Between 2001 and 2011 the number of trips made daily on foot in London increased by 12% http://t.co/1diE2gCKcK pic.twitter.com/Ih96gmoO03
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 6, 2013
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Maybe London Can Lead the West Out of the Obesity Epidemic
Monday, August 05, 2013
Why Do We Work?
[This was shared during both worship services with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26
Our son Philip, now thirty-one, was nine years old when we attended my Dad’s retirement party. On the way home from the party, a voice came from the backseat and asked, “Dad, why do we work?” That struck me. We take work for granted as part of our lives. We work to earn the money to pay our bills, of course. But why exactly do we work?
In our first lesson for this morning, a world weary Solomon, successor to his father David as king of Israel, gives vent to his own frustration with work.
Take a look at some of what Solomon says.
In Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, he writes: “I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.”
He goes on to say in Ecclesiastes 2:18-23, that he hated all his toil, his hard work, because he would die and then all the money and possessions he had would pass on to his heirs and lose all the things he’d gained through wisdom by acts of foolishness.
Solomon thought that hard work can be a vanity, a vain endeavor, meaning it was worthless and insignificant.
Now, other than Jesus, Solomon was the wisest man to ever walk the earth. Solomon is right here, I think. When you work just to pile up riches, comfort, influence, and power, all your work is in vain, meaning nothing, and a waste of our lives. One of the main characters in the classic film, Citizen Kane, surrounded by ticker tape machines that showed how his investments were going, while being interviewed by a reporter late in his life, speaks this wisdom when he says, “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money.” He understood how vain and worthless the mere acquisition of money is.
Shifting from fiction to real life, an acquaintance of Ann’s and mine once worked for a hard-charging man who built a business empire, shedding wives and any relationship with his adult kids he might have had in the process. When he died, there were a number of people at his funeral. But he went unmourned. You see he’d worked hard to leave behind a pile of money. But he never used his work or his money to achieve anything truly worthwhile in this life or in eternity.
So, why do we work?
Let me tell you, first of all, what’s not a reason to work. Someone once asked the writer G.K. Chesteron what the greatest problem in the world was. Chesterton said, “I am.”
You and I--our sins, our faults, resentments, jealousies, grudges, imperfections--are the main problem in the world. Often, we look at that fact and tell ourselves to work harder, strive to be better people, to fulfill God’s laws as embodied in the ten commandments. There’s nothing wrong with the ten commandments or with God’s law, of course. God gave them. They contain God’s will for our lives. They’re perfect.
The problem is, we’re not perfect. That’s the problem with the world. You and I could never work hard enough to earn a place in God’s kingdom or to be worthy of His love. Instead, God gives a place in His kingdom, His overflowing love, His forgiveness, as gifts of His grace to all infused by the faith only the Holy Spirit can give, to turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, the only way to life with God.
Yet even after God’s grace has come to us in Jesus Christ, even after we accept that only Christ’s hard work on the cross, and even after the most miraculous work of all, the work God the Father did when He raised the crucified Jesus from the grave--even after all that, we still work. We do so, I think, for four reasons.
First, we work because, simply, God planned things that way. God gives us work to do--as employees, family members, and citizens of our communities. Work isn’t God’s punishment for sin. In the Old Testament book of Genesis we’re told that God placed the first human being in a garden. The Bible says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” God never meant for the man to sit around and watch the garden grow! God’s intention was always for him--and for all of us--to work. God gives each of us our own parts to play in caring for, building, and renewing the world He gives us. Human beings were made to work.
A second reason we work, I think, is this: When we work, we most reflect the presence of the image of God within us. The Bible tells us that we human beings were created in the image of God. There are many implications to that statement, but one of them becomes clear when you scan the opening verses of the Bible as it talks about God. You’ll find phrases like, “God created...God separated...God named...God made.” You see, God works. God creates. God builds. We’re made in the image of a working God. So, there’s something intrinsic to being children of God that impels us to work.
But there’s a third reason that we work. Pastor Steve Goodier tells the true story of an elderly man considered by his townspeople to be both wise and thrifty. “When he died,” Goodier says, “everyone expected the authorities to find money stashed everywhere in his home. [But a]ll they found were a few gallon cans filled with coins. It turned out that he had used most of his money to help put needy young students through college. And the coins filled his pockets as he walked down the streets of the business districts looking for parking meters that had expired. When he found one, he would drop in a coin. One of his neighbors commented, ‘That explains why he looked so happy and contented!’” Here was a man who worked in his own special way even after he retired. He knew that another reason we work is to experience the joy that goes with serving others, that goes with being someone others can depend on.
God has created us for community with Him and with others. When each of us does our best at working, giving to, and serving God and others, we live out the love God has given us in Jesus Christ. And make no mistake, God and the world are depending on us to play our part in God’s creation. Elsewhere in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes: “If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.” We work because God has constructed the world in such a way that we all need each other to do our jobs well. Others are depending on us.
And this continues even when people can no longer do the things they once could. Often, when I visit with the elderly, they tell me, "I can't do the work I used to be able to do." It's then I try to convince them that, as we grow older, God may shift our workload, calling us to do the heavy lifting of more intense, longer sessions of prayer for the needs of our church, community, and world. In this too, God and our neighbors, especially those neighbors who don't realize it, are depending on us.
Now there’s a fourth reason for working which, I think, may only make sense to those who are followers of Christ.
In his fine book, Christians in the Marketplace, Pastor Bill Hybels tells the story of a young man his father hired to work in his wholesale produce business one summer. He was a student at West Point and rumor had it, a Christian. As Hybels tells it, many of his dad’s other employees were “rough...hard-drinking, hard-fighting, women-chasing men” who “relished the opportunity to make sport of a nice, clean-cut, all-American...” kid. They wanted to make this young man’s summer miserable.
But they didn’t. Instead, “David, the all-American boy, turned the company upside down.” On his very first day, he befriended some vagrants out behind the company warehouse. He gave them his lunch. Soon, he was doing Bible studies for them. Before the end of the summer, in his quiet, loving way, David had become a valued friend and counselor to some of the most hardened employees of the Hybels company. I like what Hybels says after recounting this incident. “The shame of the marketplace is that so often it centers on nothing but business. There aren’t enough Davids in the workforce.”
Our daily work isn’t just about keeping the house clean, meeting deadlines, making money, or keeping the boss off our backs. (Although those things can be part of our work lives.)
It’s not about piling up an estate that, as Solomon laments in our lesson, the kids may fritter away foolishly.
And, may I say, it’s not even about piling up the money for a bequest to the church. (In this, I liked Mary Jane Stofcheck’s philosophy, If you’re going to give money away, give it away now. Give when it requires faith that God will supply all your needs even though you give away part of your money!)
For the Christian, the key questions as we do our work boil down to a few:
“No, I haven’t been a good husband. I’ve been surly and selfish.”
“No, I haven’t been a good father. I’ve been impatient.”
“No, I haven’t been a good pastor. I should have worked harder on that lesson plan, should have listened more to that counselee, should have prayed before I took action.”
It’s in these circumstances that I turn to the God I know through Jesus in repentance and ask for the power to recommit myself to giving Him all the glory in all that I do.
Why do we work?
We Christians work because when all is said and done, we really work for the One Who loves and works for us every moment of every day.
We work because Jesus Christ, the One Who went to the cross and rose from the tomb for us, loves us and nothing is so important to the Christian than to use our whole lives to give back to the God Who gives us everything. Amen
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26
Our son Philip, now thirty-one, was nine years old when we attended my Dad’s retirement party. On the way home from the party, a voice came from the backseat and asked, “Dad, why do we work?” That struck me. We take work for granted as part of our lives. We work to earn the money to pay our bills, of course. But why exactly do we work?
In our first lesson for this morning, a world weary Solomon, successor to his father David as king of Israel, gives vent to his own frustration with work.
Take a look at some of what Solomon says.
In Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, he writes: “I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.”
He goes on to say in Ecclesiastes 2:18-23, that he hated all his toil, his hard work, because he would die and then all the money and possessions he had would pass on to his heirs and lose all the things he’d gained through wisdom by acts of foolishness.
Solomon thought that hard work can be a vanity, a vain endeavor, meaning it was worthless and insignificant.
Now, other than Jesus, Solomon was the wisest man to ever walk the earth. Solomon is right here, I think. When you work just to pile up riches, comfort, influence, and power, all your work is in vain, meaning nothing, and a waste of our lives. One of the main characters in the classic film, Citizen Kane, surrounded by ticker tape machines that showed how his investments were going, while being interviewed by a reporter late in his life, speaks this wisdom when he says, “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money.” He understood how vain and worthless the mere acquisition of money is.
Shifting from fiction to real life, an acquaintance of Ann’s and mine once worked for a hard-charging man who built a business empire, shedding wives and any relationship with his adult kids he might have had in the process. When he died, there were a number of people at his funeral. But he went unmourned. You see he’d worked hard to leave behind a pile of money. But he never used his work or his money to achieve anything truly worthwhile in this life or in eternity.
So, why do we work?
Let me tell you, first of all, what’s not a reason to work. Someone once asked the writer G.K. Chesteron what the greatest problem in the world was. Chesterton said, “I am.”
You and I--our sins, our faults, resentments, jealousies, grudges, imperfections--are the main problem in the world. Often, we look at that fact and tell ourselves to work harder, strive to be better people, to fulfill God’s laws as embodied in the ten commandments. There’s nothing wrong with the ten commandments or with God’s law, of course. God gave them. They contain God’s will for our lives. They’re perfect.
The problem is, we’re not perfect. That’s the problem with the world. You and I could never work hard enough to earn a place in God’s kingdom or to be worthy of His love. Instead, God gives a place in His kingdom, His overflowing love, His forgiveness, as gifts of His grace to all infused by the faith only the Holy Spirit can give, to turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, the only way to life with God.
Yet even after God’s grace has come to us in Jesus Christ, even after we accept that only Christ’s hard work on the cross, and even after the most miraculous work of all, the work God the Father did when He raised the crucified Jesus from the grave--even after all that, we still work. We do so, I think, for four reasons.
First, we work because, simply, God planned things that way. God gives us work to do--as employees, family members, and citizens of our communities. Work isn’t God’s punishment for sin. In the Old Testament book of Genesis we’re told that God placed the first human being in a garden. The Bible says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” God never meant for the man to sit around and watch the garden grow! God’s intention was always for him--and for all of us--to work. God gives each of us our own parts to play in caring for, building, and renewing the world He gives us. Human beings were made to work.
A second reason we work, I think, is this: When we work, we most reflect the presence of the image of God within us. The Bible tells us that we human beings were created in the image of God. There are many implications to that statement, but one of them becomes clear when you scan the opening verses of the Bible as it talks about God. You’ll find phrases like, “God created...God separated...God named...God made.” You see, God works. God creates. God builds. We’re made in the image of a working God. So, there’s something intrinsic to being children of God that impels us to work.
But there’s a third reason that we work. Pastor Steve Goodier tells the true story of an elderly man considered by his townspeople to be both wise and thrifty. “When he died,” Goodier says, “everyone expected the authorities to find money stashed everywhere in his home. [But a]ll they found were a few gallon cans filled with coins. It turned out that he had used most of his money to help put needy young students through college. And the coins filled his pockets as he walked down the streets of the business districts looking for parking meters that had expired. When he found one, he would drop in a coin. One of his neighbors commented, ‘That explains why he looked so happy and contented!’” Here was a man who worked in his own special way even after he retired. He knew that another reason we work is to experience the joy that goes with serving others, that goes with being someone others can depend on.
God has created us for community with Him and with others. When each of us does our best at working, giving to, and serving God and others, we live out the love God has given us in Jesus Christ. And make no mistake, God and the world are depending on us to play our part in God’s creation. Elsewhere in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes: “If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.” We work because God has constructed the world in such a way that we all need each other to do our jobs well. Others are depending on us.
And this continues even when people can no longer do the things they once could. Often, when I visit with the elderly, they tell me, "I can't do the work I used to be able to do." It's then I try to convince them that, as we grow older, God may shift our workload, calling us to do the heavy lifting of more intense, longer sessions of prayer for the needs of our church, community, and world. In this too, God and our neighbors, especially those neighbors who don't realize it, are depending on us.
Now there’s a fourth reason for working which, I think, may only make sense to those who are followers of Christ.
