The God Who Restores

[This was shared during the graveside service for Dan, the father of a member of Living Water Lutheran Church, earlier today. He had been an active member of a church elsewhere, but had moved to the area after being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.]

Job 19:23-27
Psalm 46
John 11:21-27

First of all, I pray God’s peace and encouragement and the hope of Jesus’ resurrection on all of you in the times to come.

I did not know Dan. But through you, his family, I learned a little about him the other day. I know that he leaves a hole in your lives. His seems to have been a strong presence always. Not flashy or demonstrative. Not judgmental or free with unsolicited advice. But a man who demonstrated his love by his deeds more than his words. A man who was firm and fair with his children as they were growing up and then respectful of their adulthood. A man who derived a sense of pleasure in knowing how things worked and in restoring old cars that from the before pictures looked beyond repair.

And it’s to this last image from Dan’s life that I want to turn your attention briefly now: the restorer of old cars. I have a lot of respect for people who can do that. To me, there are few things more beautiful in this world than a restored car. To make the restoration happen, you have to possess several qualities.

First, you must have the belief that what others might write off as hopeless is possible. The old, worn out, even dead, can be restored. You have to be able to see the possibility of new life in what others dismiss as a junker.

Second, you must have patience. Whenever you restore anything old, you run into obstacles. Sometimes it’s hard to find parts. Often, you have to improvise. If you’re going to restore an old car, you have to have patience.

Third, you have to have talent. You must have the ability to do the job. For some of us, restoring an old car would be an impossible task. But if you have the ability, you can accomplish a lot.

What our lessons from Job and from John’s gospel tell us today is that God is in the restoring business. He wants to restore us, free us from the power of sin and death. In Revelation, God says, “Behold, I make all things new.” And in 2 Corinthians, we’re told that if anyone is in Christ--if anyone believes in Christ, they are a new creation! That’s restoration!

From what I’ve been told, Dan had a tough childhood, a time of life brightened by going through it with his brother Bob. Nonetheless, we all know that not everyone gets free of the effects of difficult childhoods. People often replicate the ways of their elders in the way they are with their own families. From what I’ve been told, Dan didn’t do that.

I suspect that’s because of the gracious restoration from God Dan received when, through the ministry of a pastor he got to know, came to have a faith relationship we meet in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, God demonstrates that, like the restorer of old cars, God writes no one off as a helpless case; God has patience with us--the Bible says that God “remembers that we are dust”; and God has the power and the ability to make anyone brand new! He then empowers us to love and forgive others the way He loves and forgives us.

The restoration God gave to Dan allowed him, to be a different parent than his own parents had been. It allowed him to be the means by which Christ brought new and everlasting life to his beloved brother Bob.

Here’s the thing: God loves us all with a passion we can hardly imagine. God made us. We are His children. And though God is a gentleman who will never force a relationship with Him upon us, He wants to restore us. He wants us to enjoy an eternal relationship with Him desperately.

That’s why Jesus, God in the flesh, came into the world to take on Himself the burdens of our sin, even though He was sinless. He died, taking the punishment for sin we deserve. Then He rose from the dead, certifying His power over not just sin, but also over death, for all who turn from sin and surrender their lives to Him as their God, Savior, Lord, and King. As Jesus puts it: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

We can be assured this day that because he trusted in Christ as his Lord and Savior, Dan is alive and fully restored in the presence of the God to Whom he surrendered his life. Beyond the gates of death, in the presence of God, there is for the believer in Christ, no more Parkinson’s Disease, no more suffering, no more dying, no more tears.

And for those who are still here on earth, who follow Jesus Christ, there is the promise of God’s loving presence, the fellowship of believers, and the promise that the God we know in Jesus will continue to restore us day by day in this life and will give us a place in eternity with all of Christ’s saints, including Dan, when the dead in Christ rise again. There we will live eternally restored, the people God made us to be when He first knit us in our mothers’ wombs.

If you’re not today following Jesus, I invite you to do so. Turn to Him and live, now and in eternity.

May God give you comfort, hope, and peace. Amen

Saying goodbye

Today I was talking with a person who mentioned a friend who is moving elsewhere. "It's so hard," this person said, "to have people move in and out of your life. But then, you know what it's like having to say goodbye."

In thirty-one years as a pastor, I've served four congregations. It is hard saying goodbye, particularly to people to whom you've grown close not just personally, but spiritually.

One of the many consolations I derive from the thought of the resurrected life is that in eternity, all who have trusted in Christ will always say hello and never have to say goodbye to each other.

