Friday, April 22, 2016
Earth Day
"The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it" (Psalm 24). May we care for earth, God's gift to us, our home for now.
Obedience, Faith, & Listening to God
For my daily quiet time with God, I use a method taught by the Navigators called Stop. Look. Listen. Respond. Today, I asked God to show me the truth I needed to see as I read Matthew 12.
In my personal effort to gain the new insights I believe God wants to give all of us when we read His Word, I've been using Eugene Peterson's translation/paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. This is helping me to overcome the danger of familiarity, which is the failure to see things in the Bible exactly because I know the Scriptures fairly well.
Portions of two verses, spoken by Jesus to self-righteous people known as Pharisees especially struck me today. Jesus is speaking of how faith in Him is truly authenticated in our lives:
What the Lord led me to see in this passage today wasn't a new truth to me, but one I needed to have underscored for me at two levels.
The first level on which I needed to have this truth underscored is this. I get on myself for the temptations to sin with which I consciously wrestle and the sins I perceive in myself for which I repent.
It's right that I invoke Christ's help in fighting off temptation and in repenting for my identified sins. But sometimes I unconsciously look at the fact that I have to fight temptation or have sins for which to repent as a blot on my character.
But the fact is that fighting my temptations and repenting for the sin I see in myself are both examples of obedience to God, the very thing that Jesus says demonstrates that believers are close to God.
Temptations will come to us. They came to Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11), though He never sinned (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15). So, we can't be exempt from temptations. They're part of life for every person no matter how close they are to God.
And repentance for our sins is a sign of the Holy Spirit's work in me through God's Word. I wouldn't repent if I weren't close enough to the God I know in Christ to know when the Holy Spirit is pressing me to repent and so, to be changed and renewed by God's grace (Matthew 12:31-32).
This level of the passage's truth was and is reassuring to me, an instance of God's grace for my life.
The second level on which I needed this truth underscored is this. Earlier today, someone to whom I'm close confronted me for a way I had been acting toward them: defensive, snotty, unkind.
I hadn't even been fully aware that this was the case. While I was busy struggling with other issues--temptations and sins I had been open to letting the Spirit identify for me, I was being deaf to the Spirit's clear call to change how I was treating this person.
I need to be careful to not be so focused on evicting one demonic element from my life that, not really attending to Christ's call to obedience to God's commands in all of my life, I let other sins take root in my life.
This is exactly what Jesus warns the Pharisees, so focused on combating some evils in their lives while totally ignoring the ways in which they disobeyed God in other ways, against, also in Matthew 12:
I realized again that I need to let Christ be Lord of and let the Holy Spirit speak to, my whole life, to never presume that I see all my sins (and, like the Pharisees, think that I've got it all together).
I also need to relish the knowledge that God gives grace to me to wrestle with my temptations and my sins. The wrestling doesn't show that I'm far from God. The wrestling shows that I'm walking with, listening to, and seeking to obey God.
Lord, help me to stay related to You through Christ and to obey You by seeking to do Your will. Help me also, to seek to do Your will in every facet of my life, heeding what the Spirit tells me through Your Word. Show me the unseen places where I let sin into my life and, as I repent, make me new. In Jesus' name. Amen
In my personal effort to gain the new insights I believe God wants to give all of us when we read His Word, I've been using Eugene Peterson's translation/paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. This is helping me to overcome the danger of familiarity, which is the failure to see things in the Bible exactly because I know the Scriptures fairly well.
Portions of two verses, spoken by Jesus to self-righteous people known as Pharisees especially struck me today. Jesus is speaking of how faith in Him is truly authenticated in our lives:
"...Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys my heavenly Father's will is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:49-50)Jesus said this after being told that His family wanted to see Him.
What the Lord led me to see in this passage today wasn't a new truth to me, but one I needed to have underscored for me at two levels.
The first level on which I needed to have this truth underscored is this. I get on myself for the temptations to sin with which I consciously wrestle and the sins I perceive in myself for which I repent.
It's right that I invoke Christ's help in fighting off temptation and in repenting for my identified sins. But sometimes I unconsciously look at the fact that I have to fight temptation or have sins for which to repent as a blot on my character.
But the fact is that fighting my temptations and repenting for the sin I see in myself are both examples of obedience to God, the very thing that Jesus says demonstrates that believers are close to God.
Temptations will come to us. They came to Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11), though He never sinned (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15). So, we can't be exempt from temptations. They're part of life for every person no matter how close they are to God.
And repentance for our sins is a sign of the Holy Spirit's work in me through God's Word. I wouldn't repent if I weren't close enough to the God I know in Christ to know when the Holy Spirit is pressing me to repent and so, to be changed and renewed by God's grace (Matthew 12:31-32).
This level of the passage's truth was and is reassuring to me, an instance of God's grace for my life.
The second level on which I needed this truth underscored is this. Earlier today, someone to whom I'm close confronted me for a way I had been acting toward them: defensive, snotty, unkind.
I hadn't even been fully aware that this was the case. While I was busy struggling with other issues--temptations and sins I had been open to letting the Spirit identify for me, I was being deaf to the Spirit's clear call to change how I was treating this person.
I need to be careful to not be so focused on evicting one demonic element from my life that, not really attending to Christ's call to obedience to God's commands in all of my life, I let other sins take root in my life.
This is exactly what Jesus warns the Pharisees, so focused on combating some evils in their lives while totally ignoring the ways in which they disobeyed God in other ways, against, also in Matthew 12:
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” [Matthew 12:33-35]This is an instance of God's law and command for my life. I need it too as I pursue my relationship with God each day.
I realized again that I need to let Christ be Lord of and let the Holy Spirit speak to, my whole life, to never presume that I see all my sins (and, like the Pharisees, think that I've got it all together).
I also need to relish the knowledge that God gives grace to me to wrestle with my temptations and my sins. The wrestling doesn't show that I'm far from God. The wrestling shows that I'm walking with, listening to, and seeking to obey God.
Lord, help me to stay related to You through Christ and to obey You by seeking to do Your will. Help me also, to seek to do Your will in every facet of my life, heeding what the Spirit tells me through Your Word. Show me the unseen places where I let sin into my life and, as I repent, make me new. In Jesus' name. Amen
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Prince
I'm sixty-two. I probably listened to more of Prince than many people my age. How that happened was sort of happenstance.
Prince's heyday was in the early- and mid-eighties. It was the era of big hair and MTV. I was listening a lot to U2, the Police, Stevie Wonder, a bit of Bruce Springsteen, with whom I became less enamored after Nebraska, and later, Bruce Cockburn. And, of course, I was still listening to Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Queen, and David Bowie.
At that time, I was in seminary. During my senior year, I worked as a janitor, cleaning seminary offices and the library after hours. It was a fun gig and it came with some perks.
One was being able to crank up a stereo in the library basement while dusting and vacuuming. I didn't have much money then either. So, when friends loaned music to me, I would often use said stereo to transfer their music to cassettes I could stick into my boom box at home.
The fourteen year old son of a classmate got wind of this perk of my job and asked me to record a bunch of Prince LPs that a friend had loaned to him. Being into piracy, I recorded all of that material for him and me.
For a while after that, I listened to a lot Prince. I thought his lyrics ranged from vapid to the faux sophistication of an adolescent thinking he knows more about sex than his parents. But his musicianship was undeniable: He had a fine sense of melody and rhythm. He played guitar especially well. And his voice was rangy. For about six months, I was sort of hooked.
But, in the end, I was never moved to buy a Prince LP. In fact, I wasn't moved by Prince at all. His virtuosity could move me to appreciation. But his songs never moved me. They didn't encourage me to see my life or the world differently. They were simply the candy by which he showcased his amazing talents.
In recent years, I was aware that Prince was performing some. But I had no idea that he was still releasing new material--some source today said that he had released four new LPs in the past eighteen months! To me, there were many artists older than Prince--McCartney or Dylan, for example--or artists who were his contemporaries--U2 comes to mind--more current than Prince was over the past two decades.
Reading the other day about his plane making an emergency landing because he was ill was like learning of the reappearance of a ghost from the past, similar to his amazing guitar solo on the collaborative performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
So, the response to Prince's death I've seen evidenced online and, briefly tonight, on TV, has caught me by surprise.
Prince is being accorded coverage similar to that which greeted the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson, John Lennon, and David Bowie, or, in less heavily mediated days, those of Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, and Buddy Holly.
While I would have guessed before today that, in the end, Prince might be viewed as more culturally significant than some of his contemporaries like Madonna or even Queen, I wouldn't have anticipated the reaction we've seen to his passing today. In coming years, I suspect that he'll be remembered more for his stunning musical performances, both recorded and live on stage, than for the quality or meaning of his compositions.
But however you look at it, his sudden death is a tragedy and I pray that all who grieve will be comforted by God.
Prince's heyday was in the early- and mid-eighties. It was the era of big hair and MTV. I was listening a lot to U2, the Police, Stevie Wonder, a bit of Bruce Springsteen, with whom I became less enamored after Nebraska, and later, Bruce Cockburn. And, of course, I was still listening to Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Queen, and David Bowie.
At that time, I was in seminary. During my senior year, I worked as a janitor, cleaning seminary offices and the library after hours. It was a fun gig and it came with some perks.
One was being able to crank up a stereo in the library basement while dusting and vacuuming. I didn't have much money then either. So, when friends loaned music to me, I would often use said stereo to transfer their music to cassettes I could stick into my boom box at home.
The fourteen year old son of a classmate got wind of this perk of my job and asked me to record a bunch of Prince LPs that a friend had loaned to him. Being into piracy, I recorded all of that material for him and me.
For a while after that, I listened to a lot Prince. I thought his lyrics ranged from vapid to the faux sophistication of an adolescent thinking he knows more about sex than his parents. But his musicianship was undeniable: He had a fine sense of melody and rhythm. He played guitar especially well. And his voice was rangy. For about six months, I was sort of hooked.
But, in the end, I was never moved to buy a Prince LP. In fact, I wasn't moved by Prince at all. His virtuosity could move me to appreciation. But his songs never moved me. They didn't encourage me to see my life or the world differently. They were simply the candy by which he showcased his amazing talents.
In recent years, I was aware that Prince was performing some. But I had no idea that he was still releasing new material--some source today said that he had released four new LPs in the past eighteen months! To me, there were many artists older than Prince--McCartney or Dylan, for example--or artists who were his contemporaries--U2 comes to mind--more current than Prince was over the past two decades.
Reading the other day about his plane making an emergency landing because he was ill was like learning of the reappearance of a ghost from the past, similar to his amazing guitar solo on the collaborative performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
So, the response to Prince's death I've seen evidenced online and, briefly tonight, on TV, has caught me by surprise.
Prince is being accorded coverage similar to that which greeted the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson, John Lennon, and David Bowie, or, in less heavily mediated days, those of Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, and Buddy Holly.
While I would have guessed before today that, in the end, Prince might be viewed as more culturally significant than some of his contemporaries like Madonna or even Queen, I wouldn't have anticipated the reaction we've seen to his passing today. In coming years, I suspect that he'll be remembered more for his stunning musical performances, both recorded and live on stage, than for the quality or meaning of his compositions.
But however you look at it, his sudden death is a tragedy and I pray that all who grieve will be comforted by God.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Shelter from the Storm (Understanding Revelation, Part 3)
Revelation 7:9-17
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is Shelter from the Storm. In it, Dylan's narrator remembers a friend or loved one from whom he has since been alienated. He recalls the shelter she once provided to him, from which he had once drawn hope. Dylan begins the song:
We long for that place and those relationships in which we are known and yet loved, imperfect and yet forgiven, broken and made whole.
In fact, I believe, seeking that shelter is the quest of our lives, whether we know it or not.
If we are wise though, we learn in the course of time, that no earthly place, person, elevated status, and no relationship can completely, fully shelter us from life’s storms, or assure us of our worthiness, or give us peace, or grant us life.
We learn that it’s too much to ask of any earthbound place, person, status, or relationship to give us these things.
We may be blessed with imperfect, temporary shelters from the storms around us and within us: marriages and friendships that last decades until death parts the partners; minds and bodies that serve us well until finally giving out. We should thank God for blessings like these.
But we hunger for more.
Why is that? Are we just inherently whiny, fussy, impatient, intent on having perfection as we define it? The short answer is, “Yes.” But there’s a deeper answer.
We were made for more.
And deep in our hearts, down in our guts, in every synapse of our brains, we know it! We were made for more.
