Martha: A Special Character

[This was shared during the funeral for Martha, a member of our parish, recently.]

Zephaniah 3:17
Psalm 46
Romans 8:31-39
John 11:21-26

Two years ago, instead of a mission trip, our youth did a local mission week. Most of our work was done here in Logan. But on Wednesday, we scheduled a day in Columbus: a tour of a whistle manufacturer’s facility, lunch at Tommy’s Pizza near OSU, and an afternoon spent helping out at the Lutheran Social Services food bank on the south end. Several adults went with us, including Martha.

She was the eldest of our group, explaining why the manager of the agency turned to me after we had been there for a while, in the middle of helping a large number of clients shop for their week's worth of groceries, and said, “Pastor Mark, give Martha a break.”

I tried. But Martha was busy telling a young man how to best cook food he had never seen before--Portobello mushrooms--with scrambled eggs.

Evidently thinking I had been negligent in my duties, the manager approached Martha himself and told her to take a break.

Martha was taken aback. She stood erect, looked around, and asked, “Why am I a special character?”

Even at the end, Martha saw no reason why a little thing like being ninety years old should prevent her from doing a day’s work. (Or, for that matter, a day’s shopping!)

About a week before her passing, a hospital bed was brought into her bedroom for her, her own bed pushed against a wall to make room. This arrangement didn’t suit her too well because the unused bed blocked access to an ironing board. “How am I supposed to iron my clothes?” she asked. She couldn't imagine not working or keeping busy.

Despite her protest at the food bank, Martha was absolutely wrong about one thing. The fact is that Martha was a special character, a unique and truly extraordinary person. And I'm sure that her passing will leave a hole in the lives of everyone gathered here today: from the family members she loved so much that she insisted two Sundays before her passing that she was going to worship to pray for them, to the dear neighbors who helped her in her final years; from the colleagues who worked with her in her pioneering work as a leader in special education, to the children in this congregation on whom she doted.

I want you, Diana and Mike, and your families, to know that many of us are praying for you in your grief and that our hearts go out to you now. The hole will loom largest in your lives. It’s a hole that cannot be filled. But I pray that God will comfort you and encourage you, that you will feel His presence with you and His love for you as we move on from today.

Anyone who knew Martha knows that she was a committed Lutheran Christian. She wasn’t the kind of Christian to beat you over the head with her faith. But she believed that Jesus was God in the flesh, God’s Son, and that salvation, eternal hope, and life with God comes through Him alone.

Her faith, I think, informed so much about her. That included her love for life and her avid interest in other cultures and countries, many of which she visited. It included her sense of humor and her toughness. It included her love as a teacher for kids who no other teacher or administrator wanted to deal with and her avid and thoughtful gift-giving. It included her desire to see her neighbor and friend and helper Brenda baptized. She loved Jesus Christ and she seemed to always find her own special Martha-Way of sharing Him with others.

And this faith, Martha’s faith, the faith in Christ that she commended to others, I hope and pray, will be your comfort in the days ahead.

In our Gospel lesson for this morning, from John, Jesus tells another Martha, the sister of Lazarus, who had died four days previously: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.  And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”

I believe that because Jesus Christ died on the cross, taking the death punishment for sin we deserve, and because, after dying, Jesus rose again from the dead, and because of her faith in Christ, Martha is standing and living and laughing and rejoicing in the presence of God right now! The frailties that dogged her final years are gone. She has been made completely new by the grace and power of God. Jesus says that all who believe in Him, though the death that comes to all who walk this planet comes to them, will live because Jesus Christ lives.

But Jesus gives us more than an eternal hope. Because He has conquered sin and death, Jesus can also make us another promise: That He will stand by us in this world, in the good and the bad, in the joyful and in the sad.

The Bible, God’s Word, is filled with God’s promise to be with His people always. Several of them are among our lessons for today.

Zephaniah 3:17 tells us: “The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

And Psalm 46 says: “God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.” and encourages us, when the storms or griefs of life rage to, “be still and know that I am God.”

And Romans 8 assures the believer in Christ that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

On the afternoon of Martha’s passing, I couldn’t help telling others about her on Twitter. “A great lady of our congregation passed from this life to be with Christ today,” I wrote. “She led a life of faith, achievement, service, & good humor.” If anybody I’ve known could be said to have wrung every last bit of life from her years, it was Martha!

She was a child of God, who reveled in the sheer joy of being alive and in the joy of belonging to God forever through Jesus Christ.

She loved doing for others more than she did doing things for herself, a certain sign of someone who lives in fellowship with Christ.

Martha leaned on the God we know in Christ and so was set free from the self-involved inhibitions that prevent most of us from being our true selves. That is a remarkable testament to her joyous faith! She never shied from being her own special person--laughing, loving, speaking bluntly but kindly, sometimes just speaking bluntly, wearing bright colors that seemed somehow never to clash with each other.

She brightened our lives with the joy of her Father in heaven!

May we learn from her example and so, one day, through our Lord Jesus, be united with her again. Amen

"Buyer" Beware of the Cost of Discipleship

[This is the sermon as prepared for both worship services with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on Sunday, September 8. It represents a slight reworking of a sermon given about three years ago.]

Luke 14:25-33
An old bit of wisdom tells us, “Buyer beware.” It’s a good idea whatever we’re in the market for to be careful not to buy a “bill of goods” and to make sure that whoever’s trying to convince us of anything is engaging in “truth in advertising.”

Our Gospel lesson from Luke for today finds Jesus engaging in “truth in advertising.” He wants people to know exactly what is involved in following Him. God’s grace, His forgiveness and favor, is a free gift; but to grasp hold of it costs us everything, our whole lives. Jesus is intent on our knowing that. Jesus wants us to understand that there is a cost to being His disciple. He tells people, "Would-be believers, beware of what it means to follow Me."

Take a look, please, at this morning’s Gospel lesson, Luke 14:25-33. Verse 25 starts: “Now great multitudes went with Him [Jesus]...” Whenever references to multitudes or crowds appear in Luke’s Gospel, Luke is talking about people who are interested in Jesus, maybe even hopeful that Jesus will do something for them, but who haven’t committed to following Jesus. They wanted just enough of Jesus to get from Him what they wanted, but not enough to change their lives. I confess that there are times when I prefer the safety of blending with the crowd to sticking my neck out for Jesus. So, if you’re like me in this way, what Luke records Jesus as saying today applies not just to “those people” out in the world somewhere, but to you and me.

