The One Who Makes the Impossible Inevitable

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Mark 6:45-56
Not many days before I walked into the hospital for a visit, I’d spoken with a parishioner dealing with a number of health and personal issues. In that conversation, I'd asked, “Could I pray with you?” “No,” he answered, “no need for that. I’ve got things worked out.” 

Now, at the hospital, a man I’d never met saw me. “Sir,” he said. “Are you a priest or a pastor or something?” “Yes,” I answered. He told me, “I’ve never been one for church. A few times when I was a kid. But my wife is really sick. They don’t know if she’s going to make it. Could you pray for her?” 

I suggested that we pray right then and there. And we did. 

I don’t know what happened to the non-churchgoing man’s wife. But I do know this: In the space of a few days, I’d witnessed the faith of someone who lived outside the fellowship of the Church and an apparent lack of faith in someone who was in worship every single Sunday.

It’s essential for us to be part of Christ’s Church, of course. As we will be reminded in our upcoming series, I Am a Church Member, being a member of a church isn’t anything like belonging to Costco, nothing like belonging to an investment club or even a service club, nothing like joining a country club. In each of those cases, members speak of what they get out of belonging. But, like our Savior Jesus, you and I are part of Christ’s Church not to be served, but to serve. As a Columbus friend told us over dinner on Friday night, “Church isn’t about what you get out of it, but what you put into it.” 

To use Saint Paul’s imagery, you and I are members of the Church in the same way that our feet and eyes and brains and ears are parts of our bodies. Each person has his and her own indispensable role to play if the Church is to be all that it’s meant to be. 

And we Christians need the Church. The preacher in Hebrews says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord [the day of Jesus’ return to make all things right] is coming nearer.” (Hebrews 10:25, Good News Translation) 

According to Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, one of our Lutheran movement’s basic explanations of Christian faith, the Church exists wherever the gospel--the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus--is rightly proclaimed and the Sacraments--Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--are rightly administered. Where that happens, where Church happens, there is life with God in Christ. 

But as the parishioner who refused to pray on the grounds that he had everything taken care of already shows, not everyone who occupies a place on church membership rolls is a member of Christ’s Church. Not every person who claims to be a Christian is a Christian. As Corrie ten-Boom’s father explained after their pastor refused to help Jews escape Nazi-occupied Netherlands, “Just because the mouse is in the cookie jar doesn’t make him a cookie.”

And truth be told, all of us who do believe in Jesus Christ and seek to live out our membership in Christ’s body with faithfulness struggle to be faithful in the face of life’s challenges. 

We see that in today’s gospel lesson, Mark 6:45-56. In it, we see that the group of disciples we know as apostles, God’s sent ones who would be charged after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven with leading the Church in spreading the gospel, had trouble believing in, trusting in, Jesus. Meanwhile, others found it easy, at least at some level, to believe in Him.

Take a look at our lesson, please. It begins: “Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.” 

Jesus has just fed the 5000, probably, as we talked about last Sunday, upwards of 10,000, from a few fish and scraps of bread. Jesus had accomplished the impossible. But that moment is over and Jesus is now sending the crowds and the disciples away so that He can spend time with God. Listen: If you think that you’re going to accomplish anything of significance in your life--with your family, your work, without God, you would be foolish. 

Jesus was God in the flesh. Yet He knew that if He was going to complete his mission on earth, He needed to go to His Father first. That’s no less true for you and me. “I am the vine; you are the branches,” Jesus tells we members of His Church, individually and corporately. “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Back to our gospel lesson verse 47: “Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost.” 

Long before the apostles thought about Jesus, before they considered crying out for His help, He observed their struggles. So, why didn’t He do something as soon as He saw them struggling? Why doesn’t Jesus just go ahead and fix the bad stuff He sees happening in our lives? 

The complete answers to those questions are way above my pay grade. But I do know this: Jesus goes to those who are open to Him. 

That same Columbus friend told us over dinner on Friday of reading about a Muslim who had been asked by a Christian friend on four different occasions to come to church with him and refused, more sternly with each invitation. But after the fifth invitation was made, the Muslim said, “Yes.” 

What had changed? It turns out that each night after his Christian friend invited him to church, the Muslim man had a vivid dream in which he was pointed to strange words. He’d come to know the words by heart, but had no idea what they meant. The dream seemed to have a connection to the invitation. 