In his fine book, Christians in the Marketplace, Pastor Bill Hybels tells the story of a young man his father hired to work in his wholesale produce business one summer. He was a student at West Point and rumor had it, a Christian. As Hybels tells it, many of his dad’s other employees were “rough...hard-drinking, hard-fighting, women-chasing men” who “relished the opportunity to make sport of a nice, clean-cut, all-American...” kid. They wanted to make this young man’s summer miserable.
But they didn’t. Instead, “David, the all-American boy, turned the company upside down.” On his very first day, he befriended some vagrants out behind the company warehouse. He gave them his lunch. Soon, he was doing Bible studies for them. Before the end of the summer, in his quiet, loving way, David had become a valued friend and counselor to some of the most hardened employees of the Hybels company. I like what Hybels says after recounting this incident. “The shame of the marketplace is that so often it centers on nothing but business. There aren’t enough Davids in the workforce.”
Our daily work isn’t just about keeping the house clean, meeting deadlines, making money, or keeping the boss off our backs. (Although those things can be part of our work lives.)
It’s not about piling up an estate that, as Solomon laments in our lesson, the kids may fritter away foolishly.
And, may I say, it’s not even about piling up the money for a bequest to the church. (In this, I liked Mary Jane Stofcheck’s philosophy, If you’re going to give money away, give it away now. Give when it requires faith that God will supply all your needs even though you give away part of your money!)
For the Christian, the key questions as we do our work boil down to a few:
- Am I giving glory to the God Who gave His Son to die on the cross and rise from the dead to give forgiveness and everlasting life as free gifts to all who believe in Jesus?
- Am I giving 100% of my effort to glorifying God and loving my neighbor every day?
- Am I showing consideration--(another way of asking, Am I giving love) to my employer, my coworkers, my customers, or others I serve?
“No, I haven’t been a good husband. I’ve been surly and selfish.”
“No, I haven’t been a good father. I’ve been impatient.”
“No, I haven’t been a good pastor. I should have worked harder on that lesson plan, should have listened more to that counselee, should have prayed before I took action.”
It’s in these circumstances that I turn to the God I know through Jesus in repentance and ask for the power to recommit myself to giving Him all the glory in all that I do.
Why do we work?
- Because God wants us to work; it’s part of being human.
- Because when we work, the presence of God’s image in us is visible.
- Because when we work, we experience the joy of serving others.
- And because when we work, we glorify God.
We Christians work because when all is said and done, we really work for the One Who loves and works for us every moment of every day.
We work because Jesus Christ, the One Who went to the cross and rose from the tomb for us, loves us and nothing is so important to the Christian than to use our whole lives to give back to the God Who gives us everything. Amen
Friday, August 02, 2013
Bessie: Joy from Jesus!
[This was shared during the funeral of Bessie, a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor.]
Job 19:23-27a
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
Matthew 26:26-29
Luke 12:35-40
For some of us, myself included, there’s a disappointment that, though she had a full life, Bessie didn’t make it to her one-hundredth birthday. But Bessie, I can assure you, does not share in that disappointment. She took a dim view of having a fuss made over her if she turned 100 and besides, she told me, “One-hundred seems so old.”
But there are other reasons that Bessie wouldn’t share our disappointment.
One is that she may have been the most upbeat, positive, joyful person I ever met in my life! She had pain and griefs in her life, of course. And she acknowledged them. But she wasn’t defined by them. She wasn’t laid low by them.
I told her about a year ago, “You know, Bessie, when your circumstances dictated that you move out of your home and into the Carlin House, I never heard you complain.” “Well,” she said, “there were two ways I could have reacted. I could have been unhappy or I could have been happy. I chose to be happy.”
I chose to be happy. Now, it’s true that some people are able, by nature, to more easily make the decision to be happy and make it stick. And Bessie understood this. When she consider people who suffered from depression, she clearly understood that depression is a disease that sometimes happens to people. “It must be awful,” she told me, with empathy. And I saw her display her empathy toward people who were depressed. She was a comforting presence to them.
But the big reason, I believe, that Bessie was able to choose to be happy was that she had a rock solid faith in Jesus Christ. And hers wasn’t the superficial faith of someone who had a passing acquaintance with the teachings of the Church. She had a relationship with Jesus Christ.
That was so clear every time I visited with her over the past nearly six years. I took Holy Communion when I visited Bessie, whether at her home on Culver, or later at Carlin. Every time she received the Sacrament, she expressed gratitude that Christ had come to her and offered her forgiveness and His presence and His promise of eternity once more. “Oh, thank you,” she would say, sometimes with tears, “It’s such a gift!”
And the last time I was able to take Communion to her, Bessie told me, “You know, I don’t think some people realize what a blessing this is!” She knew that in the Sacrament, the God of all creation was coming to her and she was grateful!
No one needs to be reminded, but it should also be pointed out that Bessie had a lot of oomph! (Someone said earlier that she had a lot of spunk!) She had energy and joy to the end of her days.
I told her once, “I used to visit you thinking that I was going to inspire you. But I always leave here inspired by you.” She looked at me quizzically. She couldn’t understand what a special person she really was.
And maybe that was part of what made Bessie so special. She lived. She loved God. She loved others. She didn’t try to impress anybody. She didn’t know how impressive it was that someone legally blind would take the time and the effort to send birthday greetings, notes of encouragement, or thanks to people. (Every time I saw one of those notes, I was struck by the effort it required to do that!)
Bessie lived in the freedom of being a child of God, a living, loving member of the Body of Christ, the Church. That was inspiring!
Bessie remained special to the end. Deprived of much of her sight, she was also deprived of pursuing her lifelong passion for reading. Even big print books wouldn’t have been big enough for her to read. Undeterred, she ordered cassettes and later, CDs, of books and was always ready to recount the plot of the latest book she’d “read” in this new way.
She was part of the garden club at Carlin. (She told me once, “Some people just stand around at garden club, but I like to get my hands dirty.”)
Though she couldn’t see, she still helped out with the crossword puzzles the residents did together at Carlin.
She was always in Bible study and the weekly devotional worship there.
She went out on shopping forays whenever she could.
She made the best of challenging situations, like when Carlin was without power and she and the other residents had to be moved to the high school, where they slept on cots. Interviewed by the newspaper about it, Bessie, in typical fashion, talked about what a good job the Red Cross was doing.
She was always ready to talk about the Cincinnati Reds!
And, she seemed to pray for everyone!
Sometimes, she could give me the devil. When I forgot appointments with her or my commitment to do worship at Carlin, she let me know about it. I would get a phone call and a little lecture the next time I saw her. But she was quick to forgive and could tease me about the incidents later. And she was always after me to take better care of myself.
As was true of her attitude, Bessie’s oomph too came, I am convinced, not just from her nature or her upbringing, but from her faith in Christ. This is a person who truly lived in daily repentance and renewal. She used a scanner connected to her TV set to read the daily Bible readings and devotions and she regularly prayed for everyone on our congregation’s prayer list.
Bessie had no fear of death nor of dying. She knew that the crucified and risen Savior Jesus in Whom she believed had destroyed the power of sin, death, and futility over the lives of those who turn from sin and follow Him.
Bessie didn’t see Jesus as a rabbit’s foot who would make the bad things of this life go away. She agreed heartily with the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
In the time I knew Bessie, her life demonstrated the truth that while Jesus doesn’t insulate us from life’s difficulties or from death, knowing that we have eternity with God, we are set free to live this life with joy, hope, a love for others, and a positive attitude. These attributes were all ones that Bessie lived out.
Especially, I think, joy. Joy is the word that springs immediately to my mind when I think of Bessie.
Now, I know for a certainty that there was nothing that Bessie more passionately desired nor more fervently prayed for than this: That all her friends and family would entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. She often spoke with me about this. She often asked me to join in praying with her about it. She believed in Jesus’ words in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believed in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”
The Bible tells us that the capacity for faith in an unseen God Who has conquered sin and death through His crucifixion and resurrection--the ability to believe in such overwhelmingly good news in a bad news world--is the proof of this unseen, loving, compassionate, powerful God.*
Let Bessie’s faith in Christ be exhibit one for any who may doubt this God in Whom she believed.
Let her life of joy, hope, love for others, and incredible positive attitude in the face of life’s challenges be exhibit two.
And may we all learn to believe in and follow Christ as Bessie did and so, live this life to the fullest, and one day, enjoy a reunion with our Lord and with all the saints who have believed in Him, including Bessie, that will last for eternity. Amen
*Hebrews 11:1 says: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
Job 19:23-27a
1 Corinthians 15:1-7
Matthew 26:26-29
Luke 12:35-40
For some of us, myself included, there’s a disappointment that, though she had a full life, Bessie didn’t make it to her one-hundredth birthday. But Bessie, I can assure you, does not share in that disappointment. She took a dim view of having a fuss made over her if she turned 100 and besides, she told me, “One-hundred seems so old.”
But there are other reasons that Bessie wouldn’t share our disappointment.
One is that she may have been the most upbeat, positive, joyful person I ever met in my life! She had pain and griefs in her life, of course. And she acknowledged them. But she wasn’t defined by them. She wasn’t laid low by them.
I told her about a year ago, “You know, Bessie, when your circumstances dictated that you move out of your home and into the Carlin House, I never heard you complain.” “Well,” she said, “there were two ways I could have reacted. I could have been unhappy or I could have been happy. I chose to be happy.”
I chose to be happy. Now, it’s true that some people are able, by nature, to more easily make the decision to be happy and make it stick. And Bessie understood this. When she consider people who suffered from depression, she clearly understood that depression is a disease that sometimes happens to people. “It must be awful,” she told me, with empathy. And I saw her display her empathy toward people who were depressed. She was a comforting presence to them.
But the big reason, I believe, that Bessie was able to choose to be happy was that she had a rock solid faith in Jesus Christ. And hers wasn’t the superficial faith of someone who had a passing acquaintance with the teachings of the Church. She had a relationship with Jesus Christ.
That was so clear every time I visited with her over the past nearly six years. I took Holy Communion when I visited Bessie, whether at her home on Culver, or later at Carlin. Every time she received the Sacrament, she expressed gratitude that Christ had come to her and offered her forgiveness and His presence and His promise of eternity once more. “Oh, thank you,” she would say, sometimes with tears, “It’s such a gift!”
And the last time I was able to take Communion to her, Bessie told me, “You know, I don’t think some people realize what a blessing this is!” She knew that in the Sacrament, the God of all creation was coming to her and she was grateful!
No one needs to be reminded, but it should also be pointed out that Bessie had a lot of oomph! (Someone said earlier that she had a lot of spunk!) She had energy and joy to the end of her days.
I told her once, “I used to visit you thinking that I was going to inspire you. But I always leave here inspired by you.” She looked at me quizzically. She couldn’t understand what a special person she really was.
And maybe that was part of what made Bessie so special. She lived. She loved God. She loved others. She didn’t try to impress anybody. She didn’t know how impressive it was that someone legally blind would take the time and the effort to send birthday greetings, notes of encouragement, or thanks to people. (Every time I saw one of those notes, I was struck by the effort it required to do that!)
Bessie lived in the freedom of being a child of God, a living, loving member of the Body of Christ, the Church. That was inspiring!
Bessie remained special to the end. Deprived of much of her sight, she was also deprived of pursuing her lifelong passion for reading. Even big print books wouldn’t have been big enough for her to read. Undeterred, she ordered cassettes and later, CDs, of books and was always ready to recount the plot of the latest book she’d “read” in this new way.
She was part of the garden club at Carlin. (She told me once, “Some people just stand around at garden club, but I like to get my hands dirty.”)
Though she couldn’t see, she still helped out with the crossword puzzles the residents did together at Carlin.
She was always in Bible study and the weekly devotional worship there.
She went out on shopping forays whenever she could.
She made the best of challenging situations, like when Carlin was without power and she and the other residents had to be moved to the high school, where they slept on cots. Interviewed by the newspaper about it, Bessie, in typical fashion, talked about what a good job the Red Cross was doing.
She was always ready to talk about the Cincinnati Reds!
And, she seemed to pray for everyone!
Sometimes, she could give me the devil. When I forgot appointments with her or my commitment to do worship at Carlin, she let me know about it. I would get a phone call and a little lecture the next time I saw her. But she was quick to forgive and could tease me about the incidents later. And she was always after me to take better care of myself.
As was true of her attitude, Bessie’s oomph too came, I am convinced, not just from her nature or her upbringing, but from her faith in Christ. This is a person who truly lived in daily repentance and renewal. She used a scanner connected to her TV set to read the daily Bible readings and devotions and she regularly prayed for everyone on our congregation’s prayer list.
