stand clothed in the righteousness of forgiven sin through our faith in Jesus Christ. “Who warned you to flee from God’s impending wrath?” John asks the crowds.
And it’s here that John brings up a third important element of repentance. Look at verse 8: “Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”
John thought that the crowds composed of his fellow Jews, fellow descendants of Abraham and Sarah, were just going through the motions. “Sure, we’ll do this baptism thing,” John might have overheard some in the crowds saying, “but after all, we’re already part of God’s people. We’re OK.”
Folks: The modern counterparts of the crowds who flocked to hear John preach and to be baptized by him aren’t the rising percentages of people in our society who claim to have no religious belief whatsoever, but the Christians who casually mumble their creeds, fill up the offering plate, sing a song, even receive the body and blood of Jesus and then, a split second later, conduct business, care for children, talk with a spouse, deal with other people, engage in gossip as though Jesus’ shed blood on the cross and His resurrection from the dead to give us life mean absolutely nothing.
You see, the third essential element of repentance is authenticity.
A dying world that produces tragedies like the one we saw in Connecticut this past week needs nothing so desperately as the witness of Christians who confess that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, that the God we meet in Jesus can fill our lives with a peace that passes all understanding, and that all who believe in Jesus, though they die, yet shall they live for all eternity in a perfect kingdom without violence or sin with God.
Truly repentant people regret their sin, embrace Jesus’ forgiveness, and then authenticate their trust in Jesus by the way they live their lives.
When we truly repent, truly turn to the God we know in Christ for life and meaning and purpose, God plants the seeds of new life in us and, as we, in Martin Luther’s phrase, live in daily repentance and renewal, the fruits of repentance--the results of living intimately with Jesus as our Lord and best friend--will be seen in our authenticity as Christians.
Don’t misunderstand. Being authentic believers in Jesus does not mean being perfect. We are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God. That includes me. Just ask Ann.
Take a look at verses 10 to 14 in our Gospel lesson. John has, in effect, just warned the crowds confident about their family relationship with God simply because their parents were charter members of First Lutheran Church in Jerusalem that pretty soon, God was going to chop down their family trees, that the only people who can be confident about their relationship with God are those who turn from sin, trust in Christ, and live as God’s children.
“What shall we do?” the crowds ask John in verse 10. “If you have two coats, give one away to the person with none. If you have an abundance of food, set aside some for those who don’t have food.”
Tax collectors, people who had a notorious reputation for taking more money from people than they owed and skimming the extra for themselves, asked John in verse 12, “Teacher, what shall we do?” “Don’t steal any more,” John in effect says. “Collect what you’re supposed to collect.”
Then in verse 14, some soldiers, probably soldiers in Herod’s guard, asked, “And what shall we do?” Soldiers in those days often shook people down for protection money. So, John tells them, “Don’t intimidate people. Don’t make false accusations against people. Be content with your wages.”
You see what John was telling these people?
He wasn’t saying that they all had to go Iraq and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.
He wasn’t telling them to undertake extraordinary acts of religious devotion.
He was saying, “If the repentance you offer this morning is for real, then dare to live with authentic trust in the One Who is so great I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal...
Turn from sin.
Trust in Christ.
Then, in gratitude for the gracious gifts of forgiveness and new life Christ gives to those who believe in Him, live ethically.
Love your neighbor, even the neighbor with whom you share a marriage bed.
Hug your kids and grandkids.
Pray for those who hate you.
Give to those in need.
Invite others to know and follow Jesus.”
I have no satisfactory explanation for why tragedies befall the human race other than the fact that this isn’t heaven. Sin and death are on the loose. Yet Jesus died and rose to ensure that their days are numbered. As Jesus puts it in the Gospel of John, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
And I can say that we will be ready for whatever this life brings and ready for heaven itself when we turn from sin, trust in God’s forgiveness, and live authentically as God’s children.
Our children will be ready for anything when we teach them to do these same things.
Truly, this world needs nothing today so much as people whose minds and lives are set on Christ and by their faith in Christ, are ready for eternity.
I would love for all the major media outlets--conventional network news departments, cable news channels, and internet news publishers--to engage in an act of collusion behind an idea mentioned on this evening's PBS NewHour by David Brooks.
When tragic events like today's Connecticut shooting happen, don't identify the alleged killer, don't display that person's image, don't dig up their Facebook page, don't track down people who know them, don't publish any of their rants.
