Saturday, December 08, 2012
5 Surefire Ways to Get Blog Traffic
So you want people to visit and read your blog? Based on my ten-and-a-half years as a blogger, here are five surefire ways to get blog traffic.
I know exactly what you need to do to gain blog traffic...and I try never do it. (Most of the time, time, time.)
- Be sure to write posts with titles like, 5 Surefire Ways to Get Blog Traffic. Create titles like people see on the covers of magazines. Everyone likes to think that any challenge in life can be overcome by a few steps. It's usually a lie, of course. Life, after all, is more complicated than that. But people like to think that it's not.
- Be sure to use bullet-points as your primary means of communication. People don't have much use for the consideration of unknown mysteries. So, even if you don't have any idea what you're talking about, use a bullet point and you'll seem like an expert.
- Tell people how they can monetize their blogs...and their lives. Show them how, by being market-driven, cultivating their brands, and following whatever the crowd says is important to them, they can make money.
- If you're going to talk about politics, make sure that your every phrase has a sharp elbow and will make your readers cheer with malice. Nothing makes the readers of many political blogs happier than having their own points of view confirmed in ways that are vicious and condescending toward the opposition.
- Never discuss the most important issues of life. Never talk about the fact that all human beings are in need of the forgiveness of sin and freedom from death. Never talk about how desperately God loves all people, so desperately that He became human in Jesus of Nazareth, bore the death punishment for sin we all deserve, and then rose from the dead in order to give forgiveness of sin and new, everlasting lives to all who repent and believe in Jesus. It makes people uncomfortable when bloggers do that. It makes them think that maybe they aren't masters of their own destinies, after all.
I know exactly what you need to do to gain blog traffic...and I try never do it. (Most of the time, time, time.)
Friday, December 07, 2012
This Morning's Wake-Up Song...
...was Chris Tomlin's Born That We May Have Life, an almost immediately singable Christmas song that doesn't compromise substance for accessibility. It's from his 2009 release, Glory in the Highest. Written by Tomlin, Ed Cash, and Matt Maher, Born That We May Have Life a stirring yet simple statement of faith and awe. It's gotten my day off to a great start!
I've mentioned it before, but I'll do it again: If you want to enrich your celebration of Christmas this year, get a copy of Glory in the Highest today. I have no affiliation with LifeWay, the book and music retailer, other than being a customer. But you can find Tomlin's gem, the best Christmas LP that I've heard in years, at LifeWay, either at one of their brick and mortar outlets or online for only five bucks. You blow five bucks all the time, it's likely. But this will be a well-spent Lincoln!
I've mentioned it before, but I'll do it again: If you want to enrich your celebration of Christmas this year, get a copy of Glory in the Highest today. I have no affiliation with LifeWay, the book and music retailer, other than being a customer. But you can find Tomlin's gem, the best Christmas LP that I've heard in years, at LifeWay, either at one of their brick and mortar outlets or online for only five bucks. You blow five bucks all the time, it's likely. But this will be a well-spent Lincoln!
The Home Front After Pearl Harbor
Fantastic pictures, accompanied by a short essay on the immediate aftermath of the December 7, 1941 attack by the forces of Imperial Japan on US military installations at Pearl Harbor, can be found here on life.time.com. Worth the short time required to read the essay and go through the slide show composed of many pictures that never were used in Life magazine, the eminent pictorial chronicler of the world before television became the force it became (used to be) and long before the Internet.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
Don't Be Afraid of the Advent Police!
Loved this cartoon, which I saw on Facebook today.
My seminary training that told me that you sang no Christmas hymns and had no Christmas decorations in the church building during Advent got upended during my first Advent as a pastor.
A parishioner said to me after the Second Sunday of Advent, "Pastor, I notice that we haven't sung any Christmas hymns yet." Drawing on my "theological training," I told him (as if he didn't know): "This is Advent. Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of Christmas." "But, Pastor," he said, "singing Christmas hymns is how I prepare for Christmas."
I knew that the same was true for me. I prepared myself for Christmas during Advent with all that reminded me of Christmas. I always started playing Christmas music on Thanksgiving and played it loudly throughout my house until the end of the year. At the moment that parishioner said this to me, my family and I had had our Christmas decorations up for about three weeks.
I never want to get rid of Advent hymns or the celebration of the unique elements of Advent. But during Advent, we do prepare for the coming of the celebration of the birth of Christ (as well as of the certainty of His return in glory one day) and it's good to be reminded of this fact. So, I've been sure to include Christmas hymns during Advent worship in the churches I've served ever since.
By the way, it's by this same logic that I also reject the ancient custom of putting "Hallelujah" away during Lent, as we were also taught to do in seminary.
Jesus is still risen from the dead, whether it's the Third Sunday in Lent or not. Stifling our Hallelujahs during Lent, pretending that we don't have an Easter victory for which to praise God during that time reminds me of an old bit used by comedian Steve Martin.
Martin would be in the middle of his routine, look down at his feet and say, "Oh, my shoes are untied," bend down and then pop right up again, saying, "No, they're not. I love to fool myself like that!" We can remember with awe, sadness, and contrition Christ's death for us on the cross. But we can no longer pretend that His lifeless body lay in the tomb. We can't fool ourselves because He is risen!
And so, as Christians we have just as much reason to shout, "Hallelujah!" ("God be praised!) during Lent as at any other time of the year. Why should we stop praising God because of what is, when wrongly used, a human conceit.
In fact, there's even more reason to sing Easter hymns during Lent than there is for us to sing Christmas hymns during Advent. Every Sunday is meant to be a "little Easter" in which we celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death when He rose from the dead on the first Easter. That's why the Sundays that fall during Lent aren't counted as part of the forty days of the season, meaning that we call Lenten Sundays, Sundays in Lent, and not Sundays of Lent.
The Church Year is a tool that can be used to glorify God and convey the central truths of the Christian faith both to seekers of God and to those who have been in relationship with God through Jesus Christ their entire lives. It can help us to worship God and live out a balanced faith rooted in the whole truth about the God revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.
But the Church Year falls into the category Martin Luther called "adiaphora," a Latin term that means, "indifferent things," things that, in themselves cannot bring salvation. It is, as the theologians say, "non-salvific," incapable in itself of bringing a saving faith in Jesus Christ to those who use it. The Church Year then, is the moral equivalent of a hammer. A hammer is a great tool, but it can't save you from sin and death. Only the word of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that word embodied in the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion can work salvation and the forgiveness of sins.
You won't go to hell if you sing a Christmas hymn during Advent.
You won't encounter God's wrath for singing, "Hallelujah!" during Lent. (Nor by singing its variant, "Alleluia!")
Nor will God be upset if you continue to sing hymns of praise during both seasons, also no-no's according to liturgical propriety.
Christ sets free all who hear His Word and by faith, turn from sin and believe in Him.
We are no longer slaves to the proscribed customs of human beings.
We may find the Church Year a useful tool for growing in our faith. But we shouldn't be slaves to it.
[The cartoon was shared by Pastor Steve Shipman on Facebook. He got it from the FB site, Episcopal Church Memes. But I have no idea who the cartoonist is. If any of you know, I would like to know in order to attribute credit.]
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Octogenarians and Bicycle Helmets and When a Church Isn't a Church
I had a strange dream last night.
In it, my wife and I were the ages we are today. But we were back to taking preaching calls to congregations with pastoral vacancies or where the pastors were on vacation, just like we did when I was in seminary thirty years ago.
We arrived at a church building that looked more like an old-fashioned township hall than a traditional church building. The exterior was covered with simple white clapboard and it was topped by a simple, shingled roof like you'd see on a slab house.
We walked inside to see that the interior was one room, except for a few restrooms tucked away in a corner. The walls and ceiling were untreated, unpainted wood, the beams overheard, exposed framing wood.
There were no pulpit, altar, lectern, nor a single other item that looked "churchy."
That was OK, my wife and I told each other. Over the years, we've worshiped in school gyms, a Lions hall, a movie theater, and a cafeteria.
The words of Article VII of The Augsburg Confession crossed my mind (yes, even in my dream):
I didn't remember all the lines of Article VII in my dream, mind you. I just smiled as I scanned this "unchurchy" place and thought, "Article VII."
But then, we met the people.
The average age was about 85, although it was clear that quite a few of the folks were in the habit of dyeing their hair (even their eyebrows) all sorts of natural, that is, unnatural, colors.
From the beginning, they were a talkative bunch. They talked through the Order for Confession and Forgiveness, through hymns, through the Bible readings, and, in fact, at every single point in the service.
And they weren't just talky, they were disruptive. They were all seated in chairs and none of them seemed to give a second thought to sliding the chairs across the hard floors to get up, creating sonic skidding sounds, in order to talk to a neighbor seated elsewhere.
Suddenly, I found myself preaching on an Old Testament text and was constantly having my own concentration disrupted by the mayhem. I'd be a in the middle of a point and the whole group would get up for restroom and smoke breaks.
My wife and I kept looking at each other in mystification.
It's probably no stretch to say that many, if not most, Christian congregations are composed of functional atheists for whom the Church is basically a social gathering which occasionally does nice things for people. But this group was overtly heedless, almost scornful, of God, Christ, the Bible, worship, and so on.
