So Be It Faith (some reflections)

Most mornings, I try to spend quiet time with God, using the format of "stop, look, listen, respond," explained here.

Today, I read Revelation 13, where God spoke to me most clearly in two verses. Here's my journal entry:

Look: “Whoever has ears, let them hear. ‘If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.’ This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.” (Revelation 13:9-10)

This chapter, like much of Revelation, is filled with strange imagery that makes me want to throw my hands up in frustration. I know, of course, that much of the book is taken up with apocalyptic language about the Roman Empire and that it’s not to be taken in the same way as prophetic books of the Bible. (Apocalyptic books of the Bible aren't to be confused with prophetic books of the Bible.)  Revelation shows the ongoing struggle Christians will endure seeking to remain faithful in a fallen and always-falling world.

The verses here are the clearest words in the entire chapter. And their message is absolutely relevant for Christians living in any time.

Christians can expect to be shunned, marginalized, tormented, persecuted, and/or killed no matter the era.

The Christian Gospel with its insistence on God’s ultimate authority, salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, the ethic of love for God and love for neighbor, and the truth of God’s Word will always encounter the enmity of the world’s beasts: our own sin, the sin of the world, the devil. (I’m not suggesting a one-to-one equation between the dragon and the two beasts mentioned in Revelation 13, by the way.)

Listen: Elsewhere in the Bible, Jesus warns Christians of persecution, while reassuring us of His ultimate victory for all who trust in Him, in John 16:33: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

And Peter tells we Christians that if we’re going to get into trouble with the government, for example, we’d better make sure that it’s because we’re being faithful to God, not because we’ve actually committed wrong: “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” (1 Peter 4:15-16)

This verse from Revelation tells Christians (tells me) to adopt the attitude of “so be it.” If Christians are to be taken captive for their faith in Christ, so be it. If any are to be killed for their faith, so be it.

This isn’t to say that Christians facing persecution shouldn’t exercise common sense in protecting themselves or their loved ones.

Nor is faith equal to fatalism.

But the passage is saying that we cannot allow ourselves to:

(1) Become so fearful that we grow silent about our faith or shy about practicing it openly. Peter says elsewhere: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)

(2) Make the foolish assumption that sin and death won’t continue to do their worst in this fallen world. That’s really the point of Jesus’ words in John 6:33.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Matthew 24:12-13: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”

This is a call and command to keep following Jesus, to remain in fellowship with His Church, to continue to love God, love neighbor, and make disciples no matter what the trends, risks, dangers, or conflicting worldviews we encounter in the world around us.

In this world, we are “foreigners and exiles [called and commanded] to abstain from sinful desires [desires for things like acceptance, an isolated life, getting our own ways, ease], which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).

This is hard to remember, but this world is not our final destination. My call as a follower of Jesus is to remember that daily and seek to help as many others to follow Jesus into a life with God as I can.

Respond: God, help me to live for You alone and not for the commendations of the world. Help me to focus on my ultimate destination, not so that I become careless about this world, but so that I can love this world all the more, even in the face of patronizing, condescension, hatred, hostility, indifference, persecution, for my faith. Help me to stand firm with You no matter what. In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

What Is It About the Cross?

About three hours ago, I posted this picture, taken in our church's sanctuary after a meeting had just ended, on Facebook and in the time since, fifty-six people have "liked" it. Why is that?

Well, the image is pretty, I suppose, even in a sanctuary made from a school gym. The prettiness at sunset in a darkened sanctuary is part of what led me to snap the picture.

But the real reason, I think, is the cross.

For many--half the people of the world and growing, making Christianity the fastest growing religion in the world, the cross is the definitive symbol for our beliefs as followers of Jesus Christ.

For others, there is often a visceral, if unacknowledged, understanding of the cross. Or the stirrings of such an understanding.

Jesus, pure, sinless God and man, died on the cross, taking the punishment for sin that every human being deserves.

The cross demonstrates then how hopelessly lost and eternally dead we are unless we repent (turn from sin) and trust in Christ as our God, King, Lord, Savior. 

The cross demonstrates just how consequential our inborn sinfulness and our individual sins really are.