Read on with me, please: “And He turned and said to [the crowds], ‘If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.’”

What is Jesus saying here about being a disciple? In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke every day, the word hate didn't necessarily imply hostility, but often had the meaning to love less, to hold one thing or person as having less importance than another. In this verse, Jesus is telling us to love our families and our own lives less than we love Him, to love Him more than these things.

The so-called “family values” crowd of today will be appalled to know that Jesus doesn’t agree with them when they say, “Family is the most important thing.” Jesus says, “No. Your family is not the most important thing. I am.”

And to modern narcissists who talk about needing to take care of themselves or look after themselves, Jesus says, “You will only be truly happy, you will only find yourself, when you lose yourself in Me.”

I like what a person wrote in an online article a few years ago about the God Who comes to us in Jesus: "God does not offer us a choice. He comes, not hat in hand, but ready for battle. He breaks into the strong man’s house [that is, He breaks into our wills, held captive by sin from the moment of our conceptions] entering into contention against the heart, soul & mind of the [sinner]. The rational free will of [human beings] cannot believe or accept this & as such God always ...appears as the opposite, contrary to our expectations, confounding appeals to choice." Where do Jesus and His Word found in the Bible fall on your list priorities in life? Is Jesus everything or nothing to you?

Read verse 27 now [Jesus is still speaking]: “...whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” One scholar says of these words, says: “Bearing a cross has nothing to do with chronic illness, painful physical conditions, or trying family relationships. It is instead what we do voluntarily as a consequence of our commitment to Jesus Christ. Cross bearing requires deliberate sacrifice and exposure to risk and ridicule  in order to follow Jesus. This commitment is not just a way of life, however. It is a commitment to a person. A disciple follows another person and learns a new way of life.” That person Who calls us to a different way of life is Jesus. Discipleship means breaking with the world’s values, radically turning from what is popular or politically correct in order to follow Jesus and the Word of God alone.

After this, Jesus tells two parables, each meant to urge those considering following Him to count the cost involved. In one, Jesus says that farmers, who in first century Judea where He lived, often built towers to give themselves early warning about marauding thieves or wild animals, would be crazy not to figure out whether they could afford the structures before starting to build them. Similarly, Jesus says, a king who didn’t know about the strength of an opposing army would be foolish to start a war with that army. Again, Jesus wants us to know that following Him isn’t easy.

Then, in verse 33, Jesus says what may be the most dumbfounding thing of all in this lesson. Now, in the New King James Version we have in our pew Bibles and bulletins, Jesus is quoted as saying: “...whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” That’s a fine translation, but the New Revised Standard Version renders it more literally: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

What do we make of this? Please pull out a pew Bible and turn to James 1:17, page 701. James writes: “”Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights...”

Every penny that comes into our possession, no matter how hard we work for it, is a gift from God to be used not just for our own needs, but for the glory of God, the sharing of the Gospel, and the good of others. We may say, “But I earned the money through brain and brawn and hours of over-time or extra work.” But who gave you the brain and the brawn and the power to put in extra time? Who made the resources from which our daily bread and our luxuries are made? One of our hymns has us sing: “All that we have is Thine alone, a trust, O God, from Thee.” Jesus is not asking every Christian to take the vow of poverty. He’s calling us to allow His grace to change our attitude about our money and possessions. He wants, in effect, to be the signatory on our bank accounts. He wants to be the Lord of our money, our life, our families, our everything. We can have nothing of Jesus’ kingdom unless we are willing to let Him be our only King.

He has that right! On the cross, we were bought out of slavery to sin and death by Jesus’ suffering and death. In response to such unfathomable grace, He calls us to give Him the final say on how we spend not just our time and our lives, but also our money. The old saying tells us, “You can’t take it with you!” That’s true. But we can invest it in the kingdom--in sharing the good news, in expanding the ministries of churches, in helping the poor. In short, we’re to use our money for the same purposes for which we’re to live our lives as grateful recipients of God’s amazing grace: To love God, love neighbor, love the Church, tell the good news that all who believe in Jesus Christ have everlasting life with God.

Now, if these words of Jesus for this morning are as daunting to you as they are to me, I want you to consider some very good news. Three times in our lesson, Jesus uses the phrase “cannot be my disciple”: in verses 26, 27, and 33. In the original Greek, the same words are used in each place, giving the verses this literal meaning, “You do not have the power to be My disciples unless you put Me in first place, take up the cross, and give Me access to your whole life.” Jesus uses that word for power or ability in another place in Luke’s Gospel. It comes after Jesus tells the disciples that it will be harder for a rich person—someone who is more tempted than others to rely on their money rather than on God—to enter God’s kingdom than it would be for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The disciples, who to that point, thought that wealth was a sign of God’s favor, ask Jesus, “Then, who does have the power or ability to get into the kingdom?” Jesus says, literally, “The things that human beings cannot do [or don’t have the ability to do], God can do.”

Folks, those who follow Jesus have all the gifts He came into our world to bring: forgiveness of sin, lives lived for good purposes, strength when we’re weak, and eternity with God. But unless Jesus rules over our lives without rival, Jesus Christ alone, these gifts cannot come to us. The good news is that your ability to follow Jesus, the Savior Who died and rose for you, doesn’t depend on you. If you want Jesus to take first place in your life, all you need is to make yourself available to Him and ask Him to help you do just that. Right now. Every day. The Holy Spirit will take care of the rest!

Now, if you’re anything like me, immediately after you tell the Lord something like, “I’m available, Jesus. Be first in my life. Be Lord of my life,” you’ll start making your own plans, dreaming your own dreams, obsessing on your own thoughts, maybe even committing your own favorite sins. Keep asking Jesus to take first place in your life.

But, just as the buyer should beware, the would-be follower of Jesus should be aware, too: Let Jesus in and He will start to make of you what cannot make of yourself. Despite the temptations you face, despite the sins for which you must repeatedly repent, as you turn to Jesus, He will relentlessly, lovingly, and in ways you yourself be unable to perceive or understand, turn you into the person God wants all people to be, the person our secret hearts most yearn to be.

Jesus will make you His disciple.

What is a Christian?