I talked about this in a song I wrote and sang back in 2007, to the people of the third congregation I served as pastor on our last Sunday together:

Someday, I'm going to see you again
I'm not the one to say when
But I'm sure,
I'm going to see you again 

Someday, when we no longer grow old
We'll walk on streets made of gold
And it's then
I'm bound to see you again 

The hardest part of living each day
Is learning to say goodbye
Each sad farewell reminds us that we
Aren't in control of this life 

But someday, I'm going to see you again
I'm not the one to say when
But I'm sure,
I'm going to see you again
I'm going to see you again
Together forever again

Thank God that all who trust in Christ will one day not only be united with Him for eternity, but also with all "who have loved His appearing." Then, we'll kiss goodbyes goodbye.

"What it means to forgive your enemies"

A challenging and important article from Relevant Magazine about what the author calls, "the most unreasonable thing Jesus says." A sampling:

Loving your enemy does not mean you have to add them to your Christmas list, or make them your best friend. It doesn’t mean you excuse their actions. It means you forgive them, with the knowledge that God is both merciful and just.

Read the whole thing.

Obedience

[Jesus asked:] “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46)

These words confronted me in my daily quiet time with God today.

They hit me hard. I felt that they were directed at me and not at "other people." 

As a Lutheran Christian, I regularly confess my sinful nature. Of course, it's a true confession for any human being.

But I realize today that I also make this confession, in part, to excuse my disobedience to the will of God, the law of God, to explain it away.

Of course, the law of God cannot save me from sin and death because I'm incapable of perfect obedience. Only the perfect sinless Jesus, Who took humanity's rightful punishment for sin--death--can save those who repent and trust in Him as their God and Savior.

But surely that's no reason for me to not try to obey God's law out of gratitude for God's grace and new life given freely to all who turn from sin and trust in Christ. 

I am forced to ask myself this question: If I'm willfully disobedient or casually so, can I honestly say that I'm letting Jesus be my Lord? Am I doing violence to my relationship with Him, risking its loss because of subtle disobedience?

I've been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's meditation on Psalm 119, left incomplete at his death. This is Bonhoeffer's point regarding this psalm extolling God's law: Believers in the God we now know more fully in Jesus Christ seek to live obediently to His Word, to His law.  That message dovetails with the simple words of Jesus I focused on today.

I sensed God telling me, "If you believe in Me, no more excuses! If you believe in Me, obey!"

Of course, God is compassionate. He remembers that we are dust. But I best express my gratitude for His love and redemption by striving always to obey Him. 

God, help me to be obedient.

Don't be afraid!

[This was shared during All Saints' Sunday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church on November 1, 2015.]

John 11:32-44

Back in high school, I came to love a poem written by Alan Seeger, a young man killed in battle during World War One less than a year after he penned it, I Have a Rendezvous with Death. One reason I liked the poem so much, I think, is that it was just dawning on my sixteen year old brain that all people--even me--have a rendezvous with death.

And we can go to absurd lengths to deny the reality of death and all the other realities that go with it: aging, deterioration, and sagging bodies. A few years back, blogger and author Annie Gottlieb wrote about seeing a famous political campaign strategist on TV: “She's on CNN right now and she has had a really terrifying facelift, eyelift and Botox assault. She can hardly move her mouth, she can't smile at all…She looks like a particular fake alien face on the original Star Trek. It's a disaster! Hey, I feel bad about my neck too, but at least it's still my neck.”

None of us may like it, but the truth is that we all have a rendezvous with death, some at tragically early ages, others much later. That reality is acknowledged in today’s Gospel lesson. But so is another reality, a deeper, more powerful reality. In our lesson, Jesus’ friend Lazarus dies. In fact, earlier in chapter eleven of John’s Gospel, we see that Jesus knew that Lazarus was dead even before He told His disciples that they were setting off to Bethany, Lazarus’ hometown. The disciples hadn’t wanted to go there. That's because just a short time before, they had escaped their fellow Judeans with their lives, mobs bent on stoning Jesus and those with Him to death. Now, Jesus wanted to take them back into the jowls of death.

By the Gospel of John’s telling, these reluctant disciples had already seen Jesus perform six major miracles, six major signs of His Lordship and of God’s Kingdom. They’d seen Jesus turn water into wine, heal a desperate father’s son, restore healthy legs to a crippled man, feed 5000 with a few scraps of bread and some fish, get the disciples to a safe shore while the boat in which they rode was swamped by a furious storm, and make a blind man see. Those were all impressive miracles, the disciples must have thought. But Lazarus was dead. Dead is dead. Why should Jesus risk His neck and theirs to simply pay His respects? They didn’t know that Jesus had another miracle, another sign, He wanted them to see.

