The Right Clothes?

[Below is the message given at the wedding of a young couple that happened this weekend.]

Colossians 3:12-17
Luke and Hilary, I’m honored and happy to be here as you enter into marriage today.

This is a remarkable young couple and over the past several months, it’s been a pleasure getting to know them better. Not only do they love each other and their families, they also love the God revealed to the world in Jesus Christ. They truly want to honor Him not just in this time of worship and celebration, but with their lives.

Luke and Hilary, I’d like to speak with you particularly about one of the Bible passages you chose to be read today. 

All of the passage you chose present different facets of marriage, of course. 

The reading from Genesis reminds us that marriage between a man and a woman, two people who are the same but different, who when brought together are complementary and complete, is God’s idea. 

The passage from Ephesians reminds us that marriage is meant to be a relationship of mutual surrender in which husbands and wives love and serve one another as, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little Christs” who see the Christ in the other. 

Ecclesiastes reminds us that God made us for relationship and that every strong marriage is a cord of three strands: husband, wife, and God. 

But, for now, I want to say a few words about another passage you chose, one which we haven’t read yet. Colossians 3:12-17.

This passage, written in about 60 AD by the apostle Paul, wasn’t originally addressed to a married or engaged couple, but to a church in the ancient Greek city of Colossae. Nonetheless, its words are perfect for two people like you as you begin your married life together.

The passage begins with Paul telling the Colossians: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” 

It’s interesting that he doesn’t say, “Be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, and patient.” 

He didn’t do that because Paul knew that telling the Colossians (or any human being) to be any of those things would be like telling me to be a seven-foot-four power forward. 

Paul is saying that we can't resolve to enact these virtues, but we can clothe ourselves in them, putting them on like we put on our clothes. “Put on compassion,” Paul is saying. “Put on kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”

As you are married today, Hilary and Luke, I’m not going to tell you to be compassionate, kind, gentle, or any of the rest toward each other.

But I am telling you three things.

First, if your marriage is going to be all that God intends for it to be and everything that you want it to be, you will have to all these virtues. When two people spend a lifetime together in marriage, Paul’s list of virtues will be as essential as air and water.

The second thing I want to tell you is this: Nobody other than Jesus Himself, God in human flesh, ever exhibited these virtues with any consistency.

The third thing is this: There is a Source from Whom these virtues can be unleashed in our lives, sometimes in spite of ourselves. That Source is the one true God of the universe Who came into this world to take the punishment for sin we deserve on a cross, then rose from the dead to give life with God that never ends to all who trust in Him. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we are saved from ourselves, from our sins, and from death. 

And this same God, Who loves the two of you and everyone gathered here for this holy, happy moment with a passion and perfection none of us can imagine, can also daily refill you with the virtues with which Paul told the Colossian Christians to clothe themselves. 

God alone can give married couples all that we need not only to make our marriages work, but also to be the kinds of people to whom our marriage partners want to be married.

And how does God do this for us? 

You know the answer: By faith in Jesus Christ, by daily surrender to Him, by daily giving our marriages to Him, by daily coming to Him to confess our sins and our needs and to be filled again with His grace and power and love. To put all of that in its simplest terms: by letting Jesus Christ love us to life. 

This is really what Paul is talking about when he also tells the Colossians: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts...Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts…”

Hilary and Luke, let Jesus Christ be the center of your marriage, let Him fill you with His love, cover you with His grace, give you life with God. 

Trust in Him and He will make your marriage a blessing to you and to everyone fortunate enough to know you in the years to come. Amen

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

Is this a Christian way to pray? Yes!

Below are reflections from my quiet time with God today. I met God at Psalm 58 in His Word. To see how I approach quiet time, see here.

Look: “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions! Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short...The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.” (Psalm 58:6-7, 10)

Psalm 58 is an example of what the scholars call an “imprecatory psalm.” To imprecate is “to invoke or call down (evil or curses) as upon a person."

Those outside the faith or casual Christians who read imprecatory psalms can be horrified, even offended. They see these psalms as arguments against the transforming love of God that Christians claim is at work in believers or even as arguments against God Himself. “How could a person filled with the love of Jesus pray such things?” they wonder.

In fact, these psalms demonstrate how important it is for believers in the God revealed now to all people in Jesus to be utterly honest with God about what we’re thinking and feeling. He knows all about us and our “moods.” In Psalm 139:4, we confess to God, “Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.” It’s futile to think that we can conceal from an omniscient God the kinds of sentiments to which imprecatory psalms give expression. God wants us to be completely honest with Him, as is appropriate for someone who is your best friend.