At one point, they'd settled back in to listen to the sermon and I determined to keep it short because of the short attention span of the congregation. Just then, a man with Grecian Formula brown hair and mustache, pushed himself from his chair in the back of the sanctuary to station himself behind a person sitting toward the front.
In the meantime, one woman was speaking loudly to another woman, also toward the front. I did something I've never done as a pastor: I gave the loud talker the evil eye. She shut up, but then the Grecian Formula guy started conversing with the guy in front of him. I tried the evil eye on him. He simply looked at me dismissively, contemptuously, and started talking even more loudly than before.
The next thing I knew, the whole group had run (yes, the 85-year-olds ran) to a back room I hadn't noticed before and emerged with bicycle helmets in hand. As I struggled to keep preaching, each hung their helmets on hooks on the bare wooden wall and stood back about five feet. Then, in unison, they started a deafening countdown: "10, 9, 8..." At "Zero!," they all grabbed their helmets and were out of the room.
My wife and I were the only ones left in the little building. "I think we're through here," I told her. We both laughed and walked away, the bicycling octogenarians nowhere to be seen.
Keep in mind, this was just a dream.
But its point was clear: This strange church wasn't a church, not because it didn't look like a church, but because its people ignored the Gospel and presumably disdained the sacraments. The people didn't believe.
How many churches might that describe?
In it, my wife and I were the ages we are today. But we were back to taking preaching calls to congregations with pastoral vacancies or where the pastors were on vacation, just like we did when I was in seminary thirty years ago.
We arrived at a church building that looked more like an old-fashioned township hall than a traditional church building. The exterior was covered with simple white clapboard and it was topped by a simple, shingled roof like you'd see on a slab house.
We walked inside to see that the interior was one room, except for a few restrooms tucked away in a corner. The walls and ceiling were untreated, unpainted wood, the beams overheard, exposed framing wood.
There were no pulpit, altar, lectern, nor a single other item that looked "churchy."
That was OK, my wife and I told each other. Over the years, we've worshiped in school gyms, a Lions hall, a movie theater, and a cafeteria.
The words of Article VII of The Augsburg Confession crossed my mind (yes, even in my dream):
...The church is the assembly of saints [saints are those who believe in Jesus Christ and are covered by His forgiveness] in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments administered rightly. For the true unity of the church it is enough to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions or rites and ceremonies, instituted by [people], should be alike everywhere...In other words, church buildings don't have to look like church buildings we're used to and worship services don't have to be like the ones we're accustomed to, as long as the Gospel is taught in its purity and the sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) are administered rightly.
I didn't remember all the lines of Article VII in my dream, mind you. I just smiled as I scanned this "unchurchy" place and thought, "Article VII."
But then, we met the people.
The average age was about 85, although it was clear that quite a few of the folks were in the habit of dyeing their hair (even their eyebrows) all sorts of natural, that is, unnatural, colors.
From the beginning, they were a talkative bunch. They talked through the Order for Confession and Forgiveness, through hymns, through the Bible readings, and, in fact, at every single point in the service.
And they weren't just talky, they were disruptive. They were all seated in chairs and none of them seemed to give a second thought to sliding the chairs across the hard floors to get up, creating sonic skidding sounds, in order to talk to a neighbor seated elsewhere.
Suddenly, I found myself preaching on an Old Testament text and was constantly having my own concentration disrupted by the mayhem. I'd be a in the middle of a point and the whole group would get up for restroom and smoke breaks.
My wife and I kept looking at each other in mystification.
It's probably no stretch to say that many, if not most, Christian congregations are composed of functional atheists for whom the Church is basically a social gathering which occasionally does nice things for people. But this group was overtly heedless, almost scornful, of God, Christ, the Bible, worship, and so on.
At one point, they'd settled back in to listen to the sermon and I determined to keep it short because of the short attention span of the congregation. Just then, a man with Grecian Formula brown hair and mustache, pushed himself from his chair in the back of the sanctuary to station himself behind a person sitting toward the front.
In the meantime, one woman was speaking loudly to another woman, also toward the front. I did something I've never done as a pastor: I gave the loud talker the evil eye. She shut up, but then the Grecian Formula guy started conversing with the guy in front of him. I tried the evil eye on him. He simply looked at me dismissively, contemptuously, and started talking even more loudly than before.
The next thing I knew, the whole group had run (yes, the 85-year-olds ran) to a back room I hadn't noticed before and emerged with bicycle helmets in hand. As I struggled to keep preaching, each hung their helmets on hooks on the bare wooden wall and stood back about five feet. Then, in unison, they started a deafening countdown: "10, 9, 8..." At "Zero!," they all grabbed their helmets and were out of the room.
My wife and I were the only ones left in the little building. "I think we're through here," I told her. We both laughed and walked away, the bicycling octogenarians nowhere to be seen.
Keep in mind, this was just a dream.
But its point was clear: This strange church wasn't a church, not because it didn't look like a church, but because its people ignored the Gospel and presumably disdained the sacraments. The people didn't believe.
How many churches might that describe?
Monday, December 03, 2012
Double Trouble
This made me smile. The Biblical story of Jacob and Esau struggling in the womb apparently isn't as far-fetched as some people might think. Twins really do struggle in the womb. This will not come as a surprise to the mothers of twins.
Some Thoughts on Bullying
Here are some good thoughts on bullying from Mart DeHaan, leader of RBC Ministries. They were triggered by his screening of the 2011 documentary, Bully.
DeHaan also includes a definition of bullying:
...aggressive behavior that uses force or coercion to humiliate and exploit the weakness of others.He then points out that this phenomenon isn't confined to children and cites examples of bullying, as well as bravery in the face of bullying, from the Bible.
I have a particular interest in bullying because I myself was bullied throughout much of my growing-up years. Junior high school (grades 7, 8, and 9) was a nightmare for me. Grade 10 was only marginally better. It included being frequently hit (hard) on the back of the head, getting punched, and often facing off against three to four taunting, hitting, pushing bullies on the daily walk home from school. Verbal taunting and putdowns were steady.
Because of these and other experiences, nobody has to convince me of the reality of original sin. We come fully equipped with the desire to "be like God," which we interpret as being domineering top dogs or at least keeping others "beneath" us.
Adolescence is a time of sorting out and I know now that those classmates who bullied me--many among the most popular kids in the school--were sorting things out: their places in the world, their identities, and so on. I just happened to be a convenient tool for doing that.
In my own case, the experience has left me with a permanent preference for the underdog. I try my best always to affirm the person who seems most ignored or even the most despised in any circle of people.
Nearly five decades later, I can look back and say that while I didn't deserve to be verbally derided, physically punched, slapped in the head, or shunned, my very appearance in a room acted as a flashing, "Bully me!" sign. I was mouthy and egotistical, risky behaviors for one of the smallest and youngest people in my classes. These behaviors can partly be explained because I wasn't just younger than my classmates, I was also the least mature. I was no athlete, though I have always loved sports. I wasn't a scholar or a musician. I had no niche and I was coddled at home. There was plenty about me not to like.
I'm fortunate. I eventually found something of a niche in high school. In subsequent years, my wife Ann has taught me how to do what I so desperately wanted to do in my growing-up years, make friends. God is engaged in a lifelong project of making war on my ego, which, I hope, makes me a little easier to be around. He's also constantly assuring me of my value and worth through Jesus Christ.
Bullying, it seems, is an even bigger issue today than it was when I spent chunks of my school years dreading the beginning of each new day. We live in a far more violent society today. So-called reality shows seem to convey that wise people dominate others. Thuggery is extolled. Dysfunctional families create holes in the souls of too many children. Social media make it easy to bully and humiliate others over the Internet, complete with photoshopped imagery that gives credence to the cruel things bullies say about others. Many kids, whether implicitly or explicitly, see all of these things as green lights for bullying. They make it a hard time to grow up!
Which is why the ministry of the Church is so important!
We proclaim a God Who became one of us in order to offer new life to all who believe in Him. You don't have to be the strongest, smartest, or best-looking according to the shifting standards of a social system ticketed for hell. God loves you as you are and wants to help you become all you were made to be.
If we adult Christians can, through our words and, more importantly, our actions, convey these truths to young people, they'll be less inclined to be bullies or to accept the bullies' verdict about their lives. They'll have less reason to lash out at others because of being the victims of bullying.
As with all things in life, sharing and absorbing the truth about the God Who meets us in Jesus Christ into every element of our lives will go a long way toward diminishing and erasing bullying from kids' lives.
We'll never completely eliminate evil from this fallen world or from ourselves. (And bullying is evil.) But I've found that when Christians start living out their faith in Jesus Christ and relying on the Holy Spirit to guide them in living as the people we were made to be, good things happen in the world around us.
Sunday, December 02, 2012
Stay Awake: Christ is Coming Back Again!
Luke 21:25-36
Today is the first Sunday of the first season of the Church Year, Advent.
Advent means coming, as in “Christ came to us on Christmas day” and “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
When Christ comes back, He will finally and fully establish His kingdom with those of us who have, as the Bible says, “longed for His appearing” and have endured in faith in Him alone. From the early Church, we’ve inherited a simple confession of our faith: “Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.” Advent reminds us of these truths.
But when will Christ return? Under what circumstances? And what does it all have to do with you and me?