Refuse to give killers, like the one alleged to have perpetrated today's rampage, publicity.
People who do things like this often desire a kind of dark fame for their evil actions. When some sick people see that mass murderers get saturation coverage, seeming to hold an entire nation hostage for days, it likely incites them to go for their own twisted glory, too.
There are undoubtedly many factors contributing to the number of mass murders we have experienced in recent years. But, I beg the major news outlets to stop one of those factors in its tracks: Don't give mass killers the fame they crave.
Please pray for all the families affected by today's tragedy in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I'm asking that God will comfort them.
I'm also praying that God will end this scourge of deadly violence that afflicts the US.
Above all, I'm praying that God will produce a new birth of faith in Christ, Who empowers us to love one another.
To that end, I pray, as Jesus taught, that God will send workers into the harvest, people willing to share Christ with those in desperate need of Him (Luke 10:2).
Luke 3:1-6
Sometimes, when I’m driving or riding with Ann on the Route 33 bypass around Lancaster, I think about all that was involved in building that piece of highway. There were hills that had to be blasted through and dug out, low areas to be filled in by dirt and gravel. And all of it was done in order to give us straighter, clearer paths to the places we want to go. We owe a lot to the the road builders who clear the way for us.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning tells us about a road-builder we call John the Baptist. According to Luke, the writer of the book from which our lesson is taken, John fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, written at least five hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Luke cites Isaiah 40:3-5; they make up verses 4-6 of our Gospel lesson. John the Baptist, Luke tells us, is “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; Make His paths straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
Long before John was born, God had defined his mission in life. He was to be a road builder who would create a clear pathway for “all flesh” to “see the salvation of God.” John’s job then, was to clear the way for people to see Jesus, the only one Who can save us from death, futility, and sin.
How did John do this? And what does it have to do with us?
Please turn to our Gospel lesson, Luke 3:1-6. Luke writes: “Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests...”
When Luke first wrote his gospel account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, there was no single agreed-upon calendar. So, if you were trying to record an orderly account of events, you couldn’t say, “Back in such and such a year...” You said things like, “When So and So was king.” From what Luke tells us with this list of kings and priests, scholars believe that John the Baptist’s ministry began in 28 or 29 AD.
But Luke wants us to know more than just when John the Baptist began his ministry. He wants us to know why John began his ministry. Take a look at Luke 1:52. Mary, the virgin God chose to be the mother of Jesus, tells Elizabeth, then in the sixth month of her pregnancy for John that “[God] has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent away empty.”
The world kowtows to the Ceasars, the kings, the wealthy, and the powerful, but people who believe in the God revealed to all the world through Jesus Christ know Who’s really in charge.
They know too that God is at work even when most people think that God has disappeared.
Even when despots and superstars are “getting away with murder,” God is still moving the world and all who trust in Him toward a certain destiny, ensuring that at a time both the Old and New Testaments call “the day of the Lord,” all will be made right.
Despots will get their comeuppance and those who trust in the Lord will step into the joy of their inheritance from God.
Now, please go back to our Gospel lesson, starting in the middle of verse 2: “the word of God came to John the son of Zecharias [or, Zechariah] in the wilderness.”
These words are a clear signal of what kind of person John is. You see, a scan of the Old Testament prophets’ books shows us:
For example, the prophet Hosea’s book begins, “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of...the kings of Judah...”
Joel’s book starts, “The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel...”
Even the book of the reluctant prophet Jonah starts out, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai...”
The Old Testament prophets were people to whom a special word from God came, just as a special word from God came to John.
The word the prophets were expected to spread was often a message that people didn't want to hear, but needed to hear if they were going to have right relationships with God.
The lives of the prophets were, as a result, often difficult. Many prophets were killed, just as John the Baptist would be, not because God had abandoned them, but because they were being faithful to the word God gave to them.
And people then, no less than today, didn’t want a God Who told them what to do.
No one should ever want to be a prophet. But if God calls you to be a prophet, you dare not turn your back on God or on the word God has given to you. As Jonah learned when he tried to avoid preaching God’s Word to the people of Nineveh, even when you book a Mediterranean cruise in the opposite direction from where God tells you to go, God will find you and send you where He wants you to go.
For anyone, prophet or ordinary person like you and me, who wants God in their life, surrender to the will of God is the only viable option. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray that most dangerous of all prayer petitions: “Thy will be done...”