The Bible says that you and I were created in the image of God. God’s imprint, His eternal nature, is written right into our DNA. God did not create us to sin, to hurt each other, to be hurt by each other, to age, to be limited by disease, to die. We’re right to feel that if the world was right, these things wouldn’t be part of our lives, that we would be sheltered from all storms.
We’re related to our Father in ways that no other creature is; He meant for us to share in His perfection, righteousness, love, and eternity. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He [God] has...set eternity in the human heart…” We know that we weren’t made to be exposed to the storms, the chaos, over which God’s Spirit first moved and by the force of His love carved out a perfect universe over which we were made to be the godly stewards.
But you know what happened. Adam and Eve, our great-ancestors, fell into sin, bringing all the sins (including our sins, yours and mine) and imperfections and storms that we know too well--into this world.
So, we look for the perfect shelter.
But unless we look for it in the God we meet in Jesus Christ, we will never find it!
As we continue our series, Understanding Revelation, today we encounter people who took shelter in Jesus Christ. And they found that despite the storms they encountered in this life, God sheltered them here in His grace, and when they passed from this life, they entered the eternal shelter for which all of us long and for which we were all made.
Revelation 7:9-17. Follow along with me, beginning at verse 7. “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”
John is, as was true in last Sunday's message, still in the throne room of God. The robes worn by a crowd from every nation of the earth are white, symbolic of purity. They carry palm leaves, symbolizing victory.
Verse 10: “And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’”
In the Old Testament and among Jewish teachers down to the time of Jesus and beyond, whenever you encounter a list with an odd-number of items, you look to the one that stands in the middle. That’s the most important item. What was this throng in white emphasizing? Their thanks to God for the gift of life, for the gift of Jesus, and for the eternal shelter He provides to those who put their trust in Him above all! They were filled with thanksgiving.
Verse 13: “Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?’” The elder asked this of John like a teacher using the interrogative method, helping his student own what it being taught.
But John initially only owns his ignorance. Verse 14: “I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation [That is, those who have lived faithfully in this world despite the obstacles, despite the difficulty of believing good news in a bad news world, despite shunning, dismissive disdain, or persecution.]; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…’”
John saw many things in the revelation Jesus gave to him at Patmos. He saw God on His throne. He saw the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus, the Lamb of God. He saw angels. All of that would have caused him--would cause us, were we to see it--to stand or fall on our faces in awe, hearts racing with the majesty and perfection of God.
But nothing John saw would have given him more assurance, more hope, more peace than seeing this throng of believers safely delivered into the perfect, eternal shelter of the God in Whom they put their trust.
John saw that the yearning we know from the moment we’re born--the yearning to live eternally, to live with purpose unencumbered by all the harsh realities of this world--is the yearning God wants to fulfill for us.
God wants to set us free from sin, death, futility, disease, discord, and separation from others.
God wants to set us free to live in loving relationship with Him, our families, our friends, the world.
God wants to banish sin’s power over our lives and actions and relationships for all eternity!
These blessings were meant to be the birthright of every child fashioned in God’s image. We sold off that birthright long ago when sin took us captive. But Jesus Christ has purchased us out of our slavery to sin and death and the devil with the expenditure of His blood.
It’s an inheritance that we can claim when we wash ourselves in the blood of the Lamb, committing ourselves to lives of turning from sin and trusting in Jesus Christ to be our Savior, our Lord, our King, our God, our shelter.
Like Jesus, we will die before we know this inheritance in full. (After all, we’re not better than Jesus and we shouldn’t expect to live or die better than Jesus! So, to each us, death will come.) But even now in this world, those who take shelter in Christ, find that though the storms of life buffet them, wound them, even take our lives, we have God’s peace. We live confident in God’s grace and provision and love.
When I had my heart attack and didn’t know whether they could salvage much of the 60% of my heart still functional, my son sat in the hospital room and read Psalm 46 to me: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…[And then] Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
The God revealed to all the world as Lord and Savior in Jesus was my shelter, not because I deserve His shelter (I know me very well and I know that I deserve no blessing God might give to me; I deserve only death and damnation.), but because God loves me and wants me now and for all eternity.
He wants you now and for all eternity too!
Go back to our lesson, starting at verse 14. The elder is still speaking to John about this multitude in white. “‘Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. [There’s the promise that will see us through every storm in this life. And there follows the promise of an eternal shelter through Christ.] ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’” What a promise! Eternal shelter!
But he's right in believing that all is not “hopeless and forlorn.” We have Jesus Christ. All who trust in Him will share in the eternal blessings John saw in his vision of heaven. If we will remain steadfast in trusting in Jesus Christ with our whole lives, we will be part of the multitude John saw, those who repent for sin, take shelter in Christ, and know that they will live with God for eternity.
With the psalmist, through Jesus we can say of God: “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Amen
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is Shelter from the Storm. In it, Dylan's narrator remembers a friend or loved one from whom he has since been alienated. He recalls the shelter she once provided to him, from which he had once drawn hope. Dylan begins the song:
‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and bloodFrom the moment I first heard that song forty-one years ago, I resonated with its lyrics. Everyone of us, I believe, at one time or another, in one way or another, seeks shelter from the storm.
When darkness was a virtue, the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"Come in," she said
"I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.”
We long for that place and those relationships in which we are known and yet loved, imperfect and yet forgiven, broken and made whole.
In fact, I believe, seeking that shelter is the quest of our lives, whether we know it or not.
If we are wise though, we learn in the course of time, that no earthly place, person, elevated status, and no relationship can completely, fully shelter us from life’s storms, or assure us of our worthiness, or give us peace, or grant us life.
We learn that it’s too much to ask of any earthbound place, person, status, or relationship to give us these things.
We may be blessed with imperfect, temporary shelters from the storms around us and within us: marriages and friendships that last decades until death parts the partners; minds and bodies that serve us well until finally giving out. We should thank God for blessings like these.
But we hunger for more.
Why is that? Are we just inherently whiny, fussy, impatient, intent on having perfection as we define it? The short answer is, “Yes.” But there’s a deeper answer.
We were made for more.
And deep in our hearts, down in our guts, in every synapse of our brains, we know it! We were made for more.
The Bible says that you and I were created in the image of God. God’s imprint, His eternal nature, is written right into our DNA. God did not create us to sin, to hurt each other, to be hurt by each other, to age, to be limited by disease, to die. We’re right to feel that if the world was right, these things wouldn’t be part of our lives, that we would be sheltered from all storms.
We’re related to our Father in ways that no other creature is; He meant for us to share in His perfection, righteousness, love, and eternity. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He [God] has...set eternity in the human heart…” We know that we weren’t made to be exposed to the storms, the chaos, over which God’s Spirit first moved and by the force of His love carved out a perfect universe over which we were made to be the godly stewards.
But you know what happened. Adam and Eve, our great-ancestors, fell into sin, bringing all the sins (including our sins, yours and mine) and imperfections and storms that we know too well--into this world.
So, we look for the perfect shelter.
But unless we look for it in the God we meet in Jesus Christ, we will never find it!
As we continue our series, Understanding Revelation, today we encounter people who took shelter in Jesus Christ. And they found that despite the storms they encountered in this life, God sheltered them here in His grace, and when they passed from this life, they entered the eternal shelter for which all of us long and for which we were all made.
Revelation 7:9-17. Follow along with me, beginning at verse 7. “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”
John is, as was true in last Sunday's message, still in the throne room of God. The robes worn by a crowd from every nation of the earth are white, symbolic of purity. They carry palm leaves, symbolizing victory.
Verse 10: “And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’”
In the Old Testament and among Jewish teachers down to the time of Jesus and beyond, whenever you encounter a list with an odd-number of items, you look to the one that stands in the middle. That’s the most important item. What was this throng in white emphasizing? Their thanks to God for the gift of life, for the gift of Jesus, and for the eternal shelter He provides to those who put their trust in Him above all! They were filled with thanksgiving.
Verse 13: “Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?’” The elder asked this of John like a teacher using the interrogative method, helping his student own what it being taught.
But John initially only owns his ignorance. Verse 14: “I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation [That is, those who have lived faithfully in this world despite the obstacles, despite the difficulty of believing good news in a bad news world, despite shunning, dismissive disdain, or persecution.]; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…’”
John saw many things in the revelation Jesus gave to him at Patmos. He saw God on His throne. He saw the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus, the Lamb of God. He saw angels. All of that would have caused him--would cause us, were we to see it--to stand or fall on our faces in awe, hearts racing with the majesty and perfection of God.
But nothing John saw would have given him more assurance, more hope, more peace than seeing this throng of believers safely delivered into the perfect, eternal shelter of the God in Whom they put their trust.
John saw that the yearning we know from the moment we’re born--the yearning to live eternally, to live with purpose unencumbered by all the harsh realities of this world--is the yearning God wants to fulfill for us.
God wants to set us free from sin, death, futility, disease, discord, and separation from others.
God wants to set us free to live in loving relationship with Him, our families, our friends, the world.
God wants to banish sin’s power over our lives and actions and relationships for all eternity!
These blessings were meant to be the birthright of every child fashioned in God’s image. We sold off that birthright long ago when sin took us captive. But Jesus Christ has purchased us out of our slavery to sin and death and the devil with the expenditure of His blood.
It’s an inheritance that we can claim when we wash ourselves in the blood of the Lamb, committing ourselves to lives of turning from sin and trusting in Jesus Christ to be our Savior, our Lord, our King, our God, our shelter.
Like Jesus, we will die before we know this inheritance in full. (After all, we’re not better than Jesus and we shouldn’t expect to live or die better than Jesus! So, to each us, death will come.) But even now in this world, those who take shelter in Christ, find that though the storms of life buffet them, wound them, even take our lives, we have God’s peace. We live confident in God’s grace and provision and love.
When I had my heart attack and didn’t know whether they could salvage much of the 60% of my heart still functional, my son sat in the hospital room and read Psalm 46 to me: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…[And then] Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
The God revealed to all the world as Lord and Savior in Jesus was my shelter, not because I deserve His shelter (I know me very well and I know that I deserve no blessing God might give to me; I deserve only death and damnation.), but because God loves me and wants me now and for all eternity.
He wants you now and for all eternity too!
Go back to our lesson, starting at verse 14. The elder is still speaking to John about this multitude in white. “‘Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. [There’s the promise that will see us through every storm in this life. And there follows the promise of an eternal shelter through Christ.] ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’” What a promise! Eternal shelter!
In Dylan’s song, he says:Dylan's narrator voice is wrong to think that the ultimate shelter of his life could be found in another human being, though other human beings who trust in Christ can be the instruments by which we trust that Christ can shelter us here and in eternity. (That’s why the great commission--making disciples of all nations, is the central mission and purpose of every Christian disciple!)
I’ve heard newborn babies wailin’ like a mournin’ dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn
"Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.”
But he's right in believing that all is not “hopeless and forlorn.” We have Jesus Christ. All who trust in Him will share in the eternal blessings John saw in his vision of heaven. If we will remain steadfast in trusting in Jesus Christ with our whole lives, we will be part of the multitude John saw, those who repent for sin, take shelter in Christ, and know that they will live with God for eternity.
With the psalmist, through Jesus we can say of God: “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Amen
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
Saturday, April 16, 2016
The Shamrock West Hummingbird Bar and Grill is Now Open for 2016 Business
The new feeder is a top-fill, which I really like.
Don't know if there have been any patrons yet.
Cause Wagon
When I visited a member of the congregation at a local hospital on Wednesday, I saw a reasonably late-model minivan covered with stickers advocating all sorts of causes.
Tomorrow's Prayer of the Day
Tomorrow, we continue our series on Understanding Revelation. Here's the Prayer of the Day, which we'll pray together:
Almighty God, whether people know Your name or not, we all are each born with a yearning for the shelter of Your grace, mercy, and love. We thank You that in Christ, You have made Yourself known to us and, that by grace through faith in Christ, You shelter us from eternal imprisonment to sin and death. We pray that Your Holy Spirit will sustain us in saving faith in Christ, so that we may live with You for eternity. We pray that by the power of the same Spirit, You will help us to share Christ with others so that they too, can know Your shelter in their lives; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.Plan on worshiping at a church near you tomorrow.
Monday, April 11, 2016
The Future is in Christ's Hands (Understanding Revelation, Part 2)
Revelation 5:1-14
Last Sunday, we began a five-part series called Understanding Revelation. Near the end of last week's message, I told you, “We can trust in Jesus no matter what.”
Today, we’re going to look at what God revealed to John to assure him and us that we can trust Jesus, even though before this world ends and even though in the course of our own lives, many horrific things are bound to happen.