These are questions Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 21:25-36. At the outset, Jesus says: “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; [people’s] hearts failing them from fear...the powers of the heavens will be shaken...”
We read these words and, being clever, we figure that the end of this world and the return of Jesus must be close at hand. And that’s true.
But a careful reading of Scripture shows us that Jesus doesn’t describe the so-called “signs of the times” so that clever people can make predictions about the future. In Acts 1:7, Jesus tells His first-century disciples, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.”
By talking about the signs of His coming back to the world with His kingdom, Jesus was not really making predictions about the future at all.
Slip down to verse 32 in our Gospel lesson. There, Jesus says: “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.”
Jesus is saying that all of the drama, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, and terrors of nations that He said must precede His return would all take place within the lifetimes of the first people to whom He spoke these words in the first-century AD.
It’s because all of the signs of the end that Jesus spoke about with His disciples had already taken place twenty centuries ago that many early Christians began doubting Jesus and their faith in Him. “If Jesus hasn’t come back yet, despite the mess the world is in,” they reasoned, “maybe He never will come back. Maybe Jesus isn’t good for His word.”
Peter wrote to Christians dealing with these doubts and questions in 2 Peter 3:9, where he says: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” “You Christians overcome by the hardships you undeniably endure in this life,” Peter was saying, “get over yourselves!” Today, on the authority of God’s Word, given through Peter, I can tell you that Christ hasn’t come back to this world yet because He loves those who don’t know Him and need Him. These people need time to hear the Gospel, the good news of new and everlasting life through Christ. They need time to turn from sin, time to embrace the gift of faith in Christ.
And here’s the key takeaway for you and me as Christians this morning: Christ has also delayed coming back in order to give you and me the time we need to share with our neighbors and world the message about Christ and the salvation that comes from Christ alone.
Our call as Christians is clear: By grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we know that we've been "justified," counted guiltless for our sins despite our guilt. By grace through faith in Jesus, you and I are OK with God. So now, we’re to love our neighbors enough to help them to follow Christ and to be OK with God, too.
And how do we do that?
He tells us this not only so that we can resist temptations that could leave us trapped in sin and death when Christ returns or when we see Him face to face as the judge over our lives. Jesus also tells us to stay awake and alert so that, no matter what’s going on in our lives or in the world, we keep pursuing the commission He has given to us of making disciples of our unbelieving or spiritually-disconnected neighbors.
He was aimless and scattered. His only goals in life were to have fun and to be seen by others as the smartest guy in the room. A friend would tell him years later, “I worried about you. You just didn’t seem to have any focus, like any wind that came along would carry you to God-knows-where.”
By the grace of God, a wind did come along. It was the Holy Spirit Who carried that young man to a Lutheran church.
There he found himself, inexplicably, being drawn to interact with a woman forty years his senior. She took this young man under her wing, put up with his immaturity and flippancy and self-regard, and taught him Who Jesus is and what it means to follow Him as your only God, King, and Savior.
She taught him about the hope that belongs only to those who follow Christ.
She taught him how to pray.
By her words and her actions and her patience, she proclaimed Jesus to that young man.
And to his amazement, he found that through the ministry of that nearly seventy year old woman and the other followers of Jesus he met in that Lutheran congregation, God had sparked the gift of faith in Jesus Christ within him.
That young man is not so young any more. And he’s still an imperfect sinner in daily need of the forgiveness and new life that comes to those who entrust themselves to Jesus Christ.
But my life has been changed forever. Like the prodigal son of Jesus’ story, I was dead and am alive again, was lost and have been found.
All because a group of imperfect sinners that made up Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus, including Martha Schneider, grateful for the grace of God given in Jesus Christ to them, shared the Word in its purity and administered Holy Baptism and Holy Communion rightly. (This is how the Church, Christ's body in the world, makes disciples.)
Who will you share Christ with this week? The clock is ticking. We don’t know when Christ will return. We don't know how much time each of us personally has on this earth.
But we do know that, as surely He came upon a midnight clear, an unobtrusive baby who would grow to die for our sins and rise to give us life with God, Jesus will return.
This time, there will be nothing silent about His coming. There will be nothing quiet about His judging “the living and the dead,” not on the basis of their works, or church membership, or popularity, or wealthy, or power, but solely on the basis of whether we have trusted Him with our lives and let Him cover everything that is sinful and dying about us with His forgiveness and grace. Jesus will come in glory and time will have run out. There will be no more chance for anyone to repent and believe in Him.
Make it your daily aim to share Christ in some way with those who, absent your witness, absent your love and encouragement, absent your good word from God, will otherwise stand naked in their sins when they meet Jesus, uncovered by His grace and forgiveness, facing a Christ-less eternity.
If you had the cure for cancer, you wouldn’t keep it to yourself. You have the cure for sin and death and meaningless life. That cure is Jesus Christ. Trust in Him. And then, in as many ways as you can every single day, share Him! Amen
[This is the text for the message shared during the 10:15 worship service with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Today is the first Sunday of the first season of the Church Year, Advent.
Advent means coming, as in “Christ came to us on Christmas day” and “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
When Christ comes back, He will finally and fully establish His kingdom with those of us who have, as the Bible says, “longed for His appearing” and have endured in faith in Him alone. From the early Church, we’ve inherited a simple confession of our faith: “Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.” Advent reminds us of these truths.
But when will Christ return? Under what circumstances? And what does it all have to do with you and me?
These are questions Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 21:25-36. At the outset, Jesus says: “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; [people’s] hearts failing them from fear...the powers of the heavens will be shaken...”
We read these words and, being clever, we figure that the end of this world and the return of Jesus must be close at hand. And that’s true.
But a careful reading of Scripture shows us that Jesus doesn’t describe the so-called “signs of the times” so that clever people can make predictions about the future. In Acts 1:7, Jesus tells His first-century disciples, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.”
By talking about the signs of His coming back to the world with His kingdom, Jesus was not really making predictions about the future at all.
Slip down to verse 32 in our Gospel lesson. There, Jesus says: “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.”
Jesus is saying that all of the drama, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, and terrors of nations that He said must precede His return would all take place within the lifetimes of the first people to whom He spoke these words in the first-century AD.
It’s because all of the signs of the end that Jesus spoke about with His disciples had already taken place twenty centuries ago that many early Christians began doubting Jesus and their faith in Him. “If Jesus hasn’t come back yet, despite the mess the world is in,” they reasoned, “maybe He never will come back. Maybe Jesus isn’t good for His word.”
Peter wrote to Christians dealing with these doubts and questions in 2 Peter 3:9, where he says: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” “You Christians overcome by the hardships you undeniably endure in this life,” Peter was saying, “get over yourselves!” Today, on the authority of God’s Word, given through Peter, I can tell you that Christ hasn’t come back to this world yet because He loves those who don’t know Him and need Him. These people need time to hear the Gospel, the good news of new and everlasting life through Christ. They need time to turn from sin, time to embrace the gift of faith in Christ.
And here’s the key takeaway for you and me as Christians this morning: Christ has also delayed coming back in order to give you and me the time we need to share with our neighbors and world the message about Christ and the salvation that comes from Christ alone.
Our call as Christians is clear: By grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we know that we've been "justified," counted guiltless for our sins despite our guilt. By grace through faith in Jesus, you and I are OK with God. So now, we’re to love our neighbors enough to help them to follow Christ and to be OK with God, too.
And how do we do that?
- By sharing Jesus with them.
- By inviting them to join us for worship or Sunday School or Bible study.
- By showing mercy and forgiveness to people who have hurt us.
- By listening to the hurts of others and offering to pray with and for them.
- By serving them in the Name of Jesus.
- By giving food to the hungry.
- By helping to spread the good news of Jesus throughout the world.
He tells us this not only so that we can resist temptations that could leave us trapped in sin and death when Christ returns or when we see Him face to face as the judge over our lives. Jesus also tells us to stay awake and alert so that, no matter what’s going on in our lives or in the world, we keep pursuing the commission He has given to us of making disciples of our unbelieving or spiritually-disconnected neighbors.
He was aimless and scattered. His only goals in life were to have fun and to be seen by others as the smartest guy in the room. A friend would tell him years later, “I worried about you. You just didn’t seem to have any focus, like any wind that came along would carry you to God-knows-where.”
By the grace of God, a wind did come along. It was the Holy Spirit Who carried that young man to a Lutheran church.
There he found himself, inexplicably, being drawn to interact with a woman forty years his senior. She took this young man under her wing, put up with his immaturity and flippancy and self-regard, and taught him Who Jesus is and what it means to follow Him as your only God, King, and Savior.
She taught him about the hope that belongs only to those who follow Christ.
She taught him how to pray.
By her words and her actions and her patience, she proclaimed Jesus to that young man.
And to his amazement, he found that through the ministry of that nearly seventy year old woman and the other followers of Jesus he met in that Lutheran congregation, God had sparked the gift of faith in Jesus Christ within him.
That young man is not so young any more. And he’s still an imperfect sinner in daily need of the forgiveness and new life that comes to those who entrust themselves to Jesus Christ.
But my life has been changed forever. Like the prodigal son of Jesus’ story, I was dead and am alive again, was lost and have been found.