Our lesson finds the disciples, Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters, and the people of Bethany all struggling to follow Jesus in the face of death, the greatest enemy any of us will ever face. In the bargain, they can’t help blaming Jesus. Three times in John, chapter 11, and twice in our lesson, they tell Jesus or each other, “If Jesus had been here, Lazarus wouldn’t have died.” We make similar accusations against God when someone we care about has died or when bad things happen to us or those we care about. “Where is God?” we may wonder. “How could God let this happen?”

But it’s interesting to see that in the course of events at Bethany, John reports several times that the mourners weren’t the only ones who were upset. Jesus was upset too. At one point, He even began to weep. God in the flesh wept with those who wept. He still does.

Many times, I have puzzled over exactly why Jesus wept. I’ve reached two conclusions. Part of Jesus’ reaction, I think, stems from grief for us. He hates to see us suffer, die, or grieve. This was never part of God’s plan for our lives. But until Jesus returns, we live in a world groaning under the burdens of death, decay, and sin. Jesus wept because His friend, Lazarus, and each one of His precious children, have a rendezvous with death.

But I think that there was another reason for Jesus’ tears. He was frustrated to the core of His being that the people around whom He had lived for several years, the disciples, Mary, Martha, and the people of Bethany, refused to get it. They refused to dare to believe in Him. “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” He asks in John 11:40, with what must have been bewildered frustration. Were Jesus’ followers so stymied by death that they couldn’t see that the God Who made life and had demonstrated His power over life, death, and sin, was among them at that very moment?

Jesus didn’t begrudge them their grief. Grief is natural. But He was frustrated by their hopelessness. The follower of Jesus need never be hopeless!

Pastor Mike Foss tells the story of visiting a man about to undergo surgery. Says Foss: “Eyes sparkling, he laughed. I had met him at the hospital and, before any anesthetic had been administered, he and his wife and daughter gathered with me at his bed side. There I began to talk of his impending surgery. ‘It’s natural,” I said, “for you to be anxious.’ And I didn’t get any further than that, because he laughed...As I stood there (at a loss for words) he grinned and said, ‘Pastor Mike, I’m not afraid. I already died once. I know what’s on the other side because I saw it…and I saw Jesus [when he had briefly died during an earlier surgery]. I’m not anxious at all because I know that no matter what happens it’ll be okay.’”

When, through the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ, you know what awaits you beyond the grave, you're not afraid. In fact, you even give others encouragement.

The seminary professor who most influenced me was Pastor Bruce Schein. He had come to Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus from Jerusalem. He was gravely ill, though Pastor Schein was so intent on glorifying Christ and preparing us for ministry that I didn't even notice the signs of his physical deterioration. He was always on fire for Christ. A year after I graduated from seminary, he had surgery that lasted hours. I saw him sometime after that. He had lost so much weight and could barely walk, but the fire had not gone out. We talked for awhile. Then he told me that he had actually died during his surgery. "Mr. Daniels," he said, "I was in the throne room. I put in a good word for you." A few months later, he died, just forty-two years old.

But what a forty-two years! At the NALC Convocation in Dallas a few months ago, a person who served an internship under one of my classmates brought up Pastor Schein. “I see how he impacted all of you for Jesus,” she told me. “He would be so proud of you all.”

I tell you unashamedly that when she said that, right there in the lobby outside the meeting area, with people coming and going, I began to cry, not out of grief or frustration, but out of gratitude to God for a saint of God who brought me closer to Jesus. Pastor Schein taught me that we need not fear death.

That was precisely the lesson Lazarus learned that day in Bethany. Dead four days, his body emitting the stench of death, bound in the tight bands of cloth in which the dead in first-century Judea were always buried, Lazarus was called by Jesus from death back to the once mournful, now astonished villagers of Bethany. “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus called to the dead man (John 11:43).

I’ve often wondered if Lazarus hesitated when he heard Jesus call, knowing that on returning, he would re-enter a life of death and decay, a place where people get Botox injections to fool themselves and the world that the rendezvous with death can be avoided. Lazarus knew that, in returning, he would have to go through death again. Did Lazarus hesitate to return?

Maybe not. Because Lazarus knew that deeper reality we talked about earlier, something C.S. Lewis called “the deeper magic.” Lazarus knew that all who entrust themselves to the crucified and risen Jesus Christ will live in God’s presence forever. He knew that for the believer in Christ, beyond the gates of death is a perfect life with God, with no suffering, no death, no tears.

I’ll wager that when, any time after that, people tried to tell him how natural it was to be afraid, he laughed.

