Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 19

What Skipping Worship Does to Your Kids

A really good piece triggered by the comments of a well-known church researcher. The money quote:

Maybe the reason why our children have no love for Christ is due to the fact that we as parents do not show any love or passion for Christ, evidenced by how we prioritize our time both on Sundays and during the week. When television, sports, school, hobbies even family itself are elevated to a place of idolatry and replace the vital Christian responsibilities, then we tell our children that Christ is secondary to all these things. 

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

Father No-Lumps

"When I was drinking hot chocolate today, I thought, 'Man, I wish dad was here. He always gets the lumps out of it.'"

#thingsyour32yearolddaughterwhorememberseverythingsays

"10 Things to Say to a Loved One Who Struggles with Depression"

Here.

A few additional thoughts from my experiences as a pastor...

1. Spending time as an active listener, if the depressed loved one wants to talk, is good and can be healing. Just being heard without judgment is helpful. An active listener is an engaged listener who doesn't give advice or make directive comments unless asked for them.

2. If the depressed loved one is willing to pray with you, it can be a very good thing. Don't use your prayer petitions as a means of convincing the loved one of your preferred course for them, but simply reflect what they have shared with you, asking God for help, comfort, and guidance.

Of course, if the loved one doesn't wish to pray with you, you need to respect that desire. But you can pray for them in private and I think that there's probably nothing more important that you can do for them.

Related: How to Help a Grieving Friend

'Family'

Love this honest prayer in song by TobyMac!

Jesus on Marriage and Divorce

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 10:2-16
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus points us to God’s intention for human beings when it comes to marriage, divorce, sexuality, and family living.

We may want to run from these words of Jesus. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes, to some people in these times, anyone who dares to publicly read Jesus’ words here “is likely to be called cruel, unfeeling, unforgiving, exclusive...'unchristian'...”

But as we dive into Jesus’ words for us today, it’s important to remember Who is speaking them. This is the God Who loved us enough to take on human flesh, Who was, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin.” This is the sinless Savior Who took our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from the dead, to offer the undeserved gift of new and everlasting life to all who willingly repent, daily submitting to the death of their own sins and sinful desires and entrusting their lives to the loving will of the God we know only in Jesus Christ.

Jesus words aren’t those of a closed-minded religious bigot, but of the God Who loves us more than anyone else could!

Jesus says to His followers, including you and me, in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” I find that when Ann, who loves me, criticizes for something I’ve said or done, I’m initially defensive. But, after awhile, I remember how much she loves me and I’m ready to listen and learn from what she has to say. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts...” So, let’s listen to what our Friend, God, and Savior Jesus has to tell us today.

Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16.

In verse 2, a group of Pharisees asks Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

It’s no coincidence that the Pharisees ask this question by the Jordan River out in the Judean wilderness, the same setting in which John the Baptist ran afoul of King Herod not long before.

John, you’ll remember, challenged the legitimacy of Herod’s rule because this Herod, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, had married his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias had divorced Herod Antipas’ brother in order to marry the king. John claimed that Antipas and Herodias had defiled marriage and the royal throne by their adultery. Herodias, you’ll also remember, took particular offense at John the Baptist calling her husband and her out for their unrepentant sin. That’s why she made sure that John was beheaded.

The Pharisees, already anxious to get rid of Jesus, hope to entrap Jesus into offending the royal couple in the dominion of Antipas in the same way John had offended them.

Notice too, the thrust of the Pharisees' question. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

But Jesus isn’t interested in talking about whether it’s lawful for a person to divorce their spouse. In Deuteronomy 24, some 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through Moses that it’s legal for a person to divorce a  spouse. But as the former Pharisee turned Christian preacher and evangelist, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial...’ ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.’”

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how adultery can be a legitimate grounds for divorce.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that when an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse--what has been called “spiritual abandonment”--the Christian may have grounds for divorce.

And no loving Christian would insist that a spouse remain tied to someone who perpetrates violence against them, since clearly an abuser isn’t interested in being married, but in dominating another human being.

But Jesus wants to move beyond the law to talk about the intention of God, the will of God, for human beings when it comes to marriage and divorce.

