The Servant Who Strives for Us

[Below you'll find the text of the message for this morning's worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, along with video of both the traditional and modern worship services.]

Isaiah 49:1-7

Ancient Israel failed. The descendants of Abraham and of Abraham’s grandson Jacob were given a mission by God. “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing,” God had told Abraham. (Genesis 12:2) Through Moses, He told Israel, “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Exodus 9:16) And the psalmist led worshipers in singing of God’s mission for ancient Israel: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us—so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” (Psalm 67:1-2)

Israel was to be a people saved, justified, declared innocent of sin, and thereby freed of the penalty of death, by God’s grace through faith in God and His promises. And Israel was to be a people who shared with all nations the good news of God’s grace for all who repent and believe in Him.

But Israel failed completely in its mission. Instead of putting its faith in the living God, Israel worshiped idols. Ancient Israel trusted in wealth, power, and status. Idolatry led, as it always does, to injustice. The people of Israel failed to love God with their whole hearts and failed to love their neighbors as they loved themselves. God repeatedly sent prophets to call the people to repentance and faith. Israel kept on as if God didn’t exist. So God allowed unrepentant ancient Israel to be conquered by foreign nations. Eventually, ancient Israel ceased to exist.

Despite the heartbreak of Israel’s faithfulness though, God hasn’t given up on saving the world–Jews or Gentiles–from sin, death, and eternal separation from Him. He still stands by the promise He made to the serpent, the devil, back in the garden of Eden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

You remember how Israel got its name. One night, Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, wrestled with God. In the end, God gave Jacob the name, Israel. It means both Strives with God and God strives. The promises of God for the human race settled on Israel, Jacob, a sinner made a saint by grace through faith in God. Like you and me maybe, Jacob was always careening between striving against God and trusting God to strive for him. Jacob’s descendants were also called Israel. Eventually, they quit trusting in God to strive for them or to give them His promises.

Our first lesson for this morning, Isaiah 49:1-7, written about eight centuries before the birth of Jesus, shows us that God took the name of ancient Israel away from the descendants of Abraham. Instead, the true Israel, the One Who strives to bring the forgiveness of sins, the justification of sinners, and eternal life to all nations and peoples, is one man, a single Servant of God. Isaiah’s book has four passages known as Servant Songs, in which God points to this new Israel. The first of these songs comes in Isaiah 42, which begins, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations.” (Isaiah 42:1) Centuries later, God the Father would signal that His Servant had come into the world. At the Jordan River, he would say of Jesus: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:17)

The Servant Jesus speaks to us in today’s lesson from Isaiah: “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.’”

Here, before His birth at Bethlehem, Jesus says that though He is God, He would be born to a woman. God the Father would make Jesus’ words like a sharpened sword, able to pierce all our pretense and pomposity, to cut away the sin that kills and give us life in His name. Jesus goes on to say that the “splendor,” or the power, majesty, and holiness of God is on full display in Himself. That, of course, turned out to be true. “No one has ever seen God,” the apostle John who knew Him would say of Jesus, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God…has made Him known.” (John 1:18)

But it isn’t by the power of His deity that Jesus does His saving work for us. To give us His salvation, Jesus had to bear our sins, suffer rejection, and go through death. He had to experience the same sense of futility and forgottenness we go through in our own lives. Jesus could only save us by immersing Himself in the depths of our sin, forsakenness, and death in order to pull us out of chaos and deliver us into the hands of our loving Father! Last week, feeling overwhelmed by bad news in the midst of good news, looking too much at the world and too little at Jesus, I asked Ann, “Do you think I’ve actually accomplished anything worthwhile in my life?” Have you been there? The truth is that we are all, in our own power and reason, like ancient Israel: failures. Friends, God understands. Jesus says in today’s Servant Song: “...I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all.” This is what Jesus felt on the cross. There He died for us, a Savior hated, despised, and defeated, crying out, “​​My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

But Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father and to us was not in vain! Because of the crucified and risen Jesus, the once-rejected, now vindicated Jesus, sin, death, and failure are the last words over the life of His Servant, or over the lives of those who trust in Him. Not the last words over your lives, friends! That’s why Jesus says to us today, “Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand, and my reward is with my God.” (Isaiah 49:4b) Jesus led the perfect life and offered it for your forgiveness! He died the death we deserve to give us the life with God we don’t deserve. Jesus is the light to all nations Israel never was and, without Him living in us, we never can be. Jesus succeeds where ancient Israel failed. Jesus succeeds where we fail, then hands the eternal benefits of His righteousness over to us as a free gift! This is why the apostle Paul says that God the Father gave Jesus, “the name that is above every name.” (Philippians 2:9)

And so, after the Servant Jesus speaks in today’s first lesson, God the Father tells Jesus: “It is too small a thing [the original Hebrew carries the meaning of “too trifling a thing”] for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. [Jesus, in other words, wasn’t just going to save those in Israel who trusted in Him. The Father says:] I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)

Jesus triumphs where we fail and then graciously offers to share His victory over sin and death with all who turn to Him in repentant faith! God the Father says of Jesus in our lesson: “To him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: ‘Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” (Isaiah 49;7) John the Baptizer was right then when he said of Jesus, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!.” (John 1:29)

Jesus died to set you free from sin and set you free to live in God’s loving embrace. The Servant has finished the work long ago foretold by the prophets. You are free from condemnation for all the ways you (and I) fall short, whether by worshiping ourselves or the things of the world, failing to honor parents or those in authority, murdering or committing adultery by thought, word, or deed, stealing, coveting, lying, or gossiping. 

Jesus, the Servant, has set us free from death, free from the unkind or indifferent condemnation that may come to you from a fallen world. Free of condemnation for both our self-congratulation and our self-reproach. We are free to live in the approval of God available to us only in Christ. Jesus’ words are still true: “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 3:16-18) 

Friends, repent and trust in Jesus the Servant each day and live in the freedom He has won for you, now and eternally. Amen

Where to Turn in the Crisis

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

Luke 12:49-56
During the recent Lutheran Week in Indianapolis, I tried to eat a sandwich made with the kind of crumbly, disintegrating bread that used to give gluten-free a bad name. After lunch, Wayne asked me about the diet I had to keep in light of Celiac Disease and a heart attack I had nine years ago. As we rode down an escalator, I told him, “You know, some days I can’t wait to be with Jesus in eternity, partly because I’ll be able to eat whole wheat bread and run and play baseball again.” 

Some people near us on the escalator giggled when they heard me say that. And it is funny. I chuckled too. But don’t all Christians sometimes fantasize about the things we’ll do in eternity with Jesus once we’re free of the constraints of sin, death, and darkness that pervade this life?

But there’s a danger to our lives as Christians in focusing too much on eternity: It may cause us to ignore what Jesus calls the crisis of living each day in this world, in this life, as followers of Jesus Christ. 

We can get so accustomed to thinking that Jesus is on our sides, taking Him and the free gift of eternal life with God He gives to all who believe in Him, for granted, and thus, feeling free to do, say, and live any way we decide to. 

Listen: Jesus has not set us free from sin and death so that we can ignore His will. 

He has not set us free from sin and death so that we can ignore the needs of our neighbors or the injustice, bigotry, or hatred with which the world treats them. 

Jesus has not set us free from sin and death so that we can view our church membership as a get-out-of-hell pass while ignoring the need our neighbors have for Jesus’ salvation, ignoring that about a quarter or more of our neighbors have zero religious belief.

This means that every day a Christian lives on this earth faces a crisis. I’m using that word as Jesus does in John 12:31, where He says, “Now is the time for judgment on this world,” which is more literally translated from the Greek in which all the New Testament writers originally composed their books: “Now is the crisis [κρίσις] of this world.” 

Here, Jesus is saying that, in this life, in each moment of this life, you and I deal with a decision point, a moment when we must make a judgment. And the judgment we must make is this: 

Will we turn to Jesus or will we turn away from Him?  

Will we turn to the world, to what’s easy, to what’s socially acceptable, to what’s safe, to what’s advantageous to us if heedless of the needs of my neighbor, to go along to get along or will we turn in repentance and faith to Jesus?

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 12:49-56, finds Jesus turning abruptly from answering questions about the end of earth’s days after which all who have trusted in Him will live in His fully perfected kingdom, to the crisis the confronts us each day: the judgment you and I must make as to whether in this moment--at work, in our relationships, at home, in the world--we will turn to Jesus and live or walk away from Jesus and experience death.