"To give a short definition of a Christian: A Christian is not somebody who has no sin, but somebody against whom God no longer chalks sin, because of his faith in Christ." (Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, here regarding Galatians 2:15)

Finding Ourselves

This from the sermon preparation cutting room floor:

In Matthew 16:25, Jesus says, “...whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” In other words, the only way for us to find our true selves is not by going on a quest of self-discovery, but by giving our whole lives to Christ and live the life that only God can give us!

Strength, Goodness, Wisdom Can't Come from Inside Us

"To trust in our own strength, our own goodness, our own wisdom, is a perilous thing. Let us search the Scriptures with humility, praying that we may never lose the light of the Gospel." (Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, Galatians 2:13)

'A Hit by Varese'

This old tune by Chicago has been in my brain all day long.

Only super-talented musicians could perform this tune with its widely varying time signatures. Written and with a lead vocal by Robert Lamm, composer and singer on several of the band's earliest hits, A Hit by Varese, gives all of the original members of Chicago a chance to show their chops.

A band that included both formally trained and more instinctive musicians, Chicago's early work, including this song, presented a brilliant fusion of jazz and rock.

This is not one of their better known pieces. But it is definitely one of my favorites.

Helps for Witnesses for Christ

[During yesterday's meeting with the Women of Saint Matthew, I did a presentation meant to help those who want to share their faith in Christ with others. It wasn't written out beforehand. After the presentation, one member of the group wondered if I would take on some "homework," putting everything in written form. I thought others might be interested in it as well. So, here it is: Helps for Witnesses for Christ.]

Why witness?

The eternal destiny of every human being hinges on belief in Jesus Christ.

[Jesus says:] "For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:16-18)

Martin Luther called John 3:16, “the Gospel in a nutshell.” Simply taking this verse under consideration, we see that while God loves and wants to save all people from sin and death, God will not force Himself or His grace and forgiveness on them. They must receive Christ by faith. That is, they must trust in Christ.

Now, faith in Christ is a gift from God. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we have the ability to confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3).

But faith in Christ only comes to those who are willing to receive it.

Remember the man who told Jesus, “I do believe; Help my unbelief?” Here was a man who had heard the Word about Jesus and wanted to believe, though, as is true for us, trust was foreign to Him. But Jesus took that willingness to trust in Jesus, answered that man’s prayer, and gave him faith.

Paul writes in Romans 10:17 that “faith comes by hearing.” But just as in Jesus‘ parable of the seeds scattered on different kinds of soil with differing results, people can hear the same Gospel word, resulting in some believing and some not. The mission of every Christian is to keep scattering the seeds of the Gospel. 

What this means for those who have never heard of Jesus is not something the Bible tells us about. But we can trust the God Who came to earth in Jesus and died and rose out of love for the world to take account of that reality. Any questions we may have about those who haven’t yet heard of Jesus and His Gospel should give more urgency to the Church’s pursuit of the great commission.

This leads to a second reason for every Christian to witness for Christ: Jesus commands that we be His witnesses.

[Jesus says:] “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20)

What exactly does it mean to have faith in Jesus?

The only sermon by Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Mark is found in Mark 1:15. It summarizes Jesus’ mission on earth and the Gospel--the good news--itself:

[Jesus said:] “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:15)

Jesus came into the world to bring His kingdom to us. We enter it by faith. 

To have faith means two things:

1. To receive the gift of repentance. In the Greek in which the New Testament is written, the most common word translated into English as repent is metanoia. It literally means change one’s mind. It doesn’t come naturally any human being to think God’s way. Instead, we’re born sinners. When we receive the gift of repentance, we’re able to turn from our sins and turn to the God revealed in Christ. God forgives our sins and grants us the Holy Spirit to confront and guide us to continue walking on what Jesus called “the narrow way” (Matthew 7:13-14), the way of following Him as God makes us more like Christ Himself (2 Corinthians 3:18).

2. To trust in Jesus as our only Savior and God. The word usually translated into English as believe is, in the Greek of the New Testament, pisto. It denotes absolute trust.

When I believe in Jesus then, I trust Him as I repent, not to use my sins against me to judge me, as I deserve, but to gracious forgive Him.

I trust Him too, to make me righteous and worthy of eternity not by my merits, but solely because of His grace--His charity--which I receive by faith in Him and His Gospel.
 
How do we witness?

Read John 1:35-46, part of an account of Jesus’ early ministry:

35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, "What are you seeking?" And they said to him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?" 39 He said to them, "Come and you will see." So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." 46 Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see."

Notice how it was that people came to follow Jesus. John the Baptist tells two of his disciples that Jesus is the Lamb of God. And they follow Jesus. Andrew tells his brother. Philip tells Nathanael.

Witnessing that results in faith in Christ doesn’t happen in a vacuum. John the Baptist, for example, had a relationship with the disciples. They knew him. They valued him and invested what he said with credibility. John’s relationship with them earned him the opportunity to be a witness for Christ.

Witnessing for Christ is most effective, authentic, and believable when the person doing the witnessing is someone we know. Witnessing is relational.

Witnessing, at its best, is also invitational. Jesus didn’t try to argue the two disciples of John the Baptist into following Him. He simply invited them: “Come and see.”

Philip didn’t have all the answers to Nathanael’s questions. He simply invited this man he clearly already knew to, “Come and see.”

The best witnessing then, is relational and invitational. As Christians, we should pray that God would help us develop relationships with people not yet in relationship with Christ and His Church so that, with credibility, we can invite them to, “Come and see”: Jesus in our church, Jesus in our lives, Jesus in the Bible, Jesus met in prayer.

How do you witness? By being a friend to those for whom Jesus died and rose and inviting them to come and see Jesus!

What if I don’t know a lot about the Bible?

1 Peter 3:15 says:

“...in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect...”

None of us is expected to know more than we actually know about Jesus and God’s Word. (Although that should never be an excuse for not knowing Jesus or God’s Word better!)

The best way to be prepared to “give a reason for the hope that is in you” through Christ is to cultivate a personal relationship with God. This is best done through what is sometimes referred to as “means of grace,” highways by which the God we know in Jesus promises to come to us, encourage us, teach us, chasten us, and renew us. These would include:

1. Holy Baptism. In Baptism, God claims us as His own children. God makes a covenant with us to be our God. We, in turn, are called to live each day affirming our participation in that covenant by honoring God, loving Christ’s Church, loving God and loving neighbor, and sharing the Gospel whenever and however we can.

