Matching the Walk with the Talk

From today's devotion by Julie Ackerman Link in Our Daily Bread: 

I’d rather see a Christian
Than to hear one merely talk;
I’d rather see his actions
And behold his daily walk. —Herrell

God, forgive me for all the ways in which I have failed to live a life consistent with the faith I profess. Help me to walk like a Christian and not just talk like one. In Jesus' Name. AMEN

You'll want to read the entire devotion and the passage on which it's based, Titus 3:1-8.

UPDATE: From Stanley Hauerwas' commentary on Matthew, chapter 3:

It is not what the Pharisees and Sadducees say that John [the Baptizer] and Jesus condemn; but rather it is the inconsistency between their lives and what they commend. (emphasis mine)

Jesus Brings Comfort AND the Demand for Allegiance to Him

In studying the text for this coming Sunday's sermon, Matthew 3:1-12, just read this from New Testament scholar, N.T. "Tom" Wright:

Jesus'...mission was quite different from what people sometimes imagine; the comfort and healing of his kingdom-message was balanced by the stern and solemn warning that when God comes back he demands absolute allegiance.

Many people, including many pastors and theologians, seem to want the Jesus of comfort and healing, but not the Jesus Who demands are absolute allegiance. Truth is, like the rest of the human race, I'd rather that Jesus didn't demand my allegiance. I would rather that He not demand my utter acquiescence to His Lordship and His will.

It reminds me of a joke I heard Mel Brooks tell once on The Tonight Show. According to Brooks, God originally gave fifteen, not ten, commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. When the Israelites saw that, they immediately claimed that was too many commandments. So, Moses went back to the top of the mountain to renegotiate with God. When Moses came back, the Israelites asked, "Well?" "I've got some good news and some bad news for you," Moses told them. "The good news is, I got God down to ten commandments. The bad news is that the no-adultery one is still in there."*

Jesus has come, as the New Testament reminds us, to free us from the condemnation of God's Law, as embodied in the Ten Commandments. None of us is capable of keeping God's commands and, if it weren't for Jesus, we would all stand condemned and bound for hell. "The wages of sin is death," is how the apostle Paul puts it in the New Testament book of Romans. But Jesus, God in the flesh, took the punishment for our sins. He calls us to repent and believe in Him and so be spared the punishment we deserve.

Yet Jesus also insists God's commandments are not to be ignored:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)

The good news is that Jesus, the perfectly obedient representative of the human race, destroyed the power of God's law to condemn all who trust in Him. The bad news--or at least, what we may see as bad news if we choose to hold onto some sins that God commands us to turn away from--is that, in response to this enormous gift, we're not just to give our total allegiance to Jesus. We also are, out of our gratitude, to seek to live obedient lives. (God gives the Holy Spirit to help us in this quest. But that's another story.)

The problem for those of us who want some of Jesus, but not all of Jesus, is that Jesus can't be divided. I can't let His comfort, healing or grace into my life without letting that other part of Him--the God in the flesh Who commands me to follow Him alone and obey the commands of God--into my life as well.

The forgiveness, life, and blessings that come as free gifts--examples of what the New Testament, in its original Greek, calls charitas, grace--are absolutely free. We can do nothing to earn them.

But if we want to take them from Christ's hand, it will entail laying aside every other allegiance we have, whether to ourselves, our families, our jobs, our possessions, our countries, or anything else.

Each of these things will have their places in our personal priorities, their importance often changing depending on circumstances. But Jesus says that, if we're to have His comfort and life, none of them may take first place.

Consider this speech where Jesus' insistence on "absolute allegiance" to Him is given in "stern and solemn" tones:

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. (Luke 14:25-33)

Jesus is not here commending the emotion of hatred. In Semitic languages like Aramaic, which Jesus spoke in everyday conversation, hate was a comparative word, a priority word. He is saying, "Unless you love Me more than you love your mother and father, husband or wife, etc., you can't be part of My kingdom." Those words are "stern and solemn" enough. But He is not commanding us to hate our relatives! (Or anybody else, for that matter.)

Some will wonder whether Jesus isn't exhibiting some kind of megalomania here, demanding allegiance to Him. Jesus once said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). If Jesus is the only means through which the power of sin and death over our lives can be destroyed, it's hardly an act of arrogance on Jesus' part to insist on our allegiance to Him alone. If the only way for a drowning man to get to shore is to hold onto the lifeguard, you would hardly call the lifeguard arrogant for saying so to the thrashing victim.

Our problem, of course, is that we're control freaks. We want the Jesus Who will love us as we are, but we're not as keen to have the Jesus Who sets out to make changes in the lives of those He saves. But Jesus leaves us no choice in the matter: We will either have all of Jesus or we will have none of Jesus.

May God give me the grace, faith, and courage to choose all of Jesus every day. And if life with God is what you want, may God give you these things, too!

*You can read the real story of God giving the Ten Commandments and other commands to Moses in Exodus, chapters 19 to 24. Brooks later incorporated something of this joke into his movie, The History of the World, Part 3. Only there, his Moses held three tablets, one fell from his arms, and Moses announced that God had given "these fifteen...[one tablet falls] Oy! Ten commandments for all to obey!"

How to Help a Grieving Friend

Part 1
Part 2

Thank God for Your Problems

Another gem from John Maxwell's book, Developing the Leader Within You:

We all have a tendency all of our lives to want to get rid of problems and responsibilities. When that temptation arises, remember the youth who was questioning a lonely old man. "What is life's heaviest burden?" he asked. The old fellow answered sadly, "Having nothing to carry."

Do Your Cyber Week Christmas Shopping from Here

So far, I've accumulated 84-cents in royalties received through the Amazon Associates program. When, from this site, people click recommendations I make for books and other items that can be purchased at Amazon, Amazon sends me royalties. At least, they do theoretically. But they won't cut a check to me until I've hit $100 in royalties. By my reckoning, at my current pace, that should happen somewhere around 2047.

But, if you use the box below to do your cyber-shopping--no recommendations from me, just purchasing items you were already going to buy--you can accelerate my timetable. Isn't that nice?

Thank you for your patronage!

Are You Ready?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Isaiah 2:1-5
Advent, which begins today, is a time for getting ready. Just as many are working themselves into frenzies preparing for Christmas, Advent asks us, “Are we ready, not for Christmas Day, but for the advent of Jesus, for the appearing of Jesus?”

Are we ready for Jesus to show up to bring an end to this world of sin and death and establish a new heaven and a new earth free of sin and death and grief?

Are we ready to meet Jesus face to face should our lives end before Jesus returns?

The last thing that any human being should want is to be ready for Christmas or for things like tomorrow’s special project, school assignment, or big game, yet not be ready to meet Jesus.

So, are you ready?

Each of our appointed lessons for this first day of the new Church Year can help us to be ready for Jesus’ return or, should we die before His return, for the moments we first see Jesus face to face. (1)

Please pull out the Celebrate inserts for this morning. Our first lesson is Isaiah 2:1-5. Verse 4 is probably the most famous passage here. It's a verse that promises that, beyond these days when sin drives human beings to warfare and factionalism, there will be a day when God will destroy war itself and turn our weapons into implements put to better and more productive use. That will happen on the day of the risen, ascended Jesus' return to this world!

This vision of a new creation at peace is one that would have especially appealed to Isaiah’s likely first listeners and readers.

Isaiah started his work as a prophet of God in about 740BC. At that moment, the Assyrian Empire threatened the destruction of first-century Judah.