Take a look at our lesson, please. Jesus begins: “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” 

These words don’t fit with the world’s usual image of Jesus, the Jesus of the sentimentalists who think Jesus was a wonderful guy, but not someone they have to answer to. 

Fire, an image that Jesus and the early Church used in talking about the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of judgment and of cleansing. 

Jesus, to be sure, has come into the world to bring salvation and peace with God to all who believe in Him. 

But He has also come to singe us in the purifying flames of God’s judgment, to burn away all that’s evil, unwholesome, and unloving, in order to refine us like precious metals, separating us from sin and death. 

To truly trust in Jesus begins with truly understanding, daily, that we are sinners who need to confess our sin, divesting ourselves of our addiction to sin. Then, purged of death and darkness, we can rise to newness of life. 

This is what happens to us in Holy Baptism: first, our old selves are drowned, then our new selves, God’s brand new creatures, rise. 

Because the old self still lurks until the days of our physical deaths and resurrections, the Christian life is composed of returning each day to the Lord of the baptismal font for this same death and resurrection to happen again and again. 

Romans 6:4 reminds us, “We were therefore buried with [Jesus Christ] through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” This new life is what God wants to give to all people through faith in Jesus every single day!

Then Jesus says: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” 

Jesus wants to bring each person who hears His name to the crisis point to which we all need to come in order to receive Him and the life that only He can give to us. 

But before that could happen, Jesus had to undergo the baptism of death on a cross. 

His mission on earth would only be fulfilled when He did this and could say, “It is finished.” 

On the cross, Jesus shares the death that belongs to every human being from the moment we are born: the death of separation from the One Who gives life. It was from this place of separation that Jesus cried from the cross, “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me.” 

But because God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, in the waters of Baptism, we share in Jesus’ death so that the Father too, can raise those who trust themselves and their whole lives to Jesus. It was to accomplish this for you and me that Jesus couldn’t wait--He felt constrained to go to the cross, set His face for Jerusalem--that Jesus went to the cross.

Jesus then says: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

In this life, anyone who dares to follow Jesus, who daily turns to Jesus to seek the death of their old selves and the creation of their new selves, who live in what we Lutherans call “daily repentance and renewal” can expect that even members of our own families will turn against us. 

Or that, at any rate, they won’t understand us. 

Likely, everyone here has taken shots for following Jesus from someone in their family: siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren. Or, they have experienced not being understood. I know that I have. It’s just part of following Jesus.

At this point in our lesson, Jesus addresses the end of this world when He will return to judge the living and the dead in light of how we address the crisis--the judgment points--we face every day. “He said to the crowd: ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “It’s going to rain,” and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, “It’s going to be hot,” and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?'”

Where Jesus lived in the first century AD, if people saw clouds in the west, they knew that rain was coming in from the Mediterranean and if they felt hot winds coming from the Negev to the south, they knew were in for a heatwave. People knew how to read those meteorological signs. 

But here is Jesus, God the Son, standing right in front of these people, His identity as God and Savior repeatedly confirmed by miracles, signs, and wonders, by His words, by His compassion, by His sinlessness, yet they ignore all these signs. 

They don’t see that they need to turn to Jesus now and believe in Him. 

It’s as though they’re holding out for more proof, which will soon come in His death and resurrection, though most of the crowds who thronged to Jesus during His life on earth would never believe in Him even after He rose from the dead. 

It’s as though too, the crowd is waiting for a better offer. “Maybe,” they seem to think, “we can follow Jesus, but from a distance, getting just enough of Him to get the blessings He offers, but not close enough to actually have to give up the old sins we love so much, not close enough to actually hear Him call us to a life of love of God and love of neighbor, of worship and prayer, of witness to others for Jesus. Maybe we can have Jesus without being changed by Him, without being His disciple.” 

Folks, it doesn’t work like that. As you’ve heard me say before (and as I need to be constantly reminded myself): We will either have all of Jesus or we will have none of Jesus at all.

