A Look Back on the Reds 2013 Season

These are some off-the-cuff thoughts I had about the Cincinnati Reds' 2013 season. They came after the Reds lost the one game Wild Card play-in last night to the Pittsburgh Pirates. I posted them on a Facebook site I've enjoyed during the latter part of this season, Reds Nation #4192. Tell me what you think.

Some members of the site thought that Reds manager Dusty Baker should be fired. A few thought that the Reds players weren't really trying last night. That's why the post starts as it does.

Any team can lose a single game. So, while I'm definitely disappointed that the Reds' season came to an end tonight, I have no particular qualms with how any player played or how Dusty Baker managed in this particular game. I'm not knowledgeable enough to have an opinion about the management of the game. And I certainly can't psychoanalyze players' motives or desire to win.

But, as an armchair fan, it seems to me that the Reds not winning the NL Central Division came down to a few factors, besides the obvious ones that both the Cardinals and Pirates played better than the Reds this season.

1. Run support was lacking. Once again this season, I could say what would have been unimaginable over most of the past twenty seasons or so: The Reds' pitching staff was very good. But offensive production, usually a trademark of Reds teams, wasn't that good. Parts of the lineup seemed at times to have gone AWOL at the plate.

2. The injuries of Cueto hurt the Reds a lot. Losing your ace for a good chunk of the season not only hurts in the games he ordinarily would start, it messes with the bullpen and the rhythm of thinks in the rotation.

Other than that, there were no obvious flaws, from where I sit, and lots of pluses.

For all the complaints about Joey Votto, he had a great year and a high average in important game situations, in addition to his high on-base numbers and batting average.

Brandon Phillips was wonderful: sparkling on defense, commendable at the plate.

Frazier and Cozart were both terrific on defense. Cozart improved at the plate in the latter half of the season. Frazier, I thought, beat the sophomore jinx.

Choo was tremendous in the lead-off spot. Like Votto, he is a tremendously disciplined and productive hitter. He did well in center field, though it's not where he's most comfortable.

Jay Bruce has emerged as a consistent power hitter, underrated or overlooked in the media. I believe that 2013 shows that he is only going to get better.

Homer Bailey, Mat Latos, Sam LeCure, and Aroldis Chapman, in addition to Cueto, were joys to watch on the mound. Even Bronson Arroyo, a true professional, shone brightly in most of his starts in what will probably be his last season as a Red.

It will be interesting to see what moves the Reds make in the off-season. Obviously, the front office will want to find a spot in the lineup for Billy Hamilton. But above all, I look for them to shore up the offense. Agree? Where would they do that?

Keeping News Events in Perspective

Here.

Giving From What We've Been Given

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

Luke 16:19-31
The parable that makes up today’s Gospel lesson was told by Jesus in the face of mockery directed at Him by Pharisees after He told the parable on which we focused last Sunday. At the end of that parable, Jesus said that it is impossible for us to serve two masters. Money cannot be our ultimate loyalty; that place must be reserved for God alone.

The Pharisees mocked Jesus because, Luke tells us, they were “lovers of money.” The Pharisees spiritualized their greed, employing a few proof texts from the Old Testament to support their idea that God gives good people (like themselves, the Pharisees would say) money.

You can hear the echoes of this notion even today. A friend told me about attending a small group Bible study one night at which six of the eight attendees insisted that they had their nice homes in suburbia because they obeyed God’s rules. Like the Pharisees, the people at this small group Bible study also insisted that poor people were poor because they were sinners.

Yet the Bible--in both the Old and New Testaments--is filled with examples of people rich and poor, who were right with God, not because of their goodness, but because they trusted in the God ultimately revealed to the world in Jesus Christ.

People who think that their wealth or success in this life prove their worthiness of God’s favor, ignore certain fundamental truths.

One of those truths is that none of us is worthy of God’s favor. We are all born in sin and deserve nothing but condemnation and death.

The other is that God loves us any way and sent Jesus to die for our sins and rise from the dead so that all who believe in Him may live eternally with God.

Pastor Dale Galloway once wrote memorably, “Jesus never met an unimportant person.” He might have added, “And He always punctured the egos of those who thought themselves more important than others.” You can see Jesus elevating those considered unimportant by the world while puncturing the egos of the proud in today's lesson.

Please go to it, Luke 16:19-31. Jesus begins: “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.”

In Biblical times, tyrian purple was the color of royalty. That’s because it was prohibitively expensive due to the rarity of the dye. It was made from the secretion of a particular specie of sea snail, hard to find. So, Jesus is conveying that this rich man was really rich, like a king.