I like the suggestion made by Eugene Peterson, famed as the Bible translator who gave us The Message, and his friend Bono, lead singer of U2, in a short video from their conversation on the Psalms: The imprecatory psalms give Christians a faithful way to cuss. When we lay our anger before God in ways modeled by these psalms, we lay ourselves open to God’s correction and transformation. When we pray in this way, we may sense God telling us, “I understand your feelings…” And then, “I will take care of it. Remember that vengeance is mine.”

Or, “Are you being entirely fair?”

Or, “Does your own life measure up to the same standards by which you’re condemning so-and-so?”

Or, “Let me orchestrate events to bring about a positive resolution.”

Or, “Here are the words I want you to speak publicly to this situation.”

The third thing to be said in favor of imprecatory psalms is that their perspective can sometimes reflect God’s perspective. When we see injustices perpetrated against others, our anger toward the doers of injustice matches God’s anger toward them.

There is such a thing as righteous anger, anger born of God. Those who misuse or abuse earthly power of any kind to perpetrate injustices against others, who take refuge in the laws of this world rather than in God and His gospel will, at the final judgment, stand naked in their misdeeds rather than be covered by God’s grace given to all who trust in Christ.

The apostle Paul writes, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). In the imprecatory psalms, we find a model for acknowledging injustices and asking God to bring justice about, whether that justice comes in this world or in the one to come. Imprecation in our conversations with God is one aspect of a healthy faith.

Listen: In Psalm 58, David is specifically railing against the injustices of rulers. He cries out to God to defang these rulers, to cause them to vanish. When that happens, he says, the righteous, those who depend on God for life and holiness, not themselves, will be glad, dipping their feet in the blood of the evildoers.

Tough talk. Not the kind of talk believers might express when they’re talking to their unbelieving barista at Starbucks. But if we bring such sentiments before God, God will understand. God will hear it as prayer and respond.

Think of the bloodthirsty tyrants in the world today. Take Vladimir Putin, who has murdered, jailed, and confiscated the property of his political opponents at home, invaded Ukraine, ordered the bombing of innocent civilians and medical convoys in Syria and Chechnya, poisoned opponents granted asylum in democratic nations, stolen his country blind, tampered with democratic nations’ elections, and been an enabler for Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria. If anyone deserves to be defanged and to vanish from the earth, it’s Vladimir Putin, this evil man. That’s why I go to God each day and ask for his peaceful removal from power. I also pray that his henchman will be removed from power.

I pray similar prayers regarding other bloodthirsty rulers.

I pray that those who abet the bloodthirsty will be given God’s wisdom and an openness to that wisdom or, barring that, that they too will be removed from office.

I pray, as Scripture teaches Christians to do, for all leaders, that God will help them to rule not with their own wisdom, but with the wisdom of God Himself.

Political activity has its place. Personally, I try to be an informed citizen, I vote, I send emails to government leaders, I make political contributions. As a pastor, I feel it would, except in the most extreme of circumstances, be inappropriate to be politically active: I don’t want people to confuse my political preferences for the Gospel I am called to proclaim.  

But I also am part of a Christian tradition, Lutheranism, that encourages believers in Christ to be involved in the world for the sake of others.

And this is a key point: for the sake of others. When the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was killed by the Nazia, his cause wasn’t Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Bonhoeffer’s social class, or even Christians. Bonhoeffer acted against Hitler’s despotism because he was appalled by the treatment of Jews and others in his country and elsewhere. Christians know that we have eternal life with God; no worries. This gives us freedom to act and vote to protect others, not ourselves. God is always protecting us. “...whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Romans 14:8)

Whether it’s in our prayers or in our voting, Christians should never be about their own interests, but about what is in the best interests of their neighbors, Christian and non-Christian alike, those living today and generations yet unborn.

I follow a Savior Who calls me to take up my cross and follow the same path He took through this world. He underscored the Old Testament law that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

If my anger at unjust rulers or my quiet act of voting is ever in response to my self-interest, I’m in the wrong. Always.

If my anger at unjust rulers or my voting is in behalf of the lowly, the poor, the powerless, the overlooked, the despised, the abused, the underappreciated, the endangered, the held-down, my anger is righteous.

But the very first thing we need to do with our righteous anger is take it to God. When we do that, He can lead us in discerning how best to express and live out indignation born of holy love.