(Judah, you’ll remember, was the southern portion of what had once been a larger nation, Israel. After King Solomon’s death, Israel split into two kingdoms, the northern one with its worship and national life centered in Samaria, the south remaining focused in Jerusalem. Seven-and-a-half centuries after Isaiah began prophesying, Jesus was born and raised in Judah, also called Judea.)

In Isaiah’s day, the people of Judah were terrified of the strong, menacing Assyrians. And their fear proved well founded: In 722BC, Israel would fall to the Assyrians, just as God had revealed through Isaiah would happen. God used the Assyrian army to chasten His people, calling them to repent for sin, especially their dalliances with false gods, and to trust, have faith, only in Him.

In our lesson, God declares a moment when people from around the world would acknowledge the God of the Jews as the one true God of the universe. They would stream to worship Him along with the Jews, He says. According to God’s words here, Mount Zion, the humble hill in Jerusalem where the Temple then stood, would be acknowledged as “the highest of mountains.” People would turn to the God Whose presence once lived in the Temple’s “Holy of Holies,” saying (look at their words in Isaiah 2:3 in our first lesson):

Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” 

The lesson ends at verse 5, with these words:

O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

In these words, God wasn’t just telling the descendants of Jacob how to get ready for the restoration He wanted to bring to them once the Assyrians had conquered their land and, as a result, became desperate enough to once more realize their need of God.

God also is telling us how to prepare for the final scenes in human history, when, as Jesus puts it in our Gospel lesson, at a moment known only by the Father, the risen and ascended Jesus will return. It's then, that Jesus will, as we confess each week during worship, “judge the living and the dead.”

God's words here also tell us how to be prepared for the final scenes in our own lives, whether they come years from now or they happen this very day.

Now, it’s important to understand that what God says in Isaiah is, in a way, metaphorical. Let me explain.

Yesterday, as I was about to eat breakfast, already dressed in some of my Buckeye gear, I found Ann reading the newspaper, and said to her, like any good Ohio State alum anticipating the afternoon game must have said when first facing the day: “We must annihilate them!”

Now, I didn’t literally mean that. To annihilate something is to reduce it to nothing. If the team from up north were annihilated, who would the Buckeyes beat on certain Saturdays in November each year? I meant simply that I wanted the Buckeyes to soundly thump the Wolverines. I spoke metaphorically.

Some eight-hundred years after Isaiah shared the words of our first lesson with the people of Judah, Jesus sat by a well in the Samaritan village of Sychar. His disciples, in spite of their shared distaste for the citizens of the breakaway northern kingdom of Samaria, had gone into the village to get some food.

A Samaritan woman shows up at the well and among the things that Jesus tells her is this: “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain (Mount Gerizim in Samaria) nor in Jerusalem (on Mount Zion). You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews (more accurately translated, “the Judeans”). But the hour is coming and is now here, when we true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship Him.”

The point is that while salvation has come to the world through the Jews, you don’t have to be a Jew to have God in your life. While God’s presence came to the temple at Jerusalem, now “in these last days,” as the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, “[God] has spoken to us by a Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Who He also created the worlds.”

Our lesson from Isaiah then, foretells a time when people throughout the world won’t necessarily book flights on El Al Airlines in order to stream to Jerusalem, but a time when people from throughout the world will turn to the God first revealed to the Jews and then definitively, to everybody, through Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus famously told Nicodemus. People from throughout the world today stream to Mount Zion every time they...

• confess their sins in Jesus’ Name, 
• confess their faith in Jesus, and 
• strive, by the power of God's Holy Spirit living within them, to live as His redeemed and saved people in their every day moments.

So, how do we prepare for Jesus’ Advent, for His appearing?

First: We turn to the God made known in Christ. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” our lesson says.

In Isaiah’s time, God upbraided His people for failing to acknowledge Him as the only means of wholeness and hope in their lives. “I reared children and brought them up,” God says in Isaiah 1, “but they have rebelled against Me.” 

In these last days, God has shown that the only remedy for sin, death, and purposeless living is to turn in repentance and trust to Jesus Christ.

During His time on earth, Jesus denounced villages that refused to repent and believe in Him.

“Repent,” Jesus says elsewhere in Matthew's gospel, “for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

To repent and to believe (or trust) in Christ is nothing other than agreeing with God about our sin, on the one hand, and agreeing with God about His grace and forgiveness, on the other.

To be ready to meet Jesus, we can repent, that is, turn back to God, and trust in the grace of God to grant us forgiveness and the powerful Holy Spirit to help us live differently from day to day.

Second: We place ourselves under the authority of God’s Word. Out of Zion, where God revealed Himself to Israel and then to the world in Jesus, our lesson from Isaiah says, comes God’s “instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Through His Word, the lesson says in verse 3, God will teach us His ways.

Jesus, of course, is the ultimate Word of God, of course, and the Bible is God’s Spirit-inspired, perfect witness to that Word. Many spurn the authority of Christ over their lives. Many reject the authority of God's Biblical Word over their lives. “But to all who [receive the Word of God],” the Gospel of John says, God gives the power to become children of God.

God’s Word is the truth against which everything we do, say, and are is to be measured. (2) To build our lives on anything else, whether it’s our own experiences or the latest scientific research, is to build on quicksand.

The Lutheran Confessions says that the Word of God in the Bible is to be treasured as a precious jewel. (3)

The psalmist said that God’s Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

And in today’s lesson from Isaiah, God invites us to walk in that light.

In God’s Word, we are enlightened to see God’s passionate love for each of us, God’s desire to set us free from our bondage to sin and death, and the lengths to which He goes—even to a cross—in order to make it possible for us to return to Him.

We also see that God will not force or coerce us to return to Him or stand under His life-giving Word. God woos us. God is wooing us still.

To take hold of the life that only comes through Jesus Christ, we must stand under the authority of Scripture even when we don't and never will fully understand it.

My two heroes of the faith are Martin Luther and Billy Graham. Early in his career, Billy Graham was an evangelist with an organization called Youth for Christ. He often traveled and became pals with another Youth for Christ evangelist, Chuck Templeton. Graham says that Templeton remains the best preacher he ever heard.

Templeton, a learned man, underwent a crisis of faith in the late 1940s. He came to reject the Bible's teachings about miracles, the virgin birth of Jesus, the resurrection, and so on. (Ultimately, he became an atheist.) Because he had been so close to Graham and because Graham was impressed by Templeton's mind, personality, and preaching, Billy Graham was shaken by Templeton's rejection of the authority of the Bible. As a consequence, Graham himself began to question the reliability of the Bible. Templeton's challenge to Billy Graham--"People no longer accept the Bible as being inspired the way you do"--taunted Graham.

One evening, during a retreat in southern California, Graham took a walk into a nearby woods. He dropped to his knees by a tree stump, where he set his Bible. In the gathering darkness, he couldn't read his Bible, but he could cry out to God. Though he can't recall the exact words he used as he prayed that night, Graham does say he told God honestly that the Bible was filled with many things he couldn't comprehend or explain. But he told God, "I am going to accept this as Thy Word--by faith! I'm going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word."

As Graham explains in his autobiography, not all his questions were answered, but "a major bridge had been crossed." He knew that a great spiritual battle in his heart and mind had been fought and won. It is the same battle you and I need to fight, and, by the power of God's Spirit, can win, when we place ourselves under the authority of God's Word.

This past week, I had an appointment with the cardiologist who performed my heart stent procedure five months ago. He checked me over and asked lots of questions. "I feel optimistic about your recovery," he told me. Then, he fell into a long silence as he clicked through and considered my case history on his laptop computer. I wondered what he was thinking. Finally, he broke his silence: "I still don't know why you had a heart attack."

Folks, everyone in this sanctuary knows that, as happened to me five months ago, inexplicable things happen in life. And they can happen in a hurry. You have to be ready for anything!