I’m guessing that the hesitation of the crowd surrounding Jesus that day is no different from the hesitation felt by most people in most churches in North America. They don’t perceive the crisis of each moment, the need to turn to Jesus for life and forgiveness right now in every right now of life because life in this world can end in the blink of an eye and then there will be no more opportunity to turn to Jesus and live. 

It’s because of this hesitation in the churches of the US, Canada, and Europe that, 

Today, there are nearly as many Lutherans in Ethiopia as there are in the U.S. There are now more Baptists in Nagaland (an eastern state in India) than there are in [all of] the southern states of the U.S. There [are] more Christians worshipping in China [on this] Sunday than there [are doing so] here in the U.S. or in all of Europe! 

Christians in America have largely lost their sense of urgency about being and making disciples--about turning to Jesus and inviting others, despite the possibility of rejection, to turn to Jesus too. 

We have forgotten the moment to moment crisis that is the permanent state of being in this fallen world.

But Jesus’ call is still urgent, folks. He says: “The time has come...The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” 

There isn’t a better moment to follow Jesus than right now, in this moment in which God allows you to live on this earth. 

There isn’t a better moment to share Jesus with others than right now on this earth. 

Because Jesus saves us by grace through faith in Christ alone, may this always be our prayer: 

Jesus, what do you want me to do or say, who do you want me to listen to, pray for, or serve right now?

And then may we do what He calls us to. 

We don’t have to wait for a perfect time to live in the freedom Jesus gives to His disciples.

In the crisis moments--the decision points--of each day, may we always turn to Jesus. Amen

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

Maundy Thursday: Filled with Meaning and Mystery

[This was shared tonight during Maundy Thursday with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Mark 14:12-26
Maundy Thursday is a day heavy with meaning and mystery.

But on this Maundy Thursday, we consider the most meaningful and mysterious thing about this day. I want to talk with you about the is-ness of this day.

Tonight, you see, we do more than remember Christ, His death, and His resurrection. He will be with us. He will relive the crucifixion and resurrection in us. And He will welcome us to the heavenly banquet He eternally shares with all who believe in Him. The gospel writer Mark tells us about this meaningful and mysterious meal you and I are about to have once again.

First, some background. The Old Testament shows us that the central saving event of Israel’s history was God’s deliverance of His people, Israel, the Hebrews, from their slavery in Egypt.

This event was not just celebrated by the Jews. It was reiterated, re-lived, re-experienced in the Passover festival each year.

In the Passover, Jews don’t just go back to the events the day celebrates, they participate in the first Passover all over again. There is a present-tense is-ness in the Passover.

Above all, as you know, Passover is annually re-lived in the Seder meal.

It was while commemorating the Passover meal with the twelve apostles that Jesus chose to institute the most meaningful and mysterious meal there is, the most meaningful and mysterious thing about Maundy Thursday.

In this meal, which Jesus first shared with the twelve on the night before He would be crucified, four days before God the Father would raise Him from the dead, Jesus anticipates and gives us the means to regularly relive the central saving event not just of Israel’s history, but of world history.

That central event, of course, is Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In this meal, Jesus makes us not spectators of what He does for the sinners of the world.

He doesn’t hand us a souvenir of His death and resurrection.

In Holy Communion, Jesus makes us part of what He has done and is doing.

He gives us the forgiveness of sins He bled to buy for us on the cross.

He gives us the new life that He gains when, as the perfect sinless lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, the Father raises Jesus from the dead.

Receiving Holy Communion for believers is a bit like this: While we’re watching a favorite movie, a character in the film turns to us and invites us to become part of the story, to come up onto the screen and to have a full share in the pains and the joys that they’re experiencing, to partake of their happy ending.

As we trust the words Jesus spoke on Maundy Thursday over the bread and wine, we receive His body and blood and become part of His story.

We go through the cross.

We rise from the tomb.

We reign with Jesus in the heavenlies.

The new life that only Jesus can give is taken into our very bodies.

Our focus tonight then, is on just the last few verses of our gospel lesson, beginning at verse 22: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take it; this is my body.’”

These words would have been as strange to the apostles as they are today for people with no connection to God are apt to find them. “I’m giving myself to you and I’m giving myself for you,” Jesus is saying. “This is my body, sacrificed for you.”

Jesus asks us to take Him, the crucified and risen One, into ourselves, so that we become one with Him.