All because a group of imperfect sinners that made up Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus, including Martha Schneider, grateful for the grace of God given in Jesus Christ to them, shared the Word in its purity and administered Holy Baptism and Holy Communion rightly. (This is how the Church, Christ's body in the world, makes disciples.)
Who will you share Christ with this week? The clock is ticking. We don’t know when Christ will return. We don't know how much time each of us personally has on this earth.
But we do know that, as surely He came upon a midnight clear, an unobtrusive baby who would grow to die for our sins and rise to give us life with God, Jesus will return.
This time, there will be nothing silent about His coming. There will be nothing quiet about His judging “the living and the dead,” not on the basis of their works, or church membership, or popularity, or wealthy, or power, but solely on the basis of whether we have trusted Him with our lives and let Him cover everything that is sinful and dying about us with His forgiveness and grace. Jesus will come in glory and time will have run out. There will be no more chance for anyone to repent and believe in Him.
Make it your daily aim to share Christ in some way with those who, absent your witness, absent your love and encouragement, absent your good word from God, will otherwise stand naked in their sins when they meet Jesus, uncovered by His grace and forgiveness, facing a Christ-less eternity.
If you had the cure for cancer, you wouldn’t keep it to yourself. You have the cure for sin and death and meaningless life. That cure is Jesus Christ. Trust in Him. And then, in as many ways as you can every single day, share Him! Amen
[This is the text for the message shared during the 10:15 worship service with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Saturday, December 01, 2012
Is It Mission Critical?
Discussing Article VIII (What is the Church?) of The Augsburg Confession, a basic statement of the Lutheran understanding of Christian faith, D.J. Lura writes:
And how much of what churches do could be tossed out as unnecessary and, sometimes, even hurtful to the mission Christ has given to us?
Churches often spend so much time either maintaining traditions or carving out "seeker-sensitive" empires that they forget why Christ established His Church in the first place.
Reading the Bible and the confessions of my own tradition remind me of this and incite me to pray and to work toward doing only that which is "mission critical." But we all have so many habits associated with "being Church" that excising the unnecessary and focusing on the essential can be difficult.
Every congregation and every pastor should periodically ask themselves, "Is what I'm doing central to the mission Christ has given to us? Or should we bag it in favor of doing what is central to that mission?"
*Lura, DJ (2011-09-05). 'So What's a Lutheran, Don'tcha Know?' (Kindle Locations 652-654). . Kindle Edition.
"In both the hearing of the Word and the receiving of the Sacraments, the Church experiences Christ as he has commanded. Everything else that happens at church is [in] Luther’s Latin phrase ‘adiaphora,’ which means ‘it isn’t necessary.’"*How much of what is done by, with, and in churches is critical to the mission Jesus has given to us to make disciples by sharing the Gospel in its purity and the Sacraments as Christ intended?
And how much of what churches do could be tossed out as unnecessary and, sometimes, even hurtful to the mission Christ has given to us?
Churches often spend so much time either maintaining traditions or carving out "seeker-sensitive" empires that they forget why Christ established His Church in the first place.
Reading the Bible and the confessions of my own tradition remind me of this and incite me to pray and to work toward doing only that which is "mission critical." But we all have so many habits associated with "being Church" that excising the unnecessary and focusing on the essential can be difficult.
Every congregation and every pastor should periodically ask themselves, "Is what I'm doing central to the mission Christ has given to us? Or should we bag it in favor of doing what is central to that mission?"
*Lura, DJ (2011-09-05). 'So What's a Lutheran, Don'tcha Know?' (Kindle Locations 652-654). . Kindle Edition.
Friday, November 30, 2012
On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death: George Harrison Posts
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the death of George Harrison. Below are links to some past posts on this blog in which Harrison was mentioned or played an important part:
Why Are We So Litigious?
Anniversary of John Lennon's Death: The Dream is Over
How to Keep Our Mouths Under Control (or, Getting Free of Being a Gossip)
He Wanted to Be Successful without Being Famous
Isn't It a Pity?
Why Are We So Litigious?
Anniversary of John Lennon's Death: The Dream is Over
How to Keep Our Mouths Under Control (or, Getting Free of Being a Gossip)
He Wanted to Be Successful without Being Famous
Isn't It a Pity?
Isn't It a Pity?
My wife and I watched the second part of Martin Scorcese's documentary about George Harrison, Living in the Material World, last night. It left me feeling sad and empty.
Not just because of the tragic last years of Harrison's life, which included cancer, remission, an attack by a would-be murderer that nearly killed him, and the re-appearance of the cancer that did kill him.
And not just because of the loss of a talented musician, still in his 50s, whose music helped comprise, as some have said, "the soundtrack of my life."
What saddened me was the source of Harrison's well-known spiritual quest. Harrison was more aware than most of us are of the basic human need to know God. But in the church of his upbringing (in this case, a Roman Catholic church), he didn't get to know God.
As a Christian, that saddens, chastens, and angers me. To know that there are people who, usually without being aware of it, come to our churches hungry for God, but never get fed is, to me unspeakably sad.
And tragic!
The great thing about the Church is that it's composed of human beings. Imperfect though each Christian is, she or he is empowered by God to let others know, see, and experience God.
Faith isn't something we attain through recited prayers and creeds, mantras, or beads, though any number of human practices can support us in our faith journeys.
But faith, actual knowledge of, friendship with, and trust in, God is a gift ordinary Christians can give when, by word and deed, they tell others about God-enfleshed, Jesus Christ. God's Holy Spirit works faith in the person who hears the Gospel, the good news about the new life that comes to all who trust what Christ has done for us through His death and resurrection.
Philipp Melancthon writes in Article V of The Augsburg Confession, a basic statement of faith for we Lutheran Christians:
...through the Word [about Christ] and administering the sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion], as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given and the Holy Spirit produces faith, where and when it pleases God, in those who hear the Gospel. That is to say, it is not on account of our own merits but on account of Christ that justifies [makes right with Himself] those who believe that they are received into favor for Christ's sake... [italics added for emphasis]In other words, there's nothing we can do to find God. And we don't have to perform any task to know God. We don't even have to do any work--like chanting a mantra--to know God. God makes Himself known in Jesus Christ.
Christ commissions the Church to let others know God through Himself.
The Holy Spirit takes the witness of ordinary Christians--dishwashers, plumbers, teachers, hairdressers, computer programmers, even preachers--and creates faith in those who hear the good news about Jesus.
Earlier I said, "The great thing about the Church is that it's composed of human beings."
Do you know what the horrible thing about the Church?
It's composed of human beings.
Knowledge of God, relationship with God, and trust in God are all free gifts God grants through Christ and spreads around through Christians operating in the power of His Holy Spirit.
But because sin still lives in Christians and will until the day we die, we Christians sometimes hide God's free gifts beneath the veils and thick brick walls of religiosity, pomposity, and authoritarianism.
That, I think, is what victimized George Harrison. It's why he never got to know Jesus Christ, the One Who makes God known. (One passage in Scripture, the witness of one who had known Jesus before His crucifixion and resurrection, says: "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son [Jesus Christ], Who is close to the Father's heart, Who has made Him known" [John 1:18].)
George Harrison grew up in a church that appeared to him so bent on maintaining its rites and its status that he couldn't see God.
The irony is that in his quest for God through Indian spirituality, he took up rites of religiosity to go looking for God.
Jesus is the One Whose coming into the world we celebrate during Advent and Christmas and Whose return one day to bring His eternal kingdom in its final form that we excitedly anticipate. Jesus is God revealed to all the world. "The Father and I are one," Jesus once said (John 10:30).
It saddens me to realize that churches around the world obscure the views others need to have of God. They bury Christ beneath the rubble of religion and in some cases, legalism ("You've got to do this or that to know God.") and in others, spiritual libertarianism ("Do whatever you want; God just wants you to be happy, no matter how monstrous you may act.").
But when Christians and churches allow themselves to simply and humbly tell others about Christ, serve in His Name, and share the Sacraments Christ instituted, one vulnerable human being in need of God to another, that's when people can see God, know God, and believe in God.
I'm sorry that, for whatever reason, whether because the church of his youth obscured the Gospel about Jesus from his view or because his ears, mind, heart, and will were closed, George Harrison never got to know Jesus.
Not some Life of Brian straw man version of Jesus, easy to dismiss or tear down.
Not the means for clergy or churches to exercise power over fearful or disbelieving people.
But the real Jesus, full of grace and truth. The One Who bore the burden of our sin, death, and futility on the cross. The One Who, by His resurrection, opened the gates of eternity for all who believe in Him.
George Harrison wanted to know God so much. I wish someone had shown him the God revealed definitively to the whole human race in Jesus Christ.
Isn't it a pity that someone didn't do that?
UPDATE, evening, 11/30/12: We didn't know last evening when we watched Scorcese's documentary about Harrison that it was the tenth anniversary of George Harrison's death.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Christmas is for Children...Like Me
One of the things I hear people say at this time of year is, "Christmas is for children."
If by "children," these folks mean "chronologically younger human beings," which is what they usually do mean, I couldn't agree less.
I have happy memories of childhood Christmases.
But none of what I experienced around Christmas in those days can compare with the thoughts and feelings I have as I approach my sixtieth Christmas!
