5 Pointers for Lutherans (and other Christians) Who Want to Share Christ with Others

Yeah, you're a Christian grateful for the new life God gives to you by His grace through your faith in Jesus Christ. And, yep, you know all about that Great Commission thingy, when Jesus deputized all who believe in Christ to tell others about the new life Jesus can give to them.

But sometimes, as a deputy, you feel a lot like Barney Fife. So, what can you do? How can you get on with the job Christ has given to you?

Here five pointers, taken from my sermon of yesterday, for Lutherans and other Christians who want to be faithful witnesses for Christ. Maybe they'll help.

• Maintain intimacy with Christ. Use what we Lutherans call "the means of grace," the routes God takes to fill us with faith, to give you a closer walk with Jesus Christ. These include God's Word, which we need to study, and Holy Communion. They also include prayer, conversation with the Lord. Through each, Christ draws us closer to Himself and fills us with assurance that "nothing in all creation"--not even our halting, imperfect attempts to give witness for the eternity of hope we have as believers in Jesus--can separate us from the love of God, given through Christ.
• Live in daily repentance and renewal. Repentance is changing our minds about our sins and turning to God for the forgiveness He offers through Christ. When we do this, God will renew us, helping us to live more faithfully. Two major things will happen when we live in daily repentance and renewal. First, God helps us to avoid sins that might harm us, harm others, or harm our relationship with God. Second, God helps others see the authenticity of our faith. As the bumper stickers put it, "Christians aren't perfect; just forgiven." When others see that we are admittedly imperfect people who seek each day to orient our lives to the will of God, it will enhance the credibility of our witness for Christ.
• Be intentional about forming friendships with spiritually-disconnected people. Jesus was always reaching out to unbelieving people. Many came to follow Him. God's Holy Spirit can empower us to reach out to the same kinds of people and, as we share our witness for Jesus with them, some of them too, will come to follow Jesus.
• Remember your own story. Real witnessing for Christ doesn't usually come when we share Bible tracts with people, but at the intersection of God's story, our story, and the story of our unbelieving friend. Remember how God has given you the undeserved gift of life with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Remember the sins for which Christ daily gives you forgiveness. Be ready to share the story of your relationship with Christ with others at the opportune moments.
• Be kind. Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God is given in order to lead us to repentance. God has been kind to us. Although we deserve death and condemnation, He has patiently given us time to become acquainted with His Son, repent for our sins, and believe in Jesus. Be kind, patient, and forbearing toward your disbelieving friends. Give them the time and space to experience God's love so that they too, can come to believe in Christ.

Taking Shelter, Scattering Seeds

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

Mark 4:26-34
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells two parables or stories about “the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God exists wherever the Holy Spirit empowers a person to believe in Jesus Christ as the only way to life with God and so, repents of sin and surrenders their whole life to Christ.

But we live in a fallen, sinful world. Sin exists within and around us, which is why it’s so important for Christians to confess our sins, ask God’s help to resist the temptation to sin, and put our lives in the hands of Jesus every day.

Yet, given the simple fact that sin so clearly has our world, our nation, and this community by the throat, we may feel reason to question whether the kingdom of God is present or if it hasn't been completely overrun by evil.

In these two parables, Jesus encourages us not to give in to despair!

Yes, disrespect for God’s Name, thievery and murder of all kinds, injustice to the poor, violations of God’s will that human beings have sexual intimacy only with persons of the opposite sex to whom they are married for life, reputation-damaging gossip, materialism, and all sorts of other sins fill our world.

Yet, the kingdom of God is still among us, still growing, and still able to usher into eternity with God anyone who dares to break with the world, repent of sin, and give their lives to Jesus Christ.

Turn to our lesson, Mark 4:26-34, in the pew Bibles.

The first parable Jesus tells in the lesson is found in Mark 4:26-29. Look what Jesus says in the first few verses there: “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.”

Here, Jesus introduces us to a reckless farmer. He scatters seed. He doesn’t bother with things like watering, hoeing to remove weeds, or laying on manure. He just scatters and goes through his daily routine, sleeping at night, waking in the morning. This man’s job--his only job, apparently--is to scatter the seed and wait and presumably, pray.

Folks, that’s our job as Christians, too. The seed of God’s kingdom in this parable is our word--our witness--about the gospel, the story of how Jesus Christ makes people right with God.

We use that word gospel, the modern rendering of an old English compound word, “God’s spell” or “God’s news,” all the time. But we ought to remind ourselves of what the gospel is.

Look at the passage of Scripture that Martin Luther called “the gospel in a nutshell”: John 3:16. Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

All human beings are born in sin and we deserve death, everlasting separation from God, punishment in hell. But God loves us so much that He sent God the Son, Jesus, to take the punishment for sin we deserve. He did that on a cross. There, Jesus died in our places. Then, God the Father raised Jesus up from the dead, so that all who surrender their lives--all their past sins and current temptations, all their present needs, and all their future lives, earthly and eternal--to Jesus, will have forgiveness of sin, the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, and the everlasting life with God for which human beings were first made.

God graciously offers these free gifts to all who trust in Jesus. This is the gospel and Jesus says that this good news is scattered by one means only: through you and me.

We are the farmers whose one and only job as Christians is to tell others the good news about Jesus. We’re to scatter the seed of God’s kingdom, then leave the growth and cultivation of that seed to God.

That’s a simple mission.

Yet it seems that when we Christians interact with our spiritually-disconnected friends, we find it easier to talk about anything or everything but the gospel.

But have you noticed something?

While we Christians fail to tell others the good news about Jesus and our churches get involved with politics and social issues and social gatherings and focus more on accommodating the world by telling people things like, “It’s OK if you shack up, cause boys will be boys and girls will be girls; it’s OK if you don’t believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and physically rose from the dead because we’ve never known anyone but Him like that either,” while we’re talking about everything but the gospel, the world is embracing all sorts of new evil, walking farther away from God.

In Acts 1:11, the crucified and risen Jesus, just before He ascended into heaven, told the eleven apostles and, through them, told us: “You shall be witnesses of Me.”

If you’re a baptized believer in Jesus Christ, you are one of His witnesses, called to scatter the seed of the Gospel.

The only question is: Will we be faithful or unfaithful witnesses?

We just had a murder trial in Logan. What would have happened if all the witnesses called on sat on the stand and provided no information on the case? The jury would have been unable to make a decision.

If we Christians, who have been called to be witnesses for Christ, fail to tell others about Christ, they are unable to make a judgment about whether to receive the new life in God’s kingdom that Jesus offers. 

The stakes are so high! Heaven and hell for all the people we may interact with in our lives depends on whether we Christians will be faithful witnesses for Christ or not!

Look at what Jesus says in Mark 4:29, at the end of the first parable: “But when the grain ripens, immediately He puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

It’s pretty clear to me that the “He” here is not the farmer who scatters the seed in the first few verses of the parable.

Turn to Joel 3:13. This passage from the Old Testament prophet is what lay behind Jesus’ words here. It says: “Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow--for their wickedness is great.”

Both this passage from Joel and the words of Jesus in Mark 4:29, are about the ultimate judgment that will come to this world. The world will hurtle along from one evil day to the next. Evil will overflow through the life of the world. Those who refuse to repent and believe in Jesus will keep on sinning unrepentantly and never blink an eye.

Then God will wield His sickle. This world will come to an end. Only the seeds that have borne grain--only those who believe in Jesus Christ--will rise again.

This is why you and I must get over ourselves, get over our fears, and ask the Holy Spirit each day to present us with opportunities to scatter the seed of the gospel. We need to ask God to give us time in our conversations with our neighbors, friends, and family members to tell them that surrender to Jesus Christ is the only way to life with God. We need to ask God to help us scatter the seeds of His kingdom each day!

But how do we quiet Lutheran Christians do that? How do we find a way to scatter the seed of the gospel so that others can come to eternal life with God? Here are a few steps you can take toward being a faithful witness for Christ:

• Maintain intimacy with Christ. Use what we Lutherans call "the means of grace," the routes God takes to fill us with faith, to give you a closer walk with Jesus Christ. These include God's Word, which we need to study, and Holy Communion. They also include prayer, conversation with the Lord. Through each, Christ draws us closer to Himself and fills us with assurance that "nothing in all creation"--not even our halting, imperfect attempts to give witness for the eternity of hope we have as believers in Jesus--can separate us from the love of God, given through Christ.
  