Jesus responds to the Pharisees by asking them, in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” Alluding to Deuteronomy 24, they reply correctly, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”

The Pharisees were sticklers for Biblical law. They checked all the right boxes. Warmed a pew? Check. Gave my offerings? Check. Did my time in Catechism? Check. Gave to the poor even though I didn’t want to? Check. But they weren’t interested in surrendering to God so much as getting God to do what they wanted Him to do and to validate what wonderful, worthy, hard-working people they were.

This is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”: the idea that I can be a good enough person to earn my way into God’s good graces. But it doesn’t work! At birth, you and I are so polluted by the sin we inherit from our fathers and mothers that, in the words of Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Instead, righteousness comes as a gift only to those who surrender to and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ. Surrender to and trust in Christ is what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Turn to Romans 3:21-22: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law [apart from the demands of the little boxes the Pharisees tried to check off] is revealed...the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...” in Christ.

Back in our gospel lesson, Jesus points to God’s original intention for marriage. Look at what Jesus says, starting at Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart [Moses] wrote you this precept.”

God gave people the option of divorce as a concession to their hard-heartedness. But look at what Jesus says next in Mark 10:6-9. He points back to the book of Genesis: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man [or woman] separate.”

Even though God makes allowances for human sin, Jesus says it’s God’s will that marriage, the union of a male and a female made one flesh by the grace of God, should be inviolate. Just as war should be a last, dreaded option for nations, to be deferred until every peaceful resolution has been tried, so divorce should be a last, dreaded option for husbands and wives who have become one flesh!

After this time of public teaching on marriage and divorce, verses 10-12 find Jesus sitting with His followers in a house. He uses the time-worn method of hyperbole, exaggeration, to underscore His teaching. Jesus says that whenever a husband or a wife divorces a spouse and the ex-spouse remarries, the ex-spouse is made an adulterer. By expressing things in this way, Jesus is telling His disciples how seriously God takes the marriage vows of husbands and wives. Divorce may be unavoidable, even justifiable at times. But it is always the result of human sin and it always spreads the misery of sin around, even to helpless bystanders.

And the most helpless of all bystanders to divorce are children, which leads inevitably to the last verses of our lesson, Mark 10:13-16.

While Jesus sits with His disciples, people bring their children to be touched by Jesus. The disciples, verse 13 says, “rebuked” people for doing this. The disciples were reprimanding parents and grandparents for bringing their children to Jesus for blessing. Jesus says to let the children come to Him. It’s to people who come to Him in childlike trust that God’s kingdom belongs.

At the end of our lesson, in verse 16, we’re told, “And [Jesus] took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.”

When we were kids, we were taught to sing, “Jesus loves the little children.” He does! But I wonder sometimes how much some parents love their children when they press for divorces from their spouses just because they’re finding life together difficult or challenging.

Unless there’s abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment, kids--even grown kids--need their parents to persevere in staying together.

Listen: In twenty-eight years as a pastor, I have seen far more people, whether children or spouses, damaged by divorce than I ever have by marriages in which the husbands and wives have gone through tough times, yet tenaciously prayed, gotten counseling, surrendered each day to Christ, and, in effect, told each other, “No matter how I feel today, by the grace of God given in Christ, I will be with you tomorrow and until death parts us. Period.”

God, I’m convinced, is not calling married people to simply “stay together” while living separate lives. That is NOT what it means for a husband and a wife to become “one flesh.”

But when wives and husbands approach Jesus each day like little children, heeding His commands, trusting in His grace, speaking the truth to one another in love, forgiving each other, praying for one another, and asking God to help them to see the best in each other every day, they will do more than, as some have put it, “divorce-proof” their marriages.

Their marriages will become, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little churches,” built on the rock of Jesus Christ, where the prayers go up and the blessings come down, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is most intimately and wonderfully known. Amen

Write a Caption

My nephew Jameson and I were asked to pose today as the family Mother's Day festivities were winding down. I'm not certain why, although it's said that Jameson resembles me (poor kid). He's better looking.

Jameson suggested that, rather than stand there smiling, we stare in terror at something in the distance. (The distance was actually my sister and brother-in-law's family room.) Jameson affected terror. I, on the other hand, affected comic stupidity, my usual expression.

Do you have an apt caption?

Still Reasons for Hope!

[The funeral for my Uncle Jim happened yesterday. I was honored to be asked by my Aunt Marge, my father's older sister, to preside. This is the sermon I shared then.]