Respond: Lord, today, do not forget the victims of violence, discrimination, and harm meted out against them by the abusers of earthly power. And don't let me forget them, or to pray for them, or to act and speak for them. Bring all tyrants into submission to You. Help me to live, not self-righteously, but in utter submission to You, the Lord, Who saves me not by my merit, but by Your charitable grace given to all who repent and surrender to Jesus. I surrender again now. Grant that all that I do and say will reflect Your imprint on the deepest parts of my soul and life. And let me share the saving good news of Jesus, the gospel of new life for all who believe in Jesus, with someone today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

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

Set Free to Take Care of Each Other (AUDIO) (Church Lessons, Part 1)

Here.

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

Set Free to Take Care of Each Other (Church Lessons, Part 1)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday, the Second Sunday of Easter, April 8, 2018]

Acts 4:32-35

As is true every Easter season, the appointed Scripture lessons for Sundays include passages from Acts. So today, we begin a new series of Sunday messages based on Acts that we’re calling Church Lessons.

We start today with Acts 4:32-35.

To dip into this amazing book four chapters in, it’s necessary for us to set the scene. 

Acts begins with the risen Jesus reiterating the great commission to the eleven apostles and His whole Church. “...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” Jesus tells them, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) 

In Acts 2, as 120 disciples were gathered in Jerusalem for prayer, the Holy Spirit descended on them and the Church was empowered to fulfill Jesus’ commission. By the power of the Spirit, they told the crowds from all over the Mediterranean who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival, in the diverse languages of those crowds, about God’s mighty works. Especially the mightiest act of all: God becoming human in Jesus, living a sinless life, dying on a cross for our sins, and rising from the dead to give forgiveness and new life to all who believe in Him. 

On that day, Peter then preached a sermon that brought 3000 people to faith in Christ. We’ll be celebrating Pentecost Sunday six weeks from now. 

After Pentecost, the Church continued to pursue its mission and ran into opposition for it. But instead of collapsing or falling to the temptation of returning violence or hatred to its persecutors, the Church, as well portrayed in the fantastic new movie, Paul: Apostle of Christ, prayed for boldness in lovingly sharing the good news, the gospel, of the crucified and risen Jesus with the world. 

It’s soon after this that we come to our passage for today.

Verse 32: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” 

We need to spend some time talking about what these words mean and what they don’t mean. 

As we talked about a few Wednesday nights ago during Lent, the disciples in Christ’s Church did have conflicts and disagreement. They seem to have known the wisdom of the modern wag who said, “If two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant. 

To be of “one heart and mind” doesn’t mean that the first Christians always agreed with each other. They didn’t.

Among the many disagreements and conflicts, the one most consequential to you and me, maybe, is the one that raged for some time over the ministry to Gentiles, non-Jews, by Paul. 

There were Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentiles couldn’t be grafted into the Church or the Kingdom of God. They were sure that only Jews could be Christians and that Paul was blaspheming God by welcoming non-Jews, Gentiles, into the fellowship of Christ’s Church.

In Acts 15, we’re told about what’s now called the Council of Jerusalem. There, all points of view were aired and those gathered finally agreed to let Paul reach out to the Gentiles. As long as Gentile believers would respect Jewish Christians, Gentiles would be welcomed into the fellowship of Christ’s Church as fellow heirs of God’s grace given in Christ. That was a good decision for you and me, making it possible for us to know Jesus and the free gift of new life He gives to all who repent and believe in Him!

There are some non-negotiables for people to be part of Christ’s Church, of course. The Church expects believers to accept the deity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the belief that we are saved by God’s grace through our faith in Christ, the witness of God’s Word in the Bible. 

But the first Christian disciples, led by the witness of the apostles and the Holy Spirit, concluded agreement about unimportant matters like times of meeting, the kinds of songs, the color of the carpet, or whether people wear jeans or suits and ties to worship, to put it all in modern terms, was unnecessary.

Scholars tell us that the phrase “one in heart and mind” refers to the Old Testament vision of God’s Kingdom. Deuteronomy 15 described something of what life in covenant with God would be like. Believers were to be part of a community in which, every seven years, all debts were to be forgiven and possessions lost restored. Deuteronomy 15:4, says to the Israelites who were about to enter the promised land (this is from the English Standard Version, which gives a better translation of the verse): “...there will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess…” 

In other words, when you were part of God’s community, no one who is part of it should be in need. But Jesus has expanded the meaning of Jubilee. Through His once-and-for-all sacrifice of Himself on the cross, He has forgiven all of our debts and told His people that as we have been forgiven of our eternal debt to God, so we are to go about relieving our sisters and brothers in Christ of their debts to God, to us, to the world. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," Jesus teaches us to pray.