How can a follower of Jesus Christ really be afraid when she or he knows that besides a rendezvous with death, we also have a rendezvous with life with God that lasts forever?

How can we be afraid to use this life in full in reverencing God's Word, proclaiming Jesus' death and resurrection, repeating Jesus' call to repentance and renewal, and serving and sharing Christ with others?

This is All Saints’ Sunday. In part, it’s a time to remember the blessed dead who have lived and died believing in Jesus, the resurrection and the life, and who are now in His presence. Their examples of faithfulness to Jesus, especially the departed saints who, like the young people who recently lost their lives in Washington State after a lunatic gunmen asked them if they believed in Jesus, inspire us.

But there’s more to All Saints’ weekend than remembering the blessed dead.

A saint, according to the Bible, is nothing more than a forgiven sinner, someone who has turned from sin and let Jesus loose them from death.

Whether we’re saints on earth or saints in heaven, we all are spared separation from God. By God’s gracious acceptance of those who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, we belong to God forever.

If there is a single message we can learn from Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead and His own resurrection, it’s this: Don’t be afraid!

The Lord Who has conquered our sin and our death allows us to say, “Yes, we have a rendezvous with death. But because we believe and submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives, we also have a rendezvous with life!”

We can live with the confidence that God intends to turn all our mourning into dancing. We’re promised a banquet of grace that lasts for all eternity.

And knowing that, we too can laugh! 

Urban Meyer has done the right thing

Ohio State head football coach Urban Meyer has suspended quarterback J.T. Barrett for one game after Barrett was arrested last night on a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle under the influence. According to Columbus WBNS TV sports director Dom Tiberi, the sanction wasn't mandatory under NCAA or Ohio State athletic department rules, but Meyer levied the punishment anyway.
Meyer, I think, is doing the right thing, even though OSU's offense was just being enhanced by J.T. Barrett as the starting QB and the first CFP rankings are set to come out on Tuesday. 

It's not as if Cardale Jones is a slouch, of course. But Meyer is to be commended. When Barrett is in the game, the Buckeyes run a more diverse and difficult to defend offense, it seems.

This appears to be a classic case of too much free time as this is a bye-week for the Buckeyes. 

I'm hoping that J.T. and all these players for whom the package of a college scholarship, health services, conditioning coaching, first rate training facilities, topflight coaching, academic help, and marketing is such a great deal, especially at OSU, will learn some lessons from this event. 

Go, Buckeyes!

Urban Meyer did not have to suspend J.T. Barrett but still made the decision to do so. OSU Spokesman telling me that...
Posted by Dom Tiberi on Saturday, October 31, 2015

A modest proposal for presidential debates

The media on Thursday was filled with stories about who won or lost the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night. I was watching World Series Game 2 that evening and flipped to the debate during commercial breaks. Later, I saw a portion of the event when it was replayed on CNBC.

Take out any party or political considerations for a moment. 

Being able to "debate" in these formats probably says little about one's capacity to perform well in public office. 

A good debate performer requires glibness and an instinct for going for the jugular. If you lack this latter quality, you resort to lines that make you seem less than knowledgeable or humane or gracious.

Those who are quick on their feet can get away with deflections. But those lacking that ability are left stammering or standing stock still or appearing to have yielded points which they had no intention of conceding.

I have no dog in the presidential hunt. I wouldn't tell you if I did.  

But I hate debates. 

Long before Donald Trump came along, the debates turned campaigning for the presidency into a reality TV show. And it's doubtful they tell us anything of substance about the candidates or the issues.

Do away with them.

'Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?' by Eric Clapton

This is one of a number of songs written by Eric Clapton for his former wife (and George Harrison's former wife), Patti Boyd. Other Clapton tunes inspired by Boyd are Layla and Wonderful Tonight. Harrison's most famous paean to Boyd is Something.

Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad? exemplifies a genre of tunes I call sad longing songs. Despite that, the song manages to somehow be jubilant, if a bit overlong. I suppose that's true to the experiences attested to by sad longing song: There's jubilation in love, sadness when it can't flower or be expressed. That makes this song a kind of resigned, wondering, and yet, jubilant celebration of love's entry into one's life, even love that can't be. Unrequited love can be exhilarating and shattering at the same time, though it makes no sense that that should be the case. At least that's what this song seems to say.

Clapton originally recorded Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad? in 1970, while he was a member of Derek and the Dominos.

This is a live version recorded by him in 2009.

Reformation: Given What We Cannot Earn

[This was shared during Reformation Sunday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

Romans 3:19-28

Today is Reformation Sunday, a day that calls us to focus on the whole idea of righteousness and what it means to be righteous.