When the Muslim recited the words from the dream to his Christian friend, it turned out to be a passage from the Gospel of John. His friend explained the meaning of the words and soon, the Muslim became a disciple of Jesus. 

Why? 

Because that Muslim man was open to Jesus. Jesus goes to those open to Him. 

Despite witnessing Jesus do what only God had ever done before--feeding a hungry mass of people in the wilderness with what seemed like nothing, as God had done with manna for ancient Israel, the apostles couldn’t imagine that it was Jesus was God or that He was actually walking next to their floundering boat. 

They preferred a superstitious explanation--that this was a glost--to the explanation that made the most sense. Their miracle-working Teacher was God and was offering Himself to them, if only they would be open to Him. 

How many things do we unnecessarily struggle with in life because we can’t imagine that Jesus is walking beside us? 

How many circumstances fill us with fear because we refuse to believe that Jesus means it when He says, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20)? 

How often do we fail to believe the promise of Scripture that, “...all things [All things? Yes, all things; even the bad things. All things that happen in this fallen, imperfect world...] God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) 

As I age, as I struggle with situations in my life, even when I die, if I will keep loving the Savior Who loved me first, I believe that God will bring good things about...even if I personally, in this life, never experience it. Even if my faithful pursuit of Jesus only does good for people I will never meet this side of heaven, like the people who can be touched by the ministry of this congregation if we remain faithful in following Jesus!

Verse 49b: “...They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified [not comforted, not encouraged, not hopeful, but terrified]. Immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down [Just as in Genesis, the storms of primordial chaos died at the touch of God the Holy Spirit].” (Mark 6:49-51) 

Then these incredible words. Read them carefully, please: “They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.” (Mark 6:51-52) 

The apostles were amazed. But, when you think about it, they shouldn’t have been! In the loaves and the fishes they had seen that Jesus is God. Jesus can take control of the chaos in our world, take control of the elements of our lives. Jesus can do the impossible. He tells us, “...nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37, English Standard Version) The apostles should have known this by now. Amazed by Jesus' grace, yes. Amazed by His love for them, His patience with them, of course. But amazed that He could walk on a stormy sea right beside them? Not if they'd been paying attention!

Believers in Jesus are called to lay aside their skepticism, their fears, their limited imaginations and stop being amazed by the fact that Jesus is not just a man, but also God, and start believing in Him. Going where He leads. Doing what He calls us to do. 

The Lord Who conquered sin and death tells us, “Take courage! It is I. [I’m here.] Don’t be afraid.” Once they crossed over the lake and landed at Gennesarat, the apostles were once more shown Who Jesus is: The God of all creation Who can bring healing and help, even when all seems hopeless.

Every day, the risen, living Jesus offers Himself to us. 

When Christ called me to faith, I resisted. I had my own ideas. 

When He called me to pastoral ministry, I resisted. I had my own plans. 

When I interviewed with the call committee of Living Water, I told Ann, “There’s no way they’re going to call me to be their pastor.” 

But when you let Jesus into your life, when you dare to get close to Him each day, He accomplishes the impossible. If he saved a wretch like me, you know that's true!

Whatever storm, challenge, or growing season our Savior Jesus calls us to go through, with Him we will go through it. 

Whatever impossible thing He sets out to do through us, He will do. 

Jesus tells all the disciples in His Church, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20) 

Every single moment, in all things, let Jesus into your life, your decision-making, your church, your nation, your world; that’s when His will is done and His kingdom comes. When we trustingly ask Jesus into anyplace, the impossible becomes inevitable. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Who is This Jesus?

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, yesterday.]

Matthew 16:13-20
This morning’s Gospel lesson is so filled with good stuff that we need to dive into it right now, verse-by-verse. So, please turn to page 687 in the sanctuary Bibles and look at Matthew 16:13-20.

In verse 13, Jesus asks the disciples who people were saying He—the Son of Man—was. In the next verse the disciples give their answer: “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

Apparently, the buzz was that Jesus was the reappearance of one of the prophets.

Elijah and Jeremiah, of course, were Old Testament figures, while John the Baptist, the last of the great prophets, had just died.

In seeing Jesus as a prophet, the people were onto something. A prophet, as the Bible understands it, isn’t primarily someone who foretells the future. Rather, a prophet is one who speaks the true word of God to a world that doesn’t want to hear it, calling people to repent (turn from sin), and trust in God alone.