Whenever I think about God taking on human flesh in order to die and rise for a sinner like me, I'm overwhelmed with thankfulness and wonder.
All who receive Jesus as God, King, and Savior by faith are made children of God. So, in one sense, Christmas really is for children. As John puts it in the prologue to his gospel, "...to all who received [Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God..." (John 1:12).
By faith in Christ, I'm one of those children. And that's why, as my wife sang along with O, Holy Night in our car a few days ago, I found my eyes misting and my voice choking in thankfulness for all that God has done for an unworthy sinner like me.
I love Christmas because it reminds me that Christ loves even me!
Advent starts this coming Sunday, December 2. Advent is the season of anticipation of Christmas and anticipation of His return to the earth one day, when He will finally and fully establish His eternal kingdom. It will be a kingdom in which all who have received Christ by faith will reign with God forever.
Why not let down your guard? Make it a point to worship with the imperfect, forgiven fellowship you can find at a church somewhere close to you.
Lay aside your cynicism and defensiveness.
Lay down the sins you've allowed to define you for way too long.
Take hold of the outstretched hand of forgiveness and charity God gives to you in Jesus Christ.
You don't have to fully understand it or be able to explain it.
Just fall into the arms of the God Who loves you and let Him love you.
Let yourself be God's child.
Let Him set you free to be the joyful, grateful child He made you to be.
Let it happen this Christmas!
If by "children," these folks mean "chronologically younger human beings," which is what they usually do mean, I couldn't agree less.
I have happy memories of childhood Christmases.
But none of what I experienced around Christmas in those days can compare with the thoughts and feelings I have as I approach my sixtieth Christmas!
Whenever I think about God taking on human flesh in order to die and rise for a sinner like me, I'm overwhelmed with thankfulness and wonder.
All who receive Jesus as God, King, and Savior by faith are made children of God. So, in one sense, Christmas really is for children. As John puts it in the prologue to his gospel, "...to all who received [Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God..." (John 1:12).
By faith in Christ, I'm one of those children. And that's why, as my wife sang along with O, Holy Night in our car a few days ago, I found my eyes misting and my voice choking in thankfulness for all that God has done for an unworthy sinner like me.
I love Christmas because it reminds me that Christ loves even me!
Advent starts this coming Sunday, December 2. Advent is the season of anticipation of Christmas and anticipation of His return to the earth one day, when He will finally and fully establish His eternal kingdom. It will be a kingdom in which all who have received Christ by faith will reign with God forever.
Why not let down your guard? Make it a point to worship with the imperfect, forgiven fellowship you can find at a church somewhere close to you.
Lay aside your cynicism and defensiveness.
Lay down the sins you've allowed to define you for way too long.
Take hold of the outstretched hand of forgiveness and charity God gives to you in Jesus Christ.
You don't have to fully understand it or be able to explain it.
Just fall into the arms of the God Who loves you and let Him love you.
Let yourself be God's child.
Let Him set you free to be the joyful, grateful child He made you to be.
Let it happen this Christmas!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Christie Out of Favor with Right of Center Political Junkies
Political journalists, consultants, officeholders, and candidates are, let's be honest, junkies. They're addicted. They can never get enough of politics, political speculation, or campaigning. The object of life for many of them isn't to govern, but to win. For them, the four years between presidential elections isn't when government policies are debated and enacted, it's just part of the election cycle, akin to a major league baseball or NFL football season.
So, it was no surprise on election night to see the pundits speculating on who the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in 2016 would be. (That's when I turned off the TV and pulled out a book.)
Nor was it surprising to learn that within days of the election, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) was off to Iowa to lend his help to the state GOP with a fundraiser.
Yesterday, Ann Althouse reported on an informal poll conducted among "right of center bloggers" as to their preferred GOP presidential candidates for 2016.
The bad news is that 74 responded.
The good news is that 240 were asked.
Might it be too much to hope that the majority of this sampling of politically-engaged folks would rather be focused on the governance part of government for awhile, you know, sort of let the Electoral College actually cast their votes in December before beginning the presidential campaign full force?
A person can hope, can't he?
So, what did the bloggers say? You can read a full report here.
What stands out is how far New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has fallen in the eyes of this sampling of conservative bloggers. Based on what I see on Twitter posted by conservative folks, it would seem the right of center bloggers' disdain of Christie is fairly widespread among some Republicans. Christie is no longer the their darling.
They appear to believe that by expressing appreciation for the help that President Obama and his appointees with FEMA gave to New Jersey in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Governor Christie effectively handed the election to the President. This is viewed as a betrayal by some folks, as though Christie's highest call of duty is to the electoral chances of his party and not to the state or the nation.
Whether Chris Christie is qualified to be president or if his overall record is sufficient to pass muster with Republican Party conservatism are the sorts of questions I don't deal with. I've come to believe that pastors shouldn't do politics.
But Christie's apparent fall from grace among some Republicans is stunning: At the beginning of this presidential cycle, conservatives were urging him to run for president despite his short time as governor. And these same folks lapped up his forceful keynote address at the Republican National Convention this year.
Note: It wasn't a scandal that did Christie in. He hasn't defiled the flag or enagaged in espionage. He hasn't even been done in by a flip-flop.
What has done Christie in among some of his fellow Republicans, at least for the moment, is an expression of appreciation to the President of the United States for helping his state.
Of course, there are folks in every ideological camp who prefer ideological purity (according to the definition du jour of their ideology, of course) to getting things done.
But voters like pragmatism and magnanimity, which is why my guess is that when the voters of New Jersey go to the polls this coming November, even some of those who are very blue Democrats with misgivings about some of the cuts the governor has effected in their state, many will mark their ballots for Chris Christie.
By the way, how predictive is this poll of "right of center bloggers," who have been polled at similar times four years before the next presidential elections regarding their choices for president?
Negatively predictive. In other words, the folks they least preferred have ended up becoming their party's nominee...then losing the elections. John Hawkins explains:
So, it was no surprise on election night to see the pundits speculating on who the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in 2016 would be. (That's when I turned off the TV and pulled out a book.)
Nor was it surprising to learn that within days of the election, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) was off to Iowa to lend his help to the state GOP with a fundraiser.
Yesterday, Ann Althouse reported on an informal poll conducted among "right of center bloggers" as to their preferred GOP presidential candidates for 2016.
The bad news is that 74 responded.
The good news is that 240 were asked.
Might it be too much to hope that the majority of this sampling of politically-engaged folks would rather be focused on the governance part of government for awhile, you know, sort of let the Electoral College actually cast their votes in December before beginning the presidential campaign full force?
A person can hope, can't he?
So, what did the bloggers say? You can read a full report here.
What stands out is how far New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has fallen in the eyes of this sampling of conservative bloggers. Based on what I see on Twitter posted by conservative folks, it would seem the right of center bloggers' disdain of Christie is fairly widespread among some Republicans. Christie is no longer the their darling.
They appear to believe that by expressing appreciation for the help that President Obama and his appointees with FEMA gave to New Jersey in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Governor Christie effectively handed the election to the President. This is viewed as a betrayal by some folks, as though Christie's highest call of duty is to the electoral chances of his party and not to the state or the nation.
Whether Chris Christie is qualified to be president or if his overall record is sufficient to pass muster with Republican Party conservatism are the sorts of questions I don't deal with. I've come to believe that pastors shouldn't do politics.
But Christie's apparent fall from grace among some Republicans is stunning: At the beginning of this presidential cycle, conservatives were urging him to run for president despite his short time as governor. And these same folks lapped up his forceful keynote address at the Republican National Convention this year.
Note: It wasn't a scandal that did Christie in. He hasn't defiled the flag or enagaged in espionage. He hasn't even been done in by a flip-flop.
What has done Christie in among some of his fellow Republicans, at least for the moment, is an expression of appreciation to the President of the United States for helping his state.
Of course, there are folks in every ideological camp who prefer ideological purity (according to the definition du jour of their ideology, of course) to getting things done.
But voters like pragmatism and magnanimity, which is why my guess is that when the voters of New Jersey go to the polls this coming November, even some of those who are very blue Democrats with misgivings about some of the cuts the governor has effected in their state, many will mark their ballots for Chris Christie.
By the way, how predictive is this poll of "right of center bloggers," who have been polled at similar times four years before the next presidential elections regarding their choices for president?
Negatively predictive. In other words, the folks they least preferred have ended up becoming their party's nominee...then losing the elections. John Hawkins explains:
In 2008, the least wanted candidates for bloggers were...John McCain and Ron Paul.Personally, I'd prefer the candidate, from whatever party, who had to be persuaded at the last minute to run for president. I know, it's not gonna happen. Marco Rubio will soon be joined by an army of Red and Blue would-be presidents tromping around Iowa and New Hampshire. After all, the addicts must get their fixes.
In 2012, the least wanted candidates for bloggers were...Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.
So, going by those results, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush would have to be considered the early favorites for 2016 based on the fact that conservative bloggers don’t want either of them as a nominee.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Who's Your King?
John 18:33-37
Sam Rutigliano, one-time head coach of the Cleveland Browns and a Lutheran Christian, was scheduled to be the main speaker for a Lutheran banquet. Ed Markquart, then the senior pastor of a Lutheran congregation near Seattle, was going to the gathering, but didn’t want to go. Rutigliano would, Markquart was sure, give one of those “jock for Jesus” talks, the ones where athletes or coaches talk about all the victories Jesus has given them.