This is really what Luke, the author of Acts, means when he says at the outset of our lesson: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” 

The proof that he’s talking about the first Christian disciples taking care of each other’s needs here and not about always agreeing with each other comes in the very next thing he writes: “No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had…” 

This doesn’t mean that the first Christians sold off all of their homes and properties and lived off the land or on the streets. (Practically speaking, they would have had nowhere to meet for worship if they'd done that.) 

It means that all recognized that everything they had was from God. As James writes in his New Testament letter: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…” (James 1:17) 

So, the first Christians did something far harder than agreeing with each other: They took care of each other. 

When their widows or other destitutes among them, who had no Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid to rely on, no 401k's or 403b's, were in need, their fellow Christians met those needs. 

To be the Church means, among other things, that we take care of each other. 

Many congregations have the attitude that the pastor is the hired caregiver. 

But that’s not the Bible’s vision of the Church. Acts tells us that the whole Church took care of the whole Church: in prayer, in ministering love, in shared burdens, and in money given in support.

Years ago, I wanted to take a group of young people on a weekend during which they would worship with hundreds of other Christian young people, meet to study, pray, and reflect in small groups, hear great speakers with inspiring messages geared to them, and do service projects in Jesus’ name. 

One of the boys in our group wanted to go, but his mom, a single parent struggling to make ends meet, couldn’t afford the modest registration fee or the additional expenses for things like meals during the trip. 

I went to the Church Council and laid out the need. The council spent the better part of a half-hour going over the pros and cons. Money was not an issue; the congregation had the money. Council members were afraid of the precedent that might be set if they authorized the expenditure of a few hundred bucks for one kid to experience something that might change his life. 

They decided against paying for the young man’s registration. I was shaken. This was a truly great congregation, but its leaders couldn’t see their way clear to helping a fellow disciple in need. 

The meeting ended and I wondered what I was going to tell the mom. "I'm sorry, but the congregation doesn't care about your kid?" "I'm sorry. We can't afford to invest in your child's discipleship?" Things were lean for Ann and me: I was willing to help, but I didn’t have all the money needed. Besides, I felt that this was a responsibility of the whole community, to help grow the disciples in our fellowship.

In this state, I was walking out of the building, when a member of the council approached me. “Pastor,” he asked. “How much is the registration and expenses?” I told him what I thought it would all add up to. He said, “I think that I can find a source.” I looked at him to be sure of what he was telling me. “I think I can find someone who can give what’s needed.” 

I knew that the man’s “source” would be his own bank account, though it was clear he wanted no credit for it. All I could do was thank him again and again.

That man, still a friend of ours, was, in that small way, living out the Biblical vision for the Church: He saw the needs of another disciple in Christ’s Church as something he was called and enabled by God to take care of.

Disciples in Christ’s Church live in the absolute certainty that as God has blessed them, they are set free to bless their fellow believers--and the world, strengthening our witness for Jesus. 

The rest of our lesson from Acts underscores this truth. Verse 33: “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”

Notice that it was God’s grace at work among them powerfully that enabled the first Christians to take care of each other. Anyone who tries to do God’s will without an utter reliance on the grace--the charity--of God will fail. 

But when we let the gracious God we know in Jesus lead us, we can do anything that God is calling us to do, including taking care of one another in this community of faith, Living Water Lutheran Church, whether we agree on things like the color of the carpeting or whether men show up to worship in ties.

A not-very-good nineteenth century hymn was called, God Will Take Care of You. It has an atrocious sing-song melody. It's awful; I love it! It's message is right on point: The God we follow through Jesus Christ is committed to providing us with our daily bread. He will and He does take care of us. But sometimes a Christian sister's or brother’s bread will be sent to them from God through those of us who, at the time, have more bread than we need. 

Jesus says that the world will know that we belong to Him when we love each other (John 13:35). Acts shows us that loving one another isn’t about an attitude of friendliness. If, in response to God's grace, we set out to love others as Christ has loved us, there will always be a price tag attached, whether it’s in the sacrifice of convenience, time, status, money, sometimes our very lives. 

When we make sacrifices to take care of each other, we give witness that we can live in utter reliance on Him because Christ is alive and the gospel is true. The risen Christ assures that no matter how much we give of ourselves, He gives us eternity and more. Christ gives Himself to those who give themselves to Him. 

So, we are called to take care of each other. 