Our impulse at this point is to check out, thinking this is a parable directed at money grubbing rich people, not at people of our financial station. Do you want to hear something daunting? The other night, I found a web site called Global Rich List. It allows you to type in a level of yearly income and see where it stacks up with the rest of the world. I typed in $23,000. I did this because the Department of Health and Human Services says that in the US, a family of four making less than $23,550, is living in poverty. I don’t doubt that’s true. But the Global Rich List says that an American making $23,000 a year is wealthier than  97.75% of the global population! The point is that by global standards, most of us in this sanctuary this morning are among the wealthiest people in the world. We can’t dodge Jesus‘ parable so easily. We--you and I--are among the world’s haves, like the rich man in Jesus’ parable. Please read on.

“But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.”

This Lazarus is not the friend of Jesus who Jesus raised from the dead. This is a fictional character, the only time Jesus ever gave a name to such a character in a parable.

By doing giving this character a name, Jesus is turning the world’s usual way of doing things on its head. The poor, after all, are often a mass of faceless, nameless people in the eyes of the world, people passed by at freeway off-ramps or in walks through usually rough neighborhoods after concerts or ballgames. But by naming the beggar in His parable, Jesus is telling us that the poor among us, are real human beings, with thoughts and feelings and needs no less important than ours.

That’s why donating food to the CHAP emergency food bank, helping with the upcoming community dinners Saint Matthew will be doing with Trinity Lutheran Church, or donating health kit items to Lutheran World Relief, as coordinated by the Women of Saint Matthew, are so important. The poor may be invisible to the eyes of the world. But God sees them and God calls His people to see them and to serve them, just as God has seen and served us in Jesus Christ!

The Lazarus of Jesus’ parable is in a pitiable state. He is full of sores, presumably due to being malnourished. Our text says that he was laid at the gate to the rich man’s estate. But this is a dainty translation. The verb translated as laid is more literally rendered as thrown. Who threw Lazarus away, we don’t know. But Jesus says that Lazarus, this thrown-away man, would have been satisfied with the scraps from the rich man’s table, that he was so weak that dogs, not domesticated house pets in first century Judea, but wild animals, licked his open sores and Lazarus was unable to fend them off. It’s not a pretty picture. Please read on.

“So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.”

Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom. Abraham, the Old Testament figure whose descendants became the nation of Israel, “believed in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Despite the torments and poverty of his earthly life, Lazarus also believed in God. Because of his faith, he, like Abraham, was counted righteous, worthy of being at the heavenly banquet with God.

Please look at what happens next. “And being in torments in Hades, [the rich man] lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.  Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'”

The rich man was, like Lazarus, a descendant of Abraham. But, unlike Abraham, he had not put his trust in God. Clearly, his trust had been in his money bag. Had he trusted God and not mammon, the beggar outside his gate, Lazarus, might not have starved to death. A good work done for Lazarus would not have saved the rich man, of course. Only the God we know in Jesus Christ can save us from sin and death as we trust our whole lives to Him. But the clear implication of Jesus’ parable is that if the rich man had truly believed in God--trusted God--rather than his wallet, he would have found it easier to part with some of his money to help people like Lazarus.

The Bible teaches that one of the reasons God gives us money is precisely to help the helpless people of the world like Lazarus. In Ephesians 4:28, those who once made their income by stealing but had come to faith in Christ are told: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” In torment in Hades, the place of the dead, the rich man calls out to Father Abraham in heaven for help.

Verses 25 and 26: “But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.'”

Abraham could offer no help to the rich man. Nor could Lazarus. The rich man’s time on earth was done. His wealth, stubbornly held onto, had not made him acceptable in the eyes of God. Nor did his wealth prove that he was better than anyone else, not even a poor man who had been thrown at his gate. Having refused to trust in God while on earth, he was now separated from God’s eternal feast. Habakkuk 2:4 reminds us that we are right with God not because we have fat paychecks or even because we do good works. “Behold the proud,” it says, “his soul is not upright in him. But the just shall live by faith.”

Now, the rich man becomes a beggar. Verse 27: “Then [the rich man] said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.'"

One of the key themes that Luke hammers away at in his telling of his gospel’s story about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and in Acts, his history of the early Church, is this: The God of the Old Testament is the same God we meet in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. In both Testaments, God hates sin and injustice, calls people to faith in Him alone, promising forgiveness and life to those who believe in Him, and warning of condemnation--self-condemnation, really--for those who turn their backs on the life only God can give.