• Live in daily repentance and renewal. Repentance is changing our minds about our sins and turning to God for the forgiveness He offers through Christ. When we do this, God will renew us, helping us to live more faithfully. Two major things will happen when we live in daily repentance and renewal. First, God helps us to avoid sins that might harm us, harm others, or harm our relationship with God. Second, God helps others see the authenticity of our faith. As the bumper stickers put it, "Christians aren't perfect; just forgiven." When others see that we are admittedly imperfect people who seek each day to orient our lives to the will of God, it will enhance the credibility of our witness for Christ.
• Be intentional about forming friendships with spiritually-disconnected people. Jesus was always reaching out to unbelieving people. Many came to follow Him. God's Holy Spirit can empower us to reach out to the same kinds of people and, as we share our witness for Jesus with them, some of them too, will come to follow Jesus.
• Remember your own story. Real witnessing for Christ doesn't usually come when we share Bible tracts with people, but at the intersection of God's story, our story, and the story of our unbelieving friend. Remember how God has given you the undeserved gift of life with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Remember the sins for which Christ daily gives you forgiveness. Be ready to share the story of your relationship with Christ with others at the opportune moments.
• Be kind. Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God is given in order to lead us to repentance. God has been kind to us. Although we deserve death and condemnation, He has patiently given us time to become acquainted with His Son, repent for our sins, and believe in Jesus. Be kind, patient, and forbearing toward your disbelieving friends. Give them the time and space to experience God's love so that they too, can come to believe in Christ.

When the gospel--the kingdom of God--takes hold in a person’s life, it brings indescribable comfort and hope and peace.

In the second parable, Jesus tells us more about the kingdom of God. Look at how He describes it in Mark 4:30-32. He begins with a question: “To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it?”

When hearing Jesus say this, His first listeners probably thought of similar words from the Old Testament. Turn to Isaiah 40:18. Written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, Isaiah challenges God’s ancient people, Israel, to get a fresh picture of what God is like. He writes: “To whom will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?” The similarity between these words and those spoken by Jesus are so similar that we can be certain the words written by the prophet in Isaiah 40 form a backdrop for Jesus' words in our gospel lesson.

After these opening questions, Isaiah warns that you can’t compare God to the carved images that an artist might sculpt or to any picture our imaginations might create. God is greater than anything we can conceive. Then Isaiah writes in verse 24 of the princes and supposedly important people of this world: “Scarcely shall they be planted, scarcely shall they be sown, scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth, when He [when God] will also blow on them, and they will wither, and the whirlwind will take them away like stubble.”  Those who think that they're "all that" and that they don't need God may thrive for a time. But only God can give life to dead people and what will those who think they have no need of God do when they face God on the last day of this broken, dying world?

Now, go back to Mark 4 and look at Jesus second parable, verses 31-32. The kingdom of God, Jesus says, “is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on the earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all the herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade.”

Listen: In a world with so much tragedy and sadness and sin, it can be easy for us to lose sight of the fact that the ultimate fate of all the world still is in the hands of almighty God. The kingdom of God may seem as small and insignificant as a little mustard seed in this great big universe. But those who surrender to Jesus Christ are not alone and this fallen world is not the final destination of those who trust in Christ!

In my first parish one day, I went to visit a woman who was dying of cancer. She had undergone much more pain than she would have otherwise because she had consented to taking experimental treatments at the University of Michigan hospital, allowing doctors to learn more about her particular cancer and its treatment. She was back in the hospital in Defiance, Ohio, barely able to breathe, near death.

“Are you mad at God?” I asked her. Gasping, she drew in the air to say, “I was.” Then, using her thumb to point to the wall behind her, where a cross hung above her bed, she said, “But now I know that He’s always been right here. He won’t let me go.”

She left this life shortly thereafter. But not before she had learned to take shelter in the arms of the God Who has shared our death so that those who trust in Him, even when they die, can share His life for eternity. She trusted in Jesus and so, lived in peace and died with hope.

That woman taught me that all the wealth, power, and even good health that some may enjoy in this world are all destined to be taken from them and in the end, all that will stand for eternity will be the God we know in Jesus Christ--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--and those to whom God gives life through their faith in Jesus.

It may not always be so clear in this world where reality has gotten jumbled by sin and death, but those who have Jesus as their God and king know the truth of words in verses 13-15 of today’s psalm, Psalm 92: “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God...They shall be fresh and flourishing, to declare that the Lord is upright: [God] is my rock...”

May God be your rock.

May you daily let the seed of His kingdom be planted and grow in you.

May you daily scatter the seed of Christ’s good news so that, believing in Jesus, they may live with God forever.

And may you take shelter in the arms of the God Who never lets go of those who trust in Him.

Amen

When Sin Stands in the Way of Your Closeness to God

In her book, When You Don't Know What to Pray: How to Talk to God About Anything, Linda Evans Shepherd includes a chapter on praying to experience God's presence in our lives. Included there is a list of those things that may prevent us from enjoying closeness with God. Number one on her list is unrepented sin. Shepherd writes:

...it's not like God quits loving us, it's more like we can't hear his music because we're tuned to another station. We need to tune our antenna to God! We need to stop watching the shows we know we shouldn't see. Quit listening to music we know we shouldn't hear. Quit saying those things about our pastor, our family, our spouse, our co-workers, and our neighbors we know we shouldn't say. Stop sleeping with those people to whom we're not married. Block the porn sites. Stop with the drugs and the alcohol.

God hasn't moved. He hasn't left us. However, if we have sin in our lives, we need to clean up our act so we can enjoy his sweet spirit.

If we don't start taking our Christian walk more seriously, we're going to reap disaster in our personal lives, our families, our churches, and our community. Why? Because when we go our own way we'll zoom headlong into trouble. So, if you're doing something you shouldn't, stop it, right now. Put it down or turn it off and walk away.

Good advice! Except that, from my reading of the Bible and my own personal experience, I would put it slightly differently: Run away!

Shepherd lists several other reasons we may not be enjoying God's presence:

• Lack of invitation
• Unanswered prayer
• Grief
• No understanding of the depths of God's love

Just before He ascended to heaven, the resurrected Jesus promised believers, "I am with you always." The great thing about the promises of Jesus, God enfleshed, is that they're valid and real even when we don't feel them. Neither God nor our faith are captive to our feelings. So, even when we don't feel God's presence with us, He's still there!

What Leadership Is

John Schroeder cites this from Jonathon Leeman:

Leadership is not about running after all your dreams and ambitions, it’s often about getting on your hands and knees and making your life a stage on which those you love can pursue their ambitions, hopes, and ministries. It’s about building up as much as it’s about moving up. It’s about equipping and enabling and empowering.

John then quotes Philippians 2:5-8, worth quoting again here:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.  

That, is leadership, and why there are very few true leaders in the world at any given time and why most people have never heard of them.

Clash of Households

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

Mark 3:20-35
The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson are as likely to offend us as they did the first people to hear them in first-century Judea. In a few short verses, Jesus turns His back on His family from Nazareth and on the scribes, who stand as representatives of God’s people, Israel. He says that His ultimate loyalty in life does not go to His family, nor His country.

Please pull out a Bible and turn to Mark 13:34-35, the last verses of our lesson. We’re told: “And He [Jesus] looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him and said, ‘Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.’”

We’re going to dig more deeply into this passage in a moment. But first, we need to understand the context in which Jesus says these words. What was going on before the set of personal encounters in which Jesus said these things?

In Mark 3:13-19, Jesus, we’re told, went up on a mountain and called twelve people to be His apostles. Jesus was going to train these men for the time after His death, resurrection, and ascension. At that time, they would be sent to spread the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus as God and Savior. Ancient Israel, God’s people, you remember, were founded on the twelve sons of Jacob, who became the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. In Jesus, God is now extending the offer of new and everlasting life with God to all people--Jews and Gentiles--who believe in Jesus Christ. The apostles are to be the founding fathers of a new community of faith, the Church, a new creation, that lasts for all eternity.

After Jesus calls the apostles, Mark 3:19 tells us that Jesus and His new founding family of faith, go into a house. Some translations say "His house,” which would make sense because we know that by this point in His life, Jesus had left Nazareth and was living in a house at Capernaum, on shores of the Sea of Galilee. But this seemingly insignificant word, house, is really important for what comes in our gospel lesson. In it, the confrontation between the house of Jesus and the house of Satan comes into full view, as does a shocking revelation of who lives in those two places.