In Luke 3:3, we read, “And [John] went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission [or the forgiveness] of sins.”
Out in the wilderness where God had once spent forty years preparing His people to enter the promised land, John preaches the message that he’s been given by God. It’s simple: “Repent.”
This is how John the Road Builder did his job of creating a pathway by which people could see God’s salvation given in Christ.
Repentance, to this day, remains the only roadway by which we can find salvation from sin and death, the only roadway by which we can have peace with God and peace within ourselves.
The Bible teaches that all of us are born in sin. That’s why God sent Jesus into the world. He took our sin on His own shoulders on the cross. He rose from the dead to tear down the walls of sin and death for us and to allow us to enjoy peace and intimacy with God.
But sin can set people down pathways so far from Jesus that even if they’ve been churchgoers all their lives, they can’t really see Jesus any more.
To see Jesus, the arrogant must be laid low and the lowly must be lifted up.
We need a straight, clear path to the salvation God wants to give to all people through Christ. John pointed people (he points us still today) to the pathway of repentance as the way to salvation through Jesus.
To many people today, repentance is a dirty word. I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It said, “I was born right the first time.” No being born again for the driver of that truck, thank you very much; no acknowledgement of any need of renewal because of the wall of sin between God and us.
For others though, repentance is a great word, a joyful word! That’s because true repentance is made up of two elements. First: It means to be sorry for my sin. Second: It means to trust that when I lay my sins at the foot of Jesus Christ and His cross, He will forgive me and I will be at peace with God. The believer in the God we know in Jesus is filled with the assurance voiced by King David in Psalm 103: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us!”
Imagine two people, each headed for the same destination. One takes a mountain path, following ever upward through switchbacks and hairpin curves, sure that she’s headed in the right direction, only to find herself at the pinnacle of a mountain, nowhere close to where she intended to go.
The other person, with the same destination, descends into a deep valley, slogging around and through swamps and streams, equally certain that he’s going right, only to find himself mired in mud, his destination nowhere in sight.
These two people illustrate the lives of people who have lost their ways in life, far from the God we know in Christ.
The only way off the mountain paths of egomania that lead us away from Christ is through repentance. The egomaniac must say, “You’re right, Lord. I’m not in charge. I’m not God. I’m not entitled. Forgive me and let me be Your child.”
Similarly, the only way off the lowly paths of self-condemnation is through repentance. The lowly person says, “You’re right, Lord. I’ve been expecting too little of my character, I’ve thought too little of myself, and so, given myself a pass for engaging in sin that dehumanizes me. I thought that who I am and what I’ve done I didn’t matter. But You died and rose for me; I know that I matter! Forgive me for denying the truth about myself and lift me up to live as Your child.”
And then the repentant person, lowly or arrogant, trusts Jesus to be as good as His promise to give life, peace, hope, and the power to live with purpose to those who believe in Him.
Romans 8:1 says: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Those who repent--tell God that they are sorry for their sins and trust Christ to forgive them--know what that passage is saying. Though we are sinners who deserve condemnation, Christ sets the repentant free to live as the human beings we were all meant to be!
Chances are that if you’re like other Christians (including me), you follow Jesus well sometimes. But sometimes, you lose your way. You sin and maybe you find, as I find, that the more I sin, the easier it becomes to sin again and the harder it can become to really worship God or to have peace with God, even with ourselves.
This is why repentance is so important. It clears away the blindness of our sin, helping us to see how deadly our sin is. It helps us to see the God we know through Jesus, the love He has for us, and the life He gives to those who turn their backs on sin and follow Him.
It was while repenting that David wrote in the psalms in the Old Testament, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
John the Baptist was a road-builder. But the road to life with God and the second chances of God is open even today to all. We travel the road of repentance when we turn from sin and trust in Christ alone for life. May this be the road we travel each day.
[This was prepared to be shared during the 10:15 worship service at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, today. Thanks to Jim for sharing it with the congregation as I fight the creeping crud!]
So you want people to visit and read your blog? Based on my ten-and-a-half years as a blogger, here are five surefire ways to get blog traffic.
Be sure to write posts with titles like, 5 Surefire Ways to Get Blog Traffic. Create titles like people see on the covers of magazines. Everyone likes to think that any challenge in life can be overcome by a few steps. It's usually a lie, of course. Life, after all, is more complicated than that. But people like to think that it's not.