Church lesson #1: In all ways, we are to seek and are set free to seek to take care of the needs of our fellow believers so that together, we can be authentic witnesses for the new life God is establishing in all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Amen!

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

Let me lead others where You lead, Lord

This morning, for my quiet time with God, I read Joshua 1-3. There, God calls Joshua to lead the people in the way God leads him. It incited me to this prayer:

God, help me to always lead those you've called me to lead where You direct. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen

As a called servant-leader in Christ's Church, called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, this is my highest aspiration and most frequent prayer.

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

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I vividly remember the night of April 4, 1968.

I was fourteen and watching TV when a special bulletin interrupted the programming to say that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis.

1968 was a year haunted by violence that started in January with the bloody Tet offensive in Vietnam, resulting in the deaths of thousands, including Americans engaged in a war that not even its chief prosecutor, President Johnson, thought could be won.

Two months after King's death, Senator Robert Kennedy, an opponent of the war trying to regain political ascendancy after Senator Eugene McCarthy's performance against the incumbent president in the New Hampshire primary hinted that the Democratic nomination could be wrested from the Johnson, would be gunned down in a Los Angeles hotel.

Throughout the year, tensions over civil rights and the war led to sometimes violent confrontations between demonstrators and the police on American streets. The Kerner Commission, appointed by Johnson to look into what led to the bloodshed in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, concluded it was the result of "a police riot," the first time I remember ever hearing that term.

It seemed to me sometimes in 1968, that America was losing its mind.

But towering above that bloody year, despite the imperfections he shared with the rest of the human race and that had cut him down in the spring, stood Martin Luther King, Jr.

Historically, King was the descendant of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the Union Armies of the Civil War. Like them, he insisted that the American compact, embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, distantly descended from the truths of the Bible, was built on a simple principle. That principle King summarized in a single sentence: "No man is free until all men are free."

True freedom is built on reciprocity with and mutual accountability to my neighbor. When I enslave others--physically, spiritually, economically, or in any other way, I also enslave myself. When I set others free, I am free myself. When I voluntarily cede my "right" to hold others down, I lift them and myself up.

If I insist on enslaving my neighbor, treating him as my inferior, or being indifferent to his yearning for freedom from fear, discrimination, or violence, I am enslaving myself...to ways of life that retain my status at the expense of others, to moral putrefaction, to constant fear that my sins will catch up with me, knowing, deep in my soul, that there must be a reckoning, to the disintegration of the lives of each and every one of us.

King called whites and blacks and all Americans away from the selfishness that would enslave all so long as they failed to recognize and pursue this foundational tenet of the American creed that King had crystallized:

No man is free until all men are free.

No citizen is free until all citizens are free.

No human being is free until all human beings are free.

Over the past several weeks, my wife and I have re-watched Ken Burns' beautiful documentary on the Civil War and, last night, Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln. It struck me as I watched these two works that America's Civil War has never ended. 

After Appomattox, the war has taken its casualties and deaths: Lincoln, King, the thousands lynched in the South while the North turned the other way, and countless others. 

The war is no longer regional and not just racial. You will find whites and blacks and others in all regions of the country anxious to keep faith with America's freedom creed. You will find others in all regions of the country rebelling against that creed.

There still are the haves and the have-nots, the marginalized and the beautiful people, the accepted and the disdained. We are still, in this great American experiment, finding out whether any nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" "can long endure." 

Much of what is happening in America today--the fissures, the overt hatred, the refusal to be confused by facts--is an extension of the Civil War, battles to be added to the bloody list of Antietam, Gettysburg, Ford's Theatre, and the streets of Charlottesville in 2017. Each stand as witness to the very treason against the American compact exhibited when the first Rebel cannonball was shot at Fort Sumter. And it was this same treason, embedded deeply in the American soul, that caused James Earl Ray to murder Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a Christian, I have no illusions that the Kingdom of God in which there is perfect harmony between God, the human race made in His image, and God's creation, can be ushered in through political activism, laws, or wars. 

The Kingdom of God is only experienced when sinners (like me), daily turn from sin and daily entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. As the man for whom King was named, Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism of the petition of the Lord's Prayer taught by Jesus--"Thy kingdom come":

The kingdom of God comes indeed by itself, without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may also come to us.

And:

God's kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe his holy Word and live a godly life now and in eternity.

It's Jesus and only Jesus Who can bring the Kingdom of God into this world, in the hearts and lives of His disciples, even as the world swirls madly in violence and hatred around us. We know this from Jesus Himself: "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Even if we don't accept Jesus' Word for it, history and human experience make clear that all human attempts to establish a kingdom of harmony between God, humanity, and the Creation fail. Only God can bring His kingdom to us.