The universe undergoes cosmic convulsions of evil even as God’s people, the Church, go about our business of making disciples and being His kingdom and His priests, His ambassadors to a dying world offering the only way to life: the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
God reveals this fact to John and through John, to us, so that we will never lose heart. In the end, God wins. And so do those who surrender their lives to Christ.
The first three chapters of Revelation recount the messages Jesus revealed to John for seven churches in Asia Minor, a place we know as Turkey today.
In the fourth chapter, the scene changes.
As he worships, John finds himself swept up into the heavenly throne room. There, God the Father sits on His throne, receiving the praises of four living creatures, who represent all of God’s creation praising and surrendering to God.
Whenever these creatures begin to praise God, twenty-four elders place their crowns at God’s feet, representing the total surrender of the human race, even the most powerful members of the human race, to God.
Angels and elders together, John saw, were praising God: “‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” [Revelation 4:11].
Nobody and nothing besides this God, heaven is saying, is worthy of our surrender, our praise. That’s important to remember as we shift to Revelation 5, where today’s second lesson is found.
Take a look, please, starting at Revelation 5:1. John is the writer: “Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’”
In ancient times, kings and other officials would seal important or secret documents with wax or clay into which they would press their signets.
The scroll held in God’s right hand contained information on seven evils that will befall (and, I should add, have befallen and are befalling) this world before the day when Jesus returns and fully establishes the new heaven and new earth, the place that will be inhabited by His Church, the people who turn from sin and persist in trusting in Him for life with God.
A mighty angel asks who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and reveal its content to believers. If brute strength were what was required to break the seals, the mighty angel could have taken care of the job. But the question isn’t strength; the question is worthiness.
Listen: When we face problems in our lives, we often try to power our ways through.
Relationship issues? Our inclination is to either push to get our way or to give up.
Health or fitness? Our impulse is to rely on our willpower (which usually gives out) or to resign ourselves to whatever.
When we try to face life’s challenges or to unravel the meaning behind them with our own strength, or intellect, or willpower, we come up empty, no matter what the supposed self-made or self-made women of the world claim.
But you and I don’t have to go it alone in dealing with the challenges of life. God is more than able and willing to help us every step of the way!
Who, the mighty angel asks, is worthy of breaking the seals on the scroll? Take a look at what comes next, starting at verse 3: “But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’”
The “Lion of Judah, the Root of David” is the one Who, in earthly terms, became David’s descendant, born in David’s city of Bethlehem, Whose earthly parents were descendants of David, Mary and Joseph. It was from this family tree that the Old Testament said that the Messiah, the Savior of the world, would come.
In Isaiah 11:1 and 10, written nearly eight-hundred years before the birth of Jesus, we’re told that a descendant of David’s father Jesse would be the world’s saving king:
Because Jesus has triumphed, one of the elders tells John, he can stop his weeping, and Jesus can open the seals. Jesus is the only One Who can open up the future to us.
Next comes a few verses with strange imagery. (As if what we've already read isn't strange, right?) Verse 6: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.”
You’ve got to keep your mind nimble here!
A slain Lamb doesn’t, on the face of it, seem like one who has triumphed. The world might call Him a loser. (A term we seem to be hearing thrown around a lot this year.)
But the Lion of Judah is also the Lamb. The Lion is the King of the jungle. A Lamb is weak and submissive. This is the paradox of Jesus that drives the world crazy when it comes to receiving Jesus.
How can the Lamb who was slain help anyone?
By bearing our sin for us on the cross.
By having the strength to bear the punishment we deserved and He didn’t.
“Look,” John the Baptist said of Jesus when he saw Jesus near the banks of the Jordan, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” [John 1:29]
In the end, it’s only the Lion Who is the Lamb Who can help us!
Read on, please: “The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” All we need to know here is that seven is the number of completeness. There is nothing that needs added to or taken away from Jesus for Him to be all that He is. He is perfect. He’s worthy of our worship.
Read again, starting at verse 7: "He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp [I really wish they had guitars instead!] and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people [Now you know why our Roman Catholic friends use incense in worship, symbolizing their worship and prayers ascending to God in heaven.]. And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.’”
The worship and praise Jesus receives in God’s heavenly throne room looks a lot like the praises given earlier to God the Father.
That’s because Jesus is God.
When we trust in Jesus, we have direct access to God. We don’t need sigils, horoscopes, or Ouija boards. Through Jesus, we know that we don't need to do good works to get God's attention.* All we must do is turn to Him trustingly, repentantly!
Whatever the future holds--whatever is revealed in the seven scrolls that Jesus alone is worthy to break open--we who trust in Christ belong to God.
God’s Word to ancient Israel is true as well to those who make up His Church, people who believe in Christ: “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” [Isaiah 49:16].
Even when we forget God, He never forgets us.
Even when we sin, He never forgets His love for us, and when we truly repent, He never fails to forgive us and restore our relationship with Him.
Even when we walk away from God, He tells us through Christ: “Return to Me, and I will return to you” [Zechariah 1:3].
Jesus is worthy to break the seals on the scroll because He died and rose for us. “You were slain,” the worshipers say, “and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
Through His blood, Jesus has purchased us out of our slavery to sin and death and He has given us life. If He can do that--if He can set sinners free, if He can breathe new life into dead bones--then the Lamb of God can also give all who trust in Him the power to face whatever this life throws at us!
Do you trust in Him today? He can be trusted!
So, four take-aways from Revelation today.
Maybe you thought Revelation was just about some grim future we must endure. The truth is that it’s really about trusting in Jesus Christ here and now no matter what because we know that He’s already triumphed over evil and He truly is the Lord of the universe. Amen
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, yesterday.]
*Of course, the person saved by God's grace (God's charity) through their faith in Jesus Christ will want to do good works--works of love for God and love for neighbor--out of gratitude for God's grace which saves us from sin and death. In fact, God has already prepared good works for the saved person to do in His name and power. Check out Ephesians 2:8-10.
Last Sunday, we began a five-part series called Understanding Revelation. Near the end of last week's message, I told you, “We can trust in Jesus no matter what.”
Today, we’re going to look at what God revealed to John to assure him and us that we can trust Jesus, even though before this world ends and even though in the course of our own lives, many horrific things are bound to happen.
The universe undergoes cosmic convulsions of evil even as God’s people, the Church, go about our business of making disciples and being His kingdom and His priests, His ambassadors to a dying world offering the only way to life: the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
God reveals this fact to John and through John, to us, so that we will never lose heart. In the end, God wins. And so do those who surrender their lives to Christ.
The first three chapters of Revelation recount the messages Jesus revealed to John for seven churches in Asia Minor, a place we know as Turkey today.
In the fourth chapter, the scene changes.
As he worships, John finds himself swept up into the heavenly throne room. There, God the Father sits on His throne, receiving the praises of four living creatures, who represent all of God’s creation praising and surrendering to God.
Whenever these creatures begin to praise God, twenty-four elders place their crowns at God’s feet, representing the total surrender of the human race, even the most powerful members of the human race, to God.
Angels and elders together, John saw, were praising God: “‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” [Revelation 4:11].
Nobody and nothing besides this God, heaven is saying, is worthy of our surrender, our praise. That’s important to remember as we shift to Revelation 5, where today’s second lesson is found.
Take a look, please, starting at Revelation 5:1. John is the writer: “Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’”
In ancient times, kings and other officials would seal important or secret documents with wax or clay into which they would press their signets.
The scroll held in God’s right hand contained information on seven evils that will befall (and, I should add, have befallen and are befalling) this world before the day when Jesus returns and fully establishes the new heaven and new earth, the place that will be inhabited by His Church, the people who turn from sin and persist in trusting in Him for life with God.
A mighty angel asks who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and reveal its content to believers. If brute strength were what was required to break the seals, the mighty angel could have taken care of the job. But the question isn’t strength; the question is worthiness.
Listen: When we face problems in our lives, we often try to power our ways through.
Relationship issues? Our inclination is to either push to get our way or to give up.
Health or fitness? Our impulse is to rely on our willpower (which usually gives out) or to resign ourselves to whatever.
When we try to face life’s challenges or to unravel the meaning behind them with our own strength, or intellect, or willpower, we come up empty, no matter what the supposed self-made or self-made women of the world claim.
But you and I don’t have to go it alone in dealing with the challenges of life. God is more than able and willing to help us every step of the way!
Who, the mighty angel asks, is worthy of breaking the seals on the scroll? Take a look at what comes next, starting at verse 3: “But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’”
The “Lion of Judah, the Root of David” is the one Who, in earthly terms, became David’s descendant, born in David’s city of Bethlehem, Whose earthly parents were descendants of David, Mary and Joseph. It was from this family tree that the Old Testament said that the Messiah, the Savior of the world, would come.
In Isaiah 11:1 and 10, written nearly eight-hundred years before the birth of Jesus, we’re told that a descendant of David’s father Jesse would be the world’s saving king:
- “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.”
- “...the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him…”
Because Jesus has triumphed, one of the elders tells John, he can stop his weeping, and Jesus can open the seals. Jesus is the only One Who can open up the future to us.
Next comes a few verses with strange imagery. (As if what we've already read isn't strange, right?) Verse 6: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.”
You’ve got to keep your mind nimble here!
A slain Lamb doesn’t, on the face of it, seem like one who has triumphed. The world might call Him a loser. (A term we seem to be hearing thrown around a lot this year.)
But the Lion of Judah is also the Lamb. The Lion is the King of the jungle. A Lamb is weak and submissive. This is the paradox of Jesus that drives the world crazy when it comes to receiving Jesus.
How can the Lamb who was slain help anyone?
By bearing our sin for us on the cross.
By having the strength to bear the punishment we deserved and He didn’t.
“Look,” John the Baptist said of Jesus when he saw Jesus near the banks of the Jordan, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” [John 1:29]
In the end, it’s only the Lion Who is the Lamb Who can help us!
Read on, please: “The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” All we need to know here is that seven is the number of completeness. There is nothing that needs added to or taken away from Jesus for Him to be all that He is. He is perfect. He’s worthy of our worship.
Read again, starting at verse 7: "He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp [I really wish they had guitars instead!] and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people [Now you know why our Roman Catholic friends use incense in worship, symbolizing their worship and prayers ascending to God in heaven.]. And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.’”
The worship and praise Jesus receives in God’s heavenly throne room looks a lot like the praises given earlier to God the Father.
That’s because Jesus is God.
When we trust in Jesus, we have direct access to God. We don’t need sigils, horoscopes, or Ouija boards. Through Jesus, we know that we don't need to do good works to get God's attention.* All we must do is turn to Him trustingly, repentantly!
Whatever the future holds--whatever is revealed in the seven scrolls that Jesus alone is worthy to break open--we who trust in Christ belong to God.
God’s Word to ancient Israel is true as well to those who make up His Church, people who believe in Christ: “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” [Isaiah 49:16].
Even when we forget God, He never forgets us.
Even when we sin, He never forgets His love for us, and when we truly repent, He never fails to forgive us and restore our relationship with Him.
Even when we walk away from God, He tells us through Christ: “Return to Me, and I will return to you” [Zechariah 1:3].
Jesus is worthy to break the seals on the scroll because He died and rose for us. “You were slain,” the worshipers say, “and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
Through His blood, Jesus has purchased us out of our slavery to sin and death and He has given us life. If He can do that--if He can set sinners free, if He can breathe new life into dead bones--then the Lamb of God can also give all who trust in Him the power to face whatever this life throws at us!
Do you trust in Him today? He can be trusted!
So, four take-aways from Revelation today.
- God is still reigning, still in control, even when it seems that the devil, the world, and our sinful selves have pushed Him off His throne. The present is in His hand. There’s no valley He can’t take you through, no sin of yours He can’t forgive.
- Jesus is God the Son. The future is in His hand. Jesus, the Lamb of God, can make every part of your life new.
- We who believe in Jesus are His kingdom and His priests. As His priests, we to tell the world the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and trust in Him as their God and King. As priests, we also to pray for the world, including the people who hate us, the people we find difficult, and the situations that seem hopeless.
- In all things, in all ways, at all times, we are to worship the God we know in Jesus. Not just on Sunday mornings, but at work, at school, at leisure. We worship God whenever we choose to love God and love neighbor even when we don’t want to. When we choose to seek and follow the will of God, rather than doing what we want to do.
Maybe you thought Revelation was just about some grim future we must endure. The truth is that it’s really about trusting in Jesus Christ here and now no matter what because we know that He’s already triumphed over evil and He truly is the Lord of the universe. Amen
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, yesterday.]