Before you go to sleep at the mention of a couple of words used a lot in the Church and hardly at all in the rest of the world, please know that being righteous is the requirement for entering the Kingdom of God.

Righteousness is the essential quality we must possess in order to claim an eternal place in heaven and avoid eternal consignment to hell.

So, this business of being righteous is, to put it bluntly, the single most important thing any of us can appreciate, appropriate, or understand.* And that’s no overstatement.

A young German, Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther, who lived in the sixteenth century, knew how essential being righteous is for anyone to have a relationship with God, either now or in eternity.

Luther likely would have read words like those of Jesus in Matthew 5:20--”...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”--and think, “I need to get busy. I need to do more good things. I need to remember more of my sins and repent for them. Otherwise God will damn me for eternity.”

To be righteous, taking into account the several words translated as righteous from the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, means to be in sync with the Law of God, the will of God for human beings. To be righteous is to walk in the ways of God.

Luther thought that to become righteous, he had to work at it.

The problem, of course, was that no matter how much he repented or how many good things he did, he would always remember one more unrepented sin or commit new ones after confessing the old ones or fail to do enough good or fail to do good for the right reasons.

He felt that he could never attain the title of righteous.

According to the Bible, Luther was right. Luther couldn’t make himself righteous. Neither can you and I.

When we consider the sinful things we do or think or fantasize, we’re bound to confess with King Solomon, who writes in Ecclesiastes 7:20: “...there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.” No one.

Luther looked at how far he fell short of the moral standards of righteousness embodied in the Ten Commandments and realized that he would never measure up. Life with God was out of his reach.

Luther later confessed that, there in the monastery, working at being righteous for God and realizing that he never could make himself righteous, he hated God.

And in hating God, his guilt and his sense that there was nothing he could do to avoid being swallowed up by the fires of hell, only increased.

Then, something happened.

At the direction of his superiors, Luther became a scholar of the Bible. And through his study of God’s Word, he came to realize that righteousness can never come to us through our perpetually failed attempts to keep God’s Law.

That’s what our second lesson, Romans 3:19-28, tells us. Take a look at it now, please, starting at verse 19: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.”

It’s good and loving for God to give us His commandments. They mark out ways in which our lives not only are more pleasing to God, but also more fulfilling for us. All of us, I think, would acknowledge that it’s better for us not to steal, or covet, or live in hatred toward others.

But because we can never keep God’s Law perfectly, His Law can never make us righteous. At the most, the Law is a mirror that shows us the awful truth with which Luther wrestled about himself, which is true of us as well, that we aren’t righteous and can’t make ourselves righteous.

The Law is very bad news for anyone who thinks that being nice or doing good are enough to give us an in with God.

But there is good news!

Verse 21: “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” 

To understand the message of these magnificent verses from our lesson, let me play the part of the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and translate a little Greek for you. Greek is the language in which the New Testament was written, of course.

The first word I want to show you is δικαιοσύνη, which we translate as righteousness.

The other word, which you see in verse 26, is justifies; in the Greek in which the apostle Paul wrote the verse, that word is δικαιοῦντα.

Now, look at those two words together: δικαιοσύνη, δικαιοῦντα. We Lutheran Christians talk about “being justified” all the time, but in seeing these two words together in the Greek, sharing the same root, hopefully you can see, even if you can’t read Greek, what it means to be justified.

It means that despite our sin, despite our inability to obey God’s Law or to make ourselves righteous, God gives  Christ’s righteousness to those who entrust their lives to Christ, surrender to Christ, believe in Him as their only God, Savior, or hope. 

We can’t attain the righteousness necessary to enter God’s Kingdom. We can't work to become righteous, but God "righteous-foes" all who entrust their lives to Christ. Jesus has perfectly obeyed God’s Law for us and then shares the perfection of His obedience with those who believe in Him to make us righteous. 

Martin Luther said that when he realized that we can be justified--made righteous--by faith in Christ through the charitable grace of God, it was as if the doors of heaven opened to Him. And whenever we trust in Christ rather than ourselves, our efforts, our goodness, or our parents’ faith, heaven opens to us as well.

Look at how Paul finishes our second lesson. Verses 27-28: “Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”

Many of the self-identified Christians who get play in the media are people who seem to make a point of telling others how good they are, how wholesome they are, and what good values they have, while others are evil, devoid of values.

These phonies are braggarts. If people brag about their own goodness or imply that they’ve attained righteousness by being wonderful people, they’re not Christians. Or, at least, they’re Christians who need to repent for their sin and surrender their egos to Christ.