But above all, you have to be ready for the advent of Jesus, for the moment when you come into His presence. If you will turn to God in repentance and faith in Jesus and if you will stand under the authority of God's Word, you will be ready for Christ's return. You will be ready for anything!

(1) The appointed lessons for this First Sunday in Advent are: Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, and Matthew 24:36-44. The psalm is Psalm 122.


(2) The Formula of Concord, a basic confessional statement promulgated by Lutherans in 1577, expresses a Lutheran understanding of the Bible and its authority:

We believe, teach, and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged, as it is written in Psalm 119:105, "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." And Saint Paul says in Galatians 1:8: "Even if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed."
Other writings of ancient and modern teachers, whatever their names, should not be put on a par with Holy Scripture. Every single one of them should be subordinated to the Scriptures and should be received in no other way and no further than as witnesses to the fashion in which the doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved in post-apostolic times...


...the Holy Scripture remains as the only judge, rule, and norm according to which as the only touchstone of all doctrines should and must be understood and judged as good or evil, right or wrong...

(3) Martin Luther writes this in The Large Catechism, another of the core confessional documents which every Lutheran congregation and pastor claims as true confessions of faith:

The Word of God is the true holy thing above all holy things. Indeed, it is the only one we Christians acknowledge and have. Though we had the bones of all the saints or all the holy and consecrated vestments together in one heap, they could not help us in the slightest degree, for they are all dead things that can sanctify no one. But God's Word is the treasure that sanctifies all things. By it all the saints themselves have been sanctified. At whatever time God's Word is taught, preached, heard, read, or pondered, there the person, the day, and the work are sanctified by it...Accordingly, I constantly repeat that all our life and work must be guided by God's Word if they are to be God-pleasing or holy...


Conversely, any conduct or work done apart from God's Word  is unholy in the sight of God, no matter how splendid and brilliant it may appear...

Who Causes You the Most Trouble?

In his book, Developing the Leader Within You, John Maxwell tells the following story:

A reporter once asked the great evangelist D.L. Moody which people gave him the most trouble. He answered immediately, "I've had more trouble with D.L. Moody than any man alive."

God Will NOT Abandon Those Who Want Him More Than Anything Else!

In this time when the Church itself often appears to be set against God, God's Word, and God's will, those who seek to live the life style of daily repentance and renewal to which Jesus Christ calls us, can take encouragement from Psalm 127:

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
²
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh— my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall.
³
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.
⁴
One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
⁵
For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.
⁶
Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
⁷
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!
⁸
“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, Lord, do I seek.
⁹
Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help.

Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
¹⁰
If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.
¹¹
Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
¹²
Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.
¹³
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
¹⁴
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! 

Psalm 127 is the scriptural basis for this fantastic piece by Philip Yancey.

The Office of the Keys

"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Jesus, in Matthew 16:19)

It's not an option for Christ's Church to stint on telling the truth about sin and forgiveness, law and gospel.

Churches and Christians who, in the name of their own version of "love," fail to use the keys which Christ has conferred on them, risk the immortal souls of both themselves and those who heed their false gospel.

Christ has entrusted us with the task of calling people to repentance, so that they can take up Christ's gift of forgiveness and new life. The "office of the keys" reposed in the Church is a sacred obligation. Martin Luther talks about it in The Small Catechism:

What is the "Office of the Keys"?

It is that authority which Christ gave to His Church to forgive the sins of those who repent and to declare to those who do not repent that their sins are forgiven.

What are the words of Christ?

Our Lord Jesus Christ said to His disciples: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."-John 20:23

"Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."-Matthew 18:18

Don't Be Afraid of the Word, "Righteous"

Yesterday, in an email to the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, I thanked people for being so committed to prayer. Then I mentioned this:

James writes in the New Testament, "The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective" (James 5:16). And don't be frightened by that word "righteous." You don't have to be a stained glass saint to be righteous. A righteous person is simply a sinner who is right with God: they repent for their sins and trust in Jesus as their Lord. You can be assured that your prayers in Jesus' Name do great things!

Our righteousness doesn't depend on us. (Thank God!)

What is the Church Year?

[Five years ago, as we were beginning a new season of Advent, I presented this explanation of the Church Year. It remains one of the most popular posts I've written for this blog. As we prepare, this Sunday, November 28, to begin another Advent season, I thought people might find it helpful.]

The Church Year is a human invention. Observing it won't make us better than anybody else. Nor does keeping it "save" a person from sin and death.

But the Church Year is one of those customs or traditions designed to help people know the God we meet in Jesus and also help believers to grow in their faith.

The Church Year is built around three great festivals: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

Christmas, of course, is the celebration of Jesus' birth.

Easter is the day remembering Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

Pentecost remembers the occasion fifty days after Jesus' resurrection and ten days after His ascension into heaven when the Holy Spirit came to Jesus' praying disciples and gave birth to the Church.

Historically, Easter was the first holiday (the word contracts two words: holy day) that Christians began to celebrate. This only makes sense, as it's Jesus' resurrection that gives Christians hope for this life and the one to come. While early Christians did seem to remember Easter on a Sunday falling at the beginning of the Jewish Passover, the practice of the first Christians, all of whom were Jews like Jesus, was to worship on the traditional Jewish Sabbath--from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday--and to celebrate every Sunday as a little Easter. (Some echo of this can be found in the Gospel of John's occasional references to an "eighth day," a new beginning in a new week.)

Over time, a Church Year developed which allowed for the retelling of Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension, followed by Pentecost. The Church Year, in order, moves through these seasons:

• Advent
• Christmas
• Epiphany
• Lent
• Easter
• Pentecost

Advent, with which the color blue is most often associated today, is celebrated on the four Sundays preceding Christmas, which always occurs on the fixed date of December 25. The word advent, means coming or presence. The theme of Advent is waiting. This season remembers more than the centuries when the world anticipated or waited for the coming of the Savior, Jesus, on the first Christmas. It also calls us to patiently await both God's activity in our own lives and the return of Jesus at the end of earthly time. Advent's blue, the color of the sky, reminds us of the endless hope all believers in Jesus Christ have.

Christmas begins on December 25 and ends on January 6, with Epiphany Day. (That's why people sing about The Twelve Days of Christmas.) We don't know the exact date of Jesus' birth. Our current date was long ago selected to be a Christian alternative to a pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia. Christmas has a short season of two Sundays associated with it, running right up to the season of Epiphany. The color of the Christmas season and of Easter, because they are both festivals of Jesus, the sinless Savior, is white.

The word epiphany comes from a Greek compound word meaning to shine upon. The Epiphany Season begins with January 6, the day we commemorate the arrival of wise men from foreign lands who followed a star to the baby Jesus to a house in Bethlehem. It was there that Mary and Joseph lived with their Child for several years after the Savior's birth. January 6, in fact, is called Epiphany Day. (Because the wise men brought gifts, Epiphany was historically the day on which Christians gave gifts to one another.) The Epiphany Season is composed of between four and nine Sundays after January 6. The season is bracketed by a first Sunday, which always remembers Jesus' Baptism, and a Sunday at the end that remembers Jesus' Transfiguration. At the Transfiguration, on top of a mountain, accompanied by three of His disciples, Jesus' image was transfigured by the luminescence of heaven and God spoke, confirming Jesus' identity and mission. On the two bracketing Sundays of the Epiphany Season, the color is white. During the season in between, the color is green.

During the Epiphany season, Christians look at the early signs that pointed to Jesus being more than just a human being, but also God in the flesh, the Light of the world. The emphasis of the Epiphany season is usually on sharing the good news of Christ with others, shining the light of Christ on those around us.