Verse 20, the first verse of our Gospel lesson, says that a huge group of people crowded around Jesus’ house. People had been crowding around Jesus from the moment that He began His public ministry, telling people: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” By this point though, Jesus' family is starting to freak out. Look at verse 20: “...when His own people [that is, Jesus’ family from Nazareth] heard about this, they went out to lay hold of [Jesus], for they said, ‘He is out of His mind.’”

No, you’re not misreading this passage. Jesus’ own family turned against Him, including we’ll see, His mother, Mary.

They want to try to get Jesus out of the house, away from the apostles and the crowd, and presumably back to Nazareth.

The passage says that they wanted to “lay hold of Him,” a phrase that translates the word, kratese, from the Greek in which Mark originally wrote his gospel; it means arrest and it’s the same word that Mark used of the arrest of both John the Baptist and Jesus Himself.  Jesus’ family want to stop Him from continuing His ministry. They say that Jesus is “out of His mind,” literally “beside Himself.” In those days, mental illness, being out of one’s mind, was equated with being possessed by a demon! This is what Jesus' mother and brothers think of Jesus!

Why would they think that? Probably because, as Pastor Meda Stamper writes, Jesus was violating the family “script.”

In first century Judea, loyalty to family was equated with loyalty to God and country and there were certain things family members were expected to do. For example, the oldest son was expected to inherit the lion’s share of his father’s estate,  take his widowed mother into his home, and continue the family business and way of life.

But Jesus had violated all those expectations. He’d left Nazareth, forsaking the family business and while we know that He would later provide for the care of His mother, Mary, by entrusting her to His friend, John, He didn’t have Mary living with Him in Capernaum.

Maybe when Mary had so faithfully accepted that her firstborn was going to be the Messiah, she hadn’t thought it would entail His dropping everything, leaving His family behind, and being so radically committed to doing His Father’s will.

In any case, one can easily imagine the conversations of Mary and the rest of Jesus’ family: “Jesus has gone out of His mind, mother." "We have to get him away from all those people.”

Sometimes, our families are the people who will work the hardest to keep us from Jesus Christ.

A pastor in New York City reports that one of the biggest obstacles his congregation faces in reaching out to young people involved in selling drugs is the pressure they get from their parents. You see, selling drugs can bring a lot of money into a household. When a young person involved in that trade finds himself wanting to know more about Jesus Christ, wanting to hear how through Christ, God can forgive their sins and give them new lives, their parents become concerned about losing all that income. So, the parents will tell them things like, “Stay away from those Christians. Why do you want to become a religious fanatic? Why do you want to turn your back on your family?”

I remember the reaction of some of my extended family members after I had come to faith in Christ and made it clear that, on Christmas Eve, Ann and I would be arriving for the family gift exchange after we had worshiped at the Christmas Eve service. You’d have thought I had just told them I was planning to rob a bank. Why, one of them wondered, would you want to disrupt the family’s Christmas celebrations by going to celebrate Christ’s birth with Christ’s family, the Church? This was the kind of opposition to His faithfulness to God the Father Jesus faced from His own family.

But they weren’t the only ones against Jesus’ pursuit of the will of His Father.

In verse 22, the scribes, guardians of Jewish religious faith, come after Jesus, too. Look, they say of Him, “He has Beelzebub [another name for Satan]” and “By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.” Satan, the scribes claim, possesses Jesus and it’s through the power of Satan that Jesus is able to cast out demons.

Look at verse 23 to see how Jesus responds to their accusations. “How,” Jesus asks, “can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, the kingdom cannot stand.” In other words, if Satan is setting out to destroy his own kingdom--the household of Satan--by giving Jesus the power to cast out demons, Satan’s house wouldn’t stand for long.

Jesus cuts their argument to pieces--clearly demonstrating that He isn’t out of His mind or filled with a demon. I love the way Eugene Peterson renders verse 26 in The Message. There, Jesus says: “If Satan were fighting Satan, there soon wouldn't be any Satan left.” So, Jesus is saying, whether I am sent by God or by Satan, the jig is up for Satan. His kingdom--His household--is being destroyed.

But in reality, Jesus says in verse 27, something else is happening: Someone stronger than Satan, God Himself, is entering the house of Satan and stealing away those who have been kidnapped by Him through sin and death and giving new and everlasting life to Jesus, the stronger one.

What Jesus says next is critically important. Neither His family nor the scribes believed in Jesus for one simple reason: They refused to heed the witness of the Holy Spirit and the simple evidence before them.

Jesus was doing all that the Old Testament prophets had revealed hundreds of years before that the Messiah, God’s anointed King, would do. But instead of believing the witness of God’s Holy Spirit about Who Jesus was, Jesus’ family and the scribes accused Jesus of having a demon.

So, Jesus says, beginning in verse 28: “Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven...and whatever blasphemies they utter [blasphemy is showing contempt for or insulting God] they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal damnation.”

The New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit has two major functions. He convicts of sin, showing us that we deserve separation from God, and He convinces us of God’s grace, God’s charitable love and forgiveness, offered to all with faith in Christ.

The Spirit teaches that through Jesus and our faith in Him, we leave the household of Satan, where people live in bondage to sin and cannot free themselves, and enter the household of God.

When people willfully refuse to heed what the Holy Spirit teaches about Jesus, they erect a wall between God and them. The free gift of new life offered by Jesus can penetrate any heart and make any person new. But not if they refuse to believe the witness of the Holy Spirit about Jesus, the Son of God.

In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis points out that there are three ways we can view Jesus.

We can say that Jesus is a lunatic, which is what Jesus’ family said of Him. Jesus claims that He and God the Father are one, an assertion which, as Lewis says, a bit like a man claiming to be a poached egg. Yet, all you have to do is consider the coherence of arguments like the ones Jesus offers in our gospel lesson and know that Jesus was not crazy.

We can say that Jesus is a liar, which is what the scribes said, claiming that Jesus was really an agent of Satan. But the miracles He never performed in His own interest, but for the well being of others, and His resurrection from the dead are strong indicators that when He claimed to be God and Savior of the world, Jesus was telling the truth.

The evidence then, indicates that Jesus was neither lunatic nor liar. So, Lewis says, if Jesus is neither of these things, He must be precisely Who He claimed to be: the Lord God in human flesh, “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the only way to everlasting life with God!

Turn for a moment, if you would, to John 6:29.  Jesus says: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him Whom He [the Father] sent.” We become part of the only family that will outlast this fallen, dying world, the household of Jesus Christ, by believing in, staking our whole lives on, Jesus and no one and nothing else. This is the will of God for every human being.

And if you believe in Jesus, His words in Mark 3:35 should give you comfort and power every day you live. Read them with me now: “For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.”

Many things in this world can work to drive a wedge between Jesus and us: Our families, friends, careers, and country, to name just a few. But none of those things can bring us life with God, peace with God, or the hope of eternity. Only life with Jesus can bring us these things and much more. When the world--even the people closest to us who we love the most--tries to put anything ahead of Jesus and the will of God that we believe in Him, we must learn from Jesus and resist that pressure. When we do that, Jesus says, He will keep a promise to us, a promise sealed by His death and resurrection: "The one who endures to the end [keeps believing in Christ] will be saved."

When you and I believe in Jesus, we are the brothers, sisters, and mothers of Jesus, members of the family of Jesus. And when we remain as steadfast members of Jesus' household, by the power of the Holy Spirit, resisting the world's attempts (and the devil's attempts) to tear us from the hands of Christ, we have life with God today and forever. That’s good news!

But don’t keep it to yourself: Tell others about the new and everlasting creation of which they can be a part when they believe in Jesus. Invite them to become part of God’s eternal family too. Amen

Kindness Should Be the Christian's MO

My wife and I ate at a place called Jimmy's Pizza in Litchfield, Minnesota the other day. One server was working the dining room, taking incoming phone calls for delivery orders, and checking customers out at the register. The place wasn't packed, but it was a Friday and, judging by the numbers of times new phone calls came in, business was steady.

Our server was amazing, though! She kept up with everything and did so with a smile, an occasional kind comment, and efficiency.