Be sure to use bullet-points as your primary means of communication. People don't have much use for the consideration of unknown mysteries. So, even if you don't have any idea what you're talking about, use a bullet point and you'll seem like an expert.
Tell people how they can monetize their blogs...and their lives. Show them how, by being market-driven, cultivating their brands, and following whatever the crowd says is important to them, they can make money.
If you're going to talk about politics, make sure that your every phrase has a sharp elbow and will make your readers cheer with malice. Nothing makes the readers of many political blogs happier than having their own points of view confirmed in ways that are vicious and condescending toward the opposition.
Never discuss the most important issues of life. Never talk about the fact that all human beings are in need of the forgiveness of sin and freedom from death. Never talk about how desperately God loves all people, so desperately that He became human in Jesus of Nazareth, bore the death punishment for sin we all deserve, and then rose from the dead in order to give forgiveness of sin and new, everlasting lives to all who repent and believe in Jesus. It makes people uncomfortable when bloggers do that. It makes them think that maybe they aren't masters of their own destinies, after all.
...was Chris Tomlin's Born That We May Have Life, an almost immediately singable Christmas song that doesn't compromise substance for accessibility. It's from his 2009 release, Glory in the Highest. Written by Tomlin, Ed Cash, and Matt Maher, Born That We May Have Life a stirring yet simple statement of faith and awe. It's gotten my day off to a great start!
Loved this cartoon, which I saw on Facebook today.
My seminary training that told me that you sang no Christmas hymns and had no Christmas decorations in the church building during Advent got upended during my first Advent as a pastor.
A parishioner said to me after the Second Sunday of Advent, "Pastor, I notice that we haven't sung any Christmas hymns yet." Drawing on my "theological training," I told him (as if he didn't know): "This is Advent. Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of Christmas." "But, Pastor," he said, "singing Christmas hymns is how I prepare for Christmas."
I knew that the same was true for me. I prepared myself for Christmas during Advent with all that reminded me of Christmas. I always started playing Christmas music on Thanksgiving and played it loudly throughout my house until the end of the year. At the moment that parishioner said this to me, my family and I had had our Christmas decorations up for about three weeks.
I never want to get rid of Advent hymns or the celebration of the unique elements of Advent. But during Advent, we do prepare for the coming of the celebration of the birth of Christ (as well as of the certainty of His return in glory one day) and it's good to be reminded of this fact. So, I've been sure to include Christmas hymns during Advent worship in the churches I've served ever since.
By the way, it's by this same logic that I also reject the ancient custom of putting "Hallelujah" away during Lent, as we were also taught to do in seminary.
Jesus is still risen from the dead, whether it's the Third Sunday in Lent or not. Stifling our Hallelujahs during Lent, pretending that we don't have an Easter victory for which to praise God during that time reminds me of an old bit used by comedian Steve Martin.
Martin would be in the middle of his routine, look down at his feet and say, "Oh, my shoes are untied," bend down and then pop right up again, saying, "No, they're not. I love to fool myself like that!" We can remember with awe, sadness, and contrition Christ's death for us on the cross. But we can no longer pretend that His lifeless body lay in the tomb. We can't fool ourselves because He is risen!
And so, as Christians we have just as much reason to shout, "Hallelujah!" ("God be praised!) during Lent as at any other time of the year. Why should we stop praising God because of what is, when wrongly used, a human conceit.
In fact, there's even more reason to sing Easter hymns during Lent than there is for us to sing Christmas hymns during Advent. Every Sunday is meant to be a "little Easter" in which we celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death when He rose from the dead on the first Easter. That's why the Sundays that fall during Lent aren't counted as part of the forty days of the season, meaning that we call Lenten Sundays, Sundays in Lent, and not Sundays of Lent.
The Church Year is a tool that can be used to glorify God and convey the central truths of the Christian faith both to seekers of God and to those who have been in relationship with God through Jesus Christ their entire lives. It can help us to worship God and live out a balanced faith rooted in the whole truth about the God revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.
But the Church Year falls into the category Martin Luther called "adiaphora," a Latin term that means, "indifferent things," things that, in themselves cannot bring salvation. It is, as the theologians say, "non-salvific," incapable in itself of bringing a saving faith in Jesus Christ to those who use it. The Church Year then, is the moral equivalent of a hammer. A hammer is a great tool, but it can't save you from sin and death. Only the word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that word embodied in the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion can work salvation and the forgiveness of sins.
You won't go to hell if you sing a Christmas hymn during Advent.