2. Regular worship, including regularly receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion. One of the things that most pleases me about life at Saint Matthew these days is that people have the opportunity to receive Christ’s body and blood every week. In the Sacrament, Jesus Christ comes to us--body and blood--and brings us His presence and forgiveness. It is food for our journey until that day we meet Him face to face with all the saints in the heavenly banquet hall.

3. Regularly reading and studying God’s Word, the Bible, with other Christians. The Bible isn’t just another book. It is God’s inspired--literally meaning God-breathed--word given to us through many Biblical witnesses (2 Timothy 3:16). When we take in the Word of God, we imbibe breath, life, from the only One Who can give it.

4. Regularly praying, yielding our whole lives to Christ. This includes the discipline Martin Luther called “daily repentance and renewal.”

5. Regularly obeying to Christ’s call to serve others in His Name. This includes, but isn’t restricted to, serving the members of your family and the people in your community. As someone has said, “Charity may begin at home. But for the Christian, it doesn’t end there.”

What are some basic truths I might want to cover with a friend I want to invite to “come and see”?

We all need Christ because every human being is a sinner.

“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5)

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Romans 3:10-11)

Simply put, sin is a condition into which we all are born. It is a condition of separation from God. To be separated from God is to be separated from righteousness and from life. We commit individual sins because we are sinners. As I’ve said before: “Plumbers plumb. Teachers teach. Sinners sin.”

We sin because we can’t help ourselves. That’s who we are. That’s why we need Jesus Christ, the Savior, to erase the separation that exists between us and God.

Sin will only earn us eternal separation from God, no matter how good we may try to be. But life with God--salvation from sin, death, and hopelessness--is given freely to those who believe in Jesus Christ.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

God’s Law, seen in the Ten Commandments and explained in many other places in the Bible, find us guilty for our sin. They can show us the will of God for human beings. But they can’t save, because none of us is capable of observing God’s Law with perfection.

In Jesus, God took on human flesh and kept the law perfectly for us so that, in His undeserved death, He could take the punishment for sin we deserve. And in His rising, He makes new and everlasting life with God available to all who trust in and follow Him. God makes righteous those with faith in Christ.

“21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” (Romans 3:21-25)

We can only be certain of Jesus’ resurrection victory over sin and death--the truth on which our hope as Christians rests--by faith.

God, as someone has said, is a gentleman; He will not force us to faith in Him. But, for people who make themselves available to believe and ask God to give them trust in Him, “...faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). On the other hand, many clear-eyed, practical people who knew Jesus risked their lives in the face of persecution to affirm that Jesus rose from the dead.

[Paul wrote some twenty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection:] “3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

All who believe in Christ have a freedom and joy that nothing can take from us, in this life or in the next. Neither sin, the accusations of conscience, or the unkindness of others can harm us.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

I hope that you find this helpful. God bless!

Turning His Back on Football

Robert Stein's reasoning for saying farewell to football fandom. Interesting and thought-provoking.

What do you think?

Humility: Standing Upside Down with Jesus

[This was shared during both worship services with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on September 1.]

Luke 14:1, 7-14

In Acts 17:6, people in the first-century city of Thessalonica had an interesting reaction to the apostle Paul and his team, who had come to proclaim the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God.

They said: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also...”

These people who have been turning the world upside down...!

Paul and Silas, representing Jesus Christ in their teaching and preaching, were seen as radicals who upset the normal human way of thinking about living. Christians were seen as offering and living a radically different way of life than either the Jews or Gentiles of the mid- and late-first century had ever experienced. And it frightened people.

Unfortunately, Christians of today aren’t frightening people in the way Paul and Silas and party frightened people in Thessalonica back in the first century.

In fact, depending on which “wing” of the contemporary Church to which people belong, today’s Christians are turning very little of the world upside down.

Right wing Christians, at least in the United States, seem to speak not so much for surrender and submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ as they do for a red-white-and-blue Jesus Who affirms them in their materialism, their self-styled decency, and their hatred for change.

Left wing, or so-called mainline, Christians tell a population resistant to submission to Christ that Jesus is just a man, the Bible is just a book, that Jesus didn’t mean it when He called Himself “the Way...the Truth...the Life,” and that only a narrow-minded bigot would accept as gospel-truth Jesus‘ claim that “no one comes to [God] the Father except through Me.”

Neither of these wings of Christianity are “turning the world upside down.” They’re just trying to fit in with a world that the Bible makes clear will one day be destroyed to make way for God’s new creation.

The Jesus preached by so many churches today is one who endorses people in their own predispositions, sins, and habits of thought, whether liberal, conservative, whatever. This version of Jesus isn’t turning anyone’s world upside down. He’s the cruise director on the HMS Titanic, keeping everybody comfortable in their own self-centered world views and self-satisfied living as every human being hurtles toward the judgment we all will and must face.

“Wait a minute!” you might say. “Jesus is the Friend of sinners. Paul and Silas may have been zealot hot-heads who went off on illogical tangents of Christian idealism. But Jesus wouldn’t want to turn our worlds upside down. He doesn’t want to change me, just comfort me.”

Listen: It is precisely because Jesus is the friend of sinners that He wants to change us.

He wants to make us feel uncomfortable in living life in the selfish, self-centered ways that represent our default positions as people born in sin.

Until we feel uncomfortable in our sins--until we are dissatisfied with the fact that we are idol-worshipers, thieves, gossips, adulterers, dishonorers of our parents--until we understand that we commit these sins because we are sinners who cannot help ourselves, we will never understand our need of the help that Jesus has come to give to us.

We will never see how desperately we need Christ to free us to choose to walk away from sin and toward being actual human beings until we’re uncomfortable enough to let Christ change us.

Until we’re uncomfortable with our own sin, our Christianity will be a going-through-the-motions religion and not an eternity-changing relationship with God.

The only way Jesus can ever bring us comfort is if, day by day, moment by moment, we remain open to letting Him change us, transform us.

The gifts of salvation and new, eternal life with God are free for all who believe in Jesus. But to believe in Jesus--the real Jesus--will turn our worlds upside down! Our treasured ways of thinking must be crucified, daily, in our repentance and confession, and in God’s forgiveness, given in Christ. The habits we dismiss as being simply the way we are, must be put on the cross, so that the new people God is making of us in Christ can rise!

Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to turn our worlds upside down!

Just how topsy turvy the new world--the kingdom of God--that Jesus lived, died, and rose to give us truly is, can be seen in today’s Gospel lesson.

It finds Jesus, on a sabbath day, at a banquet in the home of a Pharisee. In chapter 14, Jesus tells three parables. Two of them are in our lesson. But I want to focus on just the first one this morning. It’s set in verses 7 to 11. Let’s a take a look:

So Jesus told a parable to those who were invited, when He noted how they chose the best places, saying to them:  "When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, 'Give place to this man,' and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, 'Friend, go up higher.' Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

First century Judea in which Jesus lived, died, and rose was as an honor/shame culture. What people thought of you could be a life and death matter. People had feuds or worse over matters of honor. And your status played out in every aspect of daily life.

We haven’t really gotten over this. Every school playground has its pecking order, for example. And we build monuments and give awards to millionaires who may otherwise be stinkers but decided to give a chunk of money to the local college or community charity. In the meantime, we may ignore the everyday sacrifice made by the old widow who serves her neighbors and friends.

But Jesus says that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and that those who humble themselves will be exalted. So, he tells us, don't take places of honor. Be willing to take the lower place in any pecking order; you might get invited to a place of honor.

Now, don’t misunderstand what Jesus is saying here. I’ve heard motivational speakers say things like: “Be willing to serve others; you might gain a better place in the world from it.” "Scratch other people's backs so that they'll scratch yours." Folks, that is the exact opposite of what Jesus is saying in our Gospel lesson.

Jesus is not telling us to play the humble card so that we can manipulate others into giving us what we want in this world, like a better seat at the banquet, or tickets on the 50-yard line at Ohio Stadium, or a cushy job, or an inheritance.

This is a parable. And all of Jesus’ parables are about the kingdom of God, the reign of God.

Where God rules, things are different than under the dog-eat-dog rules of sinful human beings. In the kingdom of God, all who have been saved from sin and death by faith in Jesus Christ alone, already have a preferred place at the table, every single one.

You don’t need to scheme or cheat to get it.

You don’t have to work hard to attain it.

You don’t have to have been born into the right circumstances.

And you don’t have to take places of honor when you know the greatest honor imaginable has already been paid you: the King of all creation died and rose for you.

All you do is admit that you're a sinner in need of saving, trust your life to Jesus, and fall into His gracious, saving arms.

That’s it.

We are exalted when, sinners though we are, we accept Jesus’ invitation to His banquet--to the kingdom of God and are made eternally clean, eternally children of God!

This means that arrogance is neither a necessity nor an option in the kingdom of God.

Each of us who stands each day in humility before God acknowledging our sin and our need of the forgiveness that Christ died and rose to give us, cannot pretend to be anything other than what we are, garden variety sinners turned into saints, holy ones, of God, solely by grace through faith in Christ.

This is how upside down Jesus’ kingdom is! In every other kingdom of the world, the honors go to those who have pushed and elbowed their ways to the top. In the kingdom of God, the honors go to those who trust in Christ, who let Christ call them and lead them and work through them.

And every one who trusts in Christ wears a crown.

All who believe in Christ are seated in God’s banquet hall!

The ultimate arrogance, of course, is for human beings to think we don’t need God.

Or, in another guise of faithlessness, to think we only need God for the things we can't handle ourselves.

Or, in another, to believe that Christ is optional for salvation.

Or, in another, that we haven’t sinned badly enough to lose our place in the kingdom of God.

Or, in yet another, to think that God’s Word is whatever we decide it is.

Friends, that all these ways of thinking, some of them having currency in the Church today, represent the way of the world, not of God.

They're all part of the easy way: the way of using people, sometimes pushing them out of the way, other times playing to the crowd to win their votes, their confidence, their money, their respect, all the while losing our own eternal souls.

Jesus once said: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

The way of humility and servanthood over arrogance, of submission to Jesus Christ and the holy Word of God, is the narrow way, the harder way to take in this world.

It’s the way that glorifies God for the simple privilege of being part of His family and never presuming to be better than anyone else...just forgiven, just made right with God by grace through faith in Christ. This is the way of life with God!

People who trust in Christ as their God and King know that no matter what situation into which they walk--banquets or ICUs, corporate negotiations or church meetings, worship services or firing squads, into death itself, they walk with Jesus! 

As they trust in Christ, they are already being exalted by God.

They have been called by name, marked with the cross of Christ, and sealed by the Holy Spirit for all eternity.

Their worlds have been turned upside down and they don’t need to follow the dying world.

They know that every earthly banquet hall will one day be destroyed, every worldly honor will be forgotten, every bank account and stock portfolio will go to someone else, all of it finally burned up in the final conflagration that will engulf this old, dying planet.

But salvation--the privilege, the honor, of being made a child of God by the precious blood of Jesus shed on the cross and by His resurrection from the dead--cannot and will not be taken from the one who sticks with Jesus.

“But he who endures to the end shall be saved,” Jesus says. Those who endure in faith in Jesus will have their lives turned right-side-up even in this world and they will stand with their Savior forever.

Keep following Jesus and no one else!

Stand under the authority of God’s Word and none other!

It will turn your world upside down and make you whole, now and forever. Amen

Q-and-A on Syrian Situation Helpful

See here.

God's Word is What He Says...

...not what we want God to say.

"We are not the masters, judges, or arbiters, but witnesses, disciples, and confessors of the Scriptures, whether we be pope, Luther, Augustine, Paul, or an angel from heaven." (Martin Luther, in his comments on Galatians 1:9 from A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.]

[NOTE: You can get a free ebook edition of Luther's commentary at the link below.]

"If God Can Do Anything..."

You've probably heard what was called "the parable of the stone" the first time I heard it in a Philosophy class at Ohio State.

It goes like this: "If God can do anything, He can create a stone too heavu for Him to lift. If there's a stone too heavy for God to lift, He can't do everything. Therefore, there is no God."

Any logician will tell you that this formal argument is airtight. Its form makes it "valid" and irrefutable.

Of course, one problem with the argument from a believer's perspective is that it presumes the conditions by which God can "prove" His existence to us. If you are trying to prove or disprove the existence of the creator and Lord of the universe, it's presumptuous to define the parameters by which you'll allow Him to prove Himself to you.