Bessie had no fear of death nor of dying. She knew that the crucified and risen Savior Jesus in Whom she believed had destroyed the power of sin, death, and futility over the lives of those who turn from sin and follow Him.
Bessie didn’t see Jesus as a rabbit’s foot who would make the bad things of this life go away. She agreed heartily with the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
In the time I knew Bessie, her life demonstrated the truth that while Jesus doesn’t insulate us from life’s difficulties or from death, knowing that we have eternity with God, we are set free to live this life with joy, hope, a love for others, and a positive attitude. These attributes were all ones that Bessie lived out.
Especially, I think, joy. Joy is the word that springs immediately to my mind when I think of Bessie.
Now, I know for a certainty that there was nothing that Bessie more passionately desired nor more fervently prayed for than this: That all her friends and family would entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. She often spoke with me about this. She often asked me to join in praying with her about it. She believed in Jesus’ words in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believed in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”
The Bible tells us that the capacity for faith in an unseen God Who has conquered sin and death through His crucifixion and resurrection--the ability to believe in such overwhelmingly good news in a bad news world--is the proof of this unseen, loving, compassionate, powerful God.*
Let Bessie’s faith in Christ be exhibit one for any who may doubt this God in Whom she believed.
Let her life of joy, hope, love for others, and incredible positive attitude in the face of life’s challenges be exhibit two.
And may we all learn to believe in and follow Christ as Bessie did and so, live this life to the fullest, and one day, enjoy a reunion with our Lord and with all the saints who have believed in Him, including Bessie, that will last for eternity. Amen
*Hebrews 11:1 says: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Today's Chesterton
[Father Brown said:] But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable mark—I mean, that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be complicated.
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2011-03-30). The Innocence of Father Brown (p. 45). Kindle Edition.
I think this is true.
Knowing God
[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, at both services this morning.]
Luke 11:1-13
Recent polling shows that a large number of Americans have no religious affiliation at all and, though the number of those identifying themselves as atheists is small, that number too is growing.
My guess is that many people come to churches hoping to know God and to learn how to speak with Him, but leave feeling confused by the standing and the sitting, the hymns they don’t understand, and the sermons which fall into a dizzying display of indecipherable religious talk.
They want to know God and that they can have a connection to God. Truth is, we all do.
Jesus’ first followers, the disciples, felt the same way. That’s why, even though they didn’t completely understand that Jesus was God in the flesh until Jesus had died and risen again, in their hunger for God, they followed Jesus for three years.
That’s also why it’s no surprise that when they saw Jesus praying one day, they asked Him to teach them how to do it. Our gospel lesson for today, Luke 11:1-13 (page 597), tells us how Jesus responded.
First of all, Jesus taught them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. It presents a great pattern for prayer for those who want to know God. Let’s take a look at it.
“Our Father,” it begins. Already, we see that being a Christian isn’t about being religious. It’s about having a relationship.
God is our father and not an earthly father who, no matter how good or devoted, can let us down. God is the Father Who made us and stands ready to hear us whenever we call on Him.
The next three petitions remind us that everything is out of place in the world and in our lives if God isn’t given first place in our world and in our lives. And so, Jesus teaches us to pray: “Hallowed be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.”
For God’s Name to be hallowed means for it to be held as unique, special, set-apart, holy. God’s Name is not a sitcom punchline or a phrase for stupid people with limited vocabularies to use instead of meaningful speech. God’s Name is a precious gift He gives that allows us to call on Him, as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, for “prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” Here, we pray that God’s Name will be revered and used properly, not just by the whole world, but by us too.
God’s kingdom is what Jesus came to bring. He brought God’s kingdom into this dying world through His life, death, and resurrection. All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus for forgiveness and new life with God are part of God’s kingdom. They live under the reign of God. Here, we pray that God’s kingdom will invade every human life--including our own, so that all who hear that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish in hell, but have life with God forever!
To pray that God’s will be done is to pray exactly what Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion. Every human impulse within Jesus wanted to live and to avoid the suffering that awaited Him on the cross. But He knew that He had come into the world to die for sinners like you and me and offer us the life that only a resurrected Savior can offer. Jesus had to go to the cross to save us from sin and death. So, He told God the Father, "Not the easy way I prefer, Lord, but the hard way that will accomplish what You want accomplished." Now, you and I aren’t God. We can’t see what lies ahead the way Jesus, both God and man, could. But our human impulses also prefer the easy way. We’d rather go on sinning. (Because, let’s be honest, we often sin because the sin is fun or it’s easier than doing the right thing.) But we pray God’s will be done because we know that God is more interested in shaping our character to be more like Him and preparing us for eternity than He is in making things easier for us. We also pray God’s will be done because it’s better to suffer for a short time here on earth than to be forever separated from God because we were too impatient or too self-centered to evade the temptation to sin.
As I’ve pointed out before, it isn’t until the petition in verse 3--”Give us this day our daily bread”--that Jesus gets around to teaching us to pray for ourselves.
This is pretty counter-cultural! How often are we advised by pop culture or even by so-called friends to look out for ourselves instead of putting God or others ahead of ourselves?
A woman told me that after she’d shared with a friend that she and her husband were having disagreements on money and child-rearing, her friend said, “Better do what I did. Better get a divorce. You deserve to be happy.” “My friend,” the woman told me, “obviously had no concern about what might make God happy, or our children happy, or my husband happy, or, in the end, what might make happy.”
Jesus doesn't teach us to defer praying for ourselves because we ourselves aren’t important. Obviously, every human being is important. That’s why Jesus Christ died and rose for every human being who has ever lived or ever will live. That’s why He teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
But it’s only after we’ve learned to put God and His desire to reign over the whole world with His love at the top of our priorities, that we’re ready to pray this petition rightly. “Give us”--all of us, from the people in my family to the people in places like China, Syria, Afghanistan, and even Michigan--”our daily bread,” not the luxuries we want or to which the advertisers say we’re entitled, but the things we need.
We pray that all people will be provided with the things they need--nutritious food, clean water, medical care, basic justice. And this prayer is no pipe dream! God’s earth produces sufficient abundance for all six-billion of the planet’s inhabitants to have exactly what they need. The fact that so many go hungry or die unnecessarily is not a supply issue, it’s a share issue. That’s why our involvement with things like Lutheran Social Services, Lutheran World Relief, the Hocking Hills Inspire Shelter, the CHAP emergency food bank, World Vision, and Compassion International are so important. God gives daily bread and in praying this petition, we acknowledge that every good and perfect gift comes from God and we ask that God will help us share His bounties with others. The words of the hymn, Praise and Thanksgiving, are true: “Where all obey You, no one will hunger; In Your love’s sway You nourish the land.”
Jesus then teaches us, in verse 4, to pray that God will forgive our sins and to keep us from blocking out His forgiveness from our lives by refusing to forgive others.
Is there someone you need to forgive this morning? Someone who has wronged you or who you think has wronged you? You don’t need to make a grand show of it. You don’t have to smugly tell that other person, “I forgive you.”
In your heart right now, you can release others of the debt you feel that they owe to you. Just tell God, “Lord, I want to release so and so of my grudge. I want to release myself from it. In Your Name and by Your power, I forgive them.”
You can do that every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. And you need to do so because Jesus makes it clear that until we let go of that grudge, we can’t take hold of His grace, His forgiveness and His charity toward our sins and our shortcomings.
Finally, Jesus teaches His disciples--including us--to pray that God will steer us clear of temptation and that the evil one--the devil--won’t be able to get a toehold in our lives.
Now, Jesus knows that it may be hard for us to believe that God could care about our prayers. More than one person in the years I’ve been a pastor has told me, “I never pray. I just don’t want to bother God.”
In teaching us this prayer though, Jesus is saying, “God does care about you. You will never be a bother to the One Who made you and Who went to the cross for you!"
To underscore this fact, Jesus tells a little parable about a man who has a late-night visitor at his house and has nothing to feed the visitor. (You remember from last Sunday’s lessons how important hospitality is in the eyes of God.) Wanting to treat the visitor right, the man runs to you--his friend--to ask for something to set before the visitor. But it’s midnight. You live in first-century Judea, meaning that you sleep on the floor with your kids, and that getting up to answer the man’s knock or to fetch the food and drink he could serve his visitor will be a hassle, maybe even waking up the little ones and depriving you of a good night’s sleep. But, Jesus says in verse 9, even if you don’t want to help your friend out “because of his persistence,” you’ll fling off your covers, walk around the kids, open the front door, and get the things your friend requests.
Now, the careless reader will think that Jesus is saying that God is a reluctant friend who, if you’re persistent, will answer your prayers. But God isn’t reluctant to hear or answer our prayers. Look at how Jesus closes out His words for us in Luke 11 today, verse 13, after saying that even sinful, "evil" parents will give good things to their children: “If you then, being evil [that is, being sinners], know how to give good gifts...how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
The God we know in Jesus Christ isn’t a reluctant friend telling those who come to Him, “Go away!” He is our Father and He wants to answer when we call out to Him. That’s why Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...”
But here’s where Christian maturity and a willingness to defer to the greater wisdom and love of God comes in.
The first two or three-hundred times I read Jesus’ words in Luke 11:13, in which He promises to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask God, I wanted to scream, “But what if I don’t want the Holy Spirit?” What if I asked for my loved one to be healed of cancer, or that my friend’s marriage would be restored, or that the civil war in Syria would come to an end, or that, as I really have prayed, the 40% of my heart damaged by a heart attack would be restored? I’ve had thoughts like these. I still do.
But here’s the thing: The Holy Spirit is exactly Who we need when we face things like crosses, and griefs, and relational discord, and war. He is the Comforter, the One Who gives us the strength and courage we need to face the pains that come to us in this imperfect and fallen world.
The Holy Spirit is the very life of God. He’s the One Who gives us faith in the face of the darkness of this world and the One Who will raise us up to come face to face with Jesus after we’ve drawn our last breaths on this earth.
Every time you pray, ask, seek, and knock at the Father’s door, He will send the Holy Spirit to you. You will know God. You will know God is with you. You will know that God is for you. And you will be filled with the life of God that nothing and nobody can ever take from you.
People everywhere want to know God. Pray in Jesus’ Name and you will know Him as surely as you know your parents, your children, your spouses, or your friends. In fact, you will, in the power of the Holy Spirit, know God better than you know any of these people.
As we pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, we know that no matter what happens in this world, we have the Holy Spirit, Who will stand with us from here to kingdom come. Amen!
Luke 11:1-13
Recent polling shows that a large number of Americans have no religious affiliation at all and, though the number of those identifying themselves as atheists is small, that number too is growing.
My guess is that many people come to churches hoping to know God and to learn how to speak with Him, but leave feeling confused by the standing and the sitting, the hymns they don’t understand, and the sermons which fall into a dizzying display of indecipherable religious talk.
They want to know God and that they can have a connection to God. Truth is, we all do.
Jesus’ first followers, the disciples, felt the same way. That’s why, even though they didn’t completely understand that Jesus was God in the flesh until Jesus had died and risen again, in their hunger for God, they followed Jesus for three years.
That’s also why it’s no surprise that when they saw Jesus praying one day, they asked Him to teach them how to do it. Our gospel lesson for today, Luke 11:1-13 (page 597), tells us how Jesus responded.
First of all, Jesus taught them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. It presents a great pattern for prayer for those who want to know God. Let’s take a look at it.
“Our Father,” it begins. Already, we see that being a Christian isn’t about being religious. It’s about having a relationship.
God is our father and not an earthly father who, no matter how good or devoted, can let us down. God is the Father Who made us and stands ready to hear us whenever we call on Him.
The next three petitions remind us that everything is out of place in the world and in our lives if God isn’t given first place in our world and in our lives. And so, Jesus teaches us to pray: “Hallowed be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.”
For God’s Name to be hallowed means for it to be held as unique, special, set-apart, holy. God’s Name is not a sitcom punchline or a phrase for stupid people with limited vocabularies to use instead of meaningful speech. God’s Name is a precious gift He gives that allows us to call on Him, as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, for “prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” Here, we pray that God’s Name will be revered and used properly, not just by the whole world, but by us too.
God’s kingdom is what Jesus came to bring. He brought God’s kingdom into this dying world through His life, death, and resurrection. All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus for forgiveness and new life with God are part of God’s kingdom. They live under the reign of God. Here, we pray that God’s kingdom will invade every human life--including our own, so that all who hear that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish in hell, but have life with God forever!