Toward the end of our visit, after we'd told her that we would take our check any time she could get to it, I said to her, "It would be great to bottle up your energy and good attitude and sell them!" She smiled, then moved to clear away the dishes of a party that had just left. With what seemed like a single motion, she put the dishes in one hand, swept the tip from the table, and wiped the table clean.

But then, she whirled around, fixed me with a smile, and said, "Just for the record, that may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!"

It's amazing the impact a simple expression of kindness and appreciation can have on people!

My friend Steve Sjogren likes to riff off an observation once made by Mother Teresa. Steve says, "Small things done with great love will change the world."

The Bible says that it's the kindness of God that leads people to repentance. (Repentance is changing our minds about God, His Son Jesus Christ, our sins and exchanging our selfish views for God's views about what's right and wrong, useful and useless.)

When people repent, they're open to trusting in Christ, the one Who came into the world to bring new, everlasting life to those who dare to trust in Him.

Jesus says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16). 

God has been incredibly kind to me, granting me forgiveness and new life I don't deserve. He's also commissioned me and every person who believes in Him to help others believe in Him. That's why there may be no more important things for Christians, as ambassadors for Christ, representatives of the One revealed to be God in the flesh, to do than to be kind to others.

UPDATE (6/7/2012): See here.

Overhearing Office Chatter Decreases Productivity

I've never been able to write, read, research, pray, or engage in any concentration-intense activity when a TV is on or when there's loud conversation happening close to me. And precisely because I love music so much, the only kind of music I can have playing around me when I'm working on a sermon, for example, is instrumental stuff, like classical or jazz, that doesn't engage me emotionally or mentally. Were I to play any of my favorite artists' music, all of whom sing, or listen to NPR, while trying to be productive, I could forget about getting anything useful done.

Maybe I'm easily distracted. But today's Harvard Business Review's Daily Stat indicates that at least one form of distraction, one that I would find hard to deal with if I worked in an office with others, can decrease productivity.

JUNE 4, 2012 Coworkers' Conversations Impair Your Performance Overhearing your office mates' conversations can cause a decline of 5% to 10% in your ability to read, write, and carry out other tasks requiring efficient use of short-term memory, according to a New York Times report of a study by Finland's Institute of Occupational Health. The researchers found that in an office environment, speech is the most disturbing type of sound because it is processed by working memory. Employees perform better when speech is masked by the sound of a babbling brook. Source: From Cubicles, Cry for Quiet Pierces Office Buzz

Silence is More Than Golden

"Discretion of speech is better than eloquence with words." Today's post from Our Daily Bread is particularly powerful.

One of the toughest passages of Scripture to live is (at least it is for me): "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him" (Colossians 3:17).

Silence may be more than golden; it may be the very word God wants us to speak.

Father, give the Holy Spirit total access to my mind, body, and tongue, so that everything I do, say, and am glorifies You and expresses my thanks for the gift of new life that comes from Jesus Christ alone. Amen

Taking the Costly Road

"...following Jesus is costly. The costs of not following, however, are eternal." (Craig S. Keener)

Putting Christ first in our lives may cost us misunderstandings with friends and the loss of relationships with them over those misunderstandings.

Putting Christ first may mean loss of social acceptability, the loss of jobs or income.

It may, sometimes, even cost us our earthly lives, as many Christians over the past one-hundred years or so have found. (More Christians were martyred for their faith in the twentieth century than in the previous nineteen centuries combined.)

But, by the grace of God given in Christ, may we learn to say with the apostle Paul: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18).

Buck the Waves

Ever notice how so many people described as being "cutting edge," "prophetic," or even "courageous" are just jumping on board the latest flavor-of-the-week bandwagon?

 This is the kind of thing Paul warned the young pastor Timothy would happen, as it does in some form in every generation: "...the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Buck the waves: Stick with Christ and the Word of God. "All other ground is sinking sand..."

This is One of Those Items That Makes Me Say, "Oy!"

Two characteristics of post-modern culture are:

• Our elevation of sex as an end in itself, rather than the creation of a good God to be used by husbands and wives to express their love and bonding to one another and, when God and they choose, a means of sharing their love with children.
• Our elevation of the value of other creatures, even as we denigrate the value of human beings.

These two characteristics are seen very much in the contemporary Church, as it plays to and reflects the surrounding culture, rather than raising a voice that shows people the more excellent ways of God.

Now, apparently, in one segment of the post-modern church, new prayers for animals that go way beyond blessing them are being considered. Check out Pastor Peters' summary. Make sure you read his comments at the end; I laughed out loud!

Five Great Insights on Growing Churches

Great food and prayer for thought here from the latest issue of Thrivent Magazine:


Spring 2012 | Volume 110 | Number 663

Live, Give, Grow: Faith

Growing Congregations

Interested in growing your church? You may find some ideas in a recent study of American congregations done by Faith Communities Today, an ongoing multi-faith research effort based at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut. Here's what growing congregations are doing:

1. Using four or five technologies (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, email and more) to serve existing members and connect with new ones (57%).
2. Offering parenting events, which they consider a "specialty" of the congregation (64%).
3. Holding special events once a month or more to attract people from outside the congregation (44%).
4. Always having children or youth read, speak or perform during worship (45%).
5. Emphasizing prayer groups, which they consider a "specialty" of the congregation (47%).

Source: FACTs on Growth (faithcommunitiestoday.org)

This Morning's Discussion of Luke, chapters 7 to 11 (Read the New Testament in a Year)

The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are currently taking a year to read the New Testament. We read five chapters each week. On Wednesdays, we get together for discussions of the week's readings. People can choose to come either in the mornings or the evenings.

Here is this morning's discussion of Luke, chapters 7 through 11.

"Bold Lutheran" Need Not Be an Oxymoron!

[This is from my devotions for the Saint Matthew Church Council this evening.]

Tonight, I'd like to look at three passages of Scripture. The first is John 14:1. It comes from the same section of John as our gospel lessons for the past few Sundays have come. It's what scholars call the Farewell Discourse, words spoken by Jesus in the presence of the twelve apostles on the night of His arrest. In John 14:1, Jesus says:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me."

Martin Luther had some especially important things for Lutherans to hear about these words of Jesus.

First, Luther said:

...if we Christians stay close to [Christ], we know that He speaks to us.

Those who trust that Jesus is God and Savior and is risen and is living, seated at the right hand of God the Father, know that, to this day, Jesus speaks to us.

• Jesus, first of all and most assuredly speaks to us in the only book in the world the contents of which were breathed into its writers by the Holy Spirit: the Bible. 
• And, Jesus speaks to us in what one pastor calls "whispers," bits of guidance, messages to the heart, that the Holy Spirit speaks to the minds of those who follow Jesus. (Those "whispers" will always be consistent with what we know of Jesus from the Bible, by the way. Whispers that urge us to sin aren't from God!)
• Jesus also speaks to us through the Sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, the "visible words" that have been instituted by Christ, involve physical elements (bread and wine or water), and bring the forgiveness of sins. 

Luther then says this of Jesus' words in John 14:1:

We can be sure of this: a sorrowful, timid, and frightened heart doesn't come from Christ.

Wow! We Lutherans need to especially latch onto the truth in those words. That's because when it comes to living our faith out loud or sharing the Good News of new life that can belong to anyone who turns from sin and believes in Jesus, we Lutherans tend to be timid.

Words on a T-shirt I saw not long ago give a good characterization of we Lutherans:

I'm proud to be a Lutheran...but not too proud.

I want to tell you that our hesitation about letting the light of Jesus shine from us and about telling others the Good News about Jesus does not come from Jesus or from the Holy Spirit.

Our hesitation is learned and cultural, not spiritual. It's not of God!

A second passage of Scripture I want to look at underscores this fact. It's 2 Timothy 1:6-7. These verses come from the second letter we have in the New Testament that was written by the apostle Paul to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul writes:

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 

All Christians have the Holy Spirit living within them. The Spirit is sometimes portrayed in Scripture as a burning flame. Paul says that we need to rekindle this flame, stoke the fire of passion and belief in Christ within us.

We do this by daily contact with God, especially by praying throughout our days about anything and everything, seeking God's help and guidance and praising Him, along with regularly reading and studying God's Word.