When Christians do brag, it’s about something else altogether. After Martin Luther died, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket, on which he had written six words: “We are beggars; this is true.”

As Christians, we don’t brag about how wonderful we are. We know better. Our daily gaze in the face of God and into the mirror of God’s Law will tell us that.Instead, we brag about how wonderful God is!


We’re not braggarts, we’re beggars, completely, utterly, totally dependent on the crucified and risen Jesus to justify us, to make us righteous, fit for life with God. Like the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64:6), we can honestly confess: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags...” 

But we live with the joy of knowing that even when the devil, the world, and our sinful selves are forced to agree with the Law that, in our own power, we aren’t and never can be righteous, in the power of God, through the spent blood of Jesus on the cross and our faith in Him, we are justified, we are right with God, we are righteous!

We’ve been set free from sin and death and condemnation.

And set free, no longer under the thumb of the Law’s condemnation, we can focus on truly living as disciples: following Christ, drawing on the Holy Spirit’s power to love God as He has loved us and to love others as Christ has loved us.

In Christ, we are justified, we are righteous.

That’s worth celebrating not just on the October Sunday closest to October 31, but every single day.

Friends of Christ, happy Reformation Day! 

*This, I believe, is my way of expressing what Martin Luther said, "Justification is the article by which the church stands and falls." I hope that's clear as you move through the message.

It's about who I am, not what I do

Today, I share what Jesus taught me during my time with Him this morning. I'm using the "Stop. Look. Listen. Respond." format for my time with Christ. That's explained here. Below is what happened during the look and listen portions today. I leave out the stop and respond, which I keep between Jesus and me. The passage where I met Jesus today is Luke 10.

LOOK: “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20)

LISTEN: I have always heard this as an admonition to not be taken with the power You give to believers, but to instead be grateful that we have been saved by grace through faith in You. And I believe that it’s still part of what You tell us.

But I now think I see You saying even more. The disciples were taken with what they could do (in Your power), but You told them to be taken with what they are (children of God, by Your grace).

You acknowledge the power that they exerted over Satan and his dark kingdom (“I saw Satan falling…”), but even these deeds of power wrought in Your name won’t endure. You have conquered and will conquer Satan and his demons. But, on Your return, there will come an absolute end to them. All that will endure is God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all whose names are written in the book of life by faith in Christ, and the angels who have stood with You. That’s the greatest wonder.

Both these things--wonders done in Your name and believers’ names being written in the book of life--are Your doing. But whenever we believers are the instruments of Your power and grace, we fall prey to the temptation of believing that we are doing something, when in fact it’s You doing something through us (Ephesians 2:8-10).

It’s possible also for the spirits to be subject to us--I think of those who weren’t Your followers who invoked Your name to work deeds of power--and still not have our names written in the book of life.

This is a haunting thought for a pastor who has exercised the office of Word and Sacrament. It’s possible to “handle the holy” as Pastor Schein used to remind us and still be far from You. God, protect me from this egotism. “Don’t be amazed by the positive feedback you receive for the sermons that I inspire,” You say, “be amazed that You have eternal life through Me.”

This applies to my personal life too. “Don’t be amazed that people value the deeds of friendship I do through You. Be amazed that by grace through faith in Me, a faith created by the Holy Spirit within you (1 Corinthians 12:3), You belong to Me.”

Be amazed always by Your grace, not by the things Your grace empowers us to do, despite ourselves!

Other incidents in Luke 10 seem to underscore this theme. The man set upon by thieves did nothing to ensure his rescue and healing. They were wrought by a good Samaritan who acted as nothing more than Your agent. And Mary chose the better part precisely because, at the moment Jesus was in her home, she lived as the grateful recipient of His Word, while Martha did so much that she failed to listen to the Word that, as it did its saving work, could ensure that her name was written in the book of life.

Stop, look, listen, and respond indeed.

Bono: Grace versus karma

Thanks to my son for putting me onto this article.

No, this really happened

A Kansas man tried to contain a trash fire in a way that will make you wonder, "What was he thinking?"

Thanks to Jeff Schultz for linking to this critical news story over on Facebook.

'5 Ways to Protect Yourself' from 'Pathological Liars'

These strategies may protect us from pathological liars, but there seems to be no way to prevent them from lying to us short of refusing them access to us to lie. Changes can happen in the behaviors of pathological liars under pressure from the Holy Spirit, for which we pray in Christ's name.

I've found it best when forced to deal with such people to keep my distance. But when that's impossible, I to try to only speak with them when there is one other trustworthy person present. That way, there is a witness to possible later lies.