To pray that God’s will be done is to pray exactly what Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion. Every human impulse within Jesus wanted to live and to avoid the suffering that awaited Him on the cross. But He knew that He had come into the world to die for sinners like you and me and offer us the life that only a resurrected Savior can offer. Jesus had to go to the cross to save us from sin and death. So, He told God the Father, "Not the easy way I prefer, Lord, but the hard way that will accomplish what You want accomplished." Now, you and I aren’t God. We can’t see what lies ahead the way Jesus, both God and man, could. But our human impulses also prefer the easy way. We’d rather go on sinning. (Because, let’s be honest, we often sin because the sin is fun or it’s easier than doing the right thing.) But we pray God’s will be done because we know that God is more interested in shaping our character to be more like Him and preparing us for eternity than He is in making things easier for us. We also pray God’s will be done because it’s better to suffer for a short time here on earth than to be forever separated from God because we were too impatient or too self-centered to evade the temptation to sin.
As I’ve pointed out before, it isn’t until the petition in verse 3--”Give us this day our daily bread”--that Jesus gets around to teaching us to pray for ourselves.
This is pretty counter-cultural! How often are we advised by pop culture or even by so-called friends to look out for ourselves instead of putting God or others ahead of ourselves?
A woman told me that after she’d shared with a friend that she and her husband were having disagreements on money and child-rearing, her friend said, “Better do what I did. Better get a divorce. You deserve to be happy.” “My friend,” the woman told me, “obviously had no concern about what might make God happy, or our children happy, or my husband happy, or, in the end, what might make happy.”
Jesus doesn't teach us to defer praying for ourselves because we ourselves aren’t important. Obviously, every human being is important. That’s why Jesus Christ died and rose for every human being who has ever lived or ever will live. That’s why He teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
But it’s only after we’ve learned to put God and His desire to reign over the whole world with His love at the top of our priorities, that we’re ready to pray this petition rightly. “Give us”--all of us, from the people in my family to the people in places like China, Syria, Afghanistan, and even Michigan--”our daily bread,” not the luxuries we want or to which the advertisers say we’re entitled, but the things we need.
We pray that all people will be provided with the things they need--nutritious food, clean water, medical care, basic justice. And this prayer is no pipe dream! God’s earth produces sufficient abundance for all six-billion of the planet’s inhabitants to have exactly what they need. The fact that so many go hungry or die unnecessarily is not a supply issue, it’s a share issue. That’s why our involvement with things like Lutheran Social Services, Lutheran World Relief, the Hocking Hills Inspire Shelter, the CHAP emergency food bank, World Vision, and Compassion International are so important. God gives daily bread and in praying this petition, we acknowledge that every good and perfect gift comes from God and we ask that God will help us share His bounties with others. The words of the hymn, Praise and Thanksgiving, are true: “Where all obey You, no one will hunger; In Your love’s sway You nourish the land.”
Jesus then teaches us, in verse 4, to pray that God will forgive our sins and to keep us from blocking out His forgiveness from our lives by refusing to forgive others.
Is there someone you need to forgive this morning? Someone who has wronged you or who you think has wronged you? You don’t need to make a grand show of it. You don’t have to smugly tell that other person, “I forgive you.”
In your heart right now, you can release others of the debt you feel that they owe to you. Just tell God, “Lord, I want to release so and so of my grudge. I want to release myself from it. In Your Name and by Your power, I forgive them.”
You can do that every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer. And you need to do so because Jesus makes it clear that until we let go of that grudge, we can’t take hold of His grace, His forgiveness and His charity toward our sins and our shortcomings.
Finally, Jesus teaches His disciples--including us--to pray that God will steer us clear of temptation and that the evil one--the devil--won’t be able to get a toehold in our lives.
Now, Jesus knows that it may be hard for us to believe that God could care about our prayers. More than one person in the years I’ve been a pastor has told me, “I never pray. I just don’t want to bother God.”
In teaching us this prayer though, Jesus is saying, “God does care about you. You will never be a bother to the One Who made you and Who went to the cross for you!"
To underscore this fact, Jesus tells a little parable about a man who has a late-night visitor at his house and has nothing to feed the visitor. (You remember from last Sunday’s lessons how important hospitality is in the eyes of God.) Wanting to treat the visitor right, the man runs to you--his friend--to ask for something to set before the visitor. But it’s midnight. You live in first-century Judea, meaning that you sleep on the floor with your kids, and that getting up to answer the man’s knock or to fetch the food and drink he could serve his visitor will be a hassle, maybe even waking up the little ones and depriving you of a good night’s sleep. But, Jesus says in verse 9, even if you don’t want to help your friend out “because of his persistence,” you’ll fling off your covers, walk around the kids, open the front door, and get the things your friend requests.
Now, the careless reader will think that Jesus is saying that God is a reluctant friend who, if you’re persistent, will answer your prayers. But God isn’t reluctant to hear or answer our prayers. Look at how Jesus closes out His words for us in Luke 11 today, verse 13, after saying that even sinful, "evil" parents will give good things to their children: “If you then, being evil [that is, being sinners], know how to give good gifts...how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
The God we know in Jesus Christ isn’t a reluctant friend telling those who come to Him, “Go away!” He is our Father and He wants to answer when we call out to Him. That’s why Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...”
But here’s where Christian maturity and a willingness to defer to the greater wisdom and love of God comes in.
The first two or three-hundred times I read Jesus’ words in Luke 11:13, in which He promises to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask God, I wanted to scream, “But what if I don’t want the Holy Spirit?” What if I asked for my loved one to be healed of cancer, or that my friend’s marriage would be restored, or that the civil war in Syria would come to an end, or that, as I really have prayed, the 40% of my heart damaged by a heart attack would be restored? I’ve had thoughts like these. I still do.
But here’s the thing: The Holy Spirit is exactly Who we need when we face things like crosses, and griefs, and relational discord, and war. He is the Comforter, the One Who gives us the strength and courage we need to face the pains that come to us in this imperfect and fallen world.
The Holy Spirit is the very life of God. He’s the One Who gives us faith in the face of the darkness of this world and the One Who will raise us up to come face to face with Jesus after we’ve drawn our last breaths on this earth.
Every time you pray, ask, seek, and knock at the Father’s door, He will send the Holy Spirit to you. You will know God. You will know God is with you. You will know that God is for you. And you will be filled with the life of God that nothing and nobody can ever take from you.
People everywhere want to know God. Pray in Jesus’ Name and you will know Him as surely as you know your parents, your children, your spouses, or your friends. In fact, you will, in the power of the Holy Spirit, know God better than you know any of these people.
As we pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus, we know that no matter what happens in this world, we have the Holy Spirit, Who will stand with us from here to kingdom come. Amen!
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Hard to Receive God's Forgiveness?
I know that some people find it hard to receive God's forgiveness. They beat themselves up and deprive themselves of the joy God wants them to know long after they repent.
Today's simple but important installment of Our Daily Bread is for those who can't let go of their guilt after God has declared them clean: "...true freedom comes when we confess our wrongdoing to God." Read the whole thing.
Today's simple but important installment of Our Daily Bread is for those who can't let go of their guilt after God has declared them clean: "...true freedom comes when we confess our wrongdoing to God." Read the whole thing.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Pseudo Kindness (Thoughts Spawned by Today's Chesterton Line)
He was a kind man, and had also that bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any difficulty or scene.
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2011-03-30). The Innocence of Father Brown (p. 35). Kindle Edition.
Was Jesus kind? All the gospel accounts lead one to answer that He was. But His wasn't pseudo kindness, the sort that Chesteron intimates here, the sort in which people affect a placid or smiling air beneath quenched teeth, or shush a child crying in pain, or ignore wrongs.
Jesus' kindness wasn't about smiling and hoping everybody had a good time. That is pseudo kindness, a contemptible sort of imbecility that will never stand the scrutiny of heaven. It was precisely because Jesus' kindness was authentic that, even as He loved, He made Himself "unpleasant," confronting sin, condemning injustice, protecting sinners, and scorning the self-righteous. He still does these things today.
A pseudo kind Jesus would have avoided making a scene and so, left us hopelessly and eternally imprisoned to our sin. Thank God, He made scenes--including the scene of greatest self-sacrifice and love ever enacted, on the cross--and so rendered the greatest kindness of all: Salvation by grace for all sinners who turn from sin and believe in Christ.
Faith Comes As God's Word Soaks Into Our Lives
And deepened faith comes by letting God's Word soak us again and again.
"A heart open to God is soil in which the seed of His Word can flourish."
"A heart open to God is soil in which the seed of His Word can flourish."
Today's Chesterton: So Much for Naive Christian Clergy
"Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2011-03-30). The Innocence of Father Brown (p. 15). . Kindle Edition.
The question is posed by Chesterton's fictional Father Brown, whose straightforward understanding of the depravity of the human heart and his nearly prescient observational skills allow him to solve crimes.
In some ways, no group of people is more likely to view the actions and motives of people with less naivete than Christian clergy.
Why is that?
First, because the Bible teaches us, as it does to all Christians, that human beings are born in sin. (Explaining why God had to become a human being, albeit one without sins, offer Himself in sacrifice for our sin so that all who turn from the sin and trust in Christ to forgive their sin with His grace gain forgiveness and new life with God.)
Second, we clergy, by doing our daily work in the light of the Bible's testimony about God and humanity, become witnesses to the full range of sin's effects and sin's manifestations in human beings. They come in the form of the person in the mirror who so often disappoints us, in the parishioner or local community member not associated with your church who figures their secret is safe with you, and even in the Christian completely oblivious to his own shocking sin and of his need of the grace of Christ.
That's why I find Chesterton's fictional detective Father Brown so plausible. Though society deems we clergy types as naive--and we may be deliberately so at times--remember that Christians have been told by Jesus to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Father Brown clearly takes Jesus' words seriously.
By the way, the abrupt and simple ways in which Chesterton's stories end, without fanfare, is fun.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Man of Contrasts
G.K. Chesterton was an English writer about whom I've read, but haven't actually read. I've decided to change that and actually dig into his writing. After all, someone whose work was loved by C.S. Lewis, my favorite writer, must have something to offer. (Both writers, Chesterton in 1936 and Lewis in 1963, died in the early 60s, each leaving behind a huge deposit of novels, stories, Christian apologetics, essays, and other writings.)
Ann Althouse spent some time on her blog recently excerpting sentences from The Great Gatsby as she read it. I've decided to rip off her idea and present sentences that strike me in Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown. This one appears almost at the beginning of the book. I love the clear picture it imprints on my imagination:
Ann Althouse spent some time on her blog recently excerpting sentences from The Great Gatsby as she read it. I've decided to rip off her idea and present sentences that strike me in Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown. This one appears almost at the beginning of the book. I love the clear picture it imprints on my imagination:
"There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face."
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2011-03-30). The Innocence of Father Brown (p. 1). . Kindle Edition.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Truly Welcoming Jesus: The Good Part
[This was prepared to be shared during the Sunday morning worship services of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
Luke 10:38-42
God values hospitality.
In our first lesson for this morning, Abraham and Sarah welcome three strangers to their tent. At least one of the strangers is God, although Saint Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, believed that Abraham and Sarah welcomed God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever the case may be, their hospitality is a great example of how people of faith should act. With Genesis 18 in mind, the preacher in Hebrews writes, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
It’s no exaggeration to say that salvation comes to us when we welcome Jesus Christ and the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Him have life in His Name with hospitality. Near the beginning of his gospel, John writes of Jesus, the Word made flesh: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name...”
Only those willing to welcome Jesus as their God and King know the salvation and new life He came to bring through His death and resurrection.
When hospitality is given for the right reasons, it’s a beautiful expression of faith in Christ.
But there’s more to hospitality than fixing dinner, handing your guest something cold to drink, and ensuring that your guests have a good time.
All of which leads us to today’s gospel lesson. Please open your Bible or your bulletin to it, Luke 10:38-42. It says: “Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.” Martha, at least at one level, practices hospitality. She welcomes Jesus into her home. That’s good.
But does she really welcome Jesus? Or is Martha like I can sometimes be, welcoming Jesus just enough to claim to know Him, but not allowing His Lordship to permeate my resistance to having someone else in charge of my life? Leave those questions in the back of your mind for now.
Let’s read on. Verse 39: “And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.” Something that often gets overlooked in this passage is the true meaning of Mary sitting “at Jesus’ feet.”