Sin isn't cute. God doesn't wink at it, though at times I wish--even pray--that He would. "The wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23)

In bearing our sin, Jesus experienced just how it alienates us from God. Has there ever been a more poignant prayer than that of Jesus, quoting Psalm 22 and asking the Father imploringly, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me"?

Sin' s power over our lives is only destroyed by what Jesus Christ voluntarily bore there and by our openness to the work of the Holy Spirit working the miracle of repentance and faith within us.

The cross demonstrates not just the depth of our alienation from God, it also demonstrates the height of God's love for us. 

As the apostle Paul put it in the first century:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless,Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

The cross demonstrates that the only way to a life free of sin and of sin's consequence, death, which was bred into the human gene pool the moment that our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin, is to acknowledge our sin and our need of the conqueror of sin, Jesus.

We must own the reality of our sin and to submit to the death of our sinful selves so that, like Jesus, we may rise to new life.

This is what Jesus is talking about when He says that anyone who would be His disciple (His follower, His student) must take up their cross and follow Him. Popular legend has reduced these words of Jesus in Luke 9:23-26 to referring to bearing life's difficulties. "Everyone has their cross to bear," people will say when speaking of their life's challenges.

But that is NOT what Jesus was talking about when He said that to be His disciple, we have to take up crosses and follow Him.

What He WAS saying is that, in order to have a share in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, we must also submit to the crucifixion of our old sinful selves.

We must be crucified through repentance--turning to God in sorrow for our sins and in the certain hope that He Who sent Jesus into the world for us, will forgive our sins and reconstruct us, make us new:

Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good - crucified. (Galatians 5:24, The Message)

The cross is also then the way to life with God.

It's a life we can enjoy in this world, though it's obscured by the reality of sin and death on this planet, including our own sinful and death-tinged ways and impulses, meaning that we must live in daily repentance and renewal until the days we die. And this is a new life we will enjoy fully and perfectly in eternity with all who have endured in trusting in Christ as their only hope.

And so, the cross is a symbol of life and hope for all who don't deserve life or hope, sinners like me. It's a symbol of God's grace--His undeserved favor and love.

God won't force life and hope on anyone. But if we will receive Christ by faith, acknowledging our need of Him and our surrender to Him, He will give us these gifts--and many more--now and in eternity.

Through the cross of Christ, God stands ready to give us what we need more than anything, a relationship with, a connection to Himself, the only giver of life that exists in the universe.

As the apostle Peter says of Jesus: "Salvation [from sin and death] is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven to mankind by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

And so...

• The cross demonstrates how hopeless human life is without God. 
• The cross demonstrates the height of God's love for us, sinners though we are.
• The cross demonstrates that in order to have new life with God, we must submit to the crucifixion of our old selves and all its selfishness and self-centered ambitions. 
• The cross is the way to life with God because when we trust in Jesus, the risen Savior, we have the life-giving promise that God can make us new today and finally, fully, totally new in the life to come.

The cross--the crucifixion of me, my selfishness, my arrogance, my insistence on being right, my insistence on being in control of my life--as the way to life is the most difficult thing to accept about Christianity.

It's also the most counterintuitive from the standpoint of human instinct and human ego.

The way of the cross is not the way to get ahead in the world. The New Testament calls Christianity's teaching about the need for each of us to take up our crosses and follow a crucified Savior, a "scandal" in the eyes of this world. It seems foolish.

It always has seemed foolish to a cynical, dying world. Take a look at this passage from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 1:20-25, written about 50-60 AD:

20 ...Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Twenty-one centuries after He died and rose, Jesus' cross is still a scandal. His way still seems foolish. But it's still the only way to life.

And somehow, deep down, we know it. That's why the cross stills fascinates us.

Here's a song about the cross from the Lutheran acoustic rock duo, Lost and Found. It's called Cling. Enjoy the explanation of the song from member George Baum that comes before the song. Lost and Found, with whom I have come to have some disagreements in recent years, have played an important part in my life as a Christian. They feature a sound they call "speedwood." Their quirky vocals remind some people of the band They Might Be Giants, although Lost and Found was around and had developed their signature stylings long before that band appeared on the musical scene. Lost and Found are currently on a farewell tour. On the Sunday morning after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the congregation I served at that time sang Cling without musical accompaniment. We knew then, as always must remember, that the only hope to be found in the world is in the Savior of the cross. We prayed that God would give us the faith to do that. (This video was recorded during the Lenten season two years ago.)