God's preferred method of "proving" Himself and His love to us is through self-disclosure, the persuasions of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of faith. Each of these methods, resulting in faith, are initiated by God. Hard as it is on human egos, theists believe no one can every be argued into or out of faith by valid arguments.

But, for the moment, let's accept that both assertions of the "parable" are true:

1. God can do anything.
2. God can create a stone too heavy for God to lift. 

Are the two parts mutually exclusive? If you say, "Yes" to #1 and "Yes" to #2 or "No" to either proposition, are you conceding that God doesn't exist?

Actually, I don't think so.

As a Christian, I accept that God can do anything. But I also accept that this God Who can do anything can create a stone too heavy for Him to lift. And yet, I conclude that God exists.

This is exactly what happened when God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus, submitting to the limitations of being human (even while totally resisting sin) and presumably, during His time on earth, encountering stones that would have been too heavy for Him to lift had He tried. (He could have caused them to cry out, by the way. But that's another story.)

Of course, all supposedly airtight arguments against God's existence have, for the person willing to receive the witness of Scripture and of Christ's Church and so, being willing to believe in Christ, been trumped by Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

In Jesus Christ, we meet the eternal and infinite God, able to do anything, including incorporate the experience of human weakness into the experience of Almighty God.

In Jesus Christ, we meet the compassionate God Who voluntarily lived with human weakness and limitation to win us back through the submission of His weak body to death.

Those who let Jesus into their lives don't need a counter-argument to the parable of the stone. The crucified and risen Jesus is evidence of the God Who can do anything, including carrying the weight of our sins on a cross and rising from the dead from a tomb once sealed by a stone too big for one person to budge.

God is mighty. God is vulnerable. Therefore God exists. And, therefore, He and He alone can give life to all who believe in Jesus Christ!

Peace with God

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

Luke 12:49-53
Among the hymns we sing at Christmas time each year is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. The second line of the hymn, based on the song the angels sang on the night when God came to the world in the human flesh of Jesus, the Christ, says: “Peace on earth, and mercy mild.”

Jesus, the Prince of peace we confess in this hymn, brings God’s peace into this world.

The apostle Paul talks about the peace that Jesus brings in Romans 5:1. Paul writes: “Therefore, having been justified [that is, having been saved from sin and death by God’s grace] by faith [in Jesus], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Ephesians 2:14, puts things more succinctly when it says of Jesus, “For He Himself is our peace...”

When we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ as our only Savior, God, and King, we have peace.

Knowing all of this may be why Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel lesson are so jarring to us. Take a look at the first few words that Jesus speaks in our lesson, Luke 12:49-53: “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”

Those hardly seem like the words of a “Prince of peace,” do they? More like the words of an arson! What is Jesus talking about?

Take a look, please, at another passage of Scripture, Acts 2:1-4. The words describe some of the scene on the Pentecost in Jerusalem fifty days after Jesus had been raised from the dead and ten days after He had ascended back to heaven. The disciples have been gathered for prayer, awaiting what God would do next and what God would have them do next. Then this:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. 

Now, when Jesus spoke the words that begin today’s Gospel lesson, He knew what lay ahead.

He knew what had to happen in order that you and I, here in Logan, Ohio in 2013, could hear and come to believe in the good news that God so loved the world He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish--will not be lost to God forever--but have eternal life.

Jesus knew that before you and I could get the chance to hear, receive, and believe in that good news, He would first have to offer His own life on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

He would have to rise from the dead in order to tear down the barriers of sin and everlasting death that otherwise will keep human beings from having peace and life with God.

He would have to send the Holy Spirit into the life of every believer so that every believer could make disciples by sharing the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus.

In the first verse of our Gospel lesson, then, Jesus is saying that He came to the earth in order to unleash the fire of His Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the one true God, is the fire that enlightens us about our sin, about our need of God’s grace in Christ, and about God’s love for us given to us on the cross.

After enlightening us, the Holy Spirit then fills the willing with the fire of saving faith in Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is the fire Who, as we repent for sin and turn to Christ alone as our righteousness, burns away our sin, our excuses for sin, and all that is unholy in us.

And the Holy Spirit does this so that, one day, when we come face to face with Jesus, by God’s amazing grace, all that will remain of each of us is the child of God we were made to be. As we submit to Christ, the Holy Spirit unleashed by Christ works in us to make us worthy to stand in the presence of God the Father by the death and resurrection of God the Son, purged of sin and death, living once more in the innocence of Eden God will ultimately give to those who believe in Jesus.

“I can’t wait to get the ball rolling on Good Friday, and Easter, and Pentecost,” Jesus is saying as He sets His face for Jerusalem and all that He will accomplish there for our salvation.

Look now at verse 50. Jesus says: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished.”

Jesus is here underscoring the fact that the fiery Holy Spirit will come to His followers because He has undergone His own baptism, the baptism of His death and resurrection.

You know, every time a person is baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Baptism of Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection from the tomb is reenacted. We’re submerged in the water and we emerge again made new by God’s grace.

Romans 6:4 says to baptized Christians: “...we were buried with [Christ] through baptism  into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.”

By undergoing the baptism of death and rising from death, Jesus makes it possible for you and me to live.

Through His Baptism, Jesus makes it possible for us to drown our old sinful selves through daily repentance and sorrow for sin and to be raised again to live in His grace as we trust in Him alone as our only hope!

In verse 50 then, Jesus voices His desperate desire to accomplish His baptism so that we can be saved to live with God now and in eternity. If that doesn't make you feel good, nothing will make you feel good. God counts you worth all the suffering and dying that Jesus underwent in order to give you a life that only comes through Christ, and through faith in Christ and His grace and His Word, alone!

Then, in verse 51, we hit these words from Jesus:

“Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

It’s jarring when Jesus says that He came to earth bring division.

Does this mean that the angels were lying when they sang of "peace on earth" on the night of Jesus’ birth?

Actually, when Jesus says that He came to bring division, He’s using a turn of phrase common in the language He used every day, Aramaic. His turn of phrase here is an Aramaism. He’s not saying that it’s His purpose to bring division. He’s saying that it’s inevitable that He will bring division.

And Jesus is right, isn't He?

Once Jesus shows up or when someone talks about Jesus, people will inevitably have an opinion about Him.

Either they will bow down to Him as God in human flesh--as God incarnate--or they won’t.

Either they will accept His claim to be the only Savior of the world--or they won’t.