Isaiah 40:27-31
Romans 8:31-39
Psalm 23
John 11:21-27

Aunt Marge, Danny, Jennifer, Cindy, and all your family members: Alongside Uncle Jim, you’ve been through terribly hard times. In just a short while, you’ve suffered sudden multiple losses after long suffering on the parts of people you loved.

There will be, sadly, hard times yet ahead. The loss of loved ones isn’t something people can just “get over.” In a sense, losing Uncle Jim—who, along with Aunt Marge—presided over a “brood” that included eighteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, is something none of you will ever “get over.”

And why should you? When the ties of love are strong, so is the sadness you feel when the familiar voice and the well-known heart are gone.

But, as the Bible says, we who believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, don’t grieve as people without hope. We have hope. Even today there is hope!

There’s hope, first of all, because the moment Uncle Jim left this life, his suffering ended and he entered a new reality. The words of Isaiah, chapter 40, spoken by God to His chosen people, Israel, through the prophet hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, are for you to hold onto today. "Those who wait for the Lord,” God says, “shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Through trust in Jesus, we can know that Uncle Jim, denied his health and the ability to walk in this world, is not only walking again, but is running without weariness. He’s once again alive, living in the presence of God.

But this passage from Isaiah is also a promise to you. Uncle Jim’s long illness and the other adversities and tragedies faced by this family have left you depleted and tired. But God will give you strength! The God Who created the universe and died and rose for us, can give you rest and renewal! “Come to Me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.”

Aunt Marge: When I read the passage from Romans 8 a few moments ago, Ann smiled because I've told her many times that if it isn't read at my own funeral, I'm getting up and reading it myself. I love it so much because it contains another amazing promise, one that underscores this hope that you can have as you move through day to day in the weeks and months to come. Those who trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior, it says, can live knowing that nothing “in all creation…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

God has not forgotten any of you or any of us this morning! That, God says in another place in Isaiah, is impossible: “I will not forget you…I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.” Even now, God is...

• as close as a prayer, 
• as close as His Word in the Bible, 
• as close as a church fellowship in which we can confess our sins, hear the Gospel, and receive Christ’s body and blood* along with others who, like us, need comfort and hope and strength, 
• as close as a friend or a family member willing to listen, to help, and to pray with you.

But we have hope more than just for this life. In the lesson we read from the Gospel of John, Jesus has gone to a town called Bethany, where a friend of his, a man named Lazarus, had died four days earlier. His sisters, Martha and Mary are beside themselves with grief. When Martha first sees Jesus, she gives words to what many people think when a loved one dies. “Lord, if You had been here,” she says, “my brother would not have died.” Martha feels that Jesus had abandoned her.

Jesus doesn’t bother sparring with Martha; God is big enough to take our accusations and our sense of abandonment. After all, if we get upset with God, it only proves our belief in God because you don’t get upset with a God you don’t believe is there. (Jesus Himself would later have the same feelings as Martha had, when, as He was being executed on the cross, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have Your forsaken Me?”) Instead of being defensive, Jesus told Martha plainly, “Your brother will rise again” and “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

Then Jesus asks Martha a question that He asks us again this morning: “Do you believe this?” Martha said that she did. Without any evidence but the credibility and love she saw in Jesus, Martha said that she believed that all who trust in Christ will live again.

Shortly thereafter, Jesus gave a sign that He could be trusted to make good on this promise to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Him: He called Lazarus back to life.

Later still, Jesus gave the ultimate sign that we can place all our hope in this promise: He took our punishment for sin on the cross and then was raised from the dead. In Christ, we have the hope of everlasting life with God…alongside all who have trusted in Him.

Now, there’s one last hope that we have this morning. That’s the hope for this life we derive from a good example, like that given to us in so many ways by Uncle Jim.

It’s one of the indelible memories of my growing-up years. Somehow, Uncle Jim and I found ourselves alone in the living room of Pop’s and Grandma’s house in Bellefontaine. Marge and Jim had recently celebrated a wedding anniversary and out of the blue, Uncle Jim told me: “You know, Mark, a lot of people say bad things about marriage. But it is a wonderful thing, especially when you're married to the right person.”