*Of course, the person saved by God's grace (God's charity) through their faith in Jesus Christ will want to do good works--works of love for God and love for neighbor--out of gratitude for God's grace which saves us from sin and death. In fact, God has already prepared good works for the saved person to do in His name and power. Check out Ephesians 2:8-10.
Monday, April 04, 2016
Beginning (Understanding Revelation, Part 1)
[This was shared yesterday, the Second Sunday of Easter, during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Revelation 1:4-18
Beginnings are important. For one thing, you don’t complete a journey unless you begin it. That’s true whether the journey is to Florida for spring break; to a new career; to deeper relationships with family members, friends, or even God. You have to start.
Today, we start a five-part series on the New Testament book of Revelation. Revelation can be strange for us. But digging into it and allowing its truths to permeate our everyday lives can help us to grow stronger in our faith, more confident in our relationship with Christ and in our witness for Him, more aware of God’s will for our lives, less afraid.
But today, I ask you to pay special attention to the beginning of Revelation. Not only does it just make sense to start this way, the beginning gives important themes that we will read and hear about throughout the book.
We call Revelation a book, one of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament, one of the sixty-six in the Bible. But Revelation really is a letter written to Christians to encourage their faith.
Traditionally, the Church has held that Revelation was written by the apostle John.
He did so during a time of sporadic persecution of the Church. In fact, John was being held prisoner for his faith when he received the revelation that he records in his letter.
The word we translate as revelation is, in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, apokalupsis, literally meaning lifting the veil. For the benefit of the seven churches to which Revelation is addressed, the truth from God about many things are unveiled. We benefit from God’s revelation to John as well, even though the imagery we run into can make us crazy.
Revelation is less about some apocalyptic future than it is about how to live our lives in the mundane everyday places of life, especially in light of others' indifference or opposition. So, it has applicability to every time in history.
That’s because this universe is still largely held captive to the one Jesus calls elsewhere, “the prince of this world,” the devil.
As has been true since Adam and Eve rebelled against God, sin--from Satan, from the world, from ourselves--is still fighting against God, even though through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has already won eternal life for those who repent of sin and believe in Christ. Remember that the next time you watch the news on your TV or your computer: Jesus has already won!
Until we come to the ends of our earthly lives or until this world is brought to an end by God, we must be vigilant in our relationship with Christ.
Otherwise, we risk being eternally taken down by the sins that Revelation specifically addresses: despair, indifference, self-righteousness, lovelessness, the opposition of the world that makes faith inconvenient or hard, being heedless of God’s righteous commands, going along to get along.
Revelation comes to inspire us and put some spine in our faith so that no matter what, we will stand with our crucified and risen Savior.
Take a look at our second lesson for today, Revelation 1:4-18.
Verse 4: “John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”
Right away, John makes clear who his original addressees are--seven churches in an area of the world we now call Turkey.
And he also makes clear who this letter is really from. John is simply the conduit or the mailman delivering a message that comes from the triune God.
He speaks on the authority of the Father, the one “who is, and who was, and who is to come,” Yahweh, I AM, Whose name in Hebrew can mean, “I was who I was,” “I am who I am,” and “I will be who I will be.”
John also speaks on behalf of God the Holy Spirit. His term “seven spirits” partly references the seven churches he addresses, but it's another title for the Holy Spirit, the number seven denoting completeness, as when God created the universe, then rested on the seventh day.
And John speaks too for Jesus: the One “who loves us...freed us from our sins...and made us to be” God’s kingdom, priests, and ambassadors.
There’s no doubt then, about Who this revelation is really from. It’s not like when you get a text message from someone who assumes you know who they are and you wonder who’s this coming from. John makes it clear this revelation is from God!
How do we know that Revelation is really from God?
Well, the Bible isn’t like the book of Mormon or the Quran, lengthy tomes penned by single individuals accountable to no one. The book of Christian faith, the Bible, is the record of multiple authors and whole groups of people based on their encounters with God. And the book of Revelation can be relied on as a Word from God because it fits in with the whole witness of God experienced by millions of people over thousands of years.
We see the consistency of Revelation's understanding of God with the rest of the Bible in verse 7, where two passages of the Old Testament, Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10, with their references to Jesus written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, are cited.
After establishing Who this revelation is from, John, tells us how it came to him.
Verse 10: “On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit,and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet…”
It was the Lord’s Day, Sunday, the day that always marks Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and John was swept up with inspiration from the Holy Spirit. (Sunday is always the day to celebrate Jesus' resurrection, including the Sundays in Lent, even if Garrison Keillor says that "if you're Lutheran and from the Midwest, it's always Lent.")
John heard a loud voice, “like a trumpet.” This seems to be God’s MO. In Exodus 19:18-19, just before God gave the ten commandments, a trumpet announced His presence. One day, a trumpet will sound when Jesus returns to this world. God got John’s attention!
This clarion voice tells John to write the revelation he receives and send it to seven churches. Then, verse 12: “I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword.His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.”
This voice had been heard before!
It was this voice that said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”
It was this voice that said, “This is My Son, the beloved; with Him I am well pleased.”
It was this voice that once promised that “his sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
This voice said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”
John knew the voice because he belonged to Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep.
John describes the appearance of this “son of man,” a term Jesus often used about Himself during His earthly life. He is pure. He glows like a furnace. His face was like the shining sun.”
In Exodus, the people of God feared to look upon God’s perfect radiance and when Moses returned to them after encountering God, his face glowed with the fires of heaven. This light displays both God’s holiness and our imperfection. God’s fire also purges those willing to follow Him of sin. His fire also rages against unrepentant sin, which is why Hebrews 12:29 describes God as “a consuming fire.”
In Jesus, John sees God.
No surprise there because John had once heard Jesus say, “I and the Father are one.”
Extending from the mouth of “the son of man” is “a sharp, double-edged sword,” the Word of God.
Hebrews 4:12 tells us: “...the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword,it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
This Word judges our sin and, for those who repent and believe in Christ, it separates us from our sin, which can be a painful process, and it cuts us into the kingdom of God, a blessing of eternal healing.
John is looking at the fiery holiness of God he had once seen in Jesus of Nazareth. What would you do in this moment? Here's what John did, verse 17: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he [Jesus] placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.’”
Beginnings are important.
Here at the beginning of Revelation, John shows us that the message he shares in this letter is from God.
He shows us that we should have a holy fear of God, but that we never need be afraid of His good will for those who love Him.
And He underscores that just as Jesus had the first word at creation, the alpha word, He will have the omega word, the last word.
He was dead, but is alive, and now holds the keys to set free from death, darkness, sin, and despair for all eternity those who turn from sin and trust in Him each and every day.
We can trust in Jesus no matter what. This, really, is what all of Revelation is about. But we will let John unfold things more fully for us in the weeks to come. Amen
Revelation 1:4-18
Beginnings are important. For one thing, you don’t complete a journey unless you begin it. That’s true whether the journey is to Florida for spring break; to a new career; to deeper relationships with family members, friends, or even God. You have to start.
Today, we start a five-part series on the New Testament book of Revelation. Revelation can be strange for us. But digging into it and allowing its truths to permeate our everyday lives can help us to grow stronger in our faith, more confident in our relationship with Christ and in our witness for Him, more aware of God’s will for our lives, less afraid.
But today, I ask you to pay special attention to the beginning of Revelation. Not only does it just make sense to start this way, the beginning gives important themes that we will read and hear about throughout the book.
We call Revelation a book, one of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament, one of the sixty-six in the Bible. But Revelation really is a letter written to Christians to encourage their faith.
Traditionally, the Church has held that Revelation was written by the apostle John.
He did so during a time of sporadic persecution of the Church. In fact, John was being held prisoner for his faith when he received the revelation that he records in his letter.
The word we translate as revelation is, in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, apokalupsis, literally meaning lifting the veil. For the benefit of the seven churches to which Revelation is addressed, the truth from God about many things are unveiled. We benefit from God’s revelation to John as well, even though the imagery we run into can make us crazy.
Revelation is less about some apocalyptic future than it is about how to live our lives in the mundane everyday places of life, especially in light of others' indifference or opposition. So, it has applicability to every time in history.
That’s because this universe is still largely held captive to the one Jesus calls elsewhere, “the prince of this world,” the devil.
As has been true since Adam and Eve rebelled against God, sin--from Satan, from the world, from ourselves--is still fighting against God, even though through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has already won eternal life for those who repent of sin and believe in Christ. Remember that the next time you watch the news on your TV or your computer: Jesus has already won!
Until we come to the ends of our earthly lives or until this world is brought to an end by God, we must be vigilant in our relationship with Christ.
Otherwise, we risk being eternally taken down by the sins that Revelation specifically addresses: despair, indifference, self-righteousness, lovelessness, the opposition of the world that makes faith inconvenient or hard, being heedless of God’s righteous commands, going along to get along.
Revelation comes to inspire us and put some spine in our faith so that no matter what, we will stand with our crucified and risen Savior.
Take a look at our second lesson for today, Revelation 1:4-18.
Verse 4: “John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”
Right away, John makes clear who his original addressees are--seven churches in an area of the world we now call Turkey.
And he also makes clear who this letter is really from. John is simply the conduit or the mailman delivering a message that comes from the triune God.
He speaks on the authority of the Father, the one “who is, and who was, and who is to come,” Yahweh, I AM, Whose name in Hebrew can mean, “I was who I was,” “I am who I am,” and “I will be who I will be.”
John also speaks on behalf of God the Holy Spirit. His term “seven spirits” partly references the seven churches he addresses, but it's another title for the Holy Spirit, the number seven denoting completeness, as when God created the universe, then rested on the seventh day.
And John speaks too for Jesus: the One “who loves us...freed us from our sins...and made us to be” God’s kingdom, priests, and ambassadors.
There’s no doubt then, about Who this revelation is really from. It’s not like when you get a text message from someone who assumes you know who they are and you wonder who’s this coming from. John makes it clear this revelation is from God!
How do we know that Revelation is really from God?
Well, the Bible isn’t like the book of Mormon or the Quran, lengthy tomes penned by single individuals accountable to no one. The book of Christian faith, the Bible, is the record of multiple authors and whole groups of people based on their encounters with God. And the book of Revelation can be relied on as a Word from God because it fits in with the whole witness of God experienced by millions of people over thousands of years.
We see the consistency of Revelation's understanding of God with the rest of the Bible in verse 7, where two passages of the Old Testament, Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10, with their references to Jesus written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, are cited.
After establishing Who this revelation is from, John, tells us how it came to him.
Verse 10: “On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit,and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet…”
It was the Lord’s Day, Sunday, the day that always marks Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and John was swept up with inspiration from the Holy Spirit. (Sunday is always the day to celebrate Jesus' resurrection, including the Sundays in Lent, even if Garrison Keillor says that "if you're Lutheran and from the Midwest, it's always Lent.")
John heard a loud voice, “like a trumpet.” This seems to be God’s MO. In Exodus 19:18-19, just before God gave the ten commandments, a trumpet announced His presence. One day, a trumpet will sound when Jesus returns to this world. God got John’s attention!
This clarion voice tells John to write the revelation he receives and send it to seven churches. Then, verse 12: “I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword.His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.”
This voice had been heard before!
It was this voice that said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”
It was this voice that said, “This is My Son, the beloved; with Him I am well pleased.”
It was this voice that once promised that “his sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
This voice said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”
John knew the voice because he belonged to Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep.
John describes the appearance of this “son of man,” a term Jesus often used about Himself during His earthly life. He is pure. He glows like a furnace. His face was like the shining sun.”
In Exodus, the people of God feared to look upon God’s perfect radiance and when Moses returned to them after encountering God, his face glowed with the fires of heaven. This light displays both God’s holiness and our imperfection. God’s fire also purges those willing to follow Him of sin. His fire also rages against unrepentant sin, which is why Hebrews 12:29 describes God as “a consuming fire.”
In Jesus, John sees God.
No surprise there because John had once heard Jesus say, “I and the Father are one.”
Extending from the mouth of “the son of man” is “a sharp, double-edged sword,” the Word of God.
Hebrews 4:12 tells us: “...the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword,it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
This Word judges our sin and, for those who repent and believe in Christ, it separates us from our sin, which can be a painful process, and it cuts us into the kingdom of God, a blessing of eternal healing.
John is looking at the fiery holiness of God he had once seen in Jesus of Nazareth. What would you do in this moment? Here's what John did, verse 17: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he [Jesus] placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.’”
Beginnings are important.
Here at the beginning of Revelation, John shows us that the message he shares in this letter is from God.