When we talk today about someone sitting at another person’s feet, we usually mean that they sit dreamy-eyed, devoid of independent thought. But this isn’t what Luke meant when he used the phrase.
Let me explain: The title that almost everyone gave to Jesus while He did His earthly ministry was rabbi, meaning teacher. A rabbi’s students--the formal word is disciples--were always said to sit at the rabbi’s feet. It meant that they were learning from the rabbi so that they too could become rabbis, teachers. Disciples hung on their rabbis’ every word because they knew that they would one day have the responsibility of imparting his teaching to others.
But here’s the thing: In those days, women were never rabbis. Women were never disciples. And knowing God’s Word, sharing God’s Word, wasn’t considered a woman’s place. A woman’s place in that culture was in the kitchen, as we see in Sarah in our first lesson.
But that’s not how things work in the kingdom of God that Jesus ushers into the world. As the apostle Paul puts it in Galatians 3:28, in Jesus’ kingdom: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In the Church, everyone is called to be a disciple, a scribe of God’s kingdom, a rabbi who teaches the Gospel to others who need to know or be re-acquainted with the crucified and risen Jesus and the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Him have a life with God that lasts for eternity.
But it was hard for Martha to accept that her sister or even she herself could be a disciple and one day, a rabbi, like the men who followed Jesus.
Look at what happens in verse 40: “But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached [Jesus] and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’"
Now, let’s be clear: Along with what I've said about Martha being hung up on the idea that women had no place in hearing or teaching the Word of God, Martha also appears to be a workaholic, one of those people who believes that by doing good works, she will receive approval from God or from others or will feel like a worthy person. Her hospitality doesn’t seem to be an expression of faith, but of pride and of a controlling personality.
It’s also true that Martha stands as a warning to all Christians to relax, to rest easy in the grace of God, in the knowledge that we are not saved by what we do but by God’s grace given to all who believe in Jesus Christ.
One of the tragedies of the Church is that so many Christians who could live in the freedom of knowing that Christ gives them a friendship with God and the forgiveness of their sins as free gifts to those who trust their lives to Christ, instead turn their Christianity into a list of do’s and don’ts and religious obligations. Martha traded in a relationship with God through faith in Christ for a religion.
That’s not the life that God intends for us!
God wants us to know that He accepts and loves us just as we are and that as we grow closer to Him, the good things we do will simply be an outgrowth of our friendship with Him--what the Bible calls a “fruit of the Spirit”--and not something we feel that we have to do.
Martha is caught up in what Martin Luther called "works righteousness." She's a slave to staying busy instead of living as a free child of God. Misery loves company, you know. So, Martha wants Mary to submit to the same religious slavery she has chosen for herself. That’s why she lashes out at Mary!
Verses 41 and 42 give Jesus’ response to Martha’s outburst: “And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’" So, what’s Jesus saying here? Let everything go to seed? Don’t do anything but listen to sermons and Bible lessons all day long? We all know people who, as I've said before, are so heavenly-minded that they're no earthly good.
Is that how Jesus wants us to be. Hardly!
I believe that we can’t really read what Jesus says here without remembering the passage that came immediately before it, Luke 10:25-37. You’ll remember that right after Jesus told a scribe, an expert in the Bible, the parable of the Good Samaritan, He also told him to go and do the same thing. The Scribe’s problem was that he knew all about the faith, but he didn’t do it, didn’t live it.
In today’s lesson, Martha’s problem is that she’s constantly doing, but she has no interest in the Word of God. Without living under the will and Word of God revealed ultimately in Jesus, she was living in futility, relying on her own goodness and her own power to work, instead of on God’s grace, to save her.
That is a dangerous way to live! People, like Martha, who know who Jesus is, who may even be active members of a church yet rely on their good works to save them from sin and death are as eternally lost as those who have never confessed belief in Jesus as their God and Lord. This is why Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the good part.
You see, every Christian needs to be a Mary!
That’s why engaging in the study of Scripture, especially in the company of other Christians, is essential to the Christian life. Reading, hearing, and studying God’s Word reminds us of Who God is and, simply soaking up His Word with faith in Christ, can build faith in us even when we know ourselves to be incapable of believing in God or living in Christian hope. That's because the Word of God is powerful! As the apostle Paul reminds us, faith comes when we hear God's Word!
Jesus knew that by taking in His Word, Mary wouldn’t sit for long! When His Word takes hold and creates faith in Christ within us, we will, not from pride, not to control, but from simple gratitude to the God Who went to the cross and offers life forever with God as a free gift to all who dare to believe in Jesus Christ, do their faith in Jesus. They will live like the people set free from the prison of sin and death that they are. [See Luke 8:15.]
Someone asked me this past week, "If we're saved by God's grace through faith in Christ, why doesn't God just let us die and be resurrected so we don't have to put up with this world any more?" Here, I think, is the big reason: Once we have become certain of our place in eternity with God through our relationship with Christ, God wants us to take as many people to heaven with Him as possible. God gives us time on this earth so that we can fulfill that commission. [See 2 Peter 3:9.]
When you and I take time to sit at Jesus’ feet, the Holy Spirit will then empower us be Jesus’ feet, Jesus’ hands, and Jesus’ voice in the world!
We know that Mary chose the good part because it’s only those who live in utter dependence on Christ and His grace who have the power from God to live and serve in Jesus’ Name long after those who try to be live like Christians without the power of Jesus’ Word working in them have given up!
Every burnt-out Christian I have ever known was one who thought they had to do everything themselves, like Martha.
Every joyful Christian I’ve ever known has been one who knew that they were completely dependent on Christ and that being a Christian is a team activity best lived out in that company of other forgiven sinners called the Church.
And joyful Christians change the world!
I recently heard the true story of Pastor Gil, who served a congregation in a poverty stricken barrio in the Virgin Islands.
Gil wanted to reach out to others with the good news of Jesus Christ, but few responded.
Then, he befriended an alcoholic named Sam. He shared the gospel with Sam and over time, a miracle happened. Sam received Christ as his Savior and was able to enter recovery from his addiction.
Sam, like Pastor Gil, wanted to share Christ with others, but few were interested in coming to worship to hear the gospel.
Then, Sam had an idea: “Pastor, come bless my house. I’ll invite my neighbors and friends. They can have parts in the blessing. You can tell the good news about Jesus and they will want to follow Jesus too.”
The house blessing happened. But no one responded to the gospel. No one came to church.
One night some time later, while working on a sermon, Pastor Gil became aware of a commotion. He looked out his window and saw that something was on fire. Along with others in the community, he ran to the fire to see if he could help.
The building on fire was Sam’s house, the one Gil had blessed. It burned to the ground. Sam’s friends laughed as the last embers were extinguished: “You thought Jesus would protect you.”
Sam pretended not to hear their words of derision. Instead, he fell at Pastor Gil’s feet. “Thank you, pastor,” he said, “for blessing my house. Something woke me up. Had you not offered a blessing, I would have died in the fire.”
Over the next four months, Pastor Gil blessed forty-eight homes and twenty-nine people came to faith in Jesus Christ.
A pastor and a parishioner steeped in the Word of God, like Mary, let their faith lead them to action, and twenty-nine people who might have otherwise remained separated from the new and everlasting life that only Jesus Christ can give, came to faith in Christ and to eternal life!*
My message to you this morning is simple. Be a Mary! Be a Gil! Be a Sam! Welcome Jesus and His Word of grace and power into the center of your life. Then do your faith in Jesus wherever God and your life may take you. You never can tell what God might do in you and through you. Amen!
*This vignette was shared by Bishop John Bradosky during a recent sermon.
[I am indebted to the scholarship of Fred Craddock and N.T. Wright in helping me to more clearly understand this incident from Jesus' ministry than I had previously.]
Luke 10:38-42
God values hospitality.
In our first lesson for this morning, Abraham and Sarah welcome three strangers to their tent. At least one of the strangers is God, although Saint Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, believed that Abraham and Sarah welcomed God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever the case may be, their hospitality is a great example of how people of faith should act. With Genesis 18 in mind, the preacher in Hebrews writes, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
It’s no exaggeration to say that salvation comes to us when we welcome Jesus Christ and the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Him have life in His Name with hospitality. Near the beginning of his gospel, John writes of Jesus, the Word made flesh: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name...”
Only those willing to welcome Jesus as their God and King know the salvation and new life He came to bring through His death and resurrection.
When hospitality is given for the right reasons, it’s a beautiful expression of faith in Christ.
But there’s more to hospitality than fixing dinner, handing your guest something cold to drink, and ensuring that your guests have a good time.
All of which leads us to today’s gospel lesson. Please open your Bible or your bulletin to it, Luke 10:38-42. It says: “Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.” Martha, at least at one level, practices hospitality. She welcomes Jesus into her home. That’s good.
But does she really welcome Jesus? Or is Martha like I can sometimes be, welcoming Jesus just enough to claim to know Him, but not allowing His Lordship to permeate my resistance to having someone else in charge of my life? Leave those questions in the back of your mind for now.
Let’s read on. Verse 39: “And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.” Something that often gets overlooked in this passage is the true meaning of Mary sitting “at Jesus’ feet.”
When we talk today about someone sitting at another person’s feet, we usually mean that they sit dreamy-eyed, devoid of independent thought. But this isn’t what Luke meant when he used the phrase.
Let me explain: The title that almost everyone gave to Jesus while He did His earthly ministry was rabbi, meaning teacher. A rabbi’s students--the formal word is disciples--were always said to sit at the rabbi’s feet. It meant that they were learning from the rabbi so that they too could become rabbis, teachers. Disciples hung on their rabbis’ every word because they knew that they would one day have the responsibility of imparting his teaching to others.
But here’s the thing: In those days, women were never rabbis. Women were never disciples. And knowing God’s Word, sharing God’s Word, wasn’t considered a woman’s place. A woman’s place in that culture was in the kitchen, as we see in Sarah in our first lesson.
But that’s not how things work in the kingdom of God that Jesus ushers into the world. As the apostle Paul puts it in Galatians 3:28, in Jesus’ kingdom: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In the Church, everyone is called to be a disciple, a scribe of God’s kingdom, a rabbi who teaches the Gospel to others who need to know or be re-acquainted with the crucified and risen Jesus and the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Him have a life with God that lasts for eternity.
But it was hard for Martha to accept that her sister or even she herself could be a disciple and one day, a rabbi, like the men who followed Jesus.
Look at what happens in verse 40: “But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached [Jesus] and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’"
Now, let’s be clear: Along with what I've said about Martha being hung up on the idea that women had no place in hearing or teaching the Word of God, Martha also appears to be a workaholic, one of those people who believes that by doing good works, she will receive approval from God or from others or will feel like a worthy person. Her hospitality doesn’t seem to be an expression of faith, but of pride and of a controlling personality.
It’s also true that Martha stands as a warning to all Christians to relax, to rest easy in the grace of God, in the knowledge that we are not saved by what we do but by God’s grace given to all who believe in Jesus Christ.
One of the tragedies of the Church is that so many Christians who could live in the freedom of knowing that Christ gives them a friendship with God and the forgiveness of their sins as free gifts to those who trust their lives to Christ, instead turn their Christianity into a list of do’s and don’ts and religious obligations. Martha traded in a relationship with God through faith in Christ for a religion.
That’s not the life that God intends for us!
God wants us to know that He accepts and loves us just as we are and that as we grow closer to Him, the good things we do will simply be an outgrowth of our friendship with Him--what the Bible calls a “fruit of the Spirit”--and not something we feel that we have to do.
Martha is caught up in what Martin Luther called "works righteousness." She's a slave to staying busy instead of living as a free child of God. Misery loves company, you know. So, Martha wants Mary to submit to the same religious slavery she has chosen for herself. That’s why she lashes out at Mary!
Verses 41 and 42 give Jesus’ response to Martha’s outburst: “And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’" So, what’s Jesus saying here? Let everything go to seed? Don’t do anything but listen to sermons and Bible lessons all day long? We all know people who, as I've said before, are so heavenly-minded that they're no earthly good.
Is that how Jesus wants us to be. Hardly!
I believe that we can’t really read what Jesus says here without remembering the passage that came immediately before it, Luke 10:25-37. You’ll remember that right after Jesus told a scribe, an expert in the Bible, the parable of the Good Samaritan, He also told him to go and do the same thing. The Scribe’s problem was that he knew all about the faith, but he didn’t do it, didn’t live it.