Those words were as much a tribute to you, Aunt Marge, as they are in remembering them now, to Uncle Jim. I have to tell you that, along with the examples of good marriages I saw in my own Mom and Dad and those of other couples I got to see up close, it gave me hope that I too, could one day have a good and happy marriage, with which I am blessed today. I never forgot what Uncle Jim told me!

And today, in addition to the hope that comes from knowing that God is with you and the hope that comes from knowing that God has promised everlasting life to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, I want to suggest that you also latch onto the hope that belongs to those who have been inspired by a good example.

Uncle Jim was a good man who loved the Lord, loved his wife, and loved his family. May his example help give us all inspiration to live lives at the end of which people can say similar things about us. Amen

*Until illness and the closure of the congregation of which he and my aunt were long-time members, Uncle Jim regularly assisted the pastor in sharing Holy Communion during worship.

Uncle Jim Would Like This

Yesterday, near the beginning of the funeral for my Uncle Jim, I pointed out that the Cincinnati Reds were, at that point, 3-0 in this young season. That drew a laugh. Uncle Jim, like the rest of us in his extended family, was a big Reds fan. I said that I wondered whether, in his new place in eternity, he was putting in a good word for the Reds.

I was being silly, of course, touching on happy memories his family have of Uncle Jim following the Reds. But, he would be very happy with the Reds' start. They're now 4-0!

Phil Expresses His View Without Saying a Word

Apparently, son Philip didn't want to be videographed while eating at Cosi a few days ago.

Feats of Impressive Physical Acumen

It all started when our great-niece turned somersaults on my mother-in-law's living room floor. I asked her, "Can you somersault backwards?" As soon as I said that, somebody asked me, "Can you?" Since I'm the videographer, there's no evidence; you'll just have to take my word for it, that I did.

At that, my brother-in-law asked us all, "Can you stand on your head?" None of us could. But, of course, we asked, "Can you?" 



Though unsuccessful on this attempt, he did, a moment later, stand on his head while braced against a couch.

Not to be outdone, our niece, mother of the first somersaulter and daughter of the head-stander, announced that she could turn cartwheels. You know what happened next.



Yeah, we're intellectuals.

You Go, Sarah!

Snapped this picture of daughter Sarah last night. She was among Dean's List students honored last night at Hocking College, where she's getting her Associate's Degree. She'll be a student at The Ohio State University in the fall.

Pictures from My Dad's 80th Birthday Party

One of my sisters has posted pics on Facebook from our Dad's eightieth birthday party. My brother, Marty, and his wife Trina were unable to be there and several of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren couldn't be there. But my three sisters and I were there, along with our spouses, along with quite a few of the grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and of course, my Mom. Click here to see the pics.

It puts me in mind of a sentimental little ditty I wrote for one of Dad's birthdays--thirty-three years ago, the recording of which featured primitive overdubbing involving the use of two old tape recorders. Some of the lyrics:

This greeting song is written for a very special man
He may not be the wealthiest or the emperor of Japan
Still there's something special, one can plainly see
After all this man has sired a special son like me.

Happy birthday, Dad
I know it ain't bad
Getting older
When you've got me looking over your shoulder...

Well, you get the idea. In my family, it's pretty much, the goofier the better. And I'm still looking over Dad's shoulder.

My Three Kid Sisters

No, that's not the name of a sitcom from the 60s. This really is a picture of my three kid sisters, snapped during a party we had for my father's eightieth birthday yesterday.

You're going to have to click on the image to enlarge.

What's Goin' On?

With that Marvin Gaye title, I give an explanation for my absence from here of late.

At the conclusion of the mission trip in Canandaigua, NY, with Group Work Camps, I got home one week ago.

On Tuesday, my wife and I flew to Florida to spend time with our daughter and her husband. It was a wonderful visit!

Yesterday, our daughter's boss, seeing that she was distraught from having said goodbye to us at breakfast and knowing that we wouldn't take off until 7PM, told our daughter to take the day off. That was a gift!

Among the most special of memories I'll take from this short foray to Florida was late-night ice cream with our daughter. (My wife is an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person.) The best memories and the best experiences always seem to happen in the supposedly mundane and inconsequential encounters we have with those we love. The old saying is absolutely true: Love is spelled T-I-M-E.