The Holy Spirit is not "a spirit of cowardice." The more we Christians rely on God, the more the Holy Spirit ignites and sustains our passion and makes us bold in sharing our faith with others.

We need to seek the help of God's Holy Spirit so that we can live with the same boldness and conviction shown by Paul in the book of Romans:

...I am not ashamed of the gospel [Paul writes]; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [or Gentile, the non-Jew]. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith."

May God's Holy Spirit fill us with boldness as we spread the good news of new life that belongs to those (and only to those) with faith in Jesus Christ!

Wants, Needs, and Daily Bread

MAY 21, 2012

Couples Argue 3 Times per Month Over Finances

Financial matters trigger an average of 3 arguments per month for married couples, an incidence that rises to 4 per month for those aged 45 to 54, according to a U.S. survey conducted for the American Institute of CPAs by Harris Interactive. The most common source of contention is disagreement over what's a "want" and what's a "need." The next most common issues are unexpected expenses and insufficient savings.

Source: AICPA Survey: Finances Causing Rifts for American Couples

This bit of information was the daily stat from the Harvard Business Review yesterday.

After I shared it with my wife, we both agreed that, happily, money or how to spend and save it, isn't a bone of contention between us.

You know, Jesus teaches Christians to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."

Martin Luther explains this petition in The Small Catechism: "God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that He would help us recognize this so that we could receive our daily bread with thanksgiving."

Of course, there are many millions of people in this world who lack "daily bread."

But this is not a provision problem. God provides all that we need, including all the technology we need to cause even the most challenging of environments provide people with sustainability.

The widespread existence of hunger in our world today--every twelve seconds, a child dies of hunger somewhere on the planet--is a sharing problem: We who have aren't sharing with those who have, often not sharing even the know-how by which people who live in parts of the world that suffer drought or, as the result of human power games, famine.

This is why the people of our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are involved with World Vision.

Through World Vision, we sponsor a child in Ethiopia. The money doesn't go directly to the child or to her family, but to efforts toward creating a sustainable future in the village in which she lives. (As well as sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with her.)

The youth of our church also have, for the past two years, participated in the 30 Hour Famine. During their famine, the teens go without food for thirty hours and receive pledges from those supporting their efforts, with the monies also going to World Vision's efforts to erase the global food shortage. (Over the course of the thirty hours, the young people also learn about the world hunger challenge and what can be done to address it.)

It's gratifying being able to give up some of our own comfort and resources in order to be the conduits through whom God provides our global neighbors with their daily bread...today and in a sustained future.

I also believe that if couples will daily seek to align their lives with the will of God as revealed in the Bible, their arguments over money will begin to diminish. Grateful for the undeserved gifts of forgiveness for sin and everlasting life with God that comes to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, they'll want to spend less superfluously and give more generously. (Learning this is a process, by the way, and it's a lesson we never fully learn this side of the grave.)

It isn't that God doesn't want us to have fun, of course. But when "fun" is the aim of our lives, we separate ourselves from God and others, we can become selfish, and we lose ourselves.

Jesus once asked: "What does it profit...to gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit [yourself]? (Luke 9:25). Good question!

Jesus' Goodbye Prayer

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

John 17:6-19
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re the parent of younger children (if you're the parent of younger children, no imagining necessary) and you’re about to go away on a long trip.

As a responsible parent, before going, there are at least three major things you would be sure to do.

First, you would arrange for someone to take care of your kids in your absence.

Second, you would review for your children any essential instructions, including remembering that you always love them.

And third, you would pray, asking that God would see that your children were looked after and that you would all be safely, happily reunited.

Jesus does all three of these things in chapters 13 through 17 of John’s gospel, a section of the New Testament scholars call Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. They’re words Jesus speaks at the Last Supper in the presence of the apostles on the night before His crucifixion.

After being crucified, of course, Jesus would rise from the dead and, forty days later, ascend to heaven. From that moment, Jesus knew that no one on earth would see Him face to face for a period of time known only to God the Father.

So, in John 13:36, Jesus says: “Where I am going, you cannot follow Me now, but you will follow Me afterward.” Like a responsible parent, Jesus is preparing His followers for His impending departure.

Later, in John 14:18, Jesus assures the disciples that, even with Him being physically absent, they wouldn’t be alone: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” Jesus will come back some day, the dead who have believed in Him will rise again, and Jesus will welcome His children into the new heaven and the new earth He has prepared for believers in Christ. But until that moment, He would not (and He does not) leave those who believe in Him by themselves. He sends the Holy Spirit to be with us!

Then in John, chapter 17, having arranged for the care of those who believe in Him and having instructed believers in how to live until He comes back, Jesus does what any responsible parent does before a time of separation from his or her children: He prays.

Turn to John, chapter 17, please. There, you’ll see that Jesus’ chapter-long prayer, called by some the high priestly prayer, has been divided by translators into three sections.

• In verses 1 through 5, Jesus prays for Himself, not selfishly, but to ask that, as He had glorified God the Father during His time on earth, the Father would now glorify Him through His suffering, death, and resurrection, all so people will believe in Him and have life. 
• In verses 20 through 26, Jesus prays for people who will come to believe in Him through the witness of those who first followed and believed in Him. (That includes you and me.)
• Our lesson is John 17:6-19. Here, Jesus prays for His first disciples. 

Let’s look at what Jesus prays. In verses 6 to 8, He says that He has “manifested” the Father’s Name. To manifest is to show or to make clear. John 1:18 says: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” The New Revised Standard Version translates that last phrase: “It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him [made God] known.” By taking on human flesh, Jesus has manifested God. When we look to Jesus, we see what God is like. In fact, we see God.

Of course, not everyone looks at Jesus and sees that He is God in the flesh. Some refuse to see God in Jesus. The fact is that only those who are willing to see Jesus in this way are granted the gift of faith. These are the people who become disciples.

Disciples --followers of Jesus--aren’t perfect people. Nor are they people who don’t sometimes have doubts. They’re people who come from an imperfect world and are themselves imperfect. But by God’s amazing grace, God gives forgiveness to those who repent for sin and grants brand new, everlasting lives to those who surrender control over their lives to Jesus. Disciples are forgiven sinners in whom, day in and day out, the Holy Spirit is constructing faith in Jesus as Lord, God, Savior, and King of their lives.

In verse 9, Jesus prays something curious. We know from John 3:16 and other passages that God the Father sent Jesus because God so loved the world, in spite of our sin, that He sent God the Son--Jesus--so that all who believe in may not perish, lost to God forever, but have everlasting life. God loves the world and the human beings who populate it!

Yet look at how Jesus prays in verse 9: “I pray for them [meaning the disciples] . I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.”

You see, more important to Jesus than this world are the people God has given to Him, the people who entrust their lives to Him, the people who make up His Church.

Long after this universe has been destroyed and Jesus establishes His new heaven, new earth, and the new Jerusalem, believers in Jesus--the Church--will still exist. (Revelation 21:1-4)

The Church, the fellowship of Jesus’ disciples, is eternal.

The Church isn’t buildings, gardens, classrooms, sanctuaries, pipe organs, albs and stoles, hymn books, or offering plates.

I love how Article VII of the Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional documents of the Lutheran movement, based on the Bible, describes the Church. It says that the “...one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.”

None of this is to say that the Church on earth is perfect. Personally, I know that I drag my old sinful self, sometimes kicking and screaming, whenever I come into the presence of Christ or gather with the fellowship of believers in Christ! This side of our own resurrections, every saint is still a sinner: a forgiven sinner, a recovering sinner, a sinner who lives in daily repentance and renewal, but still a sinner, saved only by the grace God gives to all who believe in Jesus Christ.

Article VIII of the Augsburg Confession notes that even in the church there are “many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners [who] remain among the godly...”

But that doesn’t make the Church any less essential for anyone to have a life with God.

Life with God only happens in the lives of those who hear, receive, and believe in the gospel--the good news about Jesus--and who receive the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

And these things--gospel and sacrament--are only offered by the Church.

This is why Jesus goes on to pray in John 17:11: “Holy Father, keep through Your Name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.”

Let’s be clear about what Jesus is praying here.

Jesus is not praying that everybody will all just get along.

There’s nothing wrong with people getting along, of course, and one day, after Jesus has returned to the earth, the dead who believed in Him arise, and He establishes the new heaven and the new earth, the harmony God intended for this fallen world will come into being.