In today’s lesson, Martha’s problem is that she’s constantly doing, but she has no interest in the Word of God. Without living under the will and Word of God revealed ultimately in Jesus, she was living in futility, relying on her own goodness and her own power to work, instead of on God’s grace, to save her.
That is a dangerous way to live! People, like Martha, who know who Jesus is, who may even be active members of a church yet rely on their good works to save them from sin and death are as eternally lost as those who have never confessed belief in Jesus as their God and Lord. This is why Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the good part.
You see, every Christian needs to be a Mary!
That’s why engaging in the study of Scripture, especially in the company of other Christians, is essential to the Christian life. Reading, hearing, and studying God’s Word reminds us of Who God is and, simply soaking up His Word with faith in Christ, can build faith in us even when we know ourselves to be incapable of believing in God or living in Christian hope. That's because the Word of God is powerful! As the apostle Paul reminds us, faith comes when we hear God's Word!
Jesus knew that by taking in His Word, Mary wouldn’t sit for long! When His Word takes hold and creates faith in Christ within us, we will, not from pride, not to control, but from simple gratitude to the God Who went to the cross and offers life forever with God as a free gift to all who dare to believe in Jesus Christ, do their faith in Jesus. They will live like the people set free from the prison of sin and death that they are. [See Luke 8:15.]
Someone asked me this past week, "If we're saved by God's grace through faith in Christ, why doesn't God just let us die and be resurrected so we don't have to put up with this world any more?" Here, I think, is the big reason: Once we have become certain of our place in eternity with God through our relationship with Christ, God wants us to take as many people to heaven with Him as possible. God gives us time on this earth so that we can fulfill that commission. [See 2 Peter 3:9.]
When you and I take time to sit at Jesus’ feet, the Holy Spirit will then empower us be Jesus’ feet, Jesus’ hands, and Jesus’ voice in the world!
We know that Mary chose the good part because it’s only those who live in utter dependence on Christ and His grace who have the power from God to live and serve in Jesus’ Name long after those who try to be live like Christians without the power of Jesus’ Word working in them have given up!
Every burnt-out Christian I have ever known was one who thought they had to do everything themselves, like Martha.
Every joyful Christian I’ve ever known has been one who knew that they were completely dependent on Christ and that being a Christian is a team activity best lived out in that company of other forgiven sinners called the Church.
And joyful Christians change the world!
I recently heard the true story of Pastor Gil, who served a congregation in a poverty stricken barrio in the Virgin Islands.
Gil wanted to reach out to others with the good news of Jesus Christ, but few responded.
Then, he befriended an alcoholic named Sam. He shared the gospel with Sam and over time, a miracle happened. Sam received Christ as his Savior and was able to enter recovery from his addiction.
Sam, like Pastor Gil, wanted to share Christ with others, but few were interested in coming to worship to hear the gospel.
Then, Sam had an idea: “Pastor, come bless my house. I’ll invite my neighbors and friends. They can have parts in the blessing. You can tell the good news about Jesus and they will want to follow Jesus too.”
The house blessing happened. But no one responded to the gospel. No one came to church.
One night some time later, while working on a sermon, Pastor Gil became aware of a commotion. He looked out his window and saw that something was on fire. Along with others in the community, he ran to the fire to see if he could help.
The building on fire was Sam’s house, the one Gil had blessed. It burned to the ground. Sam’s friends laughed as the last embers were extinguished: “You thought Jesus would protect you.”
Sam pretended not to hear their words of derision. Instead, he fell at Pastor Gil’s feet. “Thank you, pastor,” he said, “for blessing my house. Something woke me up. Had you not offered a blessing, I would have died in the fire.”
Over the next four months, Pastor Gil blessed forty-eight homes and twenty-nine people came to faith in Jesus Christ.
A pastor and a parishioner steeped in the Word of God, like Mary, let their faith lead them to action, and twenty-nine people who might have otherwise remained separated from the new and everlasting life that only Jesus Christ can give, came to faith in Christ and to eternal life!*
My message to you this morning is simple. Be a Mary! Be a Gil! Be a Sam! Welcome Jesus and His Word of grace and power into the center of your life. Then do your faith in Jesus wherever God and your life may take you. You never can tell what God might do in you and through you. Amen!
*This vignette was shared by Bishop John Bradosky during a recent sermon.
[I am indebted to the scholarship of Fred Craddock and N.T. Wright in helping me to more clearly understand this incident from Jesus' ministry than I had previously.]
No Proud Christians
"There are two words that don't go together: pride and Christian. How can you be a proud Christian? That's an oxymoron. The opposite is true. Becoming a Christian requires humility; humility to say, 'God, I'm a sinner. I don't deserve Heaven. I don't deserve to be loved by You on the basis of my good works, my earnings, my intelligence, or my knowledge. You, in Your rich mercy, have forgiven me, a wretched sinner. God, thank You." (Bob Lenz, in his book, Grace: For Those Who Don't Think They Measure Up)
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Set Free!
I thought of a statement made by Martin Luther, posted a few days ago on Facebook by the Institute of Lutheran Theology, as I read today's installment of Our Daily Bread and the incident from Jesus' ministry on which it's based.
Luther said: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”
Certain of their eternal futures, Christ sets each of His followers free to live a lives of servanthood unencumbered by the worldly desire to come in first.
Just one more reason that the radical Gospel of Jesus Christ is so scandalous in a dog-eat-dog world of self-promotion and self-seeking. But it's only at those moments when we realize that life isn't about us that we're set free to become the Christ-like people we were made to be.
Luther said: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”
Certain of their eternal futures, Christ sets each of His followers free to live a lives of servanthood unencumbered by the worldly desire to come in first.
Just one more reason that the radical Gospel of Jesus Christ is so scandalous in a dog-eat-dog world of self-promotion and self-seeking. But it's only at those moments when we realize that life isn't about us that we're set free to become the Christ-like people we were made to be.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Great Article on Mariano Rivera
As Mariano Rivera closes an amazing career still at the top of his game, The New York Times ran this terrific article about him on Tuesday.
Rivera was his usual impressive self on the mound in the eighth inning of Tuesday's All Star Game.
Rivera was his usual impressive self on the mound in the eighth inning of Tuesday's All Star Game.
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Be Careful What You Pray For
[This is another one of the sermons I prepared for worship this morning at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. It and the second one I prepared sort of got blended in the delivery.]
Luke 10:1-20
There’s an old saying: “Be careful what you pray for. You just might get it.”
This past Tuesday, during my morning prayer time, I stopped talking to God for a time and asked instead for God to speak to me in the silence.
“Is there something that You want me to pray about, Lord?” Often, when I pray like that, all I get is silence and that’s OK because just being able to know and speak with God by way of Jesus Christ is wonderful enough for any believer in Christ.
But, this last Tuesday, sitting in silence, a thought crossed my mind, a thought I believe came from God: It had been a while since I had directly and personally shared the Gospel--the good news that God’s passion for all people is so great that He sent His own Son Jesus, so that all who turn from sin and follow Him, who believe in Him, won’t remain in the state of separation from God in which all human beings are born, but will be made right with God and have life with God forever--[It had been a while since I’d shared that good news] with a spiritually disconnected person.
I’d shared the gospel with the people of Saint Matthew, of course.
I’d shared it indirectly with all sorts of people on my blog and my Facebook and Twitter pages.
And I love doing both of those things.
But, I believe that it was God Who reminded me and convicted me in the silence, that it had been awhile since I had lovingly and compassionately looked into the eyes of a person not in relationship with Jesus and shared the Gospel with them.
So, I prayed, “Lord, help me to share the good news with some spiritually disconnected person soon.”
God loves all people. He wants all people to know how much He loves them. He wants all people to have the relationship with Him that only comes through faith in Jesus Christ. He wants all people to know about Jesus’ death and resurrection so that believing in Him, they can have life with God, now and forever. And ordinary people like you and me--and like the seventy Jesus sent out on a mission in today's Gospel lesson--are the "jars of clay" He uses to carry the message of His love to a broken and needy world.
Well, Tuesday passed. Wednesday passed. There were conversations with a number of folks as I connected by phone or in person. But all of those happened basically, within the Christian ghetto. The Fourth of July was spent with mostly family members. I had almost forgotten my prayer when I went for physical therapy for this bicep tendonitis the doctor’s been treating lately.
I arrived at the treatment center with a bottle of water in one hand and a book in the other. I always take a book with me, just in case there’s some delay or a lull during the sessions.
My name was called and I went back for my treatments. The discussion with the therapists started predictably. “How have you been lately?” we asked each other. One of them told me about tackling and conquering a major tidying project, clearing the way for some redecorating.
Then, about twenty minutes into the treatment, one of the therapists, noticing my book, asked, “What are you reading?” “Oh, an Agatha Christie novel,” I said, Murder on the Orient Express. “I thought it was a mystery,” she said. “That’s a little surprising. Usually, I’ve noticed you’ve brought religious books with you.” She was right. But this was what I’d taken that day.
Now, I hadn’t picked up that Agatha Christie paperback with the idea that, “This book will allow me to share the Gospel with someone at the physical therapy center today.” But bizarrely, the fact that, at the last second, that was the book I picked up, led to a conversation about stories, how Jesus told stories, and how this past week at the IMPACT youth gathering, we heard true stories of young people who, after being rejected by their peers and even their own parents, even after violating the will of God, they found the grace, forgiveness, and love God offers to us through Jesus Christ. They learned that we are saved not by what we know, not by obeying religious rules, and not by being good enough, but solely by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Now, this conversation unfolded over a period of about a half-hour and it wasn’t as one-sided as that summary makes it sound. But this very natural conversation gave me the chance to share the Gospel with a spiritually-disconnected person.
It was only after I got back to my office at home and was praying that I realized, “God just answered that prayer I prayed last Tuesday!”
Somehow, we in the Church have managed to make the simple act of sharing the most important truth anyone can know--the truth that God loves us, sent Jesus to save us from ourselves, and that we can receive that salvation simply by turning from our sinful, self-driven ways and receiving the gift of faith in Jesus Christ--[we’ve turned all that] into something complicated, forbidding, the area of “experts.” But, truly, every Christian has the ability to tell others about the Savior Who has come to save us from hell and to give us heaven with God! Every Christian!
In today’s Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus calls seventy of His followers to travel two-by-two to cities He intends to visit.
Their message is simple: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” That makes sense; Jesus is the King of kings Who came to bring the kingdom of God into our world. All who believe in Him are part of that eternal kingdom.
Now, it’s important to remember that earlier in Jesus’ ministry, He sent out the twelve, the apostles, on a similar mission. That’s easy for us to understand. They had become the experts, trained in the world’s most exclusive seminary, three years on the road with Jesus.
But here, in today’s lesson, Jesus sends out non-experts, laypeople, into the world to do the same thing He had earlier sent the apostles to do. They were to share the Good News of the kingdom to which all people can belong by God’s grace through faith in Christ. Our lesson goes on to tell us that the seventy pursued that mission, even casting out demons in Jesus’ Name!
Now, there are three things I want to point out as being important in this lesson.
First: God wants people to be saved from sin and death. That's why Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. It’s why He sent the seventy in our lesson and it’s why He sends you and me into the world with a great commission.
So, pray that God will send witnesses for the crucified and risen Jesus into the world. In verse 2, Jesus says, "The harvest truly is great [the numbers of people in need of the Gospel are enormous], but the laborers [the numbers of people willing to share the Gospel with others] are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
Out of gratitude for the grace of God given to them in Jesus and out of love for others who need Jesus as much as they do, every Christian should make it her or his business to pray that workers--everyday Christians like you and me--will be prompted and empowered to share the Gospel with their spiritually disconnected friends.
But a word of warning: Be careful what you pray for. It’s often been my experience that if we are passionate enough about something to pray about it, God will often answer our prayers by saying, “OK. YOU be the answer to that prayer.”
As you pray for workers to go into the harvest, be prepared to be one of those workers who carries the Good News into the world, into Logan, into your family, into the place where you work or go to school!
Second: Expect opposition when you share the Gospel. Among those who cried for Jesus’ crucifixion, I’m convinced, were people who knew or at least strongly suspected that He was God in the flesh. They hoped that by killing Jesus, they could overthrow the power of God and believe the lie that Satan has been trying to feed the human race since the beginning, the lie that we can (or should be) like God.
Jesus warns us that the opposition that killed Him will also seek to keep us quiet as we strive to share His Good News. In verse 3 of our lesson, Jesus says, “I send you out as lambs among wolves.”