After Epiphany comes Lent, a word which in the Old English, meant spring. Lent is a time for spiritual renewal and precedes the holiest days of the Church Year, including Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Lent is referred to as a season of forty days, which it is if you know how to count the days. Because Sundays are always "little Easters," the Sundays in Lent (not of Lent), are not counted as part of those forty days.

The color associated with Lent is purple, the color of royalty because in ancient times, purple dyes were so rare and expensive that only royalty could afford cloth of that color. Historically, the season of Lent was a time of preparation for adult converts to the faith to prepare for their initiation into Christianity at Easter.

There are several key days on the Lenten calendar. The season begins with Ash Wednesday. This is a day of repentance, that is, of turning away from sin and turning to Christ for forgiveness. Of course, as Martin Luther phrased it, "daily repentance and renewal" are meant to be an ongoing element of the Christian's life as we routinely strive to orient ourselves to God and His will for us. But Ash Wednesday is a time when all are especially reminded of it.

Near the end of the season comes Passion Sunday (also known as Palm Sunday). On this day, we're called to remember both Jesus' seemingly triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday before His execution and Christ's passion, as well as its foreshadowing of Easter. Passion, a word that is used in entirely different ways today, really means to be so committed to the well-being of another that we're willing to die for them. Christ had that kind of commitment to us and so, went to a cross. Passion Sunday begins that portion of Lent called Holy Week.

The next major day on the Holy Week calendar is Maundy Thursday. Maundy is rooted in the Latin word mandatum, from which we get our word mandate, related to the word commandment. That's because on the Thursday night before He was executed, during the Passover celebration at which He instituted Holy Communion, Jesus also gave His disciples "a new commandment": that they love one another.

Many churches have foot-washing rites during their special gatherings on this day. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples before they ate together on that first Maundy Thursday and also commanded all of His followers to be servants like Him.

Good Friday, which comes on the next night, is a solemn remembrance of Jesus' death on the cross. For me, this is one of the most moving worship services of the year. At our congregation, as is true of many churches, we have a service called Tenebrae. This word comes from the Latin and means darkness. The service remembers the darkness that engulfed the world at Jesus' execution as well as our need of Him as the light in our darkness. The service ends in silence as all contemplate Jesus' sacrifice of Himself for us.

Easter Sunday brings the celebration of Jesus' resurrection in a special way and continues throughout the Easter season. This is usually the high point of the year, even in churches that don't use the Church Year. The Easter Season lasts about seven weeks. The Gospel lessons incorporate accounts of the resurrected Jesus' appearances. Tucked in the midst of the season, on a Thursday, is Ascension Day. This comes forty days after Easter. More on that below.

Pentecost Day, as I mentioned, is the celebration of the Church's birthday, when the Holy Spirit, Who hovered over the waters of primordial chaos to bring life into being back in the Old Testament book of Genesis, once again creates. This time, He creates new life by bringing Christ's Church, His body in the world, into being. The color of this day is red.

There follows after that a season that lasts from twenty-three to twenty-eight weeks. It's referred to simply as the Pentecost Season. The color is green because the emphasis here is on growing in our faith, learning to be Jesus' disciples or followers at ever-deepening levels of maturity.

The very first Sunday after Pentecost is Holy Trinity Sunday. This focuses on the great mystery of the God we meet in the Bible: One God in three Persons, revealed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The whole Church Year comes to a close, on the Sunday closest to November 30, with Christ the King Sunday.

Associated with each of the Sundays and many of the festivals of the Church Year are three cycles of appointed Biblical lessons. These cycles, referred to as Years A, B, and C, are called lectionaries. There are several sets of lectionaries, the the most well-known being those associated with the Roman Catholics, another with Lutherans, and another with a consortium of several Protestant denominations. The lectionaries are fairly similar, but do diverge occasionally.

Each Sunday and special festival day of the Church Year has appointed lessons from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the New Testament (either Acts, Revelation, or the letters), and a Gospel lesson. Generally speaking, the Old Testament, Psalm, and Gospel readings are thematically linked. The New Testament lessons are designed to make it possible over a three year period, to have almost all the letters, Revelation, and Acts read in public worship.

The three different cycles are built on the three synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. (Synoptic is a word that means to see together. These three Gospels are quite similar to one another--they see things similarly, while the Gospel of John has the most unique material.) Because Mark, with only sixteen chapters, is so short, the appointed Gospel lessons during its year are often taken from John.

Through my years as a pastor, I've felt free to spring loose from what one of our former Lutheran bishops, David Preus, called "the tyranny of the lectionary," looking at Biblical texts not appointed in the lectionary, in order to address issues that seem to be important in our community or world. But the lectionary does provide a well-rounded diet of Biblical material which, when looked at in a disciplined and devoted way, can help Christians develop a deeper faith.

[The image above, showing the cycle of the Church Year, comes from Augsburg Fortress, the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.]

"I aint got no horror story..."

"...God kept me in my youth I give him all the glory
got my story with the flow,
and now I know
the blood of the lamb has saved my soul
and that's my testimony..." (great rap from Da T.R.U.T.H.)

Here's a "video" from his recording.


Here's a live version. It's great that he asked some audience members come up on stage.


What I love about this track is that it's simply this guy's testimony about his own relationship with Christ. So often, Christians who have always believed and never been doubters, addicts, thieves, or serial adulterers feel inferior because they don't have a dramatic story to tell about their conversion. These are people like Fred Meuser, who was the son of a pastor and served as president of the seminary from which I graduated. If you spent any time with Fred, you would see as all of us who were students at Trinity, that he believed fervently in Jesus. Jesus was the center of his life. And yet, Fred had experienced no drama in his life, no years of hollow rebellion, no dark nights of doubt. "I can't remember a time when I didn't believe in Jesus," he told a group of us who had just begun our seminary training in back in January, 1980.

It's OK for Christians to have always believed. In fact, it's more than OK. Ask any Christian who, before coming to faith in Christ, wandered far from God, and they'll tell you that they would gladly have skipped all that "drama" if in its place they could have known and followed Jesus sooner.

Who need earthbound "drama" when you can have the King of kings as your best friend?

God Will Carry You!

Five years ago, a remarkable young member of the congregation I serve as pastor, Sarah, underwent the first of two bone marrow transplants (BMTs).

A second one happened two months after I became her pastor, in January, 2008.

Both procedures involved long hospital stays and accompanying complications. Through it all, Sarah and her wonderful family--Mom Becky, Dad Bryan, and Brother Stephen--have displayed faith and tenacity. They are heroes of Christian faithfulness to me!

Putting it in the only terms I can understand, Sarah's second BMT was 93% successful. This means that she will continue to need treatments always, but that she can lead a normal life. (Whatever a normal life might be!)

In 2009, Sarah was the Logan High School Homecoming Queen. She graduated near the top of her class. (Sarah was inducted into the National Honor Society while in a hospital intensive care unit.) She's now in her sophomore year of college, a psychology major with aspirations of working with young oncology patients in hospitals. (I can't imagine anyone more qualified by temperament, experience, or faithfulness to Christ to do such work.)

Last week, Sarah contracted pneumonia and struggled to breathe. Years of chemotherapy have significantly weakened her immune system. The quickness with which the pneumonia struck, at a point when everything was going so well for her, was stunning for everybody, especially for Sarah and her family.

They all had to hit "battle stations" again.

For Bryan and Stephen, that entails not just visits to the hospital and lots of praying, but also exhausting errand-running and schedule-juggling, among other things.