But God doesn't leave us stranded in complete chaos. God's Word is clear that God establishes governments in this fallen world awaiting the final consummation of God's Kingdom given through Christ. God does this because it's inborn to we human beings to only refrain from self-worshiping violence when there is a coercive force to rein in human thuggery. 

Governments are meant to ensure simple justice. This is what King called the government and the society of his day to do. That call cost him his life. It's a call that still needs to be heard and heeded. 

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

God, help me limp toward You always

These are reflections from my quiet time today. I spent time with God in His Word at Deuteronomy 3-5. (To see how I approach my quiet time with God, see here.)

Look: “...the Lord was angry with me and would not listen to me. ‘That is enough,’ the Lord said. ‘Do not speak to me anymore about this matter.’” (Deuteronomy 3:26)

In his final message to the people of Israel, now on the brink of entering the promised land, Moses remembers how he pleaded with God (Deuteronomy 3:23) to be allowed to enter the promised land. But God is firm about His earlier decision: Because Moses had rebelled against God, questioning and expressing resentment over God’s decision to make him the earthly leader of the Israelites as that people whined in the wilderness, he would not enter the promised land. Like the rest of the generation that God delivered from slavery in Egypt (except for Joshua and Caleb, who had remained faithful to God), Moses would not set foot in the promised land.

There are consequences to our sins, even when God has forgiven us and our relationship with Him has been restored. Moses’ relationship with God was restored.

We know that from what follows in Deuteronomy 3:27. God told Moses: “Go up to the top of Pisgah and look west and north and south and east. Look at the land with your own eyes, since you are not going to cross this Jordan.”

God allowed Moses to see that his forty years in the wilderness and his leadership of the people of Israel were not in vain. He saw the promised land. God demonstrated his forgiveness for Moses in this act.

Listen: I mustn’t fall prey to the facile and self-serving notion that if I sin, repent, and am forgiven by God, I will face no consequences. I WILL reach the promised land of a resurrected life with God if I entrust my sins, past, present, and future to Christ. God is good for His promises! But my sins can unleash consequences I can’t imagine.

Grace that insulates us from all possible consequences for sin in this world isn’t grace. It’s license. It’s what Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace.”

In my own life, many of the things for which I’ve repented and from which I’ve had to separate myself, have left holes in my life, chasms of grief, enduring ruptures in relationships, and sadness that abide and haunt me even in the midst of the joy for forgiven sin.

Anyone who has ever repented and turned to the God known in Jesus has experienced this. What Bonhoeffer calls “costly grace,” true grace, will cause us to give up something of what we once indulged, coveted, or saw as our right or our due. There’s no way around that if we’re serious about following Jesus. If we are to grasp hold of Jesus as our only God and need, it will entail letting go of things the jettisoning of which will leave a scar. As Bonhoeffer writes, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Every time we repent for a sin, there’s a crucifixion of the old self that loved that sin. And crucifixion is never painless.

Moses’ rebellion in the wilderness had its consequences, even in his life, the prevailing pattern of which was to, however reluctantly, to obey and to follow God. If that was Moses’ experience, I can expect no less.

Respond: Lord Jesus, I surrender all to You, including my supposed “right” to be resentful when I face the consequences of my sin. I know that in the crucified and risen Christ, in Whom I trust, my sins are forgiven and I have new life that can never be taken from me. I will live with You forever. But when I sin, set me free from any notion that I’m privileged character. I’m not. If Moses had to face the consequences of his sin, it should never be a surprise if You exact the same price from me. In Genesis, we’re told that Jacob fought against you. Though You blessed him, he walked for the rest of his days with a limp, a consequence of so often wrestling with You and relying on his own ingenuity and lies rather than on you. If I must walk through life with a limp of any kind--physical, emotional, spiritual, consequences of my self-seeking ands sinfulness, help me to gladly accept it and limp with faith toward You. To You I give all honor, glory, and praise. In Jesus’ name. Amen

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

[These chapters of Deuternomy appear as today's reading in the Discipleship Journal's Book at a Time Reading Plan. I'm sure that this is true without reference that in the last speech before his death in April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. references this passage, telling a Memphis audience as he envisioned the promised land of justice:

...I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

What King may or may not have foreseen as he spoke those words is anybody's guess. But like Moses, he professed to be at peace with God as he faced the consequence of sin over every human life, even over the lives of those who repent and believe in the God we meet Christ, death.]

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