But Jesus is not praying for unity in His Church in these days before His return at the expense of the truth.

He’s praying that our oneness, our unity, as Christians will be rooted in the truth that can only be found in Him and in the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and revealed in the pages of Scripture.

That’s why Jesus prays as He does in John 17:17 (look at the verse, please): “Sanctify [that is, set them apart from the rest of the world, make them holy]...by Your truth. Your word is truth.”

A group of people united by anything other than the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the revealed Word of God is not a church.

When Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany and unintentionally began the Reformation, he didn’t mean to divide the Church. He did it in hopes of uniting the Church behind the truth as revealed in Jesus and in the Bible, the living Word of God.

Luther was condemned by bullies of Church and State who told him that the Bible and Christian faith were what they said they were, no matter what Christ and the Holy Spirit-inspired Scriptures themselves may have said to the contrary.

To the bullies, rituals, edicts, traditions, and “church unity” were more important than the truth God has revealed in Christ and reiterated in the Bible.

They wanted to force unity at all costs.

Martin Luther and the other leaders of the Reformation said, “No. We won’t play God for a chump. We won’t turn our backs on the truth.”

Folks, unless a church teaches and believes that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that people can only come to life with God the Father through faith in Christ, it’s not really part of Christ’s church.

Unless a church believes that Jesus was born of a virgin and was physically raised from the dead, it’s not a church.

Unless a church believes that the Bible is God’s inspired Word and is useful for teaching, reprimand, correction, and for training in righteousness, it’s not really a church.

Unless a church draws its being, life, and joy from Christ alone, Word alone, faith alone, it’s not really a church.

The church is that fellowship of believers among whom the gospel of new life for all who believe in Jesus is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments are administered according to the gospel.

It’s the fellowship being taken care of by God’s Holy Spirit, in which we hear and heed the Word of God, and is bathed in prayers: the prayers of Jesus for us and the prayers we offer for one another and for our witness about Jesus in the world.

If all these things aren't true of a group of people who call themselves church, they are not part of Christ’s Church. They may be a social club. Or a service club. Or a keep-up-the-building club. But they’re not part of the Church. Salvation isn’t happening among them. Its life isn’t being built on the truth of Christ.

If the church as you experience it is anything less than what Christ intends for you to have, why not join in praying to God today:

I want to build my life on the truth of Christ. I want to be part of a fellowship that scares the devil and shares life in Christ with a world that is dying in its sin by the second. I want to see Jesus’ prayer for His Church answered in my own life, along with the lives of all who are part of Saint Matthew. Grant this, O Lord! Amen 

If that prayer expresses the desire of your heart today, I invite you to keep offering prayers like that every day you live and to allow the Holy Spirit to make you part of God the Father’s answer to Jesus’ John 17 prayer! Amen

Go Beyond Others' Expectations...You'll Smile!

Yesterday, my wife and I went to buy a few items at Giant Eagle. As we headed toward the self check, I spotted a display of DVDs. Among them were several titles by Leslie Sansone, the inventor of the simple walk at home workouts Ann and I really enjoy. One title looked especially good to us and the price was just $7.99.

We tossed the DVD into our cart and headed for the checkout. The last item I scanned was the Leslie Sansone DVD. As I did, the computer-generated voice said, "9.99." I touched the button on the computer screen for assistance and within seconds, a store manager appeared.

I explained what happened and she said, "Go ahead and complete your transaction, sir, and meet me at the register ahead." At the register, she hit some buttons and was handing my receipt to me when my wife, more alert than me, said, "You gave us the DVD for free?" "That's right!" she said, "have a nice evening and enjoy the workout."

Even if Ann and I didn't already love Giant Eagle, we would have become fans at that moment.

I've since learned that what the manager did is corporate policy.

But can you imagine what the world would be like if we did always did more than was expected of us?

What would happen in our families and marriages?

In our businesses and churches?

Based on what Ann and I felt as we left Giant Eagle yesterday, I can tell you there would be a lot more smiling faces. (The fun thing is the manager smiled too. It feels good when we go above and beyond people's expectations of us!)

Jesus once said that those who follow Him are to love even their enemies and to pray for the people who persecute them for their allegiance to Him.

At one level, that makes sense: The believer in Jesus knows that because of God's great charity, we're forgiven for our sins and Christ has given us a relationship with God that lasts eternally. We can afford to be loving and to pray for those who hate us. We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God given through Jesus!

Still, loving and praying for enemies is a countercultural and, really, who in this world would expect a person to do such crazy things?

But Jesus goes on to explain: "...if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?...And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?..." When we fail to love our enemies and pray for those who give us a hard time in life, we're no different from everybody else. But, Jesus calls those who want to follow Him into eternity, to be different. In Matthew 5:48, He tells His followers to "be perfect...as your heavenly Father is perfect," meaning abandon the fractured, self-protecting ways of this world and embrace the wholeness and self-giving ways of God Himself.

Company policy at Giant Eagle set that manager free to be more considerate of two customers than we expected her to be.

Jesus Christ sets those who believe in Him free to be the people of love and consideration that we want to be, that God made us to be.

Loving enemies and praying for those who hate us way may not change the minds or hearts of those who experience our love. But then again it might.

And having permission to go above and beyond others' expectations like that is a wonderful thing!

If you confess that Jesus is your God and King, you are among the most free human beings on the planet. (Even when your enemies are powerful people who put you in jail for your faith in Christ!)

So, use your freedom!

Go ahead, right now: Do something loving for an enemy, pray for those who persecute or ridicule your faith. It will make you smile!

[Be sure to look at the passages from Scripture that you can click onto from the links above.]

Life from the Vine

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

John 15:1-8
On the night of His arrest, in the room where He and the apostles had their Passover meal, Jesus tells them (and all who believe in Him) at the beginning of our lesson: “I am the true vine...”

What exactly does this mean and why should we spend the next few minutes of our lives trying to understand it?

In the Old Testament, God’s people Israel were pictured as a vine. For example, Psalm 80:8 says: “You have brought a vine out of Egypt. You have cast out the nations and planted it.” The mission of God’s people, Israel, was to be a light to the world, pointing others to the life that only God can give to those who turn from sin and believe in Him.

Israel's mission was later to be placed on the shoulders of one anointed king, a person described at least five centuries before the birth of Jesus in the book of Isaiah as the Servant. God speaks to this Servant in Isaiah 49:6: “I will...give You as a light to the gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.”

In our gospel lesson, Jesus claims to be that Servant, the true Vine, Who is a light to all nations and Who offers salvation to all the world.

In that first verse, Jesus also says, “My Father is the vinedresser.”

Every vine needs pruning. Otherwise, it grows crazy and sprouts small, unhealthy, useless grapes. A vinedresser makes sure that his investment of time, energy, water, and fertilizer are maximized. He cuts off the branches that are likely to rob life from the other branches and not produce much themselves. Jesus evidently has branches that will be pruned away. We'll learn more about that as we dig further into this passage.

In verse 2, Jesus explains: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He [God the Father] takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Now, Jesus, like most Jewish teachers in the ancient world and like the Biblical writers, loved plays on word. They helped make teaching more memorable. The word that Jesus uses for prune in verse 2 is kathairei, a word that is similar to one He uses in verse 3, where He says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” The word for clean in verse 3 is, in the original Greek, katharoi (we get the words like catharsis or cathartic, used of cleansing experiences, from it). Jesus is equating cleansing with pruning. “My word,” Jesus is saying, “the word that all who believe in Me will not perish but have everlasting life, has made you clean. I wash away the sins of all who believe in Me and am the way you to eternal life with God.”

Jesus makes those who believe in Him clean. Our sin is pruned away. But, Jesus says, God the Father also rids His vine of unproductive branches and rids even the productive branches of unproductive shoots.

This is important, because in verse 5, Jesus tells us: “I am the vine, you are the branches...”

Jesus says that those who are baptized and believe in Him are connected to Him, sort of like a lamp is connected to electric power through a wall outlet. A lamp that remains unplugged just sets and collects dust. It only serves a function and only "comes to life" when it's connected to its power source. Believers in Jesus draw their life from Jesus alone and as branches on the same Vine, Jesus, they are also connected to each other. You can't be a Christian on your own: You need both Jesus and His Church. 