He shows us that we should have a holy fear of God, but that we never need be afraid of His good will for those who love Him.
And He underscores that just as Jesus had the first word at creation, the alpha word, He will have the omega word, the last word.
He was dead, but is alive, and now holds the keys to set free from death, darkness, sin, and despair for all eternity those who turn from sin and trust in Him each and every day.
We can trust in Jesus no matter what. This, really, is what all of Revelation is about. But we will let John unfold things more fully for us in the weeks to come. Amen
Saturday, April 02, 2016
Books I'm Reading Right Now
I usually have two books going at the same time. (Reading them, not writing them.) Right now, there's How to Say No to a Stubborn Habit: Even When You Feel Like Saying Yes by Erwin Lutzer and The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945.
Ambrose was a favorite historian of mine. His biography of Dwight Eisenhower, one of the best studies of Ike I've read and Citizen Soldiers, a moving account of the heroism of G.I.s who were central to the Allied victory in World War 2, are among my favorites.
The Wild Blue focuses particularly on a man whose heroism and patriotism were later impugned when he ran for president in 1972, George McGovern. The South Dakotan who would later become an historian and a US Senator, piloted what were, by common consent, the most difficult-to-fly aircraft of the war. This is a great book!
Lutzer, a very conservative Christian evangelical, provides tremendous insights and guidance for anyone wanting to defeat bad habits in their lives.
Without the Bible, God's book, and other reading material, life would be barren. (In saying this, I'm not putting other books on a par with the Bible, by the way. It would be ridiculous to compare any book to the Word of God! But I am glad that God has gifted some people to author all kinds of books.) I'm so thankful for the gift of reading, for authors, and for the fact that my mom took me to the library to get borrowing privileges when I was little. (My first book was an oversized book containing photographs by Matthew Brady and others chronicling Abraham Lincoln and his times. Already a nerd, I was about four at the time.)
Ambrose was a favorite historian of mine. His biography of Dwight Eisenhower, one of the best studies of Ike I've read and Citizen Soldiers, a moving account of the heroism of G.I.s who were central to the Allied victory in World War 2, are among my favorites.
The Wild Blue focuses particularly on a man whose heroism and patriotism were later impugned when he ran for president in 1972, George McGovern. The South Dakotan who would later become an historian and a US Senator, piloted what were, by common consent, the most difficult-to-fly aircraft of the war. This is a great book!
Lutzer, a very conservative Christian evangelical, provides tremendous insights and guidance for anyone wanting to defeat bad habits in their lives.
Without the Bible, God's book, and other reading material, life would be barren. (In saying this, I'm not putting other books on a par with the Bible, by the way. It would be ridiculous to compare any book to the Word of God! But I am glad that God has gifted some people to author all kinds of books.) I'm so thankful for the gift of reading, for authors, and for the fact that my mom took me to the library to get borrowing privileges when I was little. (My first book was an oversized book containing photographs by Matthew Brady and others chronicling Abraham Lincoln and his times. Already a nerd, I was about four at the time.)
Friday, April 01, 2016
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Martyrdom in Yemen
During Holy Week, a parishioner from a congregation I previously served asked me to pray privately that Father Tom, an acquaintance of hers, would not be crucified by ISIS on Good Friday.
But those radical Islamist thugs and nihilists went ahead with their threat, killing a priest who bravely volunteered to minister in Yemen despite the dangers. It's tragically sad and infuriating.
Please pray for Christians being persecuted by Islamic-rooted terrorists, asking God to help them witness for Christ boldly and humbly in the face of persecution.
Ask God's Holy Spirit to use their witness to win their persecutors to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Please pray also for the governments of sovereign nations as they employ their resources to protect their citizens from acts of terrorism and to bring terrorists to justice.
Finally, please ask God to comfort and encourage Father Tom's family and friends with the promise of Jesus in which he believed:
But those radical Islamist thugs and nihilists went ahead with their threat, killing a priest who bravely volunteered to minister in Yemen despite the dangers. It's tragically sad and infuriating.
Please pray for Christians being persecuted by Islamic-rooted terrorists, asking God to help them witness for Christ boldly and humbly in the face of persecution.
Ask God's Holy Spirit to use their witness to win their persecutors to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Please pray also for the governments of sovereign nations as they employ their resources to protect their citizens from acts of terrorism and to bring terrorists to justice.
Finally, please ask God to comfort and encourage Father Tom's family and friends with the promise of Jesus in which he believed:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." (John 3:16-8)
For the next president: NATO and other security partnerships
An interesting article from earlier this year that appeared in The American Interest. If you're not a subscriber (which I am not), this will be the only piece you can read from the site this month.
I think there's a general failure to understand the need for security arrangements like NATO or the one the US has with Japan. This need has been demonstrated by history.
Russia's ability to wreak havoc and the need for intergovernmental cooperation in combating things like terrorism are compelling reasons for keeping NATO, for example.
The USA's decision to keep Japan demilitarized and under the American nuclear umbrella has, for decades, prevented a nuclear arms race between China and Japan, also, proponents would say, something that would be contrary to US interests.
What, some will wonder, about George Washington's warning, given in his farewell address, against "entangling alliances."
Washington's words have often been used by people like the "America Firsters" who, after the rise of Hitler, effectively prevented the US from working with other western democracies to, at first, thwart and then, to defeat, the Nazis. Millions of lives were lost as a result of the drag they inflicted on American policies.
Washington was, in fact, the father not only of his country, but also of US foreign policy realism. His warning against "entangling alliances" was rooted in his historical context and was advanced in service to the guiding light of his approach to foreign affairs: to always do what was in the best interests of the country.
At that time, that meant keeping the fledgling United States from becoming a partisan in the conflict between the western world's superpowers of the time, England and France. To be associated closely with either one, to be allied with one country or the other, would put the development of the then-delicate United States at risk. Washington wanted to give the US breathing room to develop its political and economic life, to be able to engage in trade with both of the two major powers without picking sides. When you're the littlest and weakest kid on the block, it's best not to rile up the two neighborhood bullies.
Had Washington been around at the end of World War 2, when the US emerged as the preeminent power of the world, at that time hurtling into a Cold War with a third world economy that had atomic weapons (the Soviet Union), I'm sure that his counsel would still have been to do what was in the best interests of America. At that time, that would entail recognizing the country's changed status among nations and understanding the need to provide leadership to alliances that preserved the freedom and stability for the US. NATO was one of the post-war institutions that did that.
Many argue today that NATO has outlived its usefulness. As indicated above, some disagree with that. They also would say that mutual security arrangements are beneficial to US security and allows this country to act as the "senior partner" in security arrangements with other countries.
It seems to me that the Achilles heel of these arrangements, alluded to in the linked piece, is the failure of nations under the US security umbrella to pay their fair share in manpower, arms, and money. As the article also says, this has allowed western European partner nations to develop social insurance policies that the US doesn't feel it can afford, in part because of other outlays, including those for NATO.
History demonstrates that a United States turned in on itself is less secure than one engaged with the world.
How that might be expressed today is a political issue and I don't advance political opinions here, just historical observations.
But my observation is that addressing how to renew partnerships like NATO in light of cyber-terrorism, terrorism, and the aggression of nations like Russia and China is probably something that should occupy the time and thinking of the next president and the American people.
I think there's a general failure to understand the need for security arrangements like NATO or the one the US has with Japan. This need has been demonstrated by history.
Russia's ability to wreak havoc and the need for intergovernmental cooperation in combating things like terrorism are compelling reasons for keeping NATO, for example.
The USA's decision to keep Japan demilitarized and under the American nuclear umbrella has, for decades, prevented a nuclear arms race between China and Japan, also, proponents would say, something that would be contrary to US interests.
What, some will wonder, about George Washington's warning, given in his farewell address, against "entangling alliances."
Washington's words have often been used by people like the "America Firsters" who, after the rise of Hitler, effectively prevented the US from working with other western democracies to, at first, thwart and then, to defeat, the Nazis. Millions of lives were lost as a result of the drag they inflicted on American policies.
Washington was, in fact, the father not only of his country, but also of US foreign policy realism. His warning against "entangling alliances" was rooted in his historical context and was advanced in service to the guiding light of his approach to foreign affairs: to always do what was in the best interests of the country.
At that time, that meant keeping the fledgling United States from becoming a partisan in the conflict between the western world's superpowers of the time, England and France. To be associated closely with either one, to be allied with one country or the other, would put the development of the then-delicate United States at risk. Washington wanted to give the US breathing room to develop its political and economic life, to be able to engage in trade with both of the two major powers without picking sides. When you're the littlest and weakest kid on the block, it's best not to rile up the two neighborhood bullies.
Had Washington been around at the end of World War 2, when the US emerged as the preeminent power of the world, at that time hurtling into a Cold War with a third world economy that had atomic weapons (the Soviet Union), I'm sure that his counsel would still have been to do what was in the best interests of America. At that time, that would entail recognizing the country's changed status among nations and understanding the need to provide leadership to alliances that preserved the freedom and stability for the US. NATO was one of the post-war institutions that did that.
Many argue today that NATO has outlived its usefulness. As indicated above, some disagree with that. They also would say that mutual security arrangements are beneficial to US security and allows this country to act as the "senior partner" in security arrangements with other countries.
It seems to me that the Achilles heel of these arrangements, alluded to in the linked piece, is the failure of nations under the US security umbrella to pay their fair share in manpower, arms, and money. As the article also says, this has allowed western European partner nations to develop social insurance policies that the US doesn't feel it can afford, in part because of other outlays, including those for NATO.
History demonstrates that a United States turned in on itself is less secure than one engaged with the world.
How that might be expressed today is a political issue and I don't advance political opinions here, just historical observations.
But my observation is that addressing how to renew partnerships like NATO in light of cyber-terrorism, terrorism, and the aggression of nations like Russia and China is probably something that should occupy the time and thinking of the next president and the American people.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Italy
Doesn't this look inviting?
venezia pic.twitter.com/DjMezisTp1— ILoveItaly (@I__Love__Italy) March 28, 2016
Easter: Embracing What the World Calls Crazy
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, during Easter worship services today.]
Luke 24:1-12
The message of Easter is one with which we absolutely must be careful. Here’s why: If we aren’t careful about how we hear and respond to the Easter proclamation, the message that God the Father so loved this world that He gave God the Son to die for our sin and rise to give us new, eternal lives, we might do crazy things.
Things like: doing for others without expecting anything in return; forgiving others as God forgives us in Christ; living voluntarily under the will of God and not under our own desires; following Christ and not following our hearts; risking being thought a fool for telling others that their lives can be changed forever if they trust in Christ of Easter--not in themselves, or their 401(k)s, or their looks, or their work ethic, or their supposed goodness. Our personal power, our money, our looks, work ethic, and earthly goodness are all things of this world that either die, fade, or give out. We will all be separated from them either in this life or when we draw our last earthly breaths.
Easter says that the God we meet in Jesus Christ has overcome death, and wants to share His victory with us, here, now.
In the eyes of a world that sees life on this earth as nothing more than an extended effort to make ourselves comfortable before we die, faith in the Jesus of Easter is a crazy thing. The risen Jesus, now enthroned in heaven, isn’t as tangible as a 70-inch HDTV, a well-appointed man cave, or a nice house.
Faith in the risen Jesus doesn’t dismiss any of those things. But it challenges us not to live our lives for the dead and dying stuff of this world. And it isn’t easy to live the life for the risen Christ we can’t see.
This world deems doing so as crazy. Hebrews 11:1, in the New Testament, teaches us: “...faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” For the Christian, faith is trust in a God we’ve never seen, faith in a resurrected Savior we’ve never seen.
Life with God through Christ is a free gift. But it isn’t an easy life! As one wise person has written, “It’s harder to believe than not to.”
But here’s how faith in Christ works: If you refuse to believe, you will never believe. If, on the other hand, you confess to God how hard you find it to believe in Christ, how hard it is to surrender to a Savior you’ve never seen, but that you want to believe, God will use the Word and the Sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion), to build faith within you.
God builds faith in the risen Jesus in the lives of those who are willing to believe.
Are you willing to believe?
Are you willing to trust in what the world counts crazy?
Sometimes our faith is tiny. But if we will keep listening to the words of new life, forgiveness, and call to surrender that comes from Jesus through the Bible, the words of other Christians about Jesus, and the Sacraments, faith will come to us and even sustain us in the darkest times of our lives. “I don’t know how I could have gotten through without Jesus to lean on,” a widow whose joy had returned to her several years after the death of her husband, even though her grief would never completely go away.