You won't encounter God's wrath for singing, "Hallelujah!" during Lent. (Nor by singing its variant, "Alleluia!")
Nor will God be upset if you continue to sing hymns of praise during both seasons, also no-no's according to liturgical propriety.
Christ sets free all who hear His Word and by faith, turn from sin and believe in Him.
We are no longer slaves to the proscribed customs of human beings.
We may find the Church Year a useful tool for growing in our faith. But we shouldn't be slaves to it.
[The cartoon was shared by Pastor Steve Shipman on Facebook. He got it from the FB site, Episcopal Church Memes. But I have no idea who the cartoonist is. If any of you know, I would like to know in order to attribute credit.]
In it, my wife and I were the ages we are today. But we were back to taking preaching calls to congregations with pastoral vacancies or where the pastors were on vacation, just like we did when I was in seminary thirty years ago.
We arrived at a church building that looked more like an old-fashioned township hall than a traditional church building. The exterior was covered with simple white clapboard and it was topped by a simple, shingled roof like you'd see on a slab house.
We walked inside to see that the interior was one room, except for a few restrooms tucked away in a corner. The walls and ceiling were untreated, unpainted wood, the beams overheard, exposed framing wood.
There were no pulpit, altar, lectern, nor a single other item that looked "churchy."
That was OK, my wife and I told each other. Over the years, we've worshiped in school gyms, a Lions hall, a movie theater, and a cafeteria.
The words of Article VII of The Augsburg Confession crossed my mind (yes, even in my dream):
...The church is the assembly of saints [saints are those who believe in Jesus Christ and are covered by His forgiveness] in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments administered rightly. For the true unity of the church it is enough to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions or rites and ceremonies, instituted by [people], should be alike everywhere...
In other words, church buildings don't have to look like church buildings we're used to and worship services don't have to be like the ones we're accustomed to, as long as the Gospel is taught in its purity and the sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) are administered rightly.
I didn't remember all the lines of Article VII in my dream, mind you. I just smiled as I scanned this "unchurchy" place and thought, "Article VII."
But then, we met the people.
The average age was about 85, although it was clear that quite a few of the folks were in the habit of dyeing their hair (even their eyebrows) all sorts of natural, that is, unnatural, colors.
From the beginning, they were a talkative bunch. They talked through the Order for Confession and Forgiveness, through hymns, through the Bible readings, and, in fact, at every single point in the service.
And they weren't just talky, they were disruptive. They were all seated in chairs and none of them seemed to give a second thought to sliding the chairs across the hard floors to get up, creating sonic skidding sounds, in order to talk to a neighbor seated elsewhere.
Suddenly, I found myself preaching on an Old Testament text and was constantly having my own concentration disrupted by the mayhem. I'd be a in the middle of a point and the whole group would get up for restroom and smoke breaks.
My wife and I kept looking at each other in mystification.
It's probably no stretch to say that many, if not most, Christian congregations are composed of functional atheists for whom the Church is basically a social gathering which occasionally does nice things for people. But this group was overtly heedless, almost scornful, of God, Christ, the Bible, worship, and so on.
At one point, they'd settled back in to listen to the sermon and I determined to keep it short because of the short attention span of the congregation. Just then, a man with Grecian Formula brown hair and mustache, pushed himself from his chair in the back of the sanctuary to station himself behind a person sitting toward the front.
In the meantime, one woman was speaking loudly to another woman, also toward the front. I did something I've never done as a pastor: I gave the loud talker the evil eye. She shut up, but then the Grecian Formula guy started conversing with the guy in front of him. I tried the evil eye on him. He simply looked at me dismissively, contemptuously, and started talking even more loudly than before.
The next thing I knew, the whole group had run (yes, the 85-year-olds ran) to a back room I hadn't noticed before and emerged with bicycle helmets in hand. As I struggled to keep preaching, each hung their helmets on hooks on the bare wooden wall and stood back about five feet. Then, in unison, they started a deafening countdown: "10, 9, 8..." At "Zero!," they all grabbed their helmets and were out of the room.
My wife and I were the only ones left in the little building. "I think we're through here," I told her. We both laughed and walked away, the bicycling octogenarians nowhere to be seen.
Keep in mind, this was just a dream.
But its point was clear: This strange church wasn't a church, not because it didn't look like a church, but because its people ignored the Gospel and presumably disdained the sacraments. The people didn't believe.