For Sarah's mother, Becky, a professional person just like Bryan, this means remaining with Sarah 24/7, acting as her advocate, prayer partner, intermediary, and "pal." It's a role that Becky plays well and includes a healthy respect for the fact that Sarah is now a young woman of 19.

Becky says that the day before Sarah was taken to the hospital, they had been to a massive expo in Louisville. There, they saw the reproduction of a painting showing a cowboy carrying a calf on his shoulders. Beneath it was a passage of Scripture, the very one Becky said she needed to face the new challenge which, unbeknown to her, she would face the next day. (It's amazing how God works that way, isn't it?)

Thank God, Sarah is doing well! Last night, she didn't require oxygen. She isn't on oxygen today. The regimen of treatments, buttressed by the prayers and love of Bryan, Becky, and Stephen, along with the pleading of an army of prayer warriors, has been used by God to turn away this latest assault on an incredible young woman. Sarah is to go to a regular care unit today and may be discharged tomorrow, in time to spend a very happy Thanksgiving with her parents, brother, and extended family!

During a phone conversation a little while ago, Becky revealed to me for the first time, that she has a new favorite Bible verse. Throughout Sarah's previous hospitalizations, Becky grasped hold of Psalm 46:10, which says, "Be still, and know that I am God!" That's a great passage, part of the psalm that inspired the lyrics of Martin Luther's hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. It's been a touchstone passage for her for several years.

Becky says that, over the past week or so, she's been holding onto words God revealed to the prophet Isaiah, words inscribed at the bottom of that print of a cowboy she found little over a week ago:

Even to your old age, I am He, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made you; I will bear; I will carry and will save (Isaiah 46:4)

God makes hundreds of promises in His Word, the Bible. Someone has said that all of those promises are like blank checks, just setting there for believers to "cash in." The God Who has never broken a promise is ready and willing to answer His promises to us. Of course, maturing believers realize that God takes an eternal perspective on things. This is why Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 15:19, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." We often want the things we pray for to happen immediately; God knows that He has an eternity to provide for us "far more than all we can ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:20). But we know that God's promises--God's Word--are absolutely sure and completely reliable!

In Becky's new favorite passage from Isaiah, we see a promise from God for all believers who are exhausted and who know that the burdens on our shoulders are too huge for us to carry. God will take our burdens and carry them for us, just like Jesus, God incarnate, already took the weight of our sins to the cross.

We have an incredible God! 

He wants to bear the burdens you and I were never meant to carry. 

Peter talks about this in the New Testament: "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. ⁷Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:6-7).

God cares for you!

So, when the things you're carrying get too heavy--even before they get too heavy--remember to do two things:

• Keep on praying!
• Keep following Jesus! 

God can carry you.

If you let Him, God will carry you!

Getting rid of earmarks is a fine idea, but...

...see here. (Two funny cartoons.)

(TY, to my son.)

Will You Stand Up or Just Watch?

A more literal translation of the original Greek in Luke 23:35, part of yesterday's Gospel lesson, reads like this:

And the people stood beholding. And also the rulers scoffed, saying, "Others he saved; let him save himself, if this man is the Christ, the Chosen One of God."

The verse comes as part of Luke's account of Jesus' crucifixion. It describes two groups: the people (in Greek, the laos, from which we get the English word laity) and the rulers (in Greek, the archontes, or the first ones), which can be translated as leaders. "The rulers" in this passage is not a reference to the civil rulers, the foreign Roman conquerors, but to the religious leaders. They were the Temple leaders of God's chosen people, the Jews.

The "actions" of each group interest me.

The people stand and watch as a man who has committed no crime is subjected to execution at the hands of the Gentile Romans. The people may have been horrified by what they saw, but they did nothing.

I think it's safe to say that they actually relish their lack of religious power or influence. These things enable them to hide behind a feigned ignorance about Jesus. Their ignorance must be fake because even one of the hardened criminals being executed next to Jesus can see that Jesus is the King. He understands that Jesus will somehow live on beyond death, confesses his sins to Jesus, and professing faith in Jesus as the King of kings, asks to be remembered in Jesus' kingdom. The people simply could not have been ignorant about Who Jesus is.

But the people know that if they confess their sins and profess faith in Christ, crosses might await them, too. They'd rather save their necks and forgo being part of Jesus' eternal kingdom than be with Jesus in paradise. Taking a stand is too risky for them, too inconvenient.

The other group in the verse is the leaders. One thing especially interests me about their words. There is an intrinsic confession of faith in Jesus' power: "Others he saved." They acknowledge the reports about Jesus to be true. They knew that Jesus had saved some from death (like Jairus' daughter and his friend, Lazarus), saved others from demon possession, saved some from blindness, saved some from execution, saved others from disease, saved still others from social shunning. In other words, they acknowledged all of the saving deeds that pointed to Jesus as the long anticipated Christ (Messiah or Anointed One or King), but refused to bow down to Him.

The leaders knew Who Jesus was, but instead of welcoming Him or trusting the witness about Him in God's Word--what we Christians know as the Old Testament portion of our Bibles, they wanted Jesus dead. They loved their own power and position more than they loved God. In fact, they had replaced God's Word with their own teaching. When God showed up in the flesh, He threatened them.

In the days of the Reformation, Martin Luther pointed out that the leaders of the sixteenth century Church had arrogated powers to themselves that didn't belong to them. Through an elaborate legalistic system, they stood between the God revealed in Christ and the laity. They tried to keep the people from reading the Bible. They changed the liturgy, usually spoken in a language only elites could understand, from a means of praising and interacting with God, to an object of terror, grim obligation, superstition, and extortion.

Luther, in many ways, sought to tear down the walls between the God revealed in Christ and the people. He pointed to passages like 1 Peter 2:9-10, to say that "ordinary" Christian laypeople had a priesthood. (A priest is a person who advocates for God before people and advocates for people before God.)

This, of course, is a liberating notion. Historians like Rodney Stark and Alvin J. Schmidt have shown that this teaching that all believers are equal in the sight of God, each with their own ministries, played a central role in the development of the Enlightenment, the idea of the individual, the modern democracy, and market capitalism.

But the priesthood of all believers also carries with it responsibility. Christian laypeople who know Jesus as Messiah and King can no longer dodge either His Lordship over their lives or their responsibilities as priests. Peter says that the priesthood of all believers has a purpose; God makes us priests "in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

In Lutheran circles, this means that while pastors have certain functions--our confessions speak of the pastor's ministry of "Word and Sacrament," it doesn't alter the fact that all Christians are privileged to have their own relationship with Jesus Christ. It doesn't alter the fact that they are called to know the Word of God for themselves. It doesn't alter the fact they're called to grow and mature in their faith and that they have their own ministries.

Today, many of the elites in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in the name of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call, "cheap grace," are telling us that people don't need Christ for salvation, that repentance is unnecessary, that the Word of God is only one source of authority in the lives of Christians and the Church (rather than the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice), and that if you accept the Bible's teachings that sexual intimacy is to be confined to heterosexual marriage, you're guilty of sin.

The question before laypeople in the ELCA is simple: Will you accept these false teachings and ignore your duties as priests of God, or will you lay claim to your God-given role and trust in Christ alone? Will you seek to reform our denominational body?

Today, in modern North America, no Christian leader can order your crucifixion. So, the only things impeding any ELCA layperson from praying and working to bring our denomination back under the Lordship of Jesus Christ are indifference, laziness, or complicity with false teaching.

ELCA Lutherans: Our denomination is in error. Will you stand up for Jesus or will you just watch?

If you're intent on doing more than watching, why not take the following initial steps?