Luke’s account of the first Easter begins: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ”
The women went to the tomb without faith. They loved Jesus. They revered Jesus. They missed Him. But for all their devotion to Jesus, all they expected to find on that first Easter Sunday was His battered, wounded corpse. They weren’t expecting their worlds to be turned upside down.
But then, something crazy happened to them!
Luke continues: “While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.”
The women could have thought, “This is crazy. We’d better keep this to ourselves.” At this point in Luke’s account of Easter, they’re just like you and me: They had never seen the risen Jesus. They had never known anyone who had risen from the dead. They had never previously met these two men in dazzling clothes. Their message was crazy talk!
But hearing again Jesus’ words of promise created faith within them.
Why is that? Because the Word of God and the Word of God about the resurrection of Jesus has power. It doesn’t matter if the person speaking it is a classmate, butcher, computer programmer, retiree, housewife, basketball star, preacher, or angel. When the simple truth about Jesus’ death and resurrection is shared, it can create faith in those who hear it. It can create faith in those willing to believe it.
It may require years of hearing and reading the Word about Jesus for a person to have faith, as it did in me. I was thick of head and hard of heart. It took time for the good news about the crucified and risen Jesus to penetrate and give me faith. Others are fortunate in that they hear the Word from their moms and dads as children and always have faith.
But whether in a short time or a long time, it's the Word of God that creates faith in Jesus Christ within us.
Romans 10:17 says: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”
Romans 1:16-17, says that the Gospel about Jesus “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”
There’s nothing you and I can do to convince ourselves that Jesus rose from the dead and will give new and everlasting lives to all who believe in Him. Faith comes by hearing a Word you may not--like the woman on the first Easter--have expected or, like me for years, even wanted to hear. Your ability to hear it and believe it comes from the power of the Holy Spirit-propelled Word about Jesus, the good news.
When people come to faith in Christ or to the daily renewal of their faith that God gives to those who daily repent and entrust their lives to Jesus, they can’t explain it. They know that faith is a gift and are gratified to have it because they know that, as Scripture teaches, only those with faith in Christ live with God.
But like any gift, you can choose to open it up or push it away. Luke writes in our lesson starting at verse 10: “It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”
The apostles should have believed, shouldn’t they?
They should have been open to the gift of faith.
After all, they knew Jesus’ promises. In Luke 9:22, among other places, Jesus had told them: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
But here were the apostles pushing away the gift of faith in the risen Jesus being preached to them.
This was a perilous moment for the apostles. They had to make what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II, called in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “the decision.”
We have to make the same decision every day. Will we receive the gift of new life promised by Easter through surrender to Jesus Christ? Or will we take a pass?
How we decide will determine the quality of our lives in this world and whether we spend eternity in heaven with Christ or in hell. It’s as simple as that.
Fortunately though, you don’t have to work to believe in the risen Jesus. If you and I will not push Him away when He comes to us in His Word--whether through the Bible, in the fellowship of believers, in His call to repent for sin, in His call to receive forgiveness, or in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--we can have life-changing, eternity-changing faith in Jesus Christ.
But, be warned: When we embrace the gift of faith in the risen Jesus, we dare not keep it to ourselves! When the women received the angels’ word and faith that Jesus had risen from death to give second chances and new life to all who believe, they ran back to tell all the other disciples. The the real test of whether our faith in Jesus is real or just a hobby on Easter Sundays comes in just this, whether we share the Word about the risen Jesus. As one writer asks, “Can we say that we really believe in the resurrection of the Lord if we aren't willing to tell others about it?”
Jesus is risen from the dead!
Turn from sin each day and entrust your life to Him.
He will give you life that begins with Him at your side in this dying world and life that lasts forever in the perfect eternal world to come. That’s the good news of Easter!
No matter how crazy it seems, don’t push it away.
Take it into your life every day.
Dare to believe.
Dare to ask for the power to believe that comes from God to those willing to believe in God in the flesh, Jesus Christ.
Tell others.
Then watch your faith grow.
Happy Easter, everyone!
Luke 24:1-12
The message of Easter is one with which we absolutely must be careful. Here’s why: If we aren’t careful about how we hear and respond to the Easter proclamation, the message that God the Father so loved this world that He gave God the Son to die for our sin and rise to give us new, eternal lives, we might do crazy things.
Things like: doing for others without expecting anything in return; forgiving others as God forgives us in Christ; living voluntarily under the will of God and not under our own desires; following Christ and not following our hearts; risking being thought a fool for telling others that their lives can be changed forever if they trust in Christ of Easter--not in themselves, or their 401(k)s, or their looks, or their work ethic, or their supposed goodness. Our personal power, our money, our looks, work ethic, and earthly goodness are all things of this world that either die, fade, or give out. We will all be separated from them either in this life or when we draw our last earthly breaths.
Easter says that the God we meet in Jesus Christ has overcome death, and wants to share His victory with us, here, now.
In the eyes of a world that sees life on this earth as nothing more than an extended effort to make ourselves comfortable before we die, faith in the Jesus of Easter is a crazy thing. The risen Jesus, now enthroned in heaven, isn’t as tangible as a 70-inch HDTV, a well-appointed man cave, or a nice house.
Faith in the risen Jesus doesn’t dismiss any of those things. But it challenges us not to live our lives for the dead and dying stuff of this world. And it isn’t easy to live the life for the risen Christ we can’t see.
This world deems doing so as crazy. Hebrews 11:1, in the New Testament, teaches us: “...faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” For the Christian, faith is trust in a God we’ve never seen, faith in a resurrected Savior we’ve never seen.
Life with God through Christ is a free gift. But it isn’t an easy life! As one wise person has written, “It’s harder to believe than not to.”
But here’s how faith in Christ works: If you refuse to believe, you will never believe. If, on the other hand, you confess to God how hard you find it to believe in Christ, how hard it is to surrender to a Savior you’ve never seen, but that you want to believe, God will use the Word and the Sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion), to build faith within you.
God builds faith in the risen Jesus in the lives of those who are willing to believe.
Are you willing to believe?
Are you willing to trust in what the world counts crazy?
Sometimes our faith is tiny. But if we will keep listening to the words of new life, forgiveness, and call to surrender that comes from Jesus through the Bible, the words of other Christians about Jesus, and the Sacraments, faith will come to us and even sustain us in the darkest times of our lives. “I don’t know how I could have gotten through without Jesus to lean on,” a widow whose joy had returned to her several years after the death of her husband, even though her grief would never completely go away.
Luke’s account of the first Easter begins: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ”
The women went to the tomb without faith. They loved Jesus. They revered Jesus. They missed Him. But for all their devotion to Jesus, all they expected to find on that first Easter Sunday was His battered, wounded corpse. They weren’t expecting their worlds to be turned upside down.
But then, something crazy happened to them!
Luke continues: “While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.”
The women could have thought, “This is crazy. We’d better keep this to ourselves.” At this point in Luke’s account of Easter, they’re just like you and me: They had never seen the risen Jesus. They had never known anyone who had risen from the dead. They had never previously met these two men in dazzling clothes. Their message was crazy talk!
But hearing again Jesus’ words of promise created faith within them.
Why is that? Because the Word of God and the Word of God about the resurrection of Jesus has power. It doesn’t matter if the person speaking it is a classmate, butcher, computer programmer, retiree, housewife, basketball star, preacher, or angel. When the simple truth about Jesus’ death and resurrection is shared, it can create faith in those who hear it. It can create faith in those willing to believe it.
It may require years of hearing and reading the Word about Jesus for a person to have faith, as it did in me. I was thick of head and hard of heart. It took time for the good news about the crucified and risen Jesus to penetrate and give me faith. Others are fortunate in that they hear the Word from their moms and dads as children and always have faith.
But whether in a short time or a long time, it's the Word of God that creates faith in Jesus Christ within us.
Romans 10:17 says: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”
Romans 1:16-17, says that the Gospel about Jesus “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”
There’s nothing you and I can do to convince ourselves that Jesus rose from the dead and will give new and everlasting lives to all who believe in Him. Faith comes by hearing a Word you may not--like the woman on the first Easter--have expected or, like me for years, even wanted to hear. Your ability to hear it and believe it comes from the power of the Holy Spirit-propelled Word about Jesus, the good news.
When people come to faith in Christ or to the daily renewal of their faith that God gives to those who daily repent and entrust their lives to Jesus, they can’t explain it. They know that faith is a gift and are gratified to have it because they know that, as Scripture teaches, only those with faith in Christ live with God.
But like any gift, you can choose to open it up or push it away. Luke writes in our lesson starting at verse 10: “It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”
The apostles should have believed, shouldn’t they?
They should have been open to the gift of faith.
After all, they knew Jesus’ promises. In Luke 9:22, among other places, Jesus had told them: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
But here were the apostles pushing away the gift of faith in the risen Jesus being preached to them.
This was a perilous moment for the apostles. They had to make what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II, called in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “the decision.”
We have to make the same decision every day. Will we receive the gift of new life promised by Easter through surrender to Jesus Christ? Or will we take a pass?
How we decide will determine the quality of our lives in this world and whether we spend eternity in heaven with Christ or in hell. It’s as simple as that.
Fortunately though, you don’t have to work to believe in the risen Jesus. If you and I will not push Him away when He comes to us in His Word--whether through the Bible, in the fellowship of believers, in His call to repent for sin, in His call to receive forgiveness, or in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--we can have life-changing, eternity-changing faith in Jesus Christ.
But, be warned: When we embrace the gift of faith in the risen Jesus, we dare not keep it to ourselves! When the women received the angels’ word and faith that Jesus had risen from death to give second chances and new life to all who believe, they ran back to tell all the other disciples. The the real test of whether our faith in Jesus is real or just a hobby on Easter Sundays comes in just this, whether we share the Word about the risen Jesus. As one writer asks, “Can we say that we really believe in the resurrection of the Lord if we aren't willing to tell others about it?”
Jesus is risen from the dead!
Turn from sin each day and entrust your life to Him.
He will give you life that begins with Him at your side in this dying world and life that lasts forever in the perfect eternal world to come. That’s the good news of Easter!
No matter how crazy it seems, don’t push it away.
Take it into your life every day.
Dare to believe.
Dare to ask for the power to believe that comes from God to those willing to believe in God in the flesh, Jesus Christ.
Tell others.
Then watch your faith grow.
Happy Easter, everyone!
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Easter's Coming!
[This was shared earlier today during the funeral for Phyllis, a disciple from the Living Water Lutheran Church family.]
Job 19:23-27a
Romans 8:31b-39
John 11:21-27
As Phyllis' family, friends, and fellow Christian disciples gather to honor her memory, to grieve together, to laugh together, and to draw strength, hope, and encouragement from the God we know in Jesus Christ, it’s good to remember that today is Holy Saturday...and Easter is coming!
On the first Holy Saturday, you know, Jesus’ lifeless body lay in a tomb. Jesus' first disciples were left with their grieving thoughts.
What would they do now?
How would they cope with the void?
For those first disciples, Saturday was hard and sad.
And no matter how grateful you may be that Phyllis’ battle with an implacable enemy has ended and that her suffering has ended, for you, in many ways, you experience this Saturday much of what the first disciples experienced on that first Holy Saturday. It’s a day that’s hard and sad.
There is a void in the lives of those who called Phyllis mom, grandma, great-grandma, aunt, sister, friend, fellow believer. The love, the infectious laugh, the good story, the unshakeable devotion to family: all of these things are irreplaceable. Phyllis is irreplaceable.
But take heart, though it’s Saturday now, Easter is coming!
In the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel in the Bible’s New Testament, we’re told about the reception Jesus received in Bethany from his friend, Martha.
Martha’s brother Lazarus, also a friend of Jesus, had died. Martha was upset that the One they had come to see as Lord, Jesus, hadn’t been there when Lazarus was suffering. Jesus hadn’t been there at the moment of Lazarus’ death.
Martha was disappointed and angry that Jesus, in Whom she had reposed so much trust, hadn’t been there for Lazarus. “‘Lord,’ Martha said to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”
But then, Martha said something remarkable to Jesus. “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
It’s not clear what Martha believed exactly when she made that statement. What is clear from the rest of her conversation with Jesus is that she had no idea that Jesus was about to raise Lazarus from the dead.
Despite her grief over her brother’s suffering and death, despite her anger and frustration with Jesus that Jesus had not come sooner, and despite not knowing what might happen next in her life, Martha still trusted in Jesus.
And this, when I think about it, was one of Phyllis’ remarkable qualities.
At the end, she didn’t deny the frustration or the pain of her circumstances. (She told me last week that the morphine took "some of the pain away.") Yet she kept going in faith.