Jesus never promises that if we follow Him, everyone will love us, we’ll have lots of money, and we will never suffer. Elsewhere, Jesus says: “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Like Stephen, the first Christian to be killed for following and sharing Jesus with others, when we face opposition to the Gospel that we share with others, we can join Jesus in the prayer He offered from the cross: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”
When, by faith, you know you will rise with Jesus, you can take risks to share God’s love, justice, and hope into the world that you would otherwise be terrified to share. You can face life and death knowing that none of God’s promises will ever let go of those who entrust their lives and their eternities to Jesus Christ alone!
Finally: Share your faith in Christ out of simple gratitude for His grace. Grace, you know, is God’s charity for sinners. Christians know that we deserve condemnation and death for our sin. But because of God’s grace and our trust in Christ, the One Who brings God’s grace to us, we’re set free from death.
Romans 8:1 says: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
And Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God...”
Life with God is a gift you and I could never earn nor deserve. There is no greater gift than life with God!
And it has been bought for us by Christ through the shedding of His blood, His suffering, and His death on a cross!
Of course, Christ’s death and resurrection hadn’t yet happened when Jesus sent the seventy out on their mission. So, maybe they can be excused for the triumphalism they display, getting more excited about being able to exorcise demons from people in Jesus’ Name than they were about the gift of everlasting life with God that Christ gives to all who believe in Him.
But all too often, Christians give Jesus a bad name by looking down their noses on others, acting as though they’re superior because they’re Christians. We must never fall into this trap!
No Christian can ever claim to be superior to any other human being, even if those other human beings are Osama bin-Laden or Adolf Hitler.
We followers of Jesus know that we are undeserving sinners saved only by the wonderful grace God gives through Jesus. That’s why someone has said, “Evangelism--sharing the Good News of Jesus--is nothing more than one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.”
Jesus is the bread of life Who gave Himself so that all who turn to Him will live.
May it always be our prayer that there will be workers for Christ willing to share His Good News with the spiritually disconnected in our world and in our community.
But watch out when you pray that way: Jesus may appoint you to be the answer to that prayer! Amen
Luke 10:1-20
There’s an old saying: “Be careful what you pray for. You just might get it.”
This past Tuesday, during my morning prayer time, I stopped talking to God for a time and asked instead for God to speak to me in the silence.
“Is there something that You want me to pray about, Lord?” Often, when I pray like that, all I get is silence and that’s OK because just being able to know and speak with God by way of Jesus Christ is wonderful enough for any believer in Christ.
But, this last Tuesday, sitting in silence, a thought crossed my mind, a thought I believe came from God: It had been a while since I had directly and personally shared the Gospel--the good news that God’s passion for all people is so great that He sent His own Son Jesus, so that all who turn from sin and follow Him, who believe in Him, won’t remain in the state of separation from God in which all human beings are born, but will be made right with God and have life with God forever--[It had been a while since I’d shared that good news] with a spiritually disconnected person.
I’d shared the gospel with the people of Saint Matthew, of course.
I’d shared it indirectly with all sorts of people on my blog and my Facebook and Twitter pages.
And I love doing both of those things.
But, I believe that it was God Who reminded me and convicted me in the silence, that it had been awhile since I had lovingly and compassionately looked into the eyes of a person not in relationship with Jesus and shared the Gospel with them.
So, I prayed, “Lord, help me to share the good news with some spiritually disconnected person soon.”
God loves all people. He wants all people to know how much He loves them. He wants all people to have the relationship with Him that only comes through faith in Jesus Christ. He wants all people to know about Jesus’ death and resurrection so that believing in Him, they can have life with God, now and forever. And ordinary people like you and me--and like the seventy Jesus sent out on a mission in today's Gospel lesson--are the "jars of clay" He uses to carry the message of His love to a broken and needy world.
Well, Tuesday passed. Wednesday passed. There were conversations with a number of folks as I connected by phone or in person. But all of those happened basically, within the Christian ghetto. The Fourth of July was spent with mostly family members. I had almost forgotten my prayer when I went for physical therapy for this bicep tendonitis the doctor’s been treating lately.
I arrived at the treatment center with a bottle of water in one hand and a book in the other. I always take a book with me, just in case there’s some delay or a lull during the sessions.
My name was called and I went back for my treatments. The discussion with the therapists started predictably. “How have you been lately?” we asked each other. One of them told me about tackling and conquering a major tidying project, clearing the way for some redecorating.
Then, about twenty minutes into the treatment, one of the therapists, noticing my book, asked, “What are you reading?” “Oh, an Agatha Christie novel,” I said, Murder on the Orient Express. “I thought it was a mystery,” she said. “That’s a little surprising. Usually, I’ve noticed you’ve brought religious books with you.” She was right. But this was what I’d taken that day.
Now, I hadn’t picked up that Agatha Christie paperback with the idea that, “This book will allow me to share the Gospel with someone at the physical therapy center today.” But bizarrely, the fact that, at the last second, that was the book I picked up, led to a conversation about stories, how Jesus told stories, and how this past week at the IMPACT youth gathering, we heard true stories of young people who, after being rejected by their peers and even their own parents, even after violating the will of God, they found the grace, forgiveness, and love God offers to us through Jesus Christ. They learned that we are saved not by what we know, not by obeying religious rules, and not by being good enough, but solely by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Now, this conversation unfolded over a period of about a half-hour and it wasn’t as one-sided as that summary makes it sound. But this very natural conversation gave me the chance to share the Gospel with a spiritually-disconnected person.
It was only after I got back to my office at home and was praying that I realized, “God just answered that prayer I prayed last Tuesday!”
Somehow, we in the Church have managed to make the simple act of sharing the most important truth anyone can know--the truth that God loves us, sent Jesus to save us from ourselves, and that we can receive that salvation simply by turning from our sinful, self-driven ways and receiving the gift of faith in Jesus Christ--[we’ve turned all that] into something complicated, forbidding, the area of “experts.” But, truly, every Christian has the ability to tell others about the Savior Who has come to save us from hell and to give us heaven with God! Every Christian!
In today’s Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus calls seventy of His followers to travel two-by-two to cities He intends to visit.
Their message is simple: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” That makes sense; Jesus is the King of kings Who came to bring the kingdom of God into our world. All who believe in Him are part of that eternal kingdom.
Now, it’s important to remember that earlier in Jesus’ ministry, He sent out the twelve, the apostles, on a similar mission. That’s easy for us to understand. They had become the experts, trained in the world’s most exclusive seminary, three years on the road with Jesus.
But here, in today’s lesson, Jesus sends out non-experts, laypeople, into the world to do the same thing He had earlier sent the apostles to do. They were to share the Good News of the kingdom to which all people can belong by God’s grace through faith in Christ. Our lesson goes on to tell us that the seventy pursued that mission, even casting out demons in Jesus’ Name!
Now, there are three things I want to point out as being important in this lesson.
First: God wants people to be saved from sin and death. That's why Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. It’s why He sent the seventy in our lesson and it’s why He sends you and me into the world with a great commission.
So, pray that God will send witnesses for the crucified and risen Jesus into the world. In verse 2, Jesus says, "The harvest truly is great [the numbers of people in need of the Gospel are enormous], but the laborers [the numbers of people willing to share the Gospel with others] are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
Out of gratitude for the grace of God given to them in Jesus and out of love for others who need Jesus as much as they do, every Christian should make it her or his business to pray that workers--everyday Christians like you and me--will be prompted and empowered to share the Gospel with their spiritually disconnected friends.
But a word of warning: Be careful what you pray for. It’s often been my experience that if we are passionate enough about something to pray about it, God will often answer our prayers by saying, “OK. YOU be the answer to that prayer.”
As you pray for workers to go into the harvest, be prepared to be one of those workers who carries the Good News into the world, into Logan, into your family, into the place where you work or go to school!
Second: Expect opposition when you share the Gospel. Among those who cried for Jesus’ crucifixion, I’m convinced, were people who knew or at least strongly suspected that He was God in the flesh. They hoped that by killing Jesus, they could overthrow the power of God and believe the lie that Satan has been trying to feed the human race since the beginning, the lie that we can (or should be) like God.
Jesus warns us that the opposition that killed Him will also seek to keep us quiet as we strive to share His Good News. In verse 3 of our lesson, Jesus says, “I send you out as lambs among wolves.”
Jesus never promises that if we follow Him, everyone will love us, we’ll have lots of money, and we will never suffer. Elsewhere, Jesus says: “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Like Stephen, the first Christian to be killed for following and sharing Jesus with others, when we face opposition to the Gospel that we share with others, we can join Jesus in the prayer He offered from the cross: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”
When, by faith, you know you will rise with Jesus, you can take risks to share God’s love, justice, and hope into the world that you would otherwise be terrified to share. You can face life and death knowing that none of God’s promises will ever let go of those who entrust their lives and their eternities to Jesus Christ alone!
Finally: Share your faith in Christ out of simple gratitude for His grace. Grace, you know, is God’s charity for sinners. Christians know that we deserve condemnation and death for our sin. But because of God’s grace and our trust in Christ, the One Who brings God’s grace to us, we’re set free from death.
Romans 8:1 says: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
And Ephesians 2:8 reminds us: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God...”
Life with God is a gift you and I could never earn nor deserve. There is no greater gift than life with God!
And it has been bought for us by Christ through the shedding of His blood, His suffering, and His death on a cross!
Of course, Christ’s death and resurrection hadn’t yet happened when Jesus sent the seventy out on their mission. So, maybe they can be excused for the triumphalism they display, getting more excited about being able to exorcise demons from people in Jesus’ Name than they were about the gift of everlasting life with God that Christ gives to all who believe in Him.
But all too often, Christians give Jesus a bad name by looking down their noses on others, acting as though they’re superior because they’re Christians. We must never fall into this trap!
No Christian can ever claim to be superior to any other human being, even if those other human beings are Osama bin-Laden or Adolf Hitler.
We followers of Jesus know that we are undeserving sinners saved only by the wonderful grace God gives through Jesus. That’s why someone has said, “Evangelism--sharing the Good News of Jesus--is nothing more than one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.”
Jesus is the bread of life Who gave Himself so that all who turn to Him will live.
May it always be our prayer that there will be workers for Christ willing to share His Good News with the spiritually disconnected in our world and in our community.
But watch out when you pray that way: Jesus may appoint you to be the answer to that prayer! Amen
The Real Joy!
[I prepared two different sermons to share during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio this morning. I ended up giving neither one, but a version that sort of combined both. Here's one of them.]
Luke 10:1-20
Abraham Lincoln once told the story of a man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. The man was asked how it felt. According to Lincoln, the man said that if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would just as soon as have walked.
The seventy people Jesus called to carry the Gospel into communities Jesus planned on visiting may have felt that way as they listened to the instructions Jesus gave after calling them. We may feel that way too: There is no greater joy or thrill than knowing that we have been saved from sin and death by God's grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. But the joy of that free gift only comes to those willing to follow and confess Jesus in a world that often makes following Him and confessing Him difficult.
Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, on which Jim Kalklosch preached, begins a section of Luke’s Gospel known as the greater interpolation, running from chapter 9 through chapter 19, that details Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, toward His crucifixion and resurrection.
Luke makes clear that Jesus is intent on fulfilling this calling. Luke 9:51 says that Jesus “set His face to go to Jerusalem.” No matter what pain was to engulf Him--and Jesus, as God, knew perfectly in advance all that He would have to endure as a human being in Jerusalem--Jesus wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to stop Him from offering His life on the cross to free from sin and death all who turn from sin and believe in Him. This was His mission on earth.
As I said, as today’s Gospel lesson begins, Jesus anticipates the places He will visit on the way to Jerusalem. We’re told: “After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go.”
Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, He had sent the twelve apostles into villages He was to visit. The apostles were the ones who were to spend three years in the greatest seminary that ever existed, following, living with, and learning from Jesus day to day.
But now, Jesus was sending ordinary believers, people like you and me on a similar mission. In Christ’s Church, everyone has a ministry and everyone is called to share the Good News of new life for all who repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Look, beginning at verse 3: “Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.” “Listen,” Jesus is saying, “the life I offer you with God is a free gift of grace. It’s offered to all sinners who recognize their need of forgiveness and a fresh start and who entrust their lives to Me. But following Me in this world will not be easy. Don’t expect the world to throw you a party when you call them, in My Name, to repent and believe in Jesus Christ alone.” If even the Word made flesh encountered hatred, opposition, and rejection, we who follow Him can expect no less.