The apostle Paul says something similar to this in 1 Corinthians, where he writes that those of us who make up Christ’s Church “are the body of Christ and members individually.” So, we are branches who draw life from Jesus, we’re part of His body.

But that raises a problem. Jesus is sinless. The New Testament book of Hebrews says that Jesus “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Now, if Jesus the Vine is going to thrive and give life to those who truly repent for sin and truly believe in Him, God cannot allow anything impure or sinful to be attached to Jesus. God must prune or cleanse Jesus the Vine of those branches that want to take life and blessings from Jesus without bearing fruit: without repentance for sin or trust in Jesus.

Unless the Father prunes the branches that are wasting God’s grace on the sins they want more than they want God, the whole vine, the entire body of Christ and God’s intention to create a new and everlasting kingdom for those who trust in Christ, is put in jeopardy.

This is why making our relationship with Christ and His Church the highest priority in our lives is so important. Jesus is saying that if we’re not all in with Him and His body, the Church, we’re really locking Him out of our lives. 

This leads to what Jesus says in John 15:4. It’s both an order and a plea from the Savior Who loves us like no other: “Abide in Me...”

Abide means live, stay, or remain. Jesus is saying, “Stick with Me.”

Jesus goes on to say: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Then, at the end of verse 5, Jesus says something that sticks in the craw of any self-respecting, self-sufficient human being: “without Me you can do nothing.”

Who has the guts to admit that today: "Without Jesus, I can do nothing?" I learn it more every day! A few months ago, God impressed on me a simple message: “Don’t try to be creative with your sermons. Less of you; more of Me. Preach My Word and let the chips fall where they may.” It’s liberating to know that while I can’t, God always can!

Listen: Some of you may be trying to live a good, wholesome life on the strength of your own effort. If that’s what you’re doing, I’m telling you that you are bound to fail. We can never be as good as we were made to be or as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. Jesus says we can do nothing without Him.

Others of you may think that you’re living a wholesome, godly life without paying much attention to God. As I’ve mentioned before, my grandmother used to say, “It’s easier to be good when you’re old than when you’re young.” What a stupid thing to say! That statement may be true only when you have one sin in mind.

But, I’ve found that the older I get, the easier it is for me to do just what I want to do. Society allows that as we age. “Age has its privileges,” we're told. Live enough years with that mentality and you start to believe it! You think that you’re entitled.

As the years go by--I’m talking to people in their teens as well as those in their 80s--maybe the best thing we could pray in the morning is, “God, what do you want me to do today that I don’t want to do?” I guarantee that if we will pray like that, we’ll be pushed so far out of our comfort zones we’ll have to remain connected to Christ for support and the sheer ability to get the thing done. We’ll know that we can’t, but God can.

In verse 6, Jesus says that if we refuse to be connected to Him, we will be cast out, thrown into the fire and burned. Lest we misunderstand Jesus' meaning here, He says something similar in Matthew's gospel: "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the rightweous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:49-50). The difference between the good and evil people Jesus describes here is not that one group are sinners and the other is not; it's that one group of sinners places its confidence in its own capacity to be good, while the other group relies for its goodness on Christ, the true vine, alone.

Those who don’t believe in hell need to take the subject up with Jesus; He clearly did believe in hell. In fact, He died and rose to prevent any of us from experiencing it. All that is required of us is that we remain connected to Him, trusting in Him alone.

But verse 6 isn’t the most challenging verse in the lesson. Verse 7 is. Jesus says: “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”

A lot of games get played with this verse and others like it. “If you only had enough faith,” some people will say, “you would never get sick and everything you ever wanted would be there for you.” That’s not faith, but magical thinking.

So, let’s not play games and deal honestly with what Jesus says here, with what we can understand and what we can’t. Probably every person in this sanctuary has prayed for the earthly lives of loved ones or friends, the new job or career, good health for ourselves or other things, and not received the answers we desperately sought. I cannot and will not explain away all the pain you’ve gone through as a result. Nor do I know why God seems to say, “No” to the prayers of Christians.

But, just a few thoughts. Please look at Psalm 37:4. It says: “Delight yourself...in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart.”

Notice that the prerequisite for God giving us the desires of our hearts is that we delight in Lord. To delight in the Lord must mean, in part, putting God and God’s priorities first in our lives. We delight in God as we abide in Christ and remain connected to Him. As a result, what we desire changes because we delight in God. God's mind and our minds move more in sync. Some of what we pray for may change when delight in God. God may teach us to truly pray the hardest petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done.” Maybe this is why Jesus makes this promise to give us whatever we desire within the context of His plea and command to abide in Him.

When I first became a Christian, the passage of Scripture that bothered me the most was Genesis 3:24. It comes after Adam and Eve have fallen into sin. It says that God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden and kept the whole human race from getting to the tree of life. “Why did God do that?” I wondered. Doesn’t God want to give us life?

The answer, of course, is that God does want to give us life. But more than that, God wants to give us life with Him. Had the human race gotten access to the tree of life without the change in our relationship with God that comes to those who believe in Jesus Christ, it would have meant an eternity of suffering and separation from God. We would have gotten the desires of our hearts, but the desires of hearts darkened and perverted by sin. We would have been lost to God forever, still in our sins.

God’s ways may not lead us to the answers we seek. But God’s ways, when we persevere in abiding with Christ, always lead to life beyond the confines of this suffering, dying world. God's ways always lead to resurrection victory and eternal life in His kingdom when we stick with Jesus.

The crucified and risen Jesus is the only one with the credibility to ask us to believe that, to trust God even when tragedies we devoutly prayed would not come, come anyway.

That's because Jesus on the cross assures us that God understands our pain and because Jesus risen assures us that there will be a time beyond our earthly sadness when all that seems senseless and barren will be explained, when all the hurts and kills us today will be in the past.

The apostle Paul, who knew all about suffering and about God rebuffing him when he asked that  suffering be removed from his life, could, because of his connection to Jesus, say in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us” when Jesus returns to bring His new creation in its fullness!

Until that day when Jesus returns, as we remain connected to Christ and our prayers move in sync with God, God will build up our faith, we will delight in God and desire the things God desires, and God will use us to share His love with and bring His kingdom to others. Like our Savior, we will share in others’ sorrows and joys and, in this way, bring the life of Christ to them. It is just this life--a life of deep connection with Christ and the needs of others--that Jesus calls “bearing fruit,” living the same faith Sunday afternoon through Saturday that we profess on Sunday mornings.

“By this [abiding in Him],” Jesus says in verse 8 of our gospel lesson, “My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. So [or, in this way] you will be My disciples.”

Stick with Jesus and His body, the Church.

That’s where life is.

That’s where, even in the midst of questions we can’t fully answer in this world, purpose can be found.

Amen

A Question of Authority

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

Acts 4:5-12
True story about a family in one of the parishes I served as pastor: They were very devout. They showed up for worship every Sunday and saw to it that their children were not only in worship, but also in Sunday School, Catechism, and youth group. They had a daughter who, unlike so many, didn't treat Confirmation as though it were graduation from the church. She stayed involved, evidencing a real faith in Christ.

This young woman went off to college, where she did well. While there, her commitment to Christ only deepened. She got involved with a campus Bible study. She got active with a local congregation in the college town, even going on a few mission trips. In telephone calls to her folks, she gave every evidence of being on fire for Christ.

I was talking with her mom one day and I asked how things were going. "OK," she said, "but I'm really concerned about Mary." "What's wrong?" I asked. "She's really gotten into Church, really into the Bible, really into telling others about Jesus," she told me. I wondered what the problem was. Her mom explained: “We raised her to be a churchgoer, not a fanatic.”

You know, there are people in the Church who have just enough of Jesus to be inoculated against Him. They warm a pew. They go through the motions of being "church members." And most importantly (to them), they are rostered members of their congregations who put money in the plate. What more could any normal--non-fanatical--person expect of them?

I've actually had church members say to me, "You know, Pastor, that was a beautiful sermon. It's great that we're called to love God and trust in Jesus above all else. But it doesn't work in the real world." I ask them, "Have you tried?"

But the fact is, there are lots of people in the Church who don't want to try. They want to keep God at arm's length. That's why they can be so hostile to people like Mary, who take their faith seriously and who strive to keep Jesus as the center of their lives. Do we, in today's world, need the kind of fanaticism Mary evidenced? Desperately!