He was shocked then at the banquet, when Rutigliano spoke about his faith in Christ. As Rutigliano told it, “He and his wife were driving one evening with their two year old daughter in the back seat. Suddenly a car was upon them; there was an accident; their car rolled over; the child was thrown out; and when everything had stopped moving, their little girl was pinned underneath the car.”
Markquart waited for the standard “jock for Jesus” finish. But all Rutigliano said of his daughter was, “She was dead.”
His wife and he grieved, nothing seeming to bring comfort.
Time passed and they became pregnant again, an answer to prayer, it seemed.
The pregnancy was normal and the baby was delivered, stillborn. It was more than Sam Rutigliano and his wife could bear. Sam found himself trying to negotiate with God. “If You will do this, Lord, then I will do that.” Markquart writes that as Rutigliano prayed, “...a quiet voice spoke back to Sam’s inner spirit: ‘No deals, Sam. No deals. No manipulations. I rule over you in all times of your life.'” Even the bad ones.
Rutigliano concluded his speech: “God has called me to be his servant in my turf, the National Football League. He rules over all aspects of my life, when winning or losing, in triumphs and tragedies. How about you? Where is your turf? Does God rule you there in your turf, in your situation? Not just when you’re winning, but when you are losing. Not just during the triumphs but during the tragedies of your life? Does God rule you then?”
With those words, Sam Rutigliano sat down.
Today is Christ the King Sunday. And the question before us is this: Is Jesus Christ our king? Or do we serve other kings, like desire, success, security, popular acceptance, or, one of today’s favorites, tolerance, whose subjects believe in tolerating anyone except those who disagree with them.
Here’s what I’ve learned about the kings people choose to serve other than Jesus Christ: They’re not much good when you face adversities or griefs like the ones Sam Rutigliano experienced.
The king of desire, for example, will leave you to die when you’ve overdosed and let you fend for yourself when you learn that you have a sexually transmitted disease, or are pregnant.
The king of popularity or acceptance by others will give you a happy life so long as you live like a chameleon and go along to get along with the crowd. (Some of you young people know what I’m talking about!)
That king of popular acceptance, in fact, appears to be the king of choice even in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America these days.
Our leaders and members put up with and even encourage pastors, bishops, and congregations who question or deny the virgin birth of Jesus, that Jesus physically rose from the dead [1], that Jesus is the only way to life with God, and the existence of hell.
To be acceptable to one Christian denomination, our ELCA has also effectively, given up on a central teaching of the Lutheran confessions that the written word of God in the Bible is the final authority over our life, faith, and practice and accepts instead that that other denomination’s bishops and human traditions have an authority equal to that of the Bible.
In obvious deference to being accepted by others, our ELCA has also said in its public documents that authority over Christian proclamation and practice stems not just from Scripture, but also our personal experiences. That contradicts what both the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions teach.
Denominational and synodical officials, say nothing while one of our ELCA congregations plays to the prevailing opinions of Americans people that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe it sincerely. At Ebenezer Church, an ELCA congregation in good standing, the Lord's Prayer or their version of it isn't offered to the God Who “is in heaven.” Instead, they pray to the deity “who is within us” and displace any mention of forgiving our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses of others. The so-called prayer is ended with: “You support us in our power and we act with courage. For you are the dwelling place within us, the empowerment around us and the celebration among us, now and forever. Amen.” The problem, of course, isn't that the words are wrong, but that the theology is more American and more Asian than it is Biblical. ELCA officials not only refuse undertake disciplinary action against this congregation, a high official of the ELCA, an aide to our presiding bishop, recently spoke and worshiped at a conference there, alongside a so-called “high priestess of the goddess Isis.”
In obvious deference to being accepted by others, our ELCA has also said in public documents that sources of authority over Christian sexual morality include not just Scripture, but also our personal experiences. That contradicts what both the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions teach.
The irony is that while our denomination sounds more and more like the rest of the world, the king of popularity has abandoned us. When the going gets tough, the kings of this world always abandon their subjects. But, like Sam Rutigliano, we know a King who “will never leave [us] nor forsake [us],” from whom not even death can separate us.
This morning we gather to worship and celebrate the only King worthy of our allegiance. We worship King Jesus Christ, the Lord of everything! Jesus is different from the other kings people serve.
We see how different in our gospel lesson, John 8:33-37. It’s part of John’s narrative about the trial of Jesus that will culminate in His death on a cross.
Verse 33: “Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called [other translations say, “summoned”] Jesus, and said to Him, ‘Are You the King of the Jews?’” Pilate has just come from a consultation with the leaders of the Jewish religion, whose country, Judea, was under the rule of the Roman Empire and of Pilate, the Roman governor. The leaders’ beef with Jesus is that He claimed to be God. They saw this as sacrilegious. But Romans called all sorts of people gods. So, in order to persuade Pilate that Jesus needed to be executed and gotten out of the way, they told Pilate that Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews. That got Pilate’s attention. He didn’t want any trouble from would-be kings. So, he asks Jesus, “Are You the King of the Jews?”
Jesus, this poor carpenter, already bruised and battered from the mistreatment He’s received since His arrest, shows Pilate Who’s really in charge of this interview by asking Pilate a question: “Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me?”
In essence, Jesus is asking Pilate the same question He asked His own disciples in Matthew 16:15: “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus Himself is unambiguous in identifying Who He is.
Go to John 14:9. Jesus tells Philip: “...He who has seen Me has seen the Father...”
Look at John 10:30 Jesus says, “I and My Father are one.”
Or look at John 8:58. Jesus tells His fellow Jews who want to make Him a king on their own terms: “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” (I AM--Yahweh--in the Old Testament was the Name by which God identified Himself to Moses at a burning bush some 1500 years earlier.)
Jesus isn’t one of the bitty kings people follow in this world, not the little gods of various worldly religious systems. He is the King of all creation, the One with power over life and death.
As Jesus puts it in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. [All who believe] in Me, though [they] die...shall live.”
Back in our lesson, Pilate sees himself as too important to deal with the squabbles of a conquered people. He asks Jesus in John 18:35: “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you to me. What have you done?”
But Jesus tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” We must be careful here. In saying that His kingdom is not of this world, Jesus isn’t saying that His kingdom is not for this world.
If His kingdom weren’t for this world, Jesus wouldn’t have taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
When Jesus says that His kingdom is not of this world, He’s saying that it’s not from this world. He is, after all, God the Word made flesh.
Jesus is not from the world, but through His death and resurrection He conquers this world and when He returns one day to bring this world to an end, He will bring the new heavens and the new earth for all who believe in Him to reign over with Him.
Jesus goes on to tell Pilate in our Gospel lesson: “If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight...”
Jesus is saying, “If I were an ordinary king, I’d have my own army that would fight for Me. I’d have my own political platform that My followers would fight for in the counsels of government. But My kingdom is bigger than all that. “My kingdom,” Jesus says at the end of verse 36, “is not from here.”
Pilate has seen bands of rebels undertake their little wars on Rome before. He looks at the carpenter standing before him and, probably with sarcasm, asks in verse 37, “Are You a king then?” “You say rightly that I am a king,” Jesus tells Pilate in verse 37. “For this cause [the cause of bringing God’s kingdom into this sinful, dying world] I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth [everyone, in other words, who hasn’t given their allegiance to one of the puny, dying kings of this world] hears My voice.”
This echoes what Jesus says elsewhere: His sheep know His voice and will respond to no other.
Is Jesus the only voice to which you’re listening today? Is Jesus your only King?
If you can answer yes to those questions this morning, you have reason to be grateful and glad!
But let’s be clear: It’s not an easy time to be a follower of Jesus. It’s not politically correct to proclaim, as Jesus has told us, that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life,” that Jesus is the only King of the universe, the only way to life with God.
Popular culture is aligned against the followers of Jesus Christ. But this is no time to change kings. This is no time to cave into the culture of the world, of our country, or even of our denomination.
Dietrich Offeldt lived in post-World War II eastern Germany. It was clear that the people were going to trade the terrors of living under Hitler for the terrors of life under Soviet Communism, in which official atheism told the people to have no king but the state. Dietrich Offeldt was a Christian. “Leave East Germany,” his friends told him.
But he refused, explaining later: “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. He is the ruler of my life, and he can dispose of my life in any way he chooses. I have found that every Christian finds himself or herself in a particular circumstance, a particular time, a particular place in which they live out their discipleship. My circumstance is communism; my time is the Cold War; and my place is East Berlin. I chose to be a disciple here.”
God has given you the task of being a subject of King Jesus in this town, in this time, in this place, and, as a member of a Lutheran congregation, a member of a denomination that grows bolder each day in repudiating the teachings of the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions we say are the bedrock of our faith, that subtly denies the kingship of Jesus in favor of getting along with a pluralistic world.
You and I could choose to avoid trouble with neighbors and friends by keeping our traps shut about Jesus, our king.
If we do that long enough, Jesus will no longer be our king. We’ll be subjects of the dying world’s two favorite kings, Safety and Security, which are only aliases of Satan, ticketed for death along with every other king but the risen Jesus.