I can’t explain how this works. The sacrament of Holy Communion is a mystery. I only have Jesus’ word for it that when His words of institution--”This is my body”--meet the bread, the bread becomes not just bread, but also Jesus’ body. The same is true when He says in verse 24: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” The wine is more than just wine; it’s also Christ’s blood.

But why? Why does Jesus want us to take His life into ours?

Let me suggest one of several partial, imperfect, human explanations: The ancient Jewish rabbis in the intertestamental period picked up on the prophecy of Isaiah and Ezekiel that once the Messiah had completed His work in the world, He would invite the faithful to a great banquet.

The rabbis said that the menu would include the leviathan. The leviathan represented the darkness of a life separated from God. This was the very separation into which Jesus entered when He cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1)

Conquered and eaten leviathan represented the final conquest of God over evil. Jesus subtly alludes to these teachings when, after His resurrection, He invites the apostles to enjoy the broiled fish (what my mentor, the New Testament scholar Bruce Schein called “miniature leviathans”) He had prepared for them.

When we receive Jesus’ body and blood then, we not only ingest His life, we also physically receive a share in His conquest of sin and death.

Paul says that when Jesus died on the cross “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus, bearing our sins, when lifted up on the cross, became like the bronze serpent Moses lifted on a pole in the wilderness to bring healing to God’s people (Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21). So, in Holy Communion, Christ, as we trust in Him, graciously gives us a share in His conquest of evil.

With all that’s happening in Holy Communion, who can blame the apostles for being mystified on that first Maundy Thursday? Nobody can fully understand it.

But I have good news for you: We don’t need to fully understand it. We simply have to believe what Christ promises in this sacrament.

“This is my body.” “This is my blood.” Jesus gives us His body and His blood whenever we receive the sacrament. Jesus gives us His whole self when we gather at His table. Just as He gave His whole self on the cross on Good Friday. And it is this same whole self that rose again.

Listen: Every time we receive the sacrament, we live again Christ’s death and resurrection. We live it with Him. It happens to us and in us again. And we become beneficiaries again of what Christ has done for those who believe His words over the bread and wine, of God’s forgiveness and life with God.

Paul writes in Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Similarly, if we trust Jesus in telling us that the bread is His body and the wine is His blood, we have all that the meal brings. Christ lives in us.

So tonight as we prepare to remember Christ’s death and resurrection this weekend, let us once more be re-membered to Christ. Let us relive in our bodies, minds, and souls, the passion and resurrection that Christ has won for all who believe and so, be empowered by God again today and tomorrow, to live, to die, and to rise again with Christ. Amen

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

Never Alone

This is the journal of my quiet time encounter with God in His Word today. I spent time in Psalm 42, two verses of which especially caught my attention.

Look: “I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?...Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” (Psalm 42:9,11)

The psalmist recalls being among the crowds who went to the temple in Jerusalem for festivals, where he would join in the worship of God and offer sacrifices to Him.

But those happy times are, at this point, only memories. The psalmist is suffering oppression, unable to go to Jerusalem to praise God. The psalmist asks God why God has forgotten him.

Whether it’s through the dry spiritual patches that come to every believer or in those times when people are, in whatever ways, making our lives miserable, the honest question of the psalmist in verse 9 comes to the mind of every Christian. We may not be bold enough or honest enough to speak the question. But we all sometimes wonder, “God, why have you forgotten me?”

Jesus Himself asked this question when, at the very hour at which Psalm 22 would have been read in the temple, He cried out to God the Father from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34)

Even when we know intellectually that the God fully revealed in Jesus Christ never abandons us, there are times when we feel abandoned and alone. It would be a lie to not admit that to our heavenly Father. When we honestly admit our "issues" to God, issues like sins, fears, temptations, or the suspicion that God has abandoned us, that the God can help us. Owning our feelings of abandonment with God is as an honest prayer and a permission slip to God to intervene, assuring us that we aren’t alone!

As the psalmist continues to pray, to remember God’s past deeds of goodness to them, and, I assume, to consider God’s Word, he ends up in verse 11, talking not to God, but to himself. (I think of the line from the Bob Dylan song, “You’re gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to.”) The psalmist asks, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”

You know God, the psalmist was telling himself. You know that God always triumphs over the enemies of our soul: sin, death, and darkness. Given God’s track record of faithfulness and love, you know that nothing can separate His people from God. So, why are you so glum? Even if you die, God will not let you go.