From the article:

Some individuals have developed skill in lying to others and have no fear or regret in engaged in lying to a Judge, police officer, therapist, psychiatrist, family member, spouse, supervisor, etc. They can also present as very calm or charming, provide appropriate eye contact, maintain norming breathing rhythms, be personable or friendly, and have calm body language. These individuals certainly fit the description of a sociopath and can be very dangerous for society and the lives of those who are in relation to them in some form or fashion.

I have learned that such persons, while rare, can be found in almost any institution, including the Church. They elude responsibility for bad actions or inaction, while portraying themselves as open, caring people. They're experts at deflecting responsibility for their actions, even when they bear clear responsibility for them. This can make their lies all the more damaging, because of the credibility credulous people may assign to charming liars who misuse others' goodwill.

Private confrontation, if bringing unsuccessful resolution to the lying pattern, should be followed by confrontation with a third and objective individual witness present. And if that confrontation is unsuccessful, it should be followed by confrontation in the presence of the affected group. All of this is designed to get the pathological liar or pathologically irresponsible person to a place of accountability and to gain a healed, recovering relationship with others. It is precisely the strategy for conflict resolution Christ gives to His Church in Matthew 18:15-20.

If failure to bring acknowledgment or a desire to change on the part of the pathological liar happens, more drastic action will be needed.

Pathological lying threatens any group--from the family to the congregation, from friendship to the nation--threatens any institution in which it happens.

The Meaning of Your Life

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio. The church will relocate its offices, worship center, and activity space to Centerville, Ohio in 2016, the first Sunday there scheduled to be on January 10, 2016.]

Mark 10:17-22
Today, I want to talk with you about why you exist, why you were born in this time and in this place, your purpose for living. 

Scripture is clear that God has an intimate hand in the formation and birth of every human being, no matter the circumstances of their conception. With King David, we can confess to God, “...you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made...” (Psalm 139:13-14). 

And this God Who forms us in our mothers' wombs also has a purpose for these lives He has created. 

This purpose is no mystery, even though we may sometimes forget it or try to evade it. 

Forgetting or evading it can destroy our souls, our relationships with God and others, and our lives. 

Forgetting or evading God’s purpose for our lives can do this no matter how many of the world’s markers of success we may possess or enjoy. 

Last winter, I saw an interview with Ohio State head football coach Urban Meyer about a book that had changed his life. 

Meyer had great success as the coach at the University of Florida, where he won two national championships. 

But then, Meyer’s life started going wrong. He had chest pains one night, certain that he was having a heart attack, and was taken to a hospital ER. His self-diagnosis turned out to be wrong. 

Soon though, he announced that he was retiring from the game, only to reverse himself a short time later. 

Then, came the period when, by many accounts, Meyer “lost” his team, no longer able to communicate, work with, or motivate them as he had. Meyer did retire then, taking a job as an analyst with ESPN, but without any clear understanding of how he might spend the rest of his life.

He spent a year doing that and really had no plans to return to coaching, when a friend recommended that he read a book called Lead...for God’s Sake!: A Parable for Finding the Heart of Leadership. 

I've recently read the book. It tells the story of a high school football coach who, like Meyer at Florida, has “lost” his team. He’s stressed, losing his family because of his obsession with winning at all costs, and incapable of enjoying even the victories that had once meant everything to him. 

You can understand why Urban Meyer resonated with this book. Like the fictional coach in Lead...for God’s Sake!, Meyer realized that he had forgotten his whole reason for coaching. In the chase for championships, he had even forgotten his whole reason for living. 

Fortunately, blessedly, this book helped him rediscover those things and he felt that he could take his dream job at Ohio State.

Our Gospel lesson for today tells us about Jesus’ encounter with a man who had forgotten his purpose in life. 

It’s a familiar passage, Mark 10:17-22. It begins: “As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’”

It’s an interesting question for two reasons. First of all, it indicates that here is a man of action. He wants eternal life, apparently. He deems it preferable to a life separated from God in hell. So, he asks Jesus, “What must I do?” This is a man whose focus is on doing, performing, getting to the top. He lives like a human doing rather than a human being. 

His question is also interesting because he thinks there’s something that he can do to inherit eternal life. The question is no different from what a modern person of similar position might ask his accountant, “What must I do to decrease my tax liability?” This man who has fallen to his knees before Jesus lives with the delusion that everything, even eternal life, is about doing the deal.

Jesus knows teachable moments, though. 

Verse 18: “‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’” In essence, Jesus is telling the man that whether he knew it or not, he was confessing that Jesus is God. By His rhetorical question, Jesus does nothing to refute the assertion. 