And some who reject Jesus for Who He claims to be will do so with hostility, insults, persecution, even death.

Truly: When we confess that Jesus is Lord, we are set smack dab in the middle of a conflict with the same world that nailed Jesus to a cross two thousand years ago!

A wise Christian woman recently told me about a conflict that happened in her church a few years back. Someone had asked this woman, “How can Christians fight like that?” She said, “Because they’re Christians. And because some truths, the truths revealed by God in Scripture, are worth fighting for!"

For that woman, that meant that when the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the Bible, the truth of Jesus’ Lordship were at stake, Christians won’t attack, but they also won’t budge from their good confession. They will proclaim the grace of God given only in Jesus Christ. 

They will proclaim the truth about sin and the truth about the common human need for repentance and for the new life only Christ can give. 

And they will do that even if it makes others upset with them, father against son, mother against daughter, just as Jesus says. 

We might add that they'll do so even if it causes disagreement between church member and church member.

Those who believe in Jesus have peace with God. Yet not all people who hear the good news of new life for those who believe in Christ experience God's peace. They refuse to believe in Jesus. They refuse His peace.

So, peace isn’t yet a fully accomplished fact in this fallen, world. Our peace as believers in Jesus comes from the fact that one day, Jesus will return, closing the curtain on the life of this planet, judging the living and the dead--those who have turned from sin and trusted in Him as their God will live eternally with God, those who haven’t repented or trust in Christ will be condemned and separated from God.

Only then will the kingdom of God will be fully and finally perfected in what the book of Revelation calls “a new heaven and a new earth.” Only then will the peace Jesus came to bring be fully realized.

Until that time, even in the midst of the chaos, sin, and death of this world--in the midst of the chaos, sin, and death that roils inside each of us--and even in the face of opposition from all quarters, believers in Christ experience what the Bible calls a “peace that surpasses understanding,” a peace insusceptible to empirical proof, but a peace nonetheless experienced by anyone who knows that Jesus will never allow any who trust in Him to be taken from Him.

“Peace I leave with you,” Jesus once said to His first disciples--and went on: “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you...”

We believe that Jesus Christ is the “Prince of peace,” the One Who has come to bring peace to us, even if violent, hateful people refuse His peace and even if others treat us with hostility, misunderstanding, or hatred. Even in these circumstances, even in the moment of death, we have peace with God because of Jesus.

We may find momentary peace and happiness in the sins this world offers. People may enjoy (and should enjoy) the beauties of this world.

But real peace, the peace of God, stays with us even when our lives are going crazy. The peace of God can belong to us even when, like Job, we endure multiple tragedies and our family and friends tell us that we must have done something wrong or that we’re naive to hold onto a God Who lets bad things happen to us in a bad world. The peace of God belongs to us even, when, like our sisters and brothers in Christ in places like Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, we face persecution, thuggery, and violence. Even then, we still have the peace of God as we hold on tightly to the God we know in Jesus Christ.

A sinful world today rejects Jesus and those who follow Him as much as a sinful world two thousand years ago once rejected Jesus and put Him on a cross. But whether being a Christian is in fashion as it once was or is out of fashion as it is in America today, doesn’t matter. Whether the world or unbelieving Christians--wolves in sheep’s clothing--will live in peace with God’s people who trust themselves, their sins, their pasts, their present, and their futures to Christ alone, the people who do trust in Christ alone will always have peace.

Life daily presents us with a stark choice between peace with the world or peace with God through Christ. Blessed, eternally blessed, are those who choose Christ’s peace. May that be our choice always! Amen

The "Killway"

For six years, we lived a quarter of a mile from a stretch of US 24 listed as one of America's ten deadliest highways. We drove on it every day. Haven't driven on too many of the others on the list.

You Can Choose Your Fear

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

Luke 12:32-40
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us to resist the call of one way of life, the way of fear. And He invites us to follow another way of life, the way of faith.

The call of every Christian, as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, is to “fear, love, and trust God above all things.” I love the way Luther puts that because implicit in this statement about the first commandment--”You shall have no other gods before Me”--is an acknowledgement that we all have fears.

But the call of those who have been graced by the forgiveness and love of the God made plainly knowable to the world in Jesus Christ is to fear God above anything else.

Those saved by grace through faith in Christ live each day, despite the uncertainties of this life and of this world, in the certainty that, as Romans 8 says, nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

We take shelter in God’s love, knowing  that, in the words of 1 John 4:18, God’s perfect love casts out our fear. (Consider that for a moment. It’s as if you and I were boats taking on water representing all of our fears. But the more we pump in the love of God He gives through Jesus Christ alone, the more that fear is displaced and removed from us. God won’t let anyone who allows grace to invade their lives to be sunk by fear, or sin, or death.)

1 John goes on to say that, “fear has to do with punishment.” Yet the Christian who trusts in Christ can live with the serenity of knowing that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

As we entrust our lives to Christ, the things of this world cause us less and less fear. When you know that through repentance in Christ’s Name and His power to forgive your wrongs, your sins no longer condemn you, freedom from fear belongs to you!

Listen: The person who believes in the God Who died and rose to set us free from sin and death is empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to choose their fear.

They can choose not to fear poverty.

They can choose not to fear getting older or having heart attacks or cancer.

They can choose not to fear the low opinions of others.

They can choose not to fear critical family members.

They can choose not to fear the power of their sin to send them to hell, while choosing not to fear the lie that God is incapable of protecting them from the temptation to sin.

They can choose not to fear those who dismiss as weakness or superstition their belief in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ or in the holy Word of God that gives witness to Jesus.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, they can choose, instead, to fear God.

And, by daily repentance and renewal, they ask that through God’s grace, they would fear only God and resist the call to fear anything or anyone else.

The Psalms and Proverbs affirm that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The fear of God is the first step in the life of faith. When you fear God, nothing else is as fearful.

When we have the fear of God, we acknowledge that God is God, not us.

We know that God is the world’s creator and ultimate judge.

And we know that it’s only God Who can save us from the death and judgment we deserve.

The person with true fear of God gladly and gratefully receives the grace God offers through Jesus Christ, trusting that no matter how many fears may dog us...

God loves us,

God forgives us,

God stands by us,

God has our backs,

God has erased the power of sin over our lives,

God has given us eternity with Him!