• Pray that God will bring reform and renewal to the ELCA
• Get involved in a group Bible study in your church
• Go to the Lutheran CORE web site and see for yourself if what you find there doesn't make sense and square with what Lutherans believe about Christian faith (Lutheran CORE is a group committed to reform and renewal in North American Lutheranism, whether one is committed to remaining in the ELCA or to being part of new bodies, such as Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ or The North American Lutheran Church)
• Read The Book of Concord, containing the basic confessional affirmations of Lutheran Christianity
• You might also want to read a book of essays written mostly by Lutheran laypeople and clergy called, By What Authority?: Confronting Churches Who No Longer Believe Their Own Message
• Ask God what He might want you to do as part of your own ministry

[UPDATE: The verification words that popped up when I posted the link to this piece over on Facebook were: "On Lummox." They don't quite have the ring of, "Onward, Christian soldiers," but when spoken to a spectating denomination, might, I guess, have the same basic meaning.]

Who Sees the King?

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today. As I explained this morning, this is an only slightly reworked version of a sermon I preached at Saint Matthew three years ago. Since I don't think it's possible to plagiarize one's own sermon, I guess that's OK.]

Luke 23:33-43
A family was moving to a new town. As they approached the outskirts of the place, they decided to stop at a local filling station and ask the attendant there what the town was like. “Well,” he said, “what was the last place you lived in like?” The family said, “It was awful. Neighbors were unfriendly. Delivery and repair people never showed up on time. Dogs barked at all hours. Our bosses were scrooges and the kids never once had a good teacher.” The attendant considered their answer for a while and said, “This place is pretty much like that. You’d be better off moving on.”

Later that day, the same scenario unfolded. Another family showed up at the filling station and wanted to know what this new town was like. “What was your old town like?” the attendant asked. “It was great,” the family said. “Everyone was friendly. The businesspeople did their best to get things done on time and always went above the call of duty. We had great bosses and the kids’ teachers were fantastic! Even the dogs were quiet.” The attendant considered their answer and said, “This place is pretty much like that. You’re going to love it here!”

Sometimes what we see is the thing we’re looking for. We see it because we’re open to seeing it.

On this Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church Year, our Gospel lesson seems, at first, to be out of place. After all, we’re about to celebrate Thanksgiving and are looking ahead to Christmas. But the Gospel lesson is the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, an account of the first Good Friday.

But the lesson seems out of place in another way: Nobody seems less like a king than a man executed on a cross. Not many will look at the crucified Jesus and see a king, let alone the King of kings.

True story: A young woman rediscovered her faith in Jesus while she was a teenager. She bought a simple cross necklace. One morning, her father spotted her wearing the necklace and asked what was going on. She explained that she wanted to be able to see the cross in the mirror every time she washed her hands or combed her hair. It would remind her of Christ.

Her father was repulsed. “Do you have any idea what happened on the cross?” he asked her. He went on to explain in detail what a humiliating and life-crushing experience crucifixion was. To that man, Jesus’ death on a cross was proof that Jesus was no king, just another pathetic victim of the world. To him, the story of Jesus on the cross ended not in the Savior paying the price for our sins nor in His resurrection from the dead so that all who repudiate their sin and believe in Jesus will live with God forever. To him, Jesus’ story ended in death for Jesus and for us all. Intent on making his own way in the world, what that man wanted to see when he thought of Jesus on the cross was exactly what he saw.

In our lesson today, the jealous religious leaders who sought Jesus’ death, the cynical soldiers who gambled for His clothes, and one of the criminals crucified with Him all saw Jesus as they wanted to see Him. Each in their way, taunted Jesus, seeing Him as a loser headed for utter humilation and defeat.

“He saved others,” the religious leaders say. “If He is the son of God, let Him save Himself.”

“If you really are the king,” the soldiers taunt, “save Yourself.”

“Aren’t You the Messiah?” one of the criminals asks, “Then get us off the hook and save yourself too.”

Whether the leaders, the soldiers, or the first criminal harbored notions that Jesus really was the Messiah, God’s anointed King, may not be important. It's clear though, that the religious leaders knew that Jesus was the King, but wanted to get rid of anyone who might threaten their status. The others who taunted Jesus that day were probably just garden-variety cynics who believed, like the father of that young woman, that life must end at the grave.

Even the crowds who gazed on these events in silence appear to see only hopelessness in Jesus’ crucifixion. I suppose most people who take the time to consider Jesus on the cross see hopelessness. They can’t see how Jesus’ crucifixion proves that He is the King of kings.

But we who follow Christ have been helped to see things differently. Paul writes about these two different ways of seeing Jesus on the cross in First Corinthians in the New Testament. If you would, please turn to page 657 in the pew Bibles. Look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 18. Read along with me silently. Paul says: “…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Only one person in today’s Gospel lesson was foolish enough to see the power of God in Christ’s crucifixion. He was one of the criminals. He looked at the suffering Jesus on the cross and saw not a defeated man, but the King of kings. He was so certain of Jesus being the King that he turned to Jesus and said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus promised, not because the criminal deserved it, but because he both confessed his sins and professed his faith in Jesus, that he would on that very day be with Him in paradise.

Why did that one man see Jesus as the King of kings that Good Friday?

As good Lutherans who read our Bibles, we all know that it wasn’t because he was smarter than the others, or that he was a better person, or that he had done more good things. None of these things create faith or give us our places in Christ’s kingdom. Faith that saves us from sin and death is a gift from God. In another place in the New Testament, Paul says, “No one can confess ‘Jesus is Lord,’ unless he is guided by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3, TEV). God creates and sustains faith in those who are open to seeing Jesus as their Savior and their King. Today’s Gospel lesson shows us that only one kind of person is open to seeing Christ as King. Only one kind of person will pay attention when God’s Spirit prompts them to confess their sins or follow Jesus Christ.

Michelle Akers was the first American woman to play professional soccer in Europe. After scoring ten goals in five games in the first-ever Women’s Cup in 1991, she signed an endorsement deal that brought her fame and money. She got a tryout to be a place kicker with the Dallas Cowboys, her longest attempt going 52-yards.

But in 1993, she was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. “When it was really bad,” Akers says, “I couldn’t sit up in a chair. The racking migraines stranded me at home, unable even to get up to brush my teeth or eat.” Five minute walks required two days on the couch to recover.

Strength and hard work, the two kings on whom Akers had relied her entire life, could no longer be called on to help her. She says that it was unbearable to not be the “best in the world” or the person who could always bounce back from any injury. “I was forced to spend a lot of time thinking about who I was. I didn’t like what I saw,” she says. Then, her husband left her.

It was then that Akers was invited by her strength coach to worship with him. She didn’t know why exactly, but Akers accepted the invitation. It was the beginning of a new life with Christ as her king. Looking back, Akers says, she thinks that for years God had been calling her to follow. But, certain that she knew what she was doing, sure that she could make her own decisions, convinced even that she didn’t need forgiveness or help with living her life, she ignored God and the Church. Akers says “It took total devastation before I could [surrender] and say, ‘Okay, God. You can have my life. Please help me.”

Who sees Jesus Christ as King? People who see that their lives are broken without Him.

They see Jesus as King first of all, because they see themselves as they are: as sinners in need of forgiveness, as ordinary human beings who cannot make it without the eternal God.

They're also people who see that at the end of our power to cope or hope is a King Who fills His people with love and gives them the capacity to face any cross in the certainty that they belong to God forever!

Years ago, at a national gathering of Lutheran youth in San Antonio, I met a nurse who worked in a nursing home. She told about caring for a retired pastor who was dying and had, for some time, been in a coma. She knew his favorite song and so, standing by his bed one day, sang it to him: “Yes, Jesus loves me; Yes, Jesus loves me; Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.” At that the pastor lifted himself from the bed as far as his weak arms would allow and looked the nurse straight in the eye to tell her, “Don’t you ever forget it!” Then, he fell back on his pillow and died.