Like all true prophets, Jesus calls us to live for God alone. Not for our own interests. Not for our own desires. Not for the validity of our own emotions or intellectual analyses. Not for our country or preferred political ideology. But for God alone.

Eventually, Christians would see Jesus as THE prophet, THE priest, and THE king, among other things. But Jesus is much more than is encompassed by any of these titles. That’s why He asks the disciples in verse 15, “But what about you?...Who do you say I am?”

As we said last Sunday, this is the most important question any of us will ever answer. And, at least according to the witness of the Bible and of Jesus Himself, there is really only one right answer.

Jesus is the Word, the very living power of God, made flesh.

He is the only way by which sinful human beings like you and me can be saved.

He is the embodiment of God’s love, given to be the perfect sacrificial lamb for our sin so that all who repent and trust in Him as God’s definitive self-disclosure, as our only hope and Savior and God, will have their sins forgiven and have life with God, beginning in this imperfect world and brought to incredible perfection when we see God face to face in eternity.

These truths, God’s truths, have no expiration dates. You can bank your life, your eternal life on them and on nothing else.

In verse 16, Peter answers Jesus' question to perfection: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

The first thing to be said about Peter’s confession is that, given how Peter wanted Jesus to avoid the cross and be an earthly conqueror of the Romans, given how he denied knowing Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest, and given how hopeless Peter was after Jesus died on a cross, Peter probably had little idea of what he was saying at this moment.

We all know how that goes. Two people say, “I do,” with no idea of what the future holds in store. Husbands and wives agree to start a family without knowing what that decision will bring. Peter didn’t fully understand his own confession. But his answer was authentic and true, more than mere words.

The first title Peter uses for Jesus in his confession is Messiah. This is the English transliteration of the Hebrew word, mashiah. It means anointed one. It was a title given to all of Israel’s kings. The anointing of Israel’s kings was a sign of their selection by God. But the title came to be used of the special king God had promised through His prophets. THE Messiah would come set the world right with God and fully establish God’s justice. The New Testament Greek word for Messiah is Christos, or, as we know it in English, Christ. Peter confesses Jesus as the king of the world and the king of his life. So must we.

The second title Peter uses of Jesus is the Son of the living God. Israel’s kings were referred to as God’s sons. But here, Peter is saying more than he himself realizes.

Turn to page 821 of the sanctuary Bible and look at Colossians 1:15-16, please. The passage tells us what it means to call Jesus, “the Son of God.” (We looked at this passage this past week, Tuesday group.) It says of Jesus: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.”

That’s what it means to call Jesus the Son of the living God.

It would be awhile before Peter’s faith caught up with his confession. But he had it right: Jesus is God.

If we see Jesus as anything less than the one true God and King of the universe, we have no part in Him, whatever words we may say.

Please go back to our Gospel lesson, verse 17: “Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven...’”

Peter’s confession about Jesus was pure miracle. His fledgling faith didn’t come from flesh and blood—not from a collection of human thought or the confluence of human emotions or human experiences. God Himself had revealed the truth about Who Jesus was to Peter.

The same is true for us whenever we confess faith in Jesus.

First Corinthians 12:3 tells us: “...no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

My inborn sinful nature dictates that I trust no one but me, that I look out for me and my interests, and that I not believe in a God Who is greater or more important than myself.

Yet, by God’s power, it’s possible for a self-centered, self-driven, skeptical, untrusting person to trust the God revealed to us in Jesus of Nazareth. Only God can give me (and you) the ability to believe in Christ.

In verse 18, Jesus continues by explaining to Peter the meaning of the new name He had already given to him, Peter, Petros in the Greek of the New Testament. It means rock and never in history before this time had it been given to someone as a name. Jesus then says, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [the gates of hell, the gates of death] will not overcome it.”

Jesus builds His Church on the faith confessed by Peter.

The Church isn’t made up of bricks, mortar, carpeting, or sound systems, but of flesh and blood people who believe in Jesus. Without a faith in Jesus as God and the only Way to eternity with God, the Church doesn’t exist even if people sing hymns, light candles, recite creeds and prayers, play guitars, sing praise song, hold meetings, and listen to preachers.

Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, one of the key confessional documents of Lutheranism, says that the Church exists wherever the Word of God is preached in its purity and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are administered rightly…in other words, wherever people meet Christ in faith.

In verse 19, Jesus says that to this flesh and blood people who believe in Him, He will give “the keys of the Kingdom.”

Filled with the Holy Spirit and taught by God’s Book, the Bible, you and I are given the responsibility to tell others about the will of God in His Law—the Ten Commandments—and the will of God in His promise that all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus will be saved.

We are to declare God’s condemnation for unrepentant sinners and to declare God’s forgiveness to repentant sinners.

The Office of the Keys is a scary responsibility for which none of us would be qualified were it not for the fact that, by grace through faith, Jesus lives in us.

Faith in Christ qualifies us for graces and responsibilities for which we, on our own merit, have no qualifications.

And using the keys of the kingdom can open up an eternity of hope and peace to the world.

Berhanu Ofga’a is a pastor of the Lutheran body, the Mekane Yesus Church, in Ethiopia. Once, during Ethiopia’s long civil war from 1974 to 1991, he was imprisoned. One night during his incarceration, he heard a man weeping and begging, “Does anyone here know Jesus Christ? Does anyone here believe in Jesus Christ?” Because Pastor Ofga’a was imprisoned for his confession of faith in Jesus, he was at first afraid to say anything. But finally he declared that he was a Christian. The voice then asked, “Please, how can I know Jesus?” From his prison cell, Ofga’a helped that man confess his sins and confess his faith in Jesus. And his own faith in Christ was deepened in that experience, sustaining him through a hellish time.

I first learned of Berhanu Ofga’a three years ago. At the time, he was the general secretary of his Lutheran body in Ethiopia. And even today, he and his fellow Lutherans are daily at risk of their lives for their faith in Jesus. Radical Jihadists destroyed dozens of their church buildings. Members were persecuted and subjected to violence. Yet, from 2009 to 2010, the Mekane Yesus Church grew from 5.3-million members to 5.6-million, an increase of nearly 1000 members each day.

There may be many different reasons for the explosive growth of the Lutheran church in Ethiopia. But the biggest reason no doubt is that our fellow Lutherans there are bold and unapologetic in confessing the same faith confessed by Peter in our Gospel lesson: Jesus is the Messiah and God!

Nothing—not prison cells, not hell, not death itself—can prevail against Christ’s Church. Those with faith in Christ are set free, today in this imperfect world and one day when we see God face to face, to live and speak for Jesus and to live lives of purpose that glorify Jesus for all eternity! We may as well get in the habit today, confessing and following Jesus, God and King.

Amen

Octogenarians and Bicycle Helmets and When a Church Isn't a Church

I had a strange dream last night.

In it, my wife and I were the ages we are today. But we were back to taking preaching calls to congregations with pastoral vacancies or where the pastors were on vacation, just like we did when I was in seminary thirty years ago.

We arrived at a church building that looked more like an old-fashioned township hall than a traditional church building. The exterior was covered with simple white clapboard and it was topped by a simple, shingled roof like you'd see on a slab house.

We walked inside to see that the interior was one room, except for a few restrooms tucked away in a corner. The walls and ceiling were untreated, unpainted wood, the beams overheard, exposed framing wood.

There were no pulpit, altar, lectern, nor a single other item that looked "churchy."

That was OK, my wife and I told each other. Over the years, we've worshiped in school gyms, a Lions hall, a movie theater, and a cafeteria. 

The words of Article VII of The Augsburg Confession crossed my mind (yes, even in my dream):

...The church is the assembly of saints [saints are those who believe in Jesus Christ and are covered by His forgiveness] in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments administered rightly. For the true unity of the church it is enough to agree concerning the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions or rites and ceremonies, instituted by [people], should be alike everywhere...

In other words, church buildings don't have to look like church buildings we're used to and worship services don't have to be like the ones we're accustomed to, as long as the Gospel is taught in its purity and the sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) are administered rightly.

I didn't remember all the lines of Article VII in my dream, mind you. I just smiled as I scanned this "unchurchy" place and thought, "Article VII."

But then, we met the people.

The average age was about 85, although it was clear that quite a few of the folks were in the habit of dyeing their hair (even their eyebrows) all sorts of natural, that is, unnatural, colors.