Here are some good thoughts on bullying from Mart DeHaan, leader of RBC Ministries. They were triggered by his screening of the 2011 documentary, Bully.
DeHaan also includes a definition of bullying:
...aggressive behavior that uses force or coercion to humiliate and exploit the weakness of others.
He then points out that this phenomenon isn't confined to children and cites examples of bullying, as well as bravery in the face of bullying, from the Bible.
I have a particular interest in bullying because I myself was bullied throughout much of my growing-up years. Junior high school (grades 7, 8, and 9) was a nightmare for me. Grade 10 was only marginally better. It included being frequently hit (hard) on the back of the head, getting punched, and often facing off against three to four taunting, hitting, pushing bullies on the daily walk home from school. Verbal taunting and putdowns were steady.
Because of these and other experiences, nobody has to convince me of the reality of original sin. We come fully equipped with the desire to "be like God," which we interpret as being domineering top dogs or at least keeping others "beneath" us.
Adolescence is a time of sorting out and I know now that those classmates who bullied me--many among the most popular kids in the school--were sorting things out: their places in the world, their identities, and so on. I just happened to be a convenient tool for doing that.
In my own case, the experience has left me with a permanent preference for the underdog. I try my best always to affirm the person who seems most ignored or even the most despised in any circle of people.
Nearly five decades later, I can look back and say that while I didn't deserve to be verbally derided, physically punched, slapped in the head, or shunned, my very appearance in a room acted as a flashing, "Bully me!" sign. I was mouthy and egotistical, risky behaviors for one of the smallest and youngest people in my classes. These behaviors can partly be explained because I wasn't just younger than my classmates, I was also the least mature. I was no athlete, though I have always loved sports. I wasn't a scholar or a musician. I had no niche and I was coddled at home. There was plenty about me not to like.
I'm fortunate. I eventually found something of a niche in high school. In subsequent years, my wife Ann has taught me how to do what I so desperately wanted to do in my growing-up years, make friends. God is engaged in a lifelong project of making war on my ego, which, I hope, makes me a little easier to be around. He's also constantly assuring me of my value and worth through Jesus Christ.
Bullying, it seems, is an even bigger issue today than it was when I spent chunks of my school years dreading the beginning of each new day. We live in a far more violent society today. So-called reality shows seem to convey that wise people dominate others. Thuggery is extolled. Dysfunctional families create holes in the souls of too many children. Social media make it easy to bully and humiliate others over the Internet, complete with photoshopped imagery that gives credence to the cruel things bullies say about others. Many kids, whether implicitly or explicitly, see all of these things as green lights for bullying. They make it a hard time to grow up!
Which is why the ministry of the Church is so important!
We proclaim a God Who became one of us in order to offer new life to all who believe in Him. You don't have to be the strongest, smartest, or best-looking according to the shifting standards of a social system ticketed for hell. God loves you as you are and wants to help you become all you were made to be.
If we adult Christians can, through our words and, more importantly, our actions, convey these truths to young people, they'll be less inclined to be bullies or to accept the bullies' verdict about their lives. They'll have less reason to lash out at others because of being the victims of bullying.
As with all things in life, sharing and absorbing the truth about the God Who meets us in Jesus Christ into every element of our lives will go a long way toward diminishing and erasing bullying from kids' lives.
We'll never completely eliminate evil from this fallen world or from ourselves. (And bullying is evil.) But I've found that when Christians start living out their faith in Jesus Christ and relying on the Holy Spirit to guide them in living as the people we were made to be, good things happen in the world around us.
Luke 21:25-36
Today is the first Sunday of the first season of the Church Year, Advent.
Advent means coming, as in “Christ came to us on Christmas day” and “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
When Christ comes back, He will finally and fully establish His kingdom with those of us who have, as the Bible says, “longed for His appearing” and have endured in faith in Him alone. From the early Church, we’ve inherited a simple confession of our faith: “Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.” Advent reminds us of these truths.
But when will Christ return? Under what circumstances? And what does it all have to do with you and me?
These are questions Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 21:25-36. At the outset, Jesus says: “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; [people’s] hearts failing them from fear...the powers of the heavens will be shaken...”
We read these words and, being clever, we figure that the end of this world and the return of Jesus must be close at hand. And that’s true.
But a careful reading of Scripture shows us that Jesus doesn’t describe the so-called “signs of the times” so that clever people can make predictions about the future. In Acts 1:7, Jesus tells His first-century disciples, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.”