We know that God won’t let an earthly death be the last word over the lives of those who trust in Him. God in the flesh, God the Son, Jesus, tells Martha, grieving over the death of her brother Lazarus, “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.” (John 11:25-26)

As he finishes his prayer, the psalmist, having come again into the presence of the living God in whom he believes, reminds himself of a truth that belongs to all who today know and follow the God of Israel disclosed to the whole world in the crucified and risen Jesus: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God”!

Listen: In those times when I feel bleak, dry, or doubtful, I need to come into God’s presence again. Even when I don’t feel it's true, God is real and God is there, even when I’m conscious of walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Even when I feel far from God, His cross, His empty tomb, and His Word, not to mention all of the blessings, grace, and answered prayers I can look back on, show me that He is never far from those who call on Him. Facts are facts. God is never far from me. Never!

Respond: Lord, help me to place all my hope in You alone as I lift up my prayers to You today. Even when I can’t see how You will orchestrate things for my good, the good of my family and friends, the good of Your Church, or the good of Your creation, help me to trust that You have not forgotten us. You haven’t forgotten your promises. And remind me that because Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, You have already successfully accomplished everything needed to create an eternal fellowship with those who believe in Christ. Because of Jesus and my faith in Him, I know, with the psalmist, that I will again praise You, my God and my salvation. Help me to remember and live all of this today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

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

Suffering and the Christian

[This was prepared to be shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday, June1.]

1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
“I can see that this is coming as something of a surprise to you.”

Those were the words spoken to me by a cardiologist four years ago, after he’d told me that I’d had a heart attack that destroyed 40% of my heart.

I was surprised.

Actually I was shocked.

I had none of the so-called risk factors. And I had tried to take reasonably good care of myself over the years. But a heart attack had come anyway.

When I look back on the events of that June four years ago, though--the 3:00 in the morning trip to a hospital ER in excruciating pain, the news that Superman (how I’d always thought of myself health-wise) had, of all things, heart disease--I wonder why I was surprised.

Did I think that I was exempt from the human condition?

Yes, I think that I did.

I think, in fact, that we all entertain that delusion sometimes. We rubberneck Interstate accidents with two thoughts coming to the fore at the same time: “It could have been me.” And, “That’s what happens to other people; not me.”

At one level, we are aware of our vulnerability to suffering and pain and death.

At another, we live in denial of our vulnerability, of our humanity.



But we live in a fallen and imperfect world. We are born with the fatal of condition of inborn sin, inborn alienation from God, inborn separation from the source of life. That must, inevitably, lead to suffering and death for every human being who draws breath on this earth.

Jesus raised His friend Lazarus from the dead, but eventually, Lazarus would die again, because there can be no resurrection to eternal life with God as Jesus won on Easter Sunday until we all cross the the threshold of death as Jesus did on Good Friday. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead as a sign that He (and He alone as God in the flesh) has power over life and death. But Lazarus still had to die again.

In other words, none of us is exempt from suffering.

Now, it’s easy for Christians to accept that truth when it applies to the the non-believing world. After all, non-believers haven’t trusted in the grace and promises of the crucified and risen Jesus. They haven’t taken Jesus up on His offer to be with them always, to give them life and that abundantly, to hear and act on their prayers. But the notion that no one is exempt from suffering is a hard pill for Christians to accept about Christians, especially themselves.

When cartoonist Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown, learned that he had cancer, he was dumbfounded. “How could God have let this happen this to me?” he asked friends, according to a documentary I once watched on PBS. “I taught Sunday School for years.”

His reaction isn’t unique. To a greater or lesser extent, probably every Christian has wondered about why God has allowed their suffering--be it physical, relational, emotional--when they’ve tried so hard to be faithful.

The book of 1 Peter, from which today’s second lesson is drawn, takes on the question of human suffering, particularly the suffering of those who trust in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It does so, in fact, more than any other book in the New Testament: 42 times in the 27 books of the New Testament a word which can be translated as suffering or sufferings appears; 12 of those times occur in the book of 1 Peter!