In Jesus, the One Who, from His cross, forgave those who killed Him, we see the King...

• Who stands by us no matter what...
• Who heals our deepest hurts…
• Who forgives our sins…
• Who always loves us…
• and Who gives all who turn from sin and follow Him paradise.

Today, Christ our King tells us to consider all these things and then gives us a simple message: Don’t you ever forget any of that! Amen

Tough Faith in a Tough God

[This was shared during the funeral service for Irene, a member of our congregation.]

John 11:17-27
For me, there are two words that will always immediately spring to mind when I think of Irene. Those two words are humor and toughness.

There are other words that come to mind, too; words like cheerful, loving, strong-willed, and faithful. All of them are descriptive of Irene. But her humor and toughness, as a Christian, as a mother and a grandmother, and as a person, are what stand out to me.

She wore her good humor everywhere she went: in the greeting line after worship, in visits friends and family members had at her home, and even during her stays in the hospital. Irene could laugh even when things weren’t going well.

And she was tough! There were many weeks when I would call her, sometimes after she had gotten difficult news about her health or when she wasn't feeling particularly well, and she would tell me, “I’m planning on being in church on Sunday.” "OK, Irene," I would tell her, knowing that she would be as true as her word.

Irene wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of her being in worship on a Sunday morning! She knew that, as we gather to praise God and hear God’s Word in the company of other believers, God gives us the strength—you might even say, the toughness—to face all the good and the bad that life in this world brings.

She knew too that worship with our church family also recharges us with the hope that belongs to all with faith in Jesus Christ. This is one of the reasons God calls us to regular weekly worship and it’s why the Bible tells believers “not to [neglect meeting] together,” because in this habit we encourage one another.

Irene’s faith in Christ was evidenced in her humor and in her toughness and I, for one, was encouraged by her faith!

We meet another tough woman of faith in the Gospel lesson from John, chapter 11, which we read a few moments ago. Martha, along with her sister Mary and brother Lazarus, were friends of Jesus. As our lesson opens, Jesus arrives in His friends’ hometown of Bethany. Lazarus has died four days earlier. Many of the siblings’ other friends had come to comfort Martha and Mary, just as people have done for Irene’s family this morning.

Martha sees Jesus and calls out to Him. Martha’s words indicate anger and disappointment with Jesus. “Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

There is an impulse when we grieve to feel that God has abandoned us, to question God and His promises. Some time after the events recorded in John 11, even Jesus, God in the flesh, would feel that God the Father had abandoned Him. From the cross, as He neared His own death, Jesus cried out, “Father, why have You forsaken Me?”

Such feelings are normal. Deep in our bones, we know that what the Bible teaches is true; we weren’t made for death, we were made to live! Several translations of an Old Testament passage, Ecclesiastes 3:11, tell us that God has set eternity in human hearts. We know that death is a foreign intruder that exists in this imperfect world, but should not exist in the Kingdom of God that Jesus died and rose to bring to all who believe in Him. Martha experienced the same feelings all people experience when a loved one dies.

Her feelings are made more poignant by the fact that she, her sister, and her brother all believe in Jesus. Even in her anger and disappointment, Martha calls Jesus, “Lord,” a title the use of which indicates that Martha believes that Jesus is more than a carpenter who does some teaching. She sees Jesus as the Master of the universe, as the One Who brings sight to the blind, healing to the paralytic, and new life to the dying.

In our lesson, Martha underscores that, even in the midst of a situation she can’t understand or explain—the death of her brother—she still believes in Jesus. “Even now,” she tells Jesus, “I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.”

Later, Jesus tells Martha that He is the resurrection and the life and that all who believe in Him, even if they die in this world, will rise to newness of life. Jesus asks Martha if she believes Him and, in the midst of her grief, with no idea that a few short moments later Jesus will raise Lazarus from the grave, Martha says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world.”

Folks, this is resilient faith. This is tough faith. It’s the kind of faith that I saw in Irene. It’s the kind of faith I am sure that she wants you to take hold of today.

It’s a faith that acknowledges the realities of this present, imperfect, sinful world in which we live. But it's a faith that trusts that Jesus, the resurrected Lord, is bigger than all our sorrows and that He gives eternity to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

Today, in spite of sorrow, there is reason for us to be glad.

You see, God is tough too! He went all the way to a cross to bring you forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. It’s to you and me, as much as it was to the people who first heard Him in first-century Judea, that Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the good news.”

That good news is what, even in her sorrow, Martha believed and what, even in her trials and suffering, Irene believed: “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Trust that God’s love is tough enough to love you wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, however weak and unworthy you may sometimes feel.

God endured the cross just because His love for you is resilient, tough, and uncompromising.

Let Him be your Lord today and in all the days of your life. He will give you the faith—and the humor and the toughness—you need to live each day.

And if you let Him, He will give you exactly what Irene is enjoying at this very moment: new life, life as it was meant to be, life forever in the presence of God! Amen

Keep Holding On!

[This was shared during worship this morning with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]

Luke 21:5-19
As followers of Jesus Christ, we know and cherish the promise that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ receive the forgiveness and grace that God freely offers the whole world. Believers in Jesus are the only people in the world who have an authentic and eternal hope for life with God. This hope should mean everything to us!

In twenty-six years as a pastor, I have seen that there is a qualitative difference between how those who trust in Jesus Christ face eternity and how those who are without faith in Christ face eternity.

Christians grieve the loss of other Christians, of course. It would be strange and unnatural not to grieve the loss of loved ones and friends. But, as Paul writes in First Thessalonians in the New Testament, believers in Jesus do “not grieve as others without hope” do.

To the grieving sister of His friend, Lazarus, Jesus says in John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me, will never die.”

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.”

We can live each day in hope and confidence because we have good news, bought and paid for with Jesus’ blood on the cross. This is the good news to which Jesus points all people in the Gospel of Mark when He says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

Jesus has secured an eternity of hope for us!

So, how do we live now? How do we live in this messy, sin-infested, dying world? How do we live today, in all of the moments of our lives?

It’s ironic that today’s Gospel lesson is really all about how to live in the day-to-day world in which you and I live. It's ironic because our lesson, Luke 21:5-19, is the first segment of a section of Luke’s Gospel that is described by the scholars as “apocalyptic.” From our look at Revelation earlier this year, you’ll remember that the word apacalupto, from the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, literally means, “I reveal.”

Apocalyptic literature in the Bible, which includes most of Revelation in the New Testament and Daniel in the Old Testament, basically contains God’s revelation of how this world will end and what lies beyond that end for you and me.

In the apocalyptic words of Jesus quoted in Luke 21:5-38, Jesus does reveal much about the end of the world. But in the verses that make up our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells us how to live today.

So, please pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to our Gospel lesson. Verses 5 and 6 set the stage:

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Imagine Jesus being here with us this morning and someone asking Him if He didn’t agree that Saint Matthew’s sanctuary was beautiful and Jesus saying, “It won’t last. Some day, it's going to be destroyed.” Or, imagine Him being shown, in a single moment, Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Statue of Liberty in New York City and hearing Him say that every fragment of those places would one day crumble to pieces.

Scenarios like these can only approximate how Jesus’ words about the Temple must have seemed to His first hearers. The Temple in Jerusalem was the living symbol of Judea’s religion and nationhood. It was the place where the presence of the God of the universe came to be among His people.