Last Saturday when I visited her, I told her, “Phyllis, you have one of the most remarkably positive attitudes I’ve ever encountered.” She simply said, “Well, I always try to have a positive attitude.”
And, she didn’t make the mistake of blaming God for having a disease that exists because we live in a fallen and imperfect world--a Holy Saturday world. She still trusted in the God we meet in Jesus.
That’s why she listened to Luke’s account of Palm Sunday as I read it to her and talked about it with me for a few minutes, as we always talked about Scripture when we met. It’s why she gladly received Holy Communion.
Phyllis knew the truth of what Jesus told Martha later in their conversation at Bethany: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Then, Jesus asked Martha: “Do you believe this?” And Martha, as well as she was able to at that moment, confessed her faith in God the Son: “Yes, Lord...I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Earlier in His ministry, Jesus had told an old teacher of the Jews, Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Martha believed in Jesus. In purely human terms, that must have been pretty hard at that moment. But the Spirit of God stirred her to entrust her life and all of her hope in Jesus.
Today, two thousand years later, we have far more reason to believe in Jesus than Martha did at that moment. That’s because, shortly after Jesus’ conversation with Martha, though He was sinless, Jesus voluntarily took the punishment for sin you and I deserve, by dying on a cross, killing off the power of sin and death over the lives of those who like Martha, and like Phyllis, believe in Jesus.
You can trust a God Who dies for you because He loves you.
But, we have even more reason to believe in Jesus.
Things didn’t end on Good Friday, when Jesus died. They didn’t end on Holy Saturday, when His flesh and bones lay in a tomb. They didn’t even end on Easter Sunday, when God the Father raised Jesus from death.
And today, Jesus, Who raised His friend Lazarus from the dead that day in Bethany, can raise anyone out of the prison of sin and death. Jesus can give eternal life with God that begins here and now as we trust in Jesus to be our God, King, Savior, and Best Friend.
The promise of Easter belongs to all who turn from sin and the ways of this world and turn instead in faith to Jesus Christ.
It’s a promise fulfilled for Phyllis that she will enjoy for all eternity. She is now in the presence of the One in Whom she believed, free from the confinements of age and disease, free from grief, walking and laughing and celebrating at the great heavenly feast with all the saints who have gone before, including the mother she lost when she was just a baby and the husband she adored.
As I was walking out of the door to Phyllis’ hospital room last Saturday, I stopped, turned to her, and said, “I’ll see you soon, Phyllis.”
After I walked into the hallway, I wondered whether I should have said that. I knew that her condition was worsening, maybe I wouldn’t see her soon.
But then I smiled and thought, “If Phyllis is as close to death as her doctors seem to think, I will see her soon, at least in eternal terms, in the twinkling of an eye. I will see her beyond the gates of death when all who have trusted in Christ will begin a new chapter in our lives--an eternal chapter--bathed in the love of God, perfected by His grace and ready to laugh again, to love more, to be more than we can even ask or imagine on this earth.”
Let the thought of Phyllis resurrected bring you comfort today.
Let the example of her faith in Christ spur you to faith in Christ and to ever-deepening faith in Christ so that you too will know the resurrection with God.
Today, it’s Holy Saturday. But in Christ, Easter Sunday has invaded this darkened world.
Let Christ take you captive for the eternal kingdom of God by trusting in Him and so that, like Phyllis, you can be assured of an eternity of Easter Sundays. Amen
Job 19:23-27a
Romans 8:31b-39
John 11:21-27
As Phyllis' family, friends, and fellow Christian disciples gather to honor her memory, to grieve together, to laugh together, and to draw strength, hope, and encouragement from the God we know in Jesus Christ, it’s good to remember that today is Holy Saturday...and Easter is coming!
On the first Holy Saturday, you know, Jesus’ lifeless body lay in a tomb. Jesus' first disciples were left with their grieving thoughts.
What would they do now?
How would they cope with the void?
For those first disciples, Saturday was hard and sad.
And no matter how grateful you may be that Phyllis’ battle with an implacable enemy has ended and that her suffering has ended, for you, in many ways, you experience this Saturday much of what the first disciples experienced on that first Holy Saturday. It’s a day that’s hard and sad.
There is a void in the lives of those who called Phyllis mom, grandma, great-grandma, aunt, sister, friend, fellow believer. The love, the infectious laugh, the good story, the unshakeable devotion to family: all of these things are irreplaceable. Phyllis is irreplaceable.
But take heart, though it’s Saturday now, Easter is coming!
In the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel in the Bible’s New Testament, we’re told about the reception Jesus received in Bethany from his friend, Martha.
Martha’s brother Lazarus, also a friend of Jesus, had died. Martha was upset that the One they had come to see as Lord, Jesus, hadn’t been there when Lazarus was suffering. Jesus hadn’t been there at the moment of Lazarus’ death.
Martha was disappointed and angry that Jesus, in Whom she had reposed so much trust, hadn’t been there for Lazarus. “‘Lord,’ Martha said to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”
But then, Martha said something remarkable to Jesus. “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
It’s not clear what Martha believed exactly when she made that statement. What is clear from the rest of her conversation with Jesus is that she had no idea that Jesus was about to raise Lazarus from the dead.
Despite her grief over her brother’s suffering and death, despite her anger and frustration with Jesus that Jesus had not come sooner, and despite not knowing what might happen next in her life, Martha still trusted in Jesus.
And this, when I think about it, was one of Phyllis’ remarkable qualities.
At the end, she didn’t deny the frustration or the pain of her circumstances. (She told me last week that the morphine took "some of the pain away.") Yet she kept going in faith.
Last Saturday when I visited her, I told her, “Phyllis, you have one of the most remarkably positive attitudes I’ve ever encountered.” She simply said, “Well, I always try to have a positive attitude.”
And, she didn’t make the mistake of blaming God for having a disease that exists because we live in a fallen and imperfect world--a Holy Saturday world. She still trusted in the God we meet in Jesus.
That’s why she listened to Luke’s account of Palm Sunday as I read it to her and talked about it with me for a few minutes, as we always talked about Scripture when we met. It’s why she gladly received Holy Communion.
Phyllis knew the truth of what Jesus told Martha later in their conversation at Bethany: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” Then, Jesus asked Martha: “Do you believe this?” And Martha, as well as she was able to at that moment, confessed her faith in God the Son: “Yes, Lord...I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Earlier in His ministry, Jesus had told an old teacher of the Jews, Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Martha believed in Jesus. In purely human terms, that must have been pretty hard at that moment. But the Spirit of God stirred her to entrust her life and all of her hope in Jesus.
Today, two thousand years later, we have far more reason to believe in Jesus than Martha did at that moment. That’s because, shortly after Jesus’ conversation with Martha, though He was sinless, Jesus voluntarily took the punishment for sin you and I deserve, by dying on a cross, killing off the power of sin and death over the lives of those who like Martha, and like Phyllis, believe in Jesus.
You can trust a God Who dies for you because He loves you.
But, we have even more reason to believe in Jesus.
Things didn’t end on Good Friday, when Jesus died. They didn’t end on Holy Saturday, when His flesh and bones lay in a tomb. They didn’t even end on Easter Sunday, when God the Father raised Jesus from death.
And today, Jesus, Who raised His friend Lazarus from the dead that day in Bethany, can raise anyone out of the prison of sin and death. Jesus can give eternal life with God that begins here and now as we trust in Jesus to be our God, King, Savior, and Best Friend.
The promise of Easter belongs to all who turn from sin and the ways of this world and turn instead in faith to Jesus Christ.
It’s a promise fulfilled for Phyllis that she will enjoy for all eternity. She is now in the presence of the One in Whom she believed, free from the confinements of age and disease, free from grief, walking and laughing and celebrating at the great heavenly feast with all the saints who have gone before, including the mother she lost when she was just a baby and the husband she adored.
As I was walking out of the door to Phyllis’ hospital room last Saturday, I stopped, turned to her, and said, “I’ll see you soon, Phyllis.”
After I walked into the hallway, I wondered whether I should have said that. I knew that her condition was worsening, maybe I wouldn’t see her soon.
But then I smiled and thought, “If Phyllis is as close to death as her doctors seem to think, I will see her soon, at least in eternal terms, in the twinkling of an eye. I will see her beyond the gates of death when all who have trusted in Christ will begin a new chapter in our lives--an eternal chapter--bathed in the love of God, perfected by His grace and ready to laugh again, to love more, to be more than we can even ask or imagine on this earth.”
Let the thought of Phyllis resurrected bring you comfort today.
Let the example of her faith in Christ spur you to faith in Christ and to ever-deepening faith in Christ so that you too will know the resurrection with God.
Today, it’s Holy Saturday. But in Christ, Easter Sunday has invaded this darkened world.
Let Christ take you captive for the eternal kingdom of God by trusting in Him and so that, like Phyllis, you can be assured of an eternity of Easter Sundays. Amen
Holy Saturday
On the first Holy Saturday, Jesus' body lay in the tomb and the disciples grieved as they observed the sabbath.
Meanwhile, in the dominion of absolute evil, the realm of negation and nihilism, there was defeat. The evil one's ploy to take humanity and the universe eternally captive to sin, death, and himself, born of his resentments of God and humanity, had failed.
Christ had triumphed!
Jesus Christ, the sinless One, has borne human sin, taking our death sentence, making it possible for God to offer new life to those who turn from the old world of sin, even as they turn to the new creation that belongs to those who repent and trust in Christ.
Death, futility, and the evil one no longer have dominion over those who cast their sins and cares, their past, present, and future, on Jesus!
But on that first Holy Saturday, no one in this world knew all these things. No one knew that everything had changed.
So, some gloated, believing that they had ridded the world of Jesus. Some grieved. Most were indifferent. Sometimes God is acting and we don't see it.
But watch and trust!
God is in control, with an eternity of blessings He showers on those who trust Christ and His love, who proclaim Him and pray in His name.
When you feel overwhelmed by your sins or griefs, remember that in your soul, it may be Holy Saturday.
But for all who dare surrender to Jesus, Easter is coming! Trust in him and His victory will also be yours!
Meanwhile, in the dominion of absolute evil, the realm of negation and nihilism, there was defeat. The evil one's ploy to take humanity and the universe eternally captive to sin, death, and himself, born of his resentments of God and humanity, had failed.
Christ had triumphed!
Jesus Christ, the sinless One, has borne human sin, taking our death sentence, making it possible for God to offer new life to those who turn from the old world of sin, even as they turn to the new creation that belongs to those who repent and trust in Christ.
Death, futility, and the evil one no longer have dominion over those who cast their sins and cares, their past, present, and future, on Jesus!
But on that first Holy Saturday, no one in this world knew all these things. No one knew that everything had changed.
So, some gloated, believing that they had ridded the world of Jesus. Some grieved. Most were indifferent. Sometimes God is acting and we don't see it.
But watch and trust!
God is in control, with an eternity of blessings He showers on those who trust Christ and His love, who proclaim Him and pray in His name.
When you feel overwhelmed by your sins or griefs, remember that in your soul, it may be Holy Saturday.
But for all who dare surrender to Jesus, Easter is coming! Trust in him and His victory will also be yours!
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Present-Tense Presence
[This was prepared for presentation during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio on Maundy Thursday 2016, March 24. You can listen to this message here.]
Luke 22:7-20
Maundy Thursday commemorates events that happened on the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest. The word Maundy is derived from the Latin word mandatum, from which we get words like mandate and commandment. That’s because in his Gospel, John tells us that on the first Maundy Thursday, Jesus said this to His disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:34-35).
Previously in the Old Testament, of course, God had commanded that we love Him and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, commands that Jesus underscored in what we call the Great Commandment.
But in His new commandment, Jesus tells His disciples that we must love our fellow disciples just as Christ has loved us. Jesus’ command is non-negotiable: No matter how much we Christians may drive each other crazy, no matter how much we may disagree with one another, we are to love one another with the same self-sacrificing passion Jesus has for us. This command is even more demanding and rigorous than the great commandment! Absent constant humble prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit, absent Jesus Christ living in us, we cannot hope to fulfill it.
But it’s hard for we human beings to rely on the God you can’t see. That’s why something else that transpired on the first Maundy Thursday, something not recorded in John’s Gospel, is so important. Unlike John, Luke records how Jesus and the twelve apostles celebrated the Passover together that night.
At the table, Jesus told the twelve how eager He had been to partake of Passover with them. He wanted to have it with them before He suffered, Jesus said. Undoubtedly, these words were jarring and made the twelve uneasy. But Jesus went on to explain that He would not be enjoying a feast of this kind again until He had ushered in the Kingdom of God.