  

Happy Beginnings

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

Mark 13:24-37
A confession: I’m a sucker for chick flicks. A friend recommended one of them, The Lake House, to me and so, this past week, when I saw that it was going to be on, I set my recorder and watched it the next night.

I don’t want to give it all away if you haven’t seen it. (I loved it, by the way.) But The Lake House revolves around two people, played by Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock who, having realized their love for each other, nonetheless face the impossible obstacle of living in two different time periods, able only to communicate, miraculously, by letters they place in the mailbox of a lake house.

It’s hard for two people to get together under those circumstances. And so, Bullock’s character, tired of the futility and the sense of defeat, tells Reeves’ character that while they had been involved in a beautiful fantasy, they should leave it behind and move on with their separate lives. But Reeves’ character responds with a simple message: “Don’t give up on me.” (I will tell you that there's a happy beginning at the end of the movie, but that's all.)

The plea of Reeves' character, “Don’t give up on me,” is really the message of Jesus to us on this first Sunday in Advent.

“I know that You can’t see Me right now,” Jesus, the groom, is telling us, the Church, His bride. “I know that our only communication is through the printed Words of the Bible, the water of Holy Baptism, the bread and wine of Holy Communion, the fellowship of people as imperfect and as needy as you are. There will be tough days when My love for you will seem to be making impossible promises and giving you seemingly impossible hopes. But it is going to work out. With God all things are possible.”

“We will be together one day,” Jesus is telling us. “There will be a happy beginning beyond the world's endings. Don’t give up on Me.” 

This, in fact, is truly the message of the entire Advent season. Don’t give up on Jesus.

Advent, of course, is just a human creation. But it’s a shrewd one. Think about it: Here we are preparing for the celebration of Christmas, the celebration of the birth of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. You may have noticed, though, that few of our preparations, whether as individuals, families, or nations, includes anything about Jesus.

One reason for that, I think, is that, in our minds, we tend to put Jesus in the past. He lived on this earth in the past. He died in the past. And we Christians believe He also rose in the past.

We seem to live in separate times, the notion of connection between us an impossible, beautiful fantasy. And so, we move on with our lives as though Jesus weren’t even there.

Advent is a gauntlet thrown down before a disbelieving world and an often disbelieving Church and, calling our attention to God’s Word, the Bible, tells us, “The same Jesus Who was born at Christmas, died on Good Friday, and rose on Easter, is coming back and when He does, He will bring a new heaven and a new earth and an end to this world. What good will all your frenzied materialism be then?"

Advent says: “Do not make the mistake of giving up on Jesus. Trust in Him."

We see that message in today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 13:24-37. You’ll find it on page 710 of our sanctuary Bibles.

Now, in this passage, we find Jesus speaking, I think, simultaneously about two different times and events, compressing them into a single narrative.

On the one hand, He’s talking about the invasion of Roman armies and their desecration of the temple in Jerusalem, an event that would happen about forty years after Jesus spoke these words. That event, Jesus asserts, will be the result of God’s chosen people’s failure to reach out with His love and grace to the whole world.

The Temple, the Old Testament teaches, was meant to be a house of prayer and worship for people of all nations, Jews and Gentiles. Empowered by regular encounters with God in the temple, Israel was to be God’s messenger into all the world, teaching people to repent and believe in the God of Israel in order to have new life with God. As God told the people of Israel through the prophet Isaiah: "“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

Instead, Israel largely chose either to ignore or horde God. But faith in God, just like the manna with which God fed His people Israel in the wilderness, will go bad if it’s horded. It must be given away or it will rot, die, or disappear. Whenever Israel forgot God and its mission to the world, it always led to problems. And in His words today, Jesus is saying, it would ultimately lead to its destruction as it did in 70 AD.