By talking about the signs of His coming back to the world with His kingdom, Jesus was not really making predictions about the future at all.
Slip down to verse 32 in our Gospel lesson. There, Jesus says: “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.”
Jesus is saying that all of the drama, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, and terrors of nations that He said must precede His return would all take place within the lifetimes of the first people to whom He spoke these words in the first-century AD.
It’s because all of the signs of the end that Jesus spoke about with His disciples had already taken place twenty centuries ago that many early Christians began doubting Jesus and their faith in Him. “If Jesus hasn’t come back yet, despite the mess the world is in,” they reasoned, “maybe He never will come back. Maybe Jesus isn’t good for His word.”
Peter wrote to Christians dealing with these doubts and questions in 2 Peter 3:9, where he says: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” “You Christians overcome by the hardships you undeniably endure in this life,” Peter was saying, “get over yourselves!” Today, on the authority of God’s Word, given through Peter, I can tell you that Christ hasn’t come back to this world yet because He loves those who don’t know Him and need Him. These people need time to hear the Gospel, the good news of new and everlasting life through Christ. They need time to turn from sin, time to embrace the gift of faith in Christ.
And here’s the key takeaway for you and me as Christians this morning: Christ has also delayed coming back in order to give you and me the time we need to share with our neighbors and world the message about Christ and the salvation that comes from Christ alone.
Our call as Christians is clear: By grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we know that we've been "justified," counted guiltless for our sins despite our guilt. By grace through faith in Jesus, you and I are OK with God. So now, we’re to love our neighbors enough to help them to follow Christ and to be OK with God, too.
And how do we do that?
By sharing Jesus with them.
By inviting them to join us for worship or Sunday School or Bible study.
By showing mercy and forgiveness to people who have hurt us.
By listening to the hurts of others and offering to pray with and for them.
By serving them in the Name of Jesus.
By giving food to the hungry.
By helping to spread the good news of Jesus throughout the world.
That’s why Jesus tells us in verse 34 “to take heed” of ourselves, to stay awake, to stay alert.
He was aimless and scattered. His only goals in life were to have fun and to be seen by others as the smartest guy in the room. A friend would tell him years later, “I worried about you. You just didn’t seem to have any focus, like any wind that came along would carry you to God-knows-where.”
There he found himself, inexplicably, being drawn to interact with a woman forty years his senior. She took this young man under her wing, put up with his immaturity and flippancy and self-regard, and taught him Who Jesus is and what it means to follow Him as your only God, King, and Savior.
She taught him about the hope that belongs only to those who follow Christ.
She taught him how to pray.
By her words and her actions and her patience, she proclaimed Jesus to that young man.
And to his amazement, he found that through the ministry of that nearly seventy year old woman and the other followers of Jesus he met in that Lutheran congregation, God had sparked the gift of faith in Jesus Christ within him.
That young man is not so young any more. And he’s still an imperfect sinner in daily need of the forgiveness and new life that comes to those who entrust themselves to Jesus Christ.
All because a group of imperfect sinners that made up Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus, including Martha Schneider, grateful for the grace of God given in Jesus Christ to them, shared the Word in its purity and administered Holy Baptism and Holy Communion rightly. (This is how the Church, Christ's body in the world, makes disciples.)
Who will you share Christ with this week? The clock is ticking. We don’t know when Christ will return. We don't know how much time each of us personally has on this earth.
But we do know that, as surely He came upon a midnight clear, an unobtrusive baby who would grow to die for our sins and rise to give us life with God, Jesus will return.
This time, there will be nothing silent about His coming. There will be nothing quiet about His judging “the living and the dead,” not on the basis of their works, or church membership, or popularity, or wealthy, or power, but solely on the basis of whether we have trusted Him with our lives and let Him cover everything that is sinful and dying about us with His forgiveness and grace. Jesus will come in glory and time will have run out. There will be no more chance for anyone to repent and believe in Him.
Make it your daily aim to share Christ in some way with those who, absent your witness, absent your love and encouragement, absent your good word from God, will otherwise stand naked in their sins when they meet Jesus, uncovered by His grace and forgiveness, facing a Christ-less eternity.
If you had the cure for cancer, you wouldn’t keep it to yourself. You have the cure for sin and death and meaningless life. That cure is Jesus Christ. Trust in Him. And then, in as many ways as you can every single day, share Him! Amen