Bringing the Kingdom of God--the reign of God, the freedom of eternal forgiveness and new life--to human beings otherwise lost and shackled to sin and death, was Jesus’ entire mission. It was the whole point of His entering our world. It was why He had come to Jerusalem, where He would die on Good Friday, lie dead in a tomb on Holy Saturday, and rise on Easter Sunday.
It’s why in Luke 9:51, we’re told that “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” (Another translation says that Jesus "set His face" for Jerusalem.)
And it’s why in Luke 13:33, Jesus said, “I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”
Jesus would die and rise to bring His eternal kingdom to those who dare to repent and believe in Him.
Of course, Jesus’ disciples were always lost when He told them that He would be rejected by the priests and elders, be crucified by the Romans, and rise from the dead.
The expectations of pious Jews like Jesus' first disciples were that the Messiah would be a popular leader who brought greatness to Judea, kicked out foreign interlopers, and make sure everyone was prosperous. The disciples were horrified whenever Jesus spoke of unpopularity and being executed. “That’s not what happens with Messiah,” they thought. Peter even once told Jesus, “Never, Lord...This shall never happen to you!” [Matthew 16:22]
And when Jesus said that, after dying, He would be resurrected, it didn’t register with the disciples. Jews who believed in a resurrection thought that there would be a general resurrection of all believers at some point. They didn’t know what to do with the idea that one Man--in this case, Jesus--would rise first as, in a phrase Saint Paul would later use, “the first fruits" of the dead.
In any case, Jesus’ talk on that first Maundy Thursday must have frightened the disciples. The hopes that Jesus had raised through His preaching, teaching, healing, exorcisms, and raising of the dead were going to be dashed? Jesus was going to leave them alone? Had they come this far, the disciples must have wondered, only to be abandoned by Jesus?
It was to allay the fears of those first disciples--and of we present-day disciples who have our own fears--that Jesus did what He did next. Verse 17: “After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, ‘Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’”
The celebration of Passover involved the drinking of four cups of wine. Jesus instituted Holy Communion between the third and fourth cups of His celebration with the disciples. In doing so, Jesus spoke words that were strange to the disciples and, if we allow ourselves to truly listen to them and not treat them like church words that wash over us, can seem strange to us too.
To disciples who worry that God is far away, distant, detached, Jesus says, “You are not alone. I will not leave those who trust in Me orphaned. This is My body. Here’s My blood, poured out for you.”
The God we can’t see comes to us “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine, the God of flesh and blood Who says that whenever His Word, the words of institution meet the bread and the wine among His believing people, He is there!
Now, there are some Christians who believe that when they take Holy Communion, they’re remembering what Jesus has done for them, or remembering Maundy Thursday, like friends reminiscing about days gone by or like historians rummaging through the archives of history for cogent lessons. Remembering is nice. It can even be helpful, even, when it comes to the study of history, essential. But none of this is what Holy Communion is about!
Jesus says, “This is My body...This is the new covenant in My blood.” Holy Communion isn’t about remembering a past event. It’s experiencing the present-tense presence of Jesus as we receive His body and blood with believing hearts.
When we receive the sacrament trustingly, Jesus is here, now, as close as the person sitting next to us, as close as the hearts beating in our chests.
Just this past Saturday, I was able to share Holy Communion with Phyllis at the hospital, just three days before she died. I can assure you that she wasn’t focused on the past when she received the sacrament. She was focused on the Lord Who was with her at that moment and the future heavenly banquet that this feast foreshadows for all who trustingly surrender to Jesus and His Lordship over their lives.
Yes, people say, but didn’t Jesus say that we are to do the sacrament “in remembrance of Him”? He did. But we must understand two things here.
First, Holy Communion isn’t something we do. Without Jesus and His powerful word, bread and wine are still just bread and wine. We don’t do the sacrament; Jesus gives it, He gives Himself, to us! Holy Communion is something that Jesus does; we are its recipients.
Second, the word Jesus uses which we translate as remembrance is, in the original Greek of the New Testament, a form of the word anamnesis. This word tells us that Holy Communion isn’t something for us to remember Jesus by, like a souvenir from Disney World or the lock from a deceased loved one’s hair. Instead, Holy Communion is the means by which Jesus re-members us to Him and re-members us to the Church on earth and in heaven, re-members us to the body of Christ made up of saints below and saints above.
I don’t know about you, but in my everyday life, I get so caught up in everyday life, that I sometimes start to fall apart at the seams. I fragment. I worry. I get upset. Sometimes I get angry. I sin.
When we humbly and unrepentantly come to Jesus as He offers His body and blood to us in Holy Communion, He pulls the fragments of our souls together. He makes us whole. He heals our souls. Feeding us on one holy food, Jesus makes us one with Him, one with our sisters and brothers in Christ, one with our true and best selves.
And in this way, Jesus holds us close and assures us that we are not alone. Holy Communion is the visible means on this earth by which He enacts the truth of God’s promise, given both in Deuteronomy of the Old Testament and Hebrews of the New Testament: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” No matter what happens to us, even on the brink of our deaths, Holy Communion proves that that promise is true, which is why Phyllis received the sacrament so gratefully this past Saturday.
On Sunday, eight Living Water young people will receive the sacrament for the first time. They will tell you that there are three big things that Jesus gives us in Holy Communion: forgiveness, new life, and communion with God’s family, the Church, on earth and in heaven. But all of that happens for one simple reason: In this sacrament, Jesus comes to us. In times of joy and times of sadness, and in all the times of our lives, through Holy Communion, Jesus’ gives us His body and blood to assure us that He is always with those who trust in Him. Always. Amen
Luke 22:7-20
Maundy Thursday commemorates events that happened on the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest. The word Maundy is derived from the Latin word mandatum, from which we get words like mandate and commandment. That’s because in his Gospel, John tells us that on the first Maundy Thursday, Jesus said this to His disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:34-35).
Previously in the Old Testament, of course, God had commanded that we love Him and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, commands that Jesus underscored in what we call the Great Commandment.
But in His new commandment, Jesus tells His disciples that we must love our fellow disciples just as Christ has loved us. Jesus’ command is non-negotiable: No matter how much we Christians may drive each other crazy, no matter how much we may disagree with one another, we are to love one another with the same self-sacrificing passion Jesus has for us. This command is even more demanding and rigorous than the great commandment! Absent constant humble prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit, absent Jesus Christ living in us, we cannot hope to fulfill it.
But it’s hard for we human beings to rely on the God you can’t see. That’s why something else that transpired on the first Maundy Thursday, something not recorded in John’s Gospel, is so important. Unlike John, Luke records how Jesus and the twelve apostles celebrated the Passover together that night.
At the table, Jesus told the twelve how eager He had been to partake of Passover with them. He wanted to have it with them before He suffered, Jesus said. Undoubtedly, these words were jarring and made the twelve uneasy. But Jesus went on to explain that He would not be enjoying a feast of this kind again until He had ushered in the Kingdom of God.
Bringing the Kingdom of God--the reign of God, the freedom of eternal forgiveness and new life--to human beings otherwise lost and shackled to sin and death, was Jesus’ entire mission. It was the whole point of His entering our world. It was why He had come to Jerusalem, where He would die on Good Friday, lie dead in a tomb on Holy Saturday, and rise on Easter Sunday.
It’s why in Luke 9:51, we’re told that “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” (Another translation says that Jesus "set His face" for Jerusalem.)
And it’s why in Luke 13:33, Jesus said, “I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”
Jesus would die and rise to bring His eternal kingdom to those who dare to repent and believe in Him.
Of course, Jesus’ disciples were always lost when He told them that He would be rejected by the priests and elders, be crucified by the Romans, and rise from the dead.
The expectations of pious Jews like Jesus' first disciples were that the Messiah would be a popular leader who brought greatness to Judea, kicked out foreign interlopers, and make sure everyone was prosperous. The disciples were horrified whenever Jesus spoke of unpopularity and being executed. “That’s not what happens with Messiah,” they thought. Peter even once told Jesus, “Never, Lord...This shall never happen to you!” [Matthew 16:22]
And when Jesus said that, after dying, He would be resurrected, it didn’t register with the disciples. Jews who believed in a resurrection thought that there would be a general resurrection of all believers at some point. They didn’t know what to do with the idea that one Man--in this case, Jesus--would rise first as, in a phrase Saint Paul would later use, “the first fruits" of the dead.
In any case, Jesus’ talk on that first Maundy Thursday must have frightened the disciples. The hopes that Jesus had raised through His preaching, teaching, healing, exorcisms, and raising of the dead were going to be dashed? Jesus was going to leave them alone? Had they come this far, the disciples must have wondered, only to be abandoned by Jesus?
It was to allay the fears of those first disciples--and of we present-day disciples who have our own fears--that Jesus did what He did next. Verse 17: “After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, ‘Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’”
The celebration of Passover involved the drinking of four cups of wine. Jesus instituted Holy Communion between the third and fourth cups of His celebration with the disciples. In doing so, Jesus spoke words that were strange to the disciples and, if we allow ourselves to truly listen to them and not treat them like church words that wash over us, can seem strange to us too.
To disciples who worry that God is far away, distant, detached, Jesus says, “You are not alone. I will not leave those who trust in Me orphaned. This is My body. Here’s My blood, poured out for you.”
The God we can’t see comes to us “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine, the God of flesh and blood Who says that whenever His Word, the words of institution meet the bread and the wine among His believing people, He is there!
Now, there are some Christians who believe that when they take Holy Communion, they’re remembering what Jesus has done for them, or remembering Maundy Thursday, like friends reminiscing about days gone by or like historians rummaging through the archives of history for cogent lessons. Remembering is nice. It can even be helpful, even, when it comes to the study of history, essential. But none of this is what Holy Communion is about!
Jesus says, “This is My body...This is the new covenant in My blood.” Holy Communion isn’t about remembering a past event. It’s experiencing the present-tense presence of Jesus as we receive His body and blood with believing hearts.
When we receive the sacrament trustingly, Jesus is here, now, as close as the person sitting next to us, as close as the hearts beating in our chests.
Just this past Saturday, I was able to share Holy Communion with Phyllis at the hospital, just three days before she died. I can assure you that she wasn’t focused on the past when she received the sacrament. She was focused on the Lord Who was with her at that moment and the future heavenly banquet that this feast foreshadows for all who trustingly surrender to Jesus and His Lordship over their lives.
Yes, people say, but didn’t Jesus say that we are to do the sacrament “in remembrance of Him”? He did. But we must understand two things here.
First, Holy Communion isn’t something we do. Without Jesus and His powerful word, bread and wine are still just bread and wine. We don’t do the sacrament; Jesus gives it, He gives Himself, to us! Holy Communion is something that Jesus does; we are its recipients.
Second, the word Jesus uses which we translate as remembrance is, in the original Greek of the New Testament, a form of the word anamnesis. This word tells us that Holy Communion isn’t something for us to remember Jesus by, like a souvenir from Disney World or the lock from a deceased loved one’s hair. Instead, Holy Communion is the means by which Jesus re-members us to Him and re-members us to the Church on earth and in heaven, re-members us to the body of Christ made up of saints below and saints above.
I don’t know about you, but in my everyday life, I get so caught up in everyday life, that I sometimes start to fall apart at the seams. I fragment. I worry. I get upset. Sometimes I get angry. I sin.
When we humbly and unrepentantly come to Jesus as He offers His body and blood to us in Holy Communion, He pulls the fragments of our souls together. He makes us whole. He heals our souls. Feeding us on one holy food, Jesus makes us one with Him, one with our sisters and brothers in Christ, one with our true and best selves.
And in this way, Jesus holds us close and assures us that we are not alone. Holy Communion is the visible means on this earth by which He enacts the truth of God’s promise, given both in Deuteronomy of the Old Testament and Hebrews of the New Testament: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” No matter what happens to us, even on the brink of our deaths, Holy Communion proves that that promise is true, which is why Phyllis received the sacrament so gratefully this past Saturday.
On Sunday, eight Living Water young people will receive the sacrament for the first time. They will tell you that there are three big things that Jesus gives us in Holy Communion: forgiveness, new life, and communion with God’s family, the Church, on earth and in heaven. But all of that happens for one simple reason: In this sacrament, Jesus comes to us. In times of joy and times of sadness, and in all the times of our lives, through Holy Communion, Jesus’ gives us His body and blood to assure us that He is always with those who trust in Him. Always. Amen
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