Sandwiched between a discussion of what may be our greatest fear in life--the fear of not having enough money--and the need for us to be ready for His return when He will judge the living and the dead, Jesus starts our Gospel lesson saying: “Do not fear, little flock”--flock refers to you and me, the sheep under the care of Jesus Christ, the good shepherd--”Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Years ago, a group led by science fiction writer Ray Bradbury asked Walt Disney to run for mayor of Los Angeles. "Why would I want to be mayor of Los Angeles," Disney asked the group, "when I'm already king of the world?" In the opening words of this lesson, Jesus is telling us how silly it is for Christians, the sheep of His flock, to fear anything in the world when God has already given citizenship in His eternal kingdom to all who believe in Christ.

Now, some people, even some Christians, misunderstand Jesus’ point here.

Jesus doesn’t tell us to rest easy in knowing that through Him, God the Father gives us the kingdom, so that we don't have to care anything about what goes on in this world, just waiting until the Lord calls us home.

Jesus tells us to have no fear of the world so that by fearing only God, we’ll have the courage to do what’s important in this life.

When we only fear the God we know in Jesus, we’re set free to love our neighbors, share the good news of new life for all who believe in Jesus, fight for justice, and help the poor.

The Christian who lives in the certainty of tomorrow can live today with  boldness.

That’s why I so love our Sunday School class, Bible study groups, and women’s group Bible studies. In these groups, Saint Matthew members gather to study how the liberating good news of Jesus sets them free to be God’s people right here, right now, without fear!

Jesus goes on: “Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Jesus isn’t here telling us to take vows of poverty.

Nor is He telling us to be spendthrifts.

But He is telling us to travel lightly, to not be encumbered by our money or possessions. There’s nothing wrong with wealth and I believe that God has gifted some people with a greater ability to make money than others. They may not be smarter than anyone else; they just have a Midas touch. But no matter how great a Midas touch we may have, Jesus is saying, whatever wealth has come your way in life, use it for God’s purposes, even the parts you use on your own family's needs for housing, shelter, education, and so on. If we’re more afraid of poverty or the loss of wealth than we’re afraid of God, we will never be loosed from sin and never enjoy the life of grace that Jesus came to bring to us.

And we may never have the freedom to fully follow God's will for our lives. My mentor and seminary professor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us to never have so many things that we couldn't be ready to move out of the parsonage in three days' time. It's good advice I haven't been able to keep.

In these same words in our lesson, Jesus is also telling us to invest in the right things. Luther once wrote, “I have held many things in my hands and have lost them all. But whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”

The only things that will live beyond this world are the God Who made it, died and rose for it, and still keeps it going and the people who belong to Him. Freed of fear, Christians can invest our lives--our time, our money, our brains, our mouths, our emotions, our commitments--in God and in the people God took on flesh to save.

This past week, Becky W. received a check written for $145 to the Hocking Hills Inspire Homeless Shelter. The person who wrote the check, impressed that our congregation recently raised $855 for the shelter, wanted to “round up” the funds we raised to $1000. (I told Becky I was tempted to add more money to the total so that maybe someone else would want to round it up to $2000!) This person's gift is an investment in the cause of God and in the lives of people God loves, and God loves everybody!

Then Jesus says: "Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching.”

In first century Judea, where Jesus lived, weddings could last a week or more. Nobody really knew how long the festivities might go. If a master went to a wedding, his servants could be tempted to see his absence as an excuse for not being attentive to the master's will. They might not even be ready for his return.

Be ready, Jesus is telling us. He, the Master Who is also our Savior, will come again, as we say in the creeds “to judge the living and the dead.”

The only people who will be ready for Jesus’ return are those who are “watching,” the ones who have turned their attention, their allegiance, and their lives to Jesus Christ.

They're the ones who rely on the Savior Who doesn’t demand good works or religious sacrifices or perfection from anyone. That's because He knows we can’t be perfect and that there’s nothing we can do for the eternal God of the universe that He can’t do for Himself. The people who “watch” for Jesus are those who are attentive to His Word and trust in Him, and so, have become His intimate friends. They read and study His Word, partake of Holy Communion, and trust Him with their prayers, making them ready to follow wherever He leads.

In John 10, Jesus calls Himself the gatekeeper and those who follow Him sheep and says: “He calls His own sheep by name...the sheep follow Him because they know His voice.” When you know Jesus and His voice in your life, you needn’t fear. That’s why what you’re doing here this morning, gathering around Jesus’ Word in the fellowship of other Christians is more than just a habit. Imbibing of Jesus' Word and worshiping Him brings tunes your mind, heart, and will to the voice of Jesus, making you ready for anything, even His return. I’m glad that we’re here together today.

The fact is that we all have fears. But we needn’t be controlled by the way of fear. We can be set free from our fears of the world, the devil, and all his empty promises when, through repentance and the forgiveness God bears for us in Christ, we reclaim again every day the promise of the covenant God made with us in Holy Baptism: to be our God. We surrender our fears, along with our sins and our lives to Jesus Christ and follow instead, the way of wisdom, the way of faith in Jesus. We fear God above all things and fear is banished from our lives. God sets us free to be and do all that He calls us to be and do. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. It’s also the way--Jesus is the way--to freedom from fear and freedom to live.

What fears are preventing you from living with the kind of joy, and hope, and abandon that God wants you to have? In prayer, give those fears day by day to Jesus Christ. Let faith in Jesus overtake the fears of this life. Ask Him to help you to dare to invest your life, your ambitions, your time, and your money in eternal things. Then, with His Holy Spirit’s power, resolve to live from your faith and not from your fears. Dare to live as someone who knows that Jesus will never leave you nor forsake you, that even beyond the gates of death, He will be yours and You will be His. Have no fear! Follow Jesus! Amen!

[I am indebted to theologian Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, editor of The Lutheran Forum and a research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, for a portion of her thought-provoking lecture, delivered this past week at the Lutheran CORE theological conference in Pittsburgh. It prompted the exploration of "the fear of the Lord" that appears in this sermon.]

Maybe London Can Lead the West Out of the Obesity Epidemic

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

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:

• 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?

Many days, I honestly have to say, “No” to questions like those.

“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.

In Colossians 3, the apostle Paul encouraged a group of first-century slaves who were Christians to work for others with all their hearts, “as though you were working for the Lord and not for others...For Christ is the real Master you serve.”

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

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."

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.