But Jesus has much more to teach. He meets the man where he is, mired in thinking that he could or needed to earn God’s favor. Verse 19: “You know the commandments [Jesus tells the man]: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” 

Here, Jesus references what we Lutherans call “the second table” of the Ten Commandments, the section that gives us God’s will for our relationships with others. As an explication of the command not to steal, Jesus also says we shouldn’t defraud others.

The man must have felt that he had met all the requirements for eternal life because he says to Jesus--was it with pride, relief, or triumph?--in verse 20: “Teacher,...all these I have kept since I was a boy.” 

We’re then told in verse 21 that “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Those words can sometimes bring tears to my eyes. Jesus looked at this man--this dealmaker, this conqueror of the world--who, in his desire for eternal life, placed his confidence in himself and his good works--and Jesus loved him the way a parent loves an errant child. 

Jesus knew that this earnest man truly wanted to be with God. 

But he thought that his life with God and the meaning and purpose of the life God had given to him, could be captured, slaved for, worked at, claimed as a personal achievement. 

Jesus felt compassion for this man who could, with a straight face, claim that whether in his heart, mind, or actions, he had obeyed God’s commandments and so had earned eternal life. I don’t know of a single human being who could honestly make that claim, including me.

Jesus saw the obstruction between this man and the life with God he wanted. Jesus saw that this man’s understanding of his purpose in life was the same claimed by a bumper sticker popular a few years back: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” 

Jesus continues in verse 21: “‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’” 

Let’s be clear here. Jesus is not saying that having wealth is inherently bad. There are many example in Biblical history of wealthy people who followed God: Abraham, Job, Nicodemus, Lydia, Joseph of Arimathea, and others. 

Nor is Jesus saying that everyone who’s wealthy needs to get rid of everything, give it to the poor, and live like paupers, any more than the call to be Jesus’ disciples means that everyone who follows Him has to go to seminary and become pastors. (Thank God!)

It means that when the earthly pursuits of our lives become our whole purpose for living, we need to dramatically change our relationship with those pursuits. 

When those pursuits become so consuming that we forget the reason we’re alive, things need to change. 

In the case for the rich young man, Jesus knew that nothing less than the total separation of the man from his money would allow him to follow Christ by faith into a purposeful life with God on earth and life with God in eternity. 

What earthly pursuits might we have to give up in order to follow Christ? 

Or, with what earthly pursuits must we change our relationship in order to have life with God? 

The things that keep us from following Christ might be, on their face, good things like being a good parent, moving ahead in our careers, keeping a beautiful garden, or coaching a basketball team or a football team. 

When the central character in Lead...for God’s Sake! understands his purpose in life, he doesn’t sense that God is calling him to stop coaching, but to change the purpose for which he coaches. 

And, after Urban Meyer went through his year of soul-searching, he didn’t feel that God was telling him to leave the football sidelines behind. 

In the past, I have erroneously thought that following Jesus meant making Him our number one “priority.” You know, like in a list reading: Jesus, family, friends, country, and so on. I've even preached this.

But what I now realize is this: Jesus doesn’t want to be our highest priority; He wants to be our God and King and Savior. 

He wants to be at the center of how we pursue every priority in life, be it making a living, raising children, getting an education, or enjoying the company of friends. 

He wants us to pursue the purpose of our lives, whatever we do and He makes clear in today’s Gospel lesson that whatever we do that keeps us from pursuing our life’s purpose must be changed.

Now, I’m not being coy. I haven’t mentioned the purpose of our lives until now because every one of you knows what it is. 

The purpose of every human life--and the road to eternity--is to know, follow, honor, and share the God we meet in Jesus Christ with our whole lives. 

Jesus summarizes these purposes for our lives in what we know as the Great Commandment: to love God and to love others; the Great Commission: to teach others about life with God belonging to all who turn from sin and follow Christ and making disciples; and His new commandment: that we love fellow believers with the same self-sacrificing love with which Christ has loved us. 

Jesus invites us to follow and to be transformed by His grace not so that we can learn what we have to do to earn eternal life, but so that, changed and changing over into His image as we fellowship with Him, we will live out the true meaning of our lives.

Along the way, we may become wealthy or earn wins or raise great kids, and, like the rest of the human race, we may have poverty, losses, and troubled children. 

But at the center of a life lived with its intended meaning and purpose will be the God we know Jesus Christ, the God Who made us, saves those who trust in Christ from sin and death, and gives us the only reason worth getting up for in the morning. 

And that reason is simple: To live as human beings certain of our purpose in this life and certain that on the cross, Christ has done everything to give us eternal life with God. 

Follow Jesus wherever you go and you will live out God’s purpose for your life. Amen