Our daughter seems to be doing very well with her new job and appears to have the respect of her bosses. She's a on a track for management, which is exciting. Given her childlike enthusiasm and love of people, that doesn't surprise me.

My wife and I also got some "just the two of us time" and that too, was fantastic. Whenever we get to do that, we remember again how much we love and value one another. That's good for a couple soon to be married thirty-three years to remember!

The only down part of the trip was a group of loud, inebriated fellow passengers on the return flight. Particularly annoying were a man and a woman who spoke so loudly that I'm sure that two-thirds of the passengers heard their every word. They'd met at the airport lounge and gotten pretty loaded even before we boarded. She was married; he wasn't. His subtle spiel included several expressions of regret that the woman was married. She indicated that that didn't really matter to her and toward the end of the flight, they exchanged telephone numbers...and planned to find a bar to which they could retire.

But as smarmy as their dialog was, it was their loudness and that of several of their fellow revelers that was most annoying. About three-quarters of the way through the flight, a man several rows behind me asked if the two "flirts" could keep it down.

They were quieter for a short time. But soon they were as loud as before, he with his booming and increasingly profanity-laced pronouncements and unsuccessful attempts at humor, she with a loud, penetrating cackle.

When the flight ended, we waited for awhile as an elderly man was escorted from the plane by paramedics. From my seat sixteen rows back, I saw the old man kiss the flight attendant in gratitude, his wife close at hand.

During that brief wait, the cackler smacked the shoulder of one reveler and asked, "Did you have a good time?" Several people in the back replied instead: "None of us had a good time. You made it insufferable for the rest of us!" When the boomer tried to explain that he was celebrating a $300,000.00 sale he made earlier in the day, the crowd was unimpressed.

In all honesty, it's the first time I've ever encountered anything like that on a flight. My feeling is that the attendant who might otherwise have cut off the annoying group, was too busy with the special needs of the elderly man up front to note what was going on in aisles fourteen and fifteen.

A highlight of the entire trip, including the flight, was time spent reading Philip Yancey's fantastic new book on prayer. I'm sure that I'll be writing more about this in the future.

My wife, daughter, and I also had the chance to look up and briefly visit with a Lutheran pastor with whom I've corresponded and had phone chats. He's every bit as nice in person as he is from a distance!

So, have you read Yancey's book?

Have you dealt with long distances from your grown children?

Have you ever spent time on a commercial air flight with noisy drunks?

Tell me about those experiences, if you want.

Talking with My Kids

I had a rare evening off last night. Rarer still, my son, 25, had the entire day off. And so, because he had no other plans, we got to hang out together. We did our usual: Chipotle and Half Price Books.

Later in the evening, our daughter, 22, called. She and her husband live in Florida. We must have spoken for forty minutes or so.

The conversations I had with each of the "kids" were different. My son and I discussed how one goes about sharing faith in Christ in a time when people think that they're self-sufficient. "It's funny," he commented, wisely, I think, "lots of people in the middle class West find it hard to believe in a loving, omnipotent God because bad things happen in the world. But people in the Third World, who are subject to so much pain, don't see that as an issue getting in the way of having faith." We agreed that our comforts have given us an overarching sense of entitlement, whereas those with less are free from their dependence on the things of the world and so, are much more able to believe.

My daughter and I talked a bit about her day. She and her husband both had their days off and had a good time. Then, she brought up the recent Alec Baldwin telephone message, in which the actor railed against his eleven year old daughter for not answering his call, calling her, among other things an ass and a pig. Rightly, my daughter was outraged. To personally attack a child, to make her feel small rather than dealing with what Baldwin thought she had done, struck her as terribly wrong.

She went on to talk about a conversation she'd had with a co-worker. "She says that her father is always angry, Dad. Her parents are divorcing because he can't control his temper. She wanted to know what my Dad was like. I told her that my Dad is my best friend. Just like my Mom. I can talk with you guys about anything."

Our son is working at a local Starbucks, getting ready to move to Florida himself. Though he has his own life even as he lives here in the house, I know that the ties between our kids and us will remain strong. They'll change through the years. The telephone calls will become less frequent as the demands of their lives increase. But I hope that my wife and I will always remain people that our kids can to talk to about anything.

Last night was mundane. Nothing particularly amazing happened, I suppose. And yet that's not true either, is it?