From the beginning, they were a talkative bunch. They talked through the Order for Confession and Forgiveness, through hymns, through the Bible readings, and, in fact, at every single point in the service.

And they weren't just talky, they were disruptive. They were all seated in chairs and none of them seemed to give a second thought to sliding the chairs across the hard floors to get up, creating sonic skidding sounds, in order to talk to a neighbor seated elsewhere.

Suddenly, I found myself preaching on an Old Testament text and was constantly having my own concentration disrupted by the mayhem. I'd be a in the middle of a point and the whole group would get up for restroom and smoke breaks.

My wife and I kept looking at each other in mystification.

It's probably no stretch to say that many, if not most, Christian congregations are composed of functional atheists for whom the Church is basically a social gathering which occasionally does nice things for people. But this group was overtly heedless, almost scornful, of God, Christ, the Bible, worship, and so on.

At one point, they'd settled back in to listen to the sermon and I determined to keep it short because of the short attention span of the congregation. Just then, a man with Grecian Formula brown hair and  mustache, pushed himself from his chair in the back of the sanctuary to station himself behind a person sitting toward the front.

In the meantime, one woman was speaking loudly to another woman, also toward the front. I did something I've never done as a pastor: I gave the loud talker the evil eye. She shut up, but then the Grecian Formula guy started conversing with the guy in front of him. I tried the evil eye on him. He simply looked at me dismissively, contemptuously, and started talking even more loudly than before.

The next thing I knew, the whole group had run (yes, the 85-year-olds ran) to a back room I hadn't noticed before and emerged with bicycle helmets in hand. As I struggled to keep preaching, each hung their helmets on hooks on the bare wooden wall and stood back about five feet. Then, in unison, they started a deafening countdown: "10, 9, 8..." At "Zero!," they all grabbed their helmets and were out of the room.

My wife and I were the only ones left in the little building. "I think we're through here," I told her. We both laughed and walked away, the bicycling octogenarians nowhere to be seen.

Keep in mind, this was just a dream.

But its point was clear: This strange church wasn't a church, not because it didn't look like a church, but because its people ignored the Gospel and presumably disdained the sacraments. The people didn't believe.

How many churches might that describe?

The Church: A Fellowship of Recovering Sinners

Church isn't a place for the perfect, but a fellowship for recovering sinners.

After I posted that on Facebook earlier today, a high school classmate wrote to ask, "Mark do we ever really 'recover' from sinfulness?"

If by "recover," it was meant to "get over," the answer is no. Just as with any addiction, we never fully get over the common human condition of sin this side of the grave. We depend on God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us resist temptation and to enable us do better when we "fall off the... wagon" and any sin, from taking God's Name in vain to engaging in sexual intimacy outside of marriage, from gossip to thievery. 

Just as an alcoholic who has given up drink is still only a recovering alcoholic no matter how many years it's been since their last drink, Christians are nothing more than recovering sinners. 

But, thank God for the process of recovery--what the Biblical theology calls "sanctification"--that happens for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

That's why Christians, mindful that we are sinners saved only by the grace of God given through Jesus Christ, should never look down their noses on unrepentant sinners. Instead, we should befriend them, tell them God's truth in love, pray for them, and ask them, one sinner to another, to "come and see" what it's like to be set free from sin's power, to live today as recovering sinners, and to look to an eternal future when we will live the sinless lives for which God first made us. 


The Church exists as the fellowship within which we hear God's Word and receive the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, confess our sins, receive forgiveness through Christ, and learn together to follow Jesus in our everyday lives. While Christians boldly confess, as Jesus Himself has taught, that Jesus is the only way to a relationship with God, arrogance is inconsistent with being a Christian. As Paul puts it in the New Testament: "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness...", that is, my complete dependence on Jesus Christ.


So, if you're looking for a church home, find one where neither pastor nor people think they're "all that," but who freely acknowledge their imperfections. It's in the fellowship of other "recovering sinners" that you can really experience what it is to be set free from the power of sin.

Church isn't a place for the perfect, but a fellowship for recovering sinners. Want to be a part of that?

[If you live in or near Logan or Hocking County, Ohio, you're invited to "come and see" how Jesus is living in our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church. Sunday School for all ages--and we have a great adult Sunday School class--meets at 9:15AM each Sunday. Worship happens at 10:15AM. If you currently have no church home, we would love to welcome you!]