Better to take the choice made by Dietrich Offeldt. He chose, he said, “to raise my flag and show my colors, to let those around me know for sure that I am a Christian, that Christ rules my life.”
On this Christ the King Sunday, I ask you (I ask myself): “Whose colors will you fly, those of the kings of the world? Or will you fly those of the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords, the conqueror of sin and death, the One Who is with us always, even to the close of the age, and the One Who promises to one day embrace us with those nail-scarred arms as He welcomes us, scarred ourselves by all we have faithfully endured in this world as we’ve followed Him, into eternity?”
Never be ashamed of Christ the King!
Never be ashamed of the king's book, the Bible!
Let Jesus be your King now and always. Amen
[This was prepared to be shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, during worship at both 8:30 and 10:15 this morning.]
[1] The PDF document cited here, by Pastor Mark Chavez, a former ELCA pastor, now general secretary of the North American Lutheran Church, addresses all of the problem areas mentioned above. It's well worth taking the time to read it.
Sam Rutigliano, one-time head coach of the Cleveland Browns and a Lutheran Christian, was scheduled to be the main speaker for a Lutheran banquet. Ed Markquart, then the senior pastor of a Lutheran congregation near Seattle, was going to the gathering, but didn’t want to go. Rutigliano would, Markquart was sure, give one of those “jock for Jesus” talks, the ones where athletes or coaches talk about all the victories Jesus has given them.
He was shocked then at the banquet, when Rutigliano spoke about his faith in Christ. As Rutigliano told it, “He and his wife were driving one evening with their two year old daughter in the back seat. Suddenly a car was upon them; there was an accident; their car rolled over; the child was thrown out; and when everything had stopped moving, their little girl was pinned underneath the car.”
Markquart waited for the standard “jock for Jesus” finish. But all Rutigliano said of his daughter was, “She was dead.”
His wife and he grieved, nothing seeming to bring comfort.
Time passed and they became pregnant again, an answer to prayer, it seemed.
The pregnancy was normal and the baby was delivered, stillborn. It was more than Sam Rutigliano and his wife could bear. Sam found himself trying to negotiate with God. “If You will do this, Lord, then I will do that.” Markquart writes that as Rutigliano prayed, “...a quiet voice spoke back to Sam’s inner spirit: ‘No deals, Sam. No deals. No manipulations. I rule over you in all times of your life.'” Even the bad ones.
Rutigliano concluded his speech: “God has called me to be his servant in my turf, the National Football League. He rules over all aspects of my life, when winning or losing, in triumphs and tragedies. How about you? Where is your turf? Does God rule you there in your turf, in your situation? Not just when you’re winning, but when you are losing. Not just during the triumphs but during the tragedies of your life? Does God rule you then?”
With those words, Sam Rutigliano sat down.
Today is Christ the King Sunday. And the question before us is this: Is Jesus Christ our king? Or do we serve other kings, like desire, success, security, popular acceptance, or, one of today’s favorites, tolerance, whose subjects believe in tolerating anyone except those who disagree with them.
Here’s what I’ve learned about the kings people choose to serve other than Jesus Christ: They’re not much good when you face adversities or griefs like the ones Sam Rutigliano experienced.
The king of desire, for example, will leave you to die when you’ve overdosed and let you fend for yourself when you learn that you have a sexually transmitted disease, or are pregnant.
The king of popularity or acceptance by others will give you a happy life so long as you live like a chameleon and go along to get along with the crowd. (Some of you young people know what I’m talking about!)
That king of popular acceptance, in fact, appears to be the king of choice even in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America these days.
Our leaders and members put up with and even encourage pastors, bishops, and congregations who question or deny the virgin birth of Jesus, that Jesus physically rose from the dead [1], that Jesus is the only way to life with God, and the existence of hell.
To be acceptable to one Christian denomination, our ELCA has also effectively, given up on a central teaching of the Lutheran confessions that the written word of God in the Bible is the final authority over our life, faith, and practice and accepts instead that that other denomination’s bishops and human traditions have an authority equal to that of the Bible.
In obvious deference to being accepted by others, our ELCA has also said in its public documents that authority over Christian proclamation and practice stems not just from Scripture, but also our personal experiences. That contradicts what both the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions teach.
Denominational and synodical officials, say nothing while one of our ELCA congregations plays to the prevailing opinions of Americans people that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe it sincerely. At Ebenezer Church, an ELCA congregation in good standing, the Lord's Prayer or their version of it isn't offered to the God Who “is in heaven.” Instead, they pray to the deity “who is within us” and displace any mention of forgiving our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses of others. The so-called prayer is ended with: “You support us in our power and we act with courage. For you are the dwelling place within us, the empowerment around us and the celebration among us, now and forever. Amen.” The problem, of course, isn't that the words are wrong, but that the theology is more American and more Asian than it is Biblical. ELCA officials not only refuse undertake disciplinary action against this congregation, a high official of the ELCA, an aide to our presiding bishop, recently spoke and worshiped at a conference there, alongside a so-called “high priestess of the goddess Isis.”
In obvious deference to being accepted by others, our ELCA has also said in public documents that sources of authority over Christian sexual morality include not just Scripture, but also our personal experiences. That contradicts what both the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions teach.
The irony is that while our denomination sounds more and more like the rest of the world, the king of popularity has abandoned us. When the going gets tough, the kings of this world always abandon their subjects. But, like Sam Rutigliano, we know a King who “will never leave [us] nor forsake [us],” from whom not even death can separate us.
This morning we gather to worship and celebrate the only King worthy of our allegiance. We worship King Jesus Christ, the Lord of everything! Jesus is different from the other kings people serve.
We see how different in our gospel lesson, John 8:33-37. It’s part of John’s narrative about the trial of Jesus that will culminate in His death on a cross.
Verse 33: “Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called [other translations say, “summoned”] Jesus, and said to Him, ‘Are You the King of the Jews?’” Pilate has just come from a consultation with the leaders of the Jewish religion, whose country, Judea, was under the rule of the Roman Empire and of Pilate, the Roman governor. The leaders’ beef with Jesus is that He claimed to be God. They saw this as sacrilegious. But Romans called all sorts of people gods. So, in order to persuade Pilate that Jesus needed to be executed and gotten out of the way, they told Pilate that Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews. That got Pilate’s attention. He didn’t want any trouble from would-be kings. So, he asks Jesus, “Are You the King of the Jews?”
Jesus, this poor carpenter, already bruised and battered from the mistreatment He’s received since His arrest, shows Pilate Who’s really in charge of this interview by asking Pilate a question: “Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me?”
In essence, Jesus is asking Pilate the same question He asked His own disciples in Matthew 16:15: “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus Himself is unambiguous in identifying Who He is.
Go to John 14:9. Jesus tells Philip: “...He who has seen Me has seen the Father...”
Look at John 10:30 Jesus says, “I and My Father are one.”
Or look at John 8:58. Jesus tells His fellow Jews who want to make Him a king on their own terms: “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” (I AM--Yahweh--in the Old Testament was the Name by which God identified Himself to Moses at a burning bush some 1500 years earlier.)
Jesus isn’t one of the bitty kings people follow in this world, not the little gods of various worldly religious systems. He is the King of all creation, the One with power over life and death.
As Jesus puts it in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. [All who believe] in Me, though [they] die...shall live.”
Back in our lesson, Pilate sees himself as too important to deal with the squabbles of a conquered people. He asks Jesus in John 18:35: “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you to me. What have you done?”
But Jesus tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” We must be careful here. In saying that His kingdom is not of this world, Jesus isn’t saying that His kingdom is not for this world.
If His kingdom weren’t for this world, Jesus wouldn’t have taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
When Jesus says that His kingdom is not of this world, He’s saying that it’s not from this world. He is, after all, God the Word made flesh.
Jesus is not from the world, but through His death and resurrection He conquers this world and when He returns one day to bring this world to an end, He will bring the new heavens and the new earth for all who believe in Him to reign over with Him.
Jesus goes on to tell Pilate in our Gospel lesson: “If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight...”
Jesus is saying, “If I were an ordinary king, I’d have my own army that would fight for Me. I’d have my own political platform that My followers would fight for in the counsels of government. But My kingdom is bigger than all that. “My kingdom,” Jesus says at the end of verse 36, “is not from here.”
Pilate has seen bands of rebels undertake their little wars on Rome before. He looks at the carpenter standing before him and, probably with sarcasm, asks in verse 37, “Are You a king then?” “You say rightly that I am a king,” Jesus tells Pilate in verse 37. “For this cause [the cause of bringing God’s kingdom into this sinful, dying world] I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth [everyone, in other words, who hasn’t given their allegiance to one of the puny, dying kings of this world] hears My voice.”
This echoes what Jesus says elsewhere: His sheep know His voice and will respond to no other.
Is Jesus the only voice to which you’re listening today? Is Jesus your only King?
If you can answer yes to those questions this morning, you have reason to be grateful and glad!
But let’s be clear: It’s not an easy time to be a follower of Jesus. It’s not politically correct to proclaim, as Jesus has told us, that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life,” that Jesus is the only King of the universe, the only way to life with God.
Popular culture is aligned against the followers of Jesus Christ. But this is no time to change kings. This is no time to cave into the culture of the world, of our country, or even of our denomination.