But you know what? The unwillingness to stand under the authority of Christ and of His Word that Mary's mother articulated can also be seen among so-called "leaders" of the Church, respected pastors and theologians.

About ten years ago, I attended a meeting with other clergy. We had a guest speaker, a New Testament scholar who participated in something called the Jesus Seminar. Basically, the Jesus Seminar is a group of New Testament scholars from established denominations and prestigious universities and seminaries. They get together, hear papers presented, have discussions, and then vote on which parts of the New Testament are true and which parts aren't true.

The Jesus Seminar scholar who spoke to us said, "I don't remember the exact tally, but we voted against the resurrection of Jesus. We're confident that it didn't happen."

One of the pastors screwed up his courage, raised his hand, and said, "I understand that the Biblical writers don't agree on every particular detail of things. And each of them--the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the others like Peter, Paul, James, and the preacher in the book of Hebrews--have their own particular theological slants and emphases. But among the things that none of them disputed and on which they staked their lives is that Jesus died on a cross and was raised on the third day by God the Father. How can you take a vote and say that's not true?"

"Well," the theologian said, "have you ever met a person risen from the dead? It's not within the realm of the experiences of anyone else you might meet either. And if it can't happen today, it couldn't have happened then."

What he was doing was holding his experiences and his intellect as higher authorities than the Scriptures, the revealed Word of God. And whenever we do that, we're in trouble.

Now, people like these New Testament scholars or Mary's parents are what we might call nihilists. It's a term that comes from the Latin word, nihilo, meaning nothing. Nihilists, as I'm using the term here, are people who basically believe in nothing. If you can't see it, touch it, hold it, own it, buy it, sell it, or gain weight from it, it isn't true. To the nihilist, there's no heaven, no hell, no omnipotent, immortal God. Nothing.

There are a lot of their tribe these days, both inside and outside the Church. But the phenomenon is nothing new.

Turn to Acts 3, if you would. There, we're told that one day a few years after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, the apostles Peter and John were entering the temple in Jerusalem. Like all the first Christians, these two were devout Jews and they maintained their religious practices even then, seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of God's promises to His people. As Peter and John were going into the temple, they met a man who had been lame--paralyzed--from birth. He was sitting there, hoping that people would give him some money. Peter looked at the man and the man thought that Peter was going to hand him a coin or two. Instead, look at what Peter says in Acts 3:6:  

“Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

This took place in a section of the temple known as Solomon's Portico or Solomon's Porch. It was teeming with people. You can bet that when this crowd saw this paralyzed man walking, leaping, and praising God, it got their attention!

So, this crowd came rushing toward Peter and John. They're about to hail the two apostles as miracle workers. But look at what Peter says to them in Acts 3:12 and beyond:

“[People] of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all." 

The typical term for miracle in the Greek in which the New Testament was written is semeia. It means sign. It's like the exit sign over there. The sign doesn't point to itself. It points to the place where we can exit from this room. The miracles of Jesus were never ends in themselves. They had a point. So does this miracle Jesus performed through Peter on Solomon's Porch. All of these miracles represent signs of the fact that Jesus has power over sin and death.

The reason for that is simple. The bigger question in all of our lives--just as was true with this lame man--isn't whether we're healthy or not. The bigger question is whether--healthy or ill, weak or strong--you and I are reconciled with God. The miracles recorded in the New Testament are meant simply to point us to the only one who can overcome sin and death and decay and reconcile us to the God Who, alone, can give us new life: the risen Jesus! 

And that's why Peter is so quick to say, "It isn't me who did this, but Jesus, the Lord of all...Jesus, the One you wanted out of your life and put on a cross Who is now risen and alive right now!" He then told them that they could be right with God and have life beyond the grave if they would turn from sin and give their lives to Christ.

After Peter made his proclamation about Jesus, the same leaders who, just a short while before, had petitioned Pilate to put Jesus on a cross, had Peter and John arrested. That's where the lesson for this morning, Acts 4:5-12, begins. Take a look at the opening verses:

And it came to pass, on the next day, that their rulers, elders, and scribes, as well as Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the family of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem.  

Now, it's well-documented that among this crew, especially the priests, were people who were first-century nihilists. They called themselves Sadducees. The Saducees believed that the whole notion of a resurrection of the dead was crazy. They found it inconceivable that God could or would veto the power of death.


In fact, this group of important priests, elders, and scribes had fallen prey to something that one of my professors in seminary, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to warn us against. Pastor Schein told us, "Be careful of handling the holy. Be careful in handling the Word of God. Be careful in handling the Sacraments. You might begin to think that they're nothing. You might begin to thing that they're not important and that you are the only thing that makes them worth anything."


For the priests and others who were part of the Saducees party, religious life was simply a set of motions you went through. Liturgy was something pretty that they did. Participating in worship didn't mean that you really believed in a God Who has control over life and death. They were in control and they didn't need any sign from God pointing people away from them.


So, they call Peter and John out of their jail cell to make an appearance before them. And then we read in verse 7 of our lesson what these religious leaders wanted to hear from Peter and John:

“By what power or by what name have you done this?”

You have a daughter who goes off to college and gets involved with her faith and, exercising your parental authority, you demand of her, "Whatever possessed you to think that Jesus really mattered? Didn't you know that we just took you to church so you could learn good morals and be a nice person?" 

You meet a New Testament scholar who tells you that Jesus' resurrection never happened and the scholar asks you, "By what authority do you--a common layperson or a common pastor, who has never done graduate work or spent years studying the New Testament--have the temerity to tell us that this book is actually true, that Jesus really did die and rise."

The question of authority is what the religious leaders asked of Peter and John: "Who exactly do you think you are? Who told you that you could do and say these things?"

Look at how Peter answers the question in verse 9:

If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.  

You know what? Peter wouldn't have been in trouble if he'd said something like, "Well, I picked up a little magic somewhere along the way and that's how I was able to make the man walk again." Or if he'd said, "I recognized that his paralysis was psychosomatic and that if I simply told the man to walk, he'd be able to do it." If Peter had taken the credit for himself, this healing wouldn't have been controversial. The leaders wouldn't have even arrested John and Peter in the first place!

But the trouble was that Peter ascribed the miracle to Jesus. And the minute you give any credit to Jesus, you get yourself in trouble in this world. 

Jesus once said that for those who follow Him, enemies will not be the outside world, but those of one's own household...one's own family...one's own church. They're the ones who ask, "Who said that you could get so high and mighty with this Jesus stuff?"

The Saducees and others wanted to knock Peter and John down a peg or two. Peter said, in effect, "That's OK. I'm not the One Who did this. It was done by the One Who was killed by our sins, the One God raised from the dead."

Now I ask myself, "Where is it that Peter got the stuff to do this?" Remember Peter on Maundy Thursday, when Jesus was bring tried and faced death on the cross? He denied even knowing Jesus three times. Where does this guy get his guts? Acts 4:8 answers that mystery:

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit... 

We can have the power to live by the faith in Christ we profess, not because we talk ourselves into it or because of some inspiration we pick up along the way, but because Jesus sends His Holy Spirit to those who are desperate enough to acknowledge their need of the Spirit, desperate enough to ask for the presence of the Spirit in their lives. 

I know all about that desperation. When I told my mother that I was going to seminary, she told me that she was apprehensive. "Mark," she said, "you've never dealt well with sickness or death. Are you sure you can be a pastor?" I said, "No." But here's how I've done it for twenty-seven years: In the car, on the way to the hospital, or the death bed, or the funeral home, I pray, "God, I can't. You can. Give me the right words. Give me the right silences. Send Your Spirit."

You know, that God has always answered that prayer? God has never failed once.


That's how Peter was able to share his faith in Christ. 


And that's how you and I, in the face of a world that is increasingly indifferent or hostile toward the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus, can stand firm. We can stand firm, not out of egotism or an attitude of being holier or better than others, but simply because we love God and we love others and those "others" need Jesus as much as we do.


Look at what Peter says at the very end of our lesson, Acts 4:12:

"Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Now, if we believe that--if we believe Jesus when He says that He is the way and the truth and the life and that no one can be reconciled with God the Father except through Him, we can't have it on our consciences that we have not shared Jesus with others. We can't settle for a hypocritical half-faith. And though we are unable to do it on our own, as weak, at least, as Peter, God can help us share Christ with others when we depend on His Spirit. 

Amen