In Jesus’ parable, Abraham tells the rich man that if the rich man’s brothers didn’t pay heed to the will of God to trust in God, to love God, and to love neighbor when they heard and read about it in “the law and the prophets,” that is, in what you and I know as the Old Testament, neither would they pay attention to God or repent for their sins and trust in God alone for life and hope, if someone who had been dead should rise from death and appear to them.

Some Christians, in a Pharisaic mood, may see Jesus’ words as applying to Jews who refuse to trust in the crucified and risen Christ. But if they do so, they miss Jesus’ point.

The God disclosed to all the world in Jesus Christ has given His witness to Jew and Gentile alike. As tempting as it is to put our trust in things we can see--things like money and possessions--our call is to trust in God alone and then, from hearts brimming over with gratitude for the freedom from sin and death we enjoy as the gift of God to all who live the trust in Jesus Christ, live the faith we confess here on Sunday mornings.

God’s earth produces more than enough to provide for every person’s need for daily bread. We live our faith when we dare to share what God has given to us with those in need.

And we needn’t be afraid that we’ll have less of what we need if we give to others. There is no limit to the bounties of God’s grace or goodness. The God Who loves to give will also empower us to give to others from hearts filled with God's infinite storehouse of love. Amen

[This sermon is really a companion to the one given last Sunday. You might want to check it out here.]

Be Shrewd; Follow Christ

[This is the sermon prepared for delivery during Sunday worship with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on September 22, 2013.]

Luke 16:1-13
Today’s Gospel lesson is one of the most confusing passages of Scripture. Christians often read it and wonder, “Is Jesus telling us to be dishonest?” From the witness of the rest of the Bible, we know the answer to that question is, “No.”

So, the parable told here by Jesus and its attendant teaching, require us to think and to studiously delve into the text.

The Gospel message, of course, is simple: Unwilling to see human beings, the only of His creatures made in His image, go to hell for eternity without fighting for us, God took on human flesh in Jesus Christ. He bore the weight of our sins on the cross. He took onto Himself the punishment for sin you and I deserve. Then He rose from the dead to make it possible for those who repent and believe in Christ as their only God and Lord, to have new and everlasting life with God. That is a simple message.

But the living of our faith in that simple, life-giving Gospel in a fallen, sinful world, is not simple. And so, Jesus shares complicated parables like the one in our lesson for today. He gives complicated teaching we also find there. He wants to help us live out the faith of the simple Gospel message in a world complicated by the sin of the world, the sin inside of us, and the sin of our common enemy, the devil.

So, please go to today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 16:1-13. Verse 1 says: “He [Jesus] also said to His disciples: ‘There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.’”

Agricultural life in the first century when Jesus taught this parable was governed by a sort of a feudal system. A wealthy man owned vast quantities of land. There were tenants or sharecroppers on the land. They could farm the land and have a place to live. In exchange, the tenants were bound to give a share of their crops and earnings to the rich man. To oversee their holdings, it was common for rich men to have stewards, household managers.

In Jesus‘ parable, someone tells the rich man that his household manager is “wasting” or squandering the rich man’s money. The word translated as “wasting,” in the original Greek in which Luke wrote his Gospel, is the same word used of the prodigal son who traveled to a faraway land with the money his rich father had given to him and squandered it, wasted it all, on sinful living.

There are two passages in the New Testament I’d like to ask you to look at right now because I think they will help make the message Jesus shares today clearer.

The first is  2 Corinthians 8:9 (page 668 in the pew Bibles): “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”

Both Paul, the writer of this verse, and Luke, the author of our Gospel lesson, understood the God we know in Jesus Christ to be wealthy, rich. Psalm 95 in the Old Testament conveys the same idea, when it says of God:

In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; And His hands formed the dry land. 

The universe belongs to God; God is rich.

But in Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, God stepped out of heaven and, though sinless Himself, though immortal, took on the poverty of sin and death for us. Through His death and resurrection, God donates the infinite wealth of His goodness and His infinite life, to cover our sins and buy us out of our slavery to sin and death.

This rich man in Jesus‘ parable, in some way, represents God, rich in power, possessions, holiness, and love. Now, be careful! This is a parable. A parable is not the same as a metaphor. Jesus isn’t saying, “This rich man is God.” He’s saying, instead, “This rich man, in his richness and dominion is sort of a stand-in for God.” There are, obviously, differences between this rich man and God Himself.