Dietrich Offeldt lived in post-World War II eastern Germany. It was clear that the people were going to trade the terrors of living under Hitler for the terrors of life under Soviet Communism, in which official atheism told the people to have no king but the state. Dietrich Offeldt was a Christian. “Leave East Germany,” his friends told him.
But he refused, explaining later: “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. He is the ruler of my life, and he can dispose of my life in any way he chooses. I have found that every Christian finds himself or herself in a particular circumstance, a particular time, a particular place in which they live out their discipleship. My circumstance is communism; my time is the Cold War; and my place is East Berlin. I chose to be a disciple here.”
God has given you the task of being a subject of King Jesus in this town, in this time, in this place, and, as a member of a Lutheran congregation, a member of a denomination that grows bolder each day in repudiating the teachings of the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions we say are the bedrock of our faith, that subtly denies the kingship of Jesus in favor of getting along with a pluralistic world.
You and I could choose to avoid trouble with neighbors and friends by keeping our traps shut about Jesus, our king.
If we do that long enough, Jesus will no longer be our king. We’ll be subjects of the dying world’s two favorite kings, Safety and Security, which are only aliases of Satan, ticketed for death along with every other king but the risen Jesus.
Better to take the choice made by Dietrich Offeldt. He chose, he said, “to raise my flag and show my colors, to let those around me know for sure that I am a Christian, that Christ rules my life.”
On this Christ the King Sunday, I ask you (I ask myself): “Whose colors will you fly, those of the kings of the world? Or will you fly those of the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords, the conqueror of sin and death, the One Who is with us always, even to the close of the age, and the One Who promises to one day embrace us with those nail-scarred arms as He welcomes us, scarred ourselves by all we have faithfully endured in this world as we’ve followed Him, into eternity?”
Never be ashamed of Christ the King!
Never be ashamed of the king's book, the Bible!
Let Jesus be your King now and always. Amen
[This was prepared to be shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, during worship at both 8:30 and 10:15 this morning.]
Footnotes
[1] The PDF document cited here, by Pastor Mark Chavez, a former ELCA pastor, now general secretary of the North American Lutheran Church, addresses all of the problem areas mentioned above. It's well worth taking the time to read it.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Amazing Video of Baby Yawning in the Womb!
"We already know that unborn babies can stretch and even hiccup in the womb," says a report from The Telegraph, "but new research from the University of Durham concludes that they can also yawn."
This stunning video makes that point.
Read the entire Telegraph report here.
Read the entire Telegraph report here.
When People Worship "Stuff"
When "stuff" is our god, the video above, shot at a Walmart where people were trying to take advantage of a cell phone sale, this is what "worship" looks like.
Worshiping false gods is inherently destructive of relationship. When we worship false gods--money, status, ourselves, dope, booze, or whatever, we destroy our relationships with God, others, and the people we were meant to be.
When the one true God of creation calls us, through Jesus Christ, to follow Him, it's a call to love the God we worship AND the neighbor God created. Move closer to Christ and you're less likely to dehumanize, take for granted, hurt, or gossip about the people you encounter.
But there's something more to getting straight about what or who will be the object of our worship.
You see, cell phones and other stuff eventually die.
God is immortal and in Christ, He has conquered sin and death for us in order to give us a life that is the opposite of the frenzy you see here.
Let Christ be your God!
What Money is For
From today's installment of Our Daily Bread: "The challenge of riches is living with thankful hearts to God and open hands to others." See here.
Money itself isn't condemned by the Bible. 1 Timothy 6:10, in the Bible's New Testament is often misquoted to claim (or accuse) the Bible of this attitude. (Even by Pink Floyd in the song, Money, on Dark Side of the Moon.) Money is not the root of all evil. The misquoted passage says that, "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains."
Jesus does say that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the eternal kingdom Jesus came to bring to those with faith in Him. He says this to His disciples after telling a rich man to sell everything he has, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus.
But Jesus isn't saying that wealth is intrinsically bad. It just happened that money was this young man's particular idol of choice and it becomes such for lots of people.
The simple truth is that not everyone can handle wealth, no doubt far fewer than actually have wealth. The rich young man who incited Jesus to use His "camel through the eye of a needle" metaphor, was apparently not handling his wealth in a way that had him in sync with God. (Matthew 19:16-26)
Because wealth buys so much in this dying world, it's easy for the wealthy to delude themselves into thinking that they are, in a sense, gods in themselves.
Or, they can develop a material notion about life itself, thinking that anything that can't be bought, sold, touched, or manipulated, isn't real, even God Himself, Who, after all, has been revealed materially only once, in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Savior.
Yet the Bible is filled with wealthy people who retained their faith and their wealth. Because God came first, they were able to use their wealth in a way that honored and loved God and gave practical expression to their love for others. The list includes Abraham and Sarah, Lydia, Matthew, and Joseph of Arimathea, to name just a few. And the fishermen who followed Jesus--including Peter, Andrew, James, and John--were at the least, members of the upper middle class of their time.
Each came to see their wealth as a gift from God over which they were to exercise good management. The Biblical word for this is stewardship.
In another part of 1 Timothy, on which today's installment of Our Daily Bread, quoted and linked above, is based, the apostle Paul writes:
And this is it: We acquire wealth so that we can take care of the needy.
The needy, of course, can include the neediest people of all: those who have never come to know or follow Jesus Christ. Proclaiming the good news that God so loves every person on this planet that He gave His Son Jesus, so that all who will turn from sin (repent) and believe in Jesus (surrender their lives to Him) will have everlasting life is the job of every Christian. Even our money should be marshaled in the effort to help others to fill their need for Christ.
But the needy also include the poor, whether in our own community or around the world.
The needy also include the victims of disaster, wherever they live.
Understanding why God entrusts our wealth to us, no matter how wealthy we may be by world standards, should alter the decisions we make about how we spend our money.
Followers of Jesus Christ, grateful that God has already saved them by His grace through our faith in Jesus, are set free from the temptations of money and can ask themselves each day, "God has given me new and everlasting life through Christ. God gives me my daily bread. In response, how can I use what God has given to me in order to address the needs of others?"
Maybe one day I'll be content with how my life daily answers that question. But I haven't gotten there yet. God is still working on me.
Money itself isn't condemned by the Bible. 1 Timothy 6:10, in the Bible's New Testament is often misquoted to claim (or accuse) the Bible of this attitude. (Even by Pink Floyd in the song, Money, on Dark Side of the Moon.) Money is not the root of all evil. The misquoted passage says that, "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains."
Jesus does say that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the eternal kingdom Jesus came to bring to those with faith in Him. He says this to His disciples after telling a rich man to sell everything he has, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus.
But Jesus isn't saying that wealth is intrinsically bad. It just happened that money was this young man's particular idol of choice and it becomes such for lots of people.
The simple truth is that not everyone can handle wealth, no doubt far fewer than actually have wealth. The rich young man who incited Jesus to use His "camel through the eye of a needle" metaphor, was apparently not handling his wealth in a way that had him in sync with God. (Matthew 19:16-26)
Because wealth buys so much in this dying world, it's easy for the wealthy to delude themselves into thinking that they are, in a sense, gods in themselves.
Or, they can develop a material notion about life itself, thinking that anything that can't be bought, sold, touched, or manipulated, isn't real, even God Himself, Who, after all, has been revealed materially only once, in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Savior.
Yet the Bible is filled with wealthy people who retained their faith and their wealth. Because God came first, they were able to use their wealth in a way that honored and loved God and gave practical expression to their love for others. The list includes Abraham and Sarah, Lydia, Matthew, and Joseph of Arimathea, to name just a few. And the fishermen who followed Jesus--including Peter, Andrew, James, and John--were at the least, members of the upper middle class of their time.
Each came to see their wealth as a gift from God over which they were to exercise good management. The Biblical word for this is stewardship.
In another part of 1 Timothy, on which today's installment of Our Daily Bread, quoted and linked above, is based, the apostle Paul writes:
Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy (1 Timothy 4:28).Paul is not saying that everyone who has acquired wealth stole it. He is saying that the thieves who had come to faith in Christ needed to leave their sins behind by learning the true object for acquiring money while we live on earth.
And this is it: We acquire wealth so that we can take care of the needy.
The needy, of course, can include the neediest people of all: those who have never come to know or follow Jesus Christ. Proclaiming the good news that God so loves every person on this planet that He gave His Son Jesus, so that all who will turn from sin (repent) and believe in Jesus (surrender their lives to Him) will have everlasting life is the job of every Christian. Even our money should be marshaled in the effort to help others to fill their need for Christ.
But the needy also include the poor, whether in our own community or around the world.
The needy also include the victims of disaster, wherever they live.
Understanding why God entrusts our wealth to us, no matter how wealthy we may be by world standards, should alter the decisions we make about how we spend our money.
Followers of Jesus Christ, grateful that God has already saved them by His grace through our faith in Jesus, are set free from the temptations of money and can ask themselves each day, "God has given me new and everlasting life through Christ. God gives me my daily bread. In response, how can I use what God has given to me in order to address the needs of others?"
Maybe one day I'll be content with how my life daily answers that question. But I haven't gotten there yet. God is still working on me.
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