Yet Jesus says the Temple would be destroyed. Little more than forty years later, it was destroyed, undoubtedly caused by the God Who, in Jesus, said that worshiping Him “in spirit and truth” was more important than having the "right places" for worship. Jesus' words show us that often, places of worship like the Temple devolve into monuments to human egos rather than the places of humility and submission to God they were meant to be. Jesus’ words suggest that some of our most cherished religious traditions may be worthless, especially if in keeping them, we forget about truly worshiping Him as God and King over our lives!

In verse 7 of our lesson, no doubt frightened by Jesus’ words, His listeners ask what sign will be given that the Temple would be destroyed. Read along silently with me at verse 8 for Jesus’ response:

 “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.’” 

Jesus warns us to not fall for false messiahs. Years later, in letters like First and Second Timothy, which we looked at a few weeks ago, the apostle Paul warned Christians not to fall for false teachers. Such people still pop up today. They’re on religious TV stations, on the New York Times lists of best selling books, and even in the assemblies of the very Lutheran body to which we belong and that we cherish.

The moments when these false teachers make their plays to lead us away from God can come at any moment, which is why it’s important for us to use as many moments as we can steeping ourselves in God’s Word, getting to know the God of the Bible, not the false versions of God pushed by false teachers. That’s why Sunday School and other opportunities to study the Bible with others are important, even for we adults.

In verses 9 to 11 of the Gospel lesson, Jesus says not to be surprised or frightened by all of the disasters, natural and human-made, that happen in this fallen world.

Then, starting at verse 12, He warns that persecution will naturally befall believers in Him. We’ve seen exactly what Jesus was talking about in recent international events.

• Two weeks ago, a Catholic church in Iraq was attacked during worship; 70 people were killed. 
• This past week, a series of roadside bombs was detonated in Iraq, 11 in all, were set off in Christian neighborhoods there. 
• This past week, in Pakistan, a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, a mother of five, whose crime appears to be that she offered water to some co-workers who deemed her unclean because of her faith in Christ, was sentenced to be hanged for blasphemy. 
• And frequently, all across China, where a groundswell of conversions and baptisms help to make Christianity the fastest growing religion in the world, Christians are, every day, subject to arrest, torture, and execution by the Chinese government. 

Now, there’s all sorts of persecution in the world, of course. Some of it is even perpetrated by those claiming to be Christians. Whenever persecution happens, it is always wrong.

It’s also true that if you proclaim a Lord and Savior Who is more important than you, your family, your country, your neighborhood church, the denomination with which you’re affiliated, or anything else, you will incur opposition, snubbing, and persecution. Bank on it, Jesus says.

All forms of persecution toward those who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior of the world are the death throes of a sinful world Jesus is going to destroy, the early warning signs of the new creation that is already being born in all who repent and believe in Jesus.

In verse 13, Jesus says something peculiar about being persecuted for faith in Him: “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”

If you have a pencil or pen, you might want to circle that word, “opportunity.” In Jesus’ mathematics, Persecution=Opportunity.

Jesus is telling us that when Christians are persecuted, that’s when the depth and reality of our faith shows. It’s easy to confess faith in Jesus on Sunday mornings in a free country. But the authenticity of our confession is seen when being a Christian is marginalized, dismissed, or distorted, as happens today to Christians in America, to Christians in Logan, Ohio.

Listen carefully: God’s primary project in you and me is not to give us easy lives, but to build our characters, to retrofit our sinful natures, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, to recreate us in the very image of Jesus.

The character that people see in us when adversity strikes is our “testimony,” for good or ill. There is really only one way to ensure that our testimony for God is positively Christian and that’s to humbly own up to our imperfections, turn ourselves over to Christ, repent for our sins, and allow the Holy Spirit access to our lives every moment of every day.

And, we need to do those things every single day if we are to become, in Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, which I’ve mentioned before, “the Holy Spirit’s workshop.”

Acts, chapter 4, in the New Testament, is a very important place in Scripture for me. After a decade of atheism, I came to faith in Christ through the witness and confessions of the Lutheran Church. The first book of the Bible I read as a new Christian was Acts. I chose it because, in recounting the history of the Church in the first three to four decades after the risen Jesus' ascension, it would show me how Jesus' imperfect followers lived from day to day without Jesus being physically present to them. 

I'll never forget coming to Acts, chapter 4. It tells about how the apostles Peter and John, after healing a man in Jesus' Name, were dragged before the religious authorities, beaten, and told never to again speak in Jesus’ Name. "Whether it's right for you to forbid us to speak in Jesus' Name," they said, "we can't say. But we can't help but speak His Name because there isn't another name God has given by which we must be saved." Despite their defiance, the religious authorities released them.

Peter and John, the wounds from the whips still fresh on their backs, sought out the company of the other disciples. They all prayed together. When I first read their prayer nearly thirty-four years ago, I was thunderstruck. It begins: “And now, Lord, take notice of the threats they have made, and allow us, your servants…” And there, I expected them to ask God to help them to exact revenge against the men who had harmed Peter and John, the same authorities who had conspired with the Romans to crucify Jesus and who were then trying to stop the spread of the Gospel. But they didn't pray for vengeance. Instead, they asked God to help them “to speak your message with all boldness.” 

I remember that tears filled my eyes when I read those words and I stopped to pray, “Oh, God, please give me a faith like that!”

You see, God had forged new characters in these first Christians. They weren't interested in obtaining revenge on their persecutors. They only wanted the boldness to share Christ with others, in spite of persecutions.

I don’t know about you, but in my daily life, that’s what I want more than anything! I want to be faithful no matter what!

Persecution and all adversity are, as Jesus tells us, opportunities to live our faith and to share our testimony about Jesus, not just with our words, but with our lives. Jesus promises, you see in verse 18 of our Gospel lesson, that if we will be steadfast in following Him, seeking His help in all the moments of our lives, “not a hair on your head will perish.”

Jesus isn’t offering a cure for baldness here! Nor is He saying that all will go well in this life if we follow Him. He’s saying that, no matter the adversities we experience in this life, we can live each day in the certainty that we will be with Him for all eternity!

“By your endurance,” He says in verse 19, “you will gain your souls.”

Eternity, you see, belongs to those who hold onto Jesus even when the chips are down.

Today, Jesus’ message for us is simple: “Keep holding onto Me! Keep holding onto Me!"

What the Newest Zogby Poll Could Say

Yesterday over on Facebook, Ohio's outgoing Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, posted a link to a new Zogby Poll. Brunner, a progressive Democrat, understandably highlighted Zogby's finding that, in spite of the "shellacking" that Democrats took in the 2010 midterm elections a few weeks ago, voter majorities still favor government spending on infrastructure in order to create jobs. (That's what Zogby highlighted, too.) It's true, the majorities for such spending are still there.

But in looking at the poll results, something else became apparent.

This data, for the most part, indicates an overall moderation of views among Americans. The big red flag for those working in state governments across the country is the opposition to any help for states in balancing their budgets. Here in Ohio, of course, we face the prospect of an $8-billion shortfall. In California, the number is $52-billion.

The coming year may turn out to be the most challenging one for the country since World War Two. This makes the polarization offered up by the two parties even a greater problem than it has been; it will make it tougher to reach the compromises needed to go forward, I think.

Is there any chance that the two parties that both love to spend and give away money like drunken sailors (to their favorite special interest groups), will finally incite a moderate revolution? Or will the partisan kabuki dance continue until the American future is utterly mortgaged to the Chinese government and its allies, clients, and subjects? 


Right now, we have a very polarized electorate whose main question seems to be, "What's in it for me?" (And who nonetheless claim, if the exit polls are any indication, want the parties to work together in Washington.) That isn't a very promising political landscape. 


Praying, for those so inclined, like me, seems more than appropriate.