Now, Jesus says elsewhere, that He is the temple that cannot be destroyed and today He sends all who believe in Him into the world to make disciples.



But in today's lesson, Jesus also speaks more generally of the end times, when this world will come to an end and He will establish His eternal kingdom.

Verse 24: “But in those days, [Jesus says] following that distress [times of persecution and hardship He has been talking about in earlier verses], the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light;  the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ [Here Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.] At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

The first time Jesus came into our world, He did so on a silent night in an obscure village of which the world would not have heard. God sent His angels to announce the birth only to shepherds, people on the bottom end of the economic and religious food chain. Jesus lived and died and rose again in a backwater country that had spent most of its history under the thumbs of foreign powers.

But when Jesus returns, there will be nothing obscure or silent about it.

The whole world will know at once, “in the twinkling of an eye.” And, He will send His angels out to gather together His elect--those chosen for salvation not by fiat, but because they have believed in Jesus Christ. They are elect because God has saved them by His grace through their faith in Jesus.

Interestingly, that word that we translate as elect is, in the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally written, eklektos. It literally means "called out from." But it's transliterated into the English as eclectic, a word that can mean, diverse.

The elect the angels will gather on the day of Jesus' return from this world will be diverse, eclectic. They will come from "every nation, tribe, people and language," formed by the Holy Spirit into a single family through their faith in Christ.

The elect are the people who refuse to give up on Jesus.

They face tragedy; but they don’t give up.

They face death; but they don’t give up.

They face opposition for their faith but keep believing.

They wrestle with the will of God, but keep holding onto Jesus.

They’re the people who believe that it’s always too soon to give up on Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death.

They trust the promise of Jesus in Matthew 24:12-13: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”



Verse 28: [Jesus goes on] “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

Two messages come to us from Jesus here, I think:

(1) Most obviously, be ready for His return;

(2) And you never can tell when His return may happen because every condition necessary for His return has already happened while Jesus was still on the earth.

It’s such a silly waste to look for “the signs of the times.” The world was already full up on those signs, full up on sin and death even before Jesus went to the cross. It was ready for the end even then.

So, our focus shouldn't be on speculation. It should be on being ready for Jesus to return.

And how we do that is to keep repenting for sin and to keep trusting Jesus, the Way and the truth and the life, to cover our sins with God’s forgiveness and to fill us with life eternal.

We get ready for Jesus’ return by following Him now and into eternity even when the world wants to tie Him down to the ancient past.

That’s why the words with which Jesus closes in today's lesson, found in verses 32 to 37, boils down to one word alone: “Watch.”

The One we try to tie to the past is actually our future and through the eyes of faith, we need to keep focused on Him.

One Bible scholar has observed that, “Modern Christians often think, ‘Since the time [of Jesus’ return] is unknown, it could be hundred, or thousands, or millions of years from now…[But Christ’s words for us this morning should cause us to think]...’since the timing is unknown, it could be today! Maybe this evening, or at midnight, or when dawn breaks.’”

The scholar goes on to ask: “But does anyone actually think that way? Does anyone go through every day, wondering at morning, noon, and night if now is the time that someone long gone might return?"

"Yes," he says. "People who are in love do that.”

Are we in love with Jesus enough to take Him at His word that one day He will return and make all things right?

Because of the love God has shown us in Christ, because of the cross and empty tomb, because the Holy Spirit has given us faith in Christ, we know that we are loved and we know that it’s safe to love Him in return. We're on solid ground in loving Him back. Christ’s love is one that will never let us down.

And so we wait for His return.

We wait with eager anticipation.

We ready ourselves while we wait by attending to His Word, worshiping with His people, receiving His body and blood, sharing His love and His message with others.

This Advent season, may Christ teach us to look forward to a lot more than Christmas day.

May He teach us to live lives spent in active attentiveness to Him.

May we learn to watch for Him and, in the watching, be ready for anything in this life or in the one to come.

When we watch for Jesus and trust in Him to return, to dry our tears and to make things right, we can be assured that beyond all the endings--beyond the end of this world, beyond the ends of our own lives, He will bring us a happy beginning that never ends. Amen