The second passage is 1 Corinthians 4:1 (page 658 in the pew Bibles). It says: “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”

The word for stewards used here is the same one used in our Gospel lesson. Every Christian has been blessed with new life when they believe in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. But they are also called to be good stewards, good managers, of the new life God has given to them.

Part of what that means is that God tells us not to squander His blessings on us--our money, our time, our health, our friendships, our relationships--on ourselves in selfish pursuits. We are to use all of God’s blessings like good stewards, using our money, our time, our health, our brain power, our muscle to give God glory in how we live from day to day and to share the Gospel message with others. So, the steward in Jesus‘ parable, in some ways, represents all of us who are disciples--followers--of Jesus. The parable asks us, “How are you using your life? Are you investing in eternity? Or are you squandering it on the things of this world?”

Back to our Gospel lesson, starting at verse 2. It says: “So he [the rich man] called him [the household steward] and said to him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.' Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.'”

When the rich man in Jesus‘ parable demands an accounting for how the steward has been spending his fortunes, the steward panics. Fearful of losing his job, he considers his options. He’s too weak to dig ditches. He’s too proud to beg. So he decides to devise his own golden parachute. That way, when he’s been turned out of his master’s home, there will be people willing to let him live with them.

This may be the most important part of the parable. The steward is afraid of not having a home. He realizes that the way he’s been squandering, wasting, his life on selfish things has put having a home at risk.

In John 14:2, Jesus says, “In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Jesus poured out His body and blood to give us places to live, eternal homes with God.

Many people know that; far fewer trust that. They recite the creeds on Sunday mornings. But on Monday through Saturday, they put their trust in other things, not in the God Who died and rose for them.

Here’s a truth I have learned, more from getting it wrong than from getting it right: The more I trust Jesus, the more reasons I find for trusting in Him; the more I do things my own way, the less reason I find for trusting Jesus.

It’s the people who trust in Jesus, no matter how weak their trust may be at any given moment, who are assured of a place to live with God. Truly, we are saved by our trust--our faith--in Jesus Christ.

Next in Jesus‘ parable, He talks about how the steward reduced the debts owed by the tenants, winning their goodwill while, at the same time, bringing some wealth into his master’s coffers. What Jesus says next troubles us. Starting at verse 8: “So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”

Note, please: The rich master does not commend the steward for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. Jesus delivers a similar message in Matthew 10:16, where He tells Christians: “...be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

Christians understand that, ultimately, money has no value because money can’t be spent in eternity. Money, along with homes, farms, cars, and tractors, will one day be destroyed with the rest of this earth.

But, like our non-Christian neighbors, God calls each of us to earn a living and manage His gifts to us. The difference is this: We Christians are called to use the sinful world’s material goods not to feather earthly nests or promote ourselves at the expense of others. We’re to use our money--along with our time and smarts, our friendships and knowledge, and all the blessings God has given to us--to help others know Christ, through our giving, serving, witnessing, listening, and loving in the Name of Jesus, so that in eternity, they, like us, will have one of those mansions Jesus promises to all who believe in Him. When we trust Jesus, putting Him first in our lives, we can live in the certainty that we will have a place to live with God eternally.

And this, I believe, is why Jesus ends His teaching as He does today. Verse 13: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [or material wealth, money]."

You know, God’s Word never says that money is the root of all evil. Instead, 1 Timothy 6:10, tells us: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

Money in itself is morally neutral, neither bad nor good. Whether money is a force for good in people’s lives or a root of all kinds of evil depends on how we view it. If money is an end for people, a goal, a means for keeping score, of being able to buy whatever they want, or of measuring their value as human beings, then money is the master of their lives. Money is their god, the place in which they place their ultimate hope.

Money can’t buy eternity. Money is a lifeless deity that will, in the end, leave all who serve it cold and lifeless in the grave.

But when the God we know in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ is our God, when we put our lives and our paychecks at His disposal, providing for our families while also helping to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, and spread the good news of new life through faith in Christ--the things we do together as a congregation here at Saint Matthew, we invest in eternal things.

We know that when we invest in eternity, trusting Christ with our whole selves, including our money, God will raise us from our graves and we will live with Him for eternity.

Will you bet your life on the dead things of this dying world?

Or will you bet it all on the God Who, in Jesus, has conquered sin and death?

Following Jesus, believing the Gospel message, isn’t simple. But it is shrewd.

New life and an eternal home with God for all who turn from sin and simply trust in Christ is what Christ offers.

It’s a great deal. It’s a shrewd deal. Be shrewd; follow Christ. Amen

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.]