Look at verse 4, please: “Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals; and greet no one along the road.” Followers of Jesus are to be as intent on following Him as Jesus was on going to Jerusalem.
In a world filled with all sorts of opportunities and distractions, at least for people like us in middle class America, it’s easy to lose our focus on following Jesus.
But when we veer off course, the God we know in Jesus is anxious to help us to move from sin and move back toward Jesus. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to [the human race]. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Stay focused on following Jesus and when your focus gets blurry, turn to the God Who loves you and wants what’s best for you to set things right between You and Him!
What Jesus says next is more specifically geared to the seventy He’s sending out, but it has application to us too. He says: “But whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house.' And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it; if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you. And heal the sick there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'”
There are people who will welcome you and your witness for Jesus. They may not understand it at first. But as long as they show no hostility to you when you share your faith with them, you shouldn’t stop. The apostle Peter writes: “...do not be frightened. But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”
As Christians, our aim, like the seventy Jesus sends in today’s Gospel lesson, is to share Christ--we tell them that His kingdom is as near as their openness to the Word about Jesus that can create faith and give new life to those who hear it.
Like them, we also aim to bring God’s healing to the world. This past week, during the IMPACT youth gathering, the 350 youth and adults there packed over 21,000 meals, meaning that 58 children in Haiti can be fed for a year.
In addition, 25 children were sponsored through Compassion International.
Saint Matthew will seek to share Christ with our community through our Vacation Bible School, August 12 through 16.
And we’ll seek to bring Jesus’ healing to others with the community dinner we’re having on Saturday, July 20 to raise money for the Hocking Hills Inspire Shelter.
The women of the church are this year leading us in contributing bars of soap to be used in this year’s Lutheran World Relief project.
As the body of Christ, the Church is the hands and feet of God! Jesus sent the seventy out to be His hands and feet. He sends us out with the same mission.
Then, starting at verse 8, Jesus makes clear that He gives all of us who follow Him the great commission to make disciples: “But whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 'The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.' But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that Day for Sodom than for that city. "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades.”
As followers of Jesus, with our focus on Him, we can’t get hung up on those who oppose or hate us when we follow Him or share Him. If people are unwilling to receive the peace or good news of Jesus which He empowers us and commands us to share with others, we’re to know that His peace and favor is still with us and simply move on. We're to be people with tender hearts and thick skins!
In these verses, Jesus mentions several Gallilean communities, including His adopted hometown of Capernaum as places on which His judgment will fall because they have rejected His Lordship. He says that two Gentile cities notorious for their sin--Tyre and Sidon--will be better off on the day of judgment than these Jewish cities smug in their self-righteousness, certain of their place in God's kingdom even as they reject the King of kings.
Then, Jesus says in verse 16: “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.’"
When you and I speak, live, or act in the Name of the One Who died and rose for us, we do so in the Name and the power of God the Father. We speak the message of God Himself.
That’s not a thing to be taken lightly. And we’re to be very sure that we never put our words or thoughts into the mind or mouth of God.
But when we have acquainted ourselves with God’s Word, we surrender our every moment to Him, and we know the truth of God that might help another person, we shouldn’t be shy about sharing that Word. We have God’s permission to do so. In fact, we have His command to do it. 1 Timothy 1:7 reminds followers of Jesus: “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
Verse 17: “Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.’ And He said to them, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.'”
The seventy came back to Jesus in a triumphant mood. Jesus hadn’t even told them that they would be exorcising demons in His Name and they found that they could do it!
But this was a dangerous time for the seventy, a moment of great spiritual vulnerability, a time when the very evil they were so excited about overcoming could, if they weren’t careful overcome them.
Every now and then, I preach a sermon that really seems to "click." People tell me, “That was a great sermon.” (Even Ann!) Now, folks, I know that when a sermon “works,” it’s not because of me. It’s because I’ve gotten out of the way and let God speak from the pulpit that day.
But do you know what happens? The next day, as I start to work on my sermon for the following Sunday, I subconsciously think, “I’ve got to write a sermon as good as last week’s.” Listen: When we think that our good sermons, good deeds, good parenting, good advice, or good anything comes from us, we’re in trouble. James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.”
If VBS goes well, if the dinner for the Inspire Shelter goes well, if any good thing we seek to do as followers of Jesus goes well, we can be grateful. But things going well is not what we should most celebrate in life. That’s why Jesus says in the final verse of our Gospel lesson: “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
The most precious possession any human being can have is a right relationship with God. It’s a possession that can sustain us through anything that might happen to us in this world, that assures us that we belong to God forever.
But we can’t work for it, earn it, or deserve it. It’s a gift. It belongs to those in whom God’s Word and God’s Holy Spirit has planted the gift of faith. It belongs to those who trust in Jesus Christ, Who died and rose for them.
Ephesians 2 reminds us: “For by grace [God’s charity] you have been saved through faith [in Christ], and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God...”
When, by grace, we come to believe in, trust in, surrender to Jesus Christ as our only God and King and Savior, our names are written in heaven. Knowing that is the great thrill and joy of being a Christian!
When you know that your name is, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, written in heaven, every good thing that comes your way is gravy.
Every bad thing can be endured with confidence and hope.
And, like the seventy Jesus called in today’s lesson, you can dare to share His good news and His healing love with confidence and passion! Amen
Luke 10:1-20
Abraham Lincoln once told the story of a man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. The man was asked how it felt. According to Lincoln, the man said that if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would just as soon as have walked.
The seventy people Jesus called to carry the Gospel into communities Jesus planned on visiting may have felt that way as they listened to the instructions Jesus gave after calling them. We may feel that way too: There is no greater joy or thrill than knowing that we have been saved from sin and death by God's grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. But the joy of that free gift only comes to those willing to follow and confess Jesus in a world that often makes following Him and confessing Him difficult.
Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, on which Jim Kalklosch preached, begins a section of Luke’s Gospel known as the greater interpolation, running from chapter 9 through chapter 19, that details Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, toward His crucifixion and resurrection.
Luke makes clear that Jesus is intent on fulfilling this calling. Luke 9:51 says that Jesus “set His face to go to Jerusalem.” No matter what pain was to engulf Him--and Jesus, as God, knew perfectly in advance all that He would have to endure as a human being in Jerusalem--Jesus wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to stop Him from offering His life on the cross to free from sin and death all who turn from sin and believe in Him. This was His mission on earth.
As I said, as today’s Gospel lesson begins, Jesus anticipates the places He will visit on the way to Jerusalem. We’re told: “After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go.”
Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, He had sent the twelve apostles into villages He was to visit. The apostles were the ones who were to spend three years in the greatest seminary that ever existed, following, living with, and learning from Jesus day to day.
But now, Jesus was sending ordinary believers, people like you and me on a similar mission. In Christ’s Church, everyone has a ministry and everyone is called to share the Good News of new life for all who repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Look, beginning at verse 3: “Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.” “Listen,” Jesus is saying, “the life I offer you with God is a free gift of grace. It’s offered to all sinners who recognize their need of forgiveness and a fresh start and who entrust their lives to Me. But following Me in this world will not be easy. Don’t expect the world to throw you a party when you call them, in My Name, to repent and believe in Jesus Christ alone.” If even the Word made flesh encountered hatred, opposition, and rejection, we who follow Him can expect no less.
Look at verse 4, please: “Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals; and greet no one along the road.” Followers of Jesus are to be as intent on following Him as Jesus was on going to Jerusalem.
In a world filled with all sorts of opportunities and distractions, at least for people like us in middle class America, it’s easy to lose our focus on following Jesus.
But when we veer off course, the God we know in Jesus is anxious to help us to move from sin and move back toward Jesus. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to [the human race]. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Stay focused on following Jesus and when your focus gets blurry, turn to the God Who loves you and wants what’s best for you to set things right between You and Him!
What Jesus says next is more specifically geared to the seventy He’s sending out, but it has application to us too. He says: “But whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house.' And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it; if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you. And heal the sick there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'”
There are people who will welcome you and your witness for Jesus. They may not understand it at first. But as long as they show no hostility to you when you share your faith with them, you shouldn’t stop. The apostle Peter writes: “...do not be frightened. But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”
As Christians, our aim, like the seventy Jesus sends in today’s Gospel lesson, is to share Christ--we tell them that His kingdom is as near as their openness to the Word about Jesus that can create faith and give new life to those who hear it.
Like them, we also aim to bring God’s healing to the world. This past week, during the IMPACT youth gathering, the 350 youth and adults there packed over 21,000 meals, meaning that 58 children in Haiti can be fed for a year.
In addition, 25 children were sponsored through Compassion International.
Saint Matthew will seek to share Christ with our community through our Vacation Bible School, August 12 through 16.
And we’ll seek to bring Jesus’ healing to others with the community dinner we’re having on Saturday, July 20 to raise money for the Hocking Hills Inspire Shelter.
The women of the church are this year leading us in contributing bars of soap to be used in this year’s Lutheran World Relief project.
As the body of Christ, the Church is the hands and feet of God! Jesus sent the seventy out to be His hands and feet. He sends us out with the same mission.
Then, starting at verse 8, Jesus makes clear that He gives all of us who follow Him the great commission to make disciples: “But whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 'The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.' But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that Day for Sodom than for that city. "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades.”
As followers of Jesus, with our focus on Him, we can’t get hung up on those who oppose or hate us when we follow Him or share Him. If people are unwilling to receive the peace or good news of Jesus which He empowers us and commands us to share with others, we’re to know that His peace and favor is still with us and simply move on. We're to be people with tender hearts and thick skins!
In these verses, Jesus mentions several Gallilean communities, including His adopted hometown of Capernaum as places on which His judgment will fall because they have rejected His Lordship. He says that two Gentile cities notorious for their sin--Tyre and Sidon--will be better off on the day of judgment than these Jewish cities smug in their self-righteousness, certain of their place in God's kingdom even as they reject the King of kings.
Then, Jesus says in verse 16: “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.’"
When you and I speak, live, or act in the Name of the One Who died and rose for us, we do so in the Name and the power of God the Father. We speak the message of God Himself.
That’s not a thing to be taken lightly. And we’re to be very sure that we never put our words or thoughts into the mind or mouth of God.
But when we have acquainted ourselves with God’s Word, we surrender our every moment to Him, and we know the truth of God that might help another person, we shouldn’t be shy about sharing that Word. We have God’s permission to do so. In fact, we have His command to do it. 1 Timothy 1:7 reminds followers of Jesus: “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
Verse 17: “Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.’ And He said to them, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.'”
The seventy came back to Jesus in a triumphant mood. Jesus hadn’t even told them that they would be exorcising demons in His Name and they found that they could do it!
But this was a dangerous time for the seventy, a moment of great spiritual vulnerability, a time when the very evil they were so excited about overcoming could, if they weren’t careful overcome them.
Every now and then, I preach a sermon that really seems to "click." People tell me, “That was a great sermon.” (Even Ann!) Now, folks, I know that when a sermon “works,” it’s not because of me. It’s because I’ve gotten out of the way and let God speak from the pulpit that day.
But do you know what happens? The next day, as I start to work on my sermon for the following Sunday, I subconsciously think, “I’ve got to write a sermon as good as last week’s.” Listen: When we think that our good sermons, good deeds, good parenting, good advice, or good anything comes from us, we’re in trouble. James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.”
If VBS goes well, if the dinner for the Inspire Shelter goes well, if any good thing we seek to do as followers of Jesus goes well, we can be grateful. But things going well is not what we should most celebrate in life. That’s why Jesus says in the final verse of our Gospel lesson: “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
The most precious possession any human being can have is a right relationship with God. It’s a possession that can sustain us through anything that might happen to us in this world, that assures us that we belong to God forever.
But we can’t work for it, earn it, or deserve it. It’s a gift. It belongs to those in whom God’s Word and God’s Holy Spirit has planted the gift of faith. It belongs to those who trust in Jesus Christ, Who died and rose for them.
Ephesians 2 reminds us: “For by grace [God’s charity] you have been saved through faith [in Christ], and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God...”
When, by grace, we come to believe in, trust in, surrender to Jesus Christ as our only God and King and Savior, our names are written in heaven. Knowing that is the great thrill and joy of being a Christian!
When you know that your name is, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, written in heaven, every good thing that comes your way is gravy.
Every bad thing can be endured with confidence and hope.
And, like the seventy Jesus called in today’s lesson, you can dare to share His good news and His healing love with confidence and passion! Amen
Friday, July 05, 2013
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