As we’ve mentioned before, the apostle Peter wrote this letter to be circulated among the churches in first-century Asia Minor, a region that basically encompasses today’s Turkey.

From the outset of the letter, Peter makes clear that he’s going to deal with the question of sufferings--and he always uses the plural of that word--the sufferings of Christians. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we don’t know if the Christians in Asia Minor were undergoing official persecution or simply the shunning of friends. But Peter may have had in mind much more than dealing with the opposition of other people to the Asia Minor Christians‘ faith, explaining perhaps the plural usage.

Even if he didn’t have all human suffering in mind, his words on the subject have application to us all, irrespective of the source of our sufferings.

Please take a look at the opening verses of the lesson, 1 Peter 4:12-14 (page 852 in the sanctuary Bible). Peter writes:

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.

For years, some scholars thought that the phrase “fiery ordeal” referred to the Roman punishment of burning Christians to death. But Peter’s letter was written years before that form of punishment was instituted.

Now, I think it’s clear that it refers to the metaphor of the purifying fire that would come to believers in the times before the Messiah, the Christ, fully established His kingdom. Psalm 66:10 refers to a moment of happiness and victory following a time of testing and pain when it says: “For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.”

“Don’t be surprised!” Peter is telling us, “when suffering and difficulties come to you. As you bear them with Christ at your side, He is using those moments of suffering and challenge to forge your character, to draw Him closer to you.”

Jesus makes clear in the Gospels that God isn’t the author of our suffering. Satan is.

But God can use the suffering of Christians to deepen our fellowship with God in this life and to ready us for life in eternity. 

And, Peter is telling us, Jesus Christ suffers with us.

And the One Who cried out from the cross, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” understands our questions, even when they can’t be answered on this side of eternity.

“Are you mad at God?” I asked a woman who was dying. “I was,” she said. “But I remember that Christ is always with me.”

The Christ Who suffered for you on His Good Friday is also the Christ Who will suffer with you on your Good Fridays, if you will let Him into your life.

That’s what Peter gets to in the latter part of our lesson, starting at 1 Peter 5:6:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. [Even if this life is filled with the suffering which may come to human beings at any time in this world, we have the hope of resurrection life with Christ, where sufferings will be done and joy will be complete.] Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

Listen: Following Jesus is not an insurance policy against the realities of this life. “In this world,” Jesus says to those who follow Him, “you will have trouble...” If that’s a promise we’d rather not have from Jesus, remember that there are other promises that go with that one.

One of those is referred to by Peter here when he says: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

The God made known to the world cares for you. Among all the little gods and godlets, the idols that have sprung from human imagination, in both ancient and modern times, none cared for human beings. The Greek and Roman idols from which Asia Minor Christians had been freed by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, might, in the mythology about them, manipulate or use humans or fall in love with them or abuse them. But they didn’t care for human beings.

God though, the God Who made you in His image, does care for you, even when you sin. Romans 5:8 says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Give your sins, along with your cares and your sufferings to Jesus. He will bathe you in the grace and forgiveness of God. He will stand with you. He will stand for you in the halls of heaven as you pray. 

In my thirty years as a pastor, it's been my observation that suffering can do one of two big things to people.

For those with shallow faith, the kind of faith that sees Jesus as a rabbit's foot, suffering alienates them from God and embitters them.

For others though, suffering acquaints them with their weakness...and with God's strength.

In Saint Matthew in Logan, where I last served, was a young woman named Sarah. She learned when she was thirteen that she had leukemia. She fought valiantly through seven years, two bone marrow transplants, and five relapses. Once, when she was in the ICU, observing how she held onto Christ, not as a good luck charm, but as her Lord, I asked if she would preach the following Easter Sunday. Later, she joked that since, at the time, she'd been under the influence of pain-killers, she'd said yes to my request. But it was a powerful moment for us all when Sarah did preach the following Easter and reminded us that our hope is in Christ alone.

You may remember that once, the apostle Paul was suffering from what he called "a thorn in the flesh." We have no idea what it was. But Paul reported that he asked God three different times to take it away. God said, "No. My grace is sufficient. I'm all you need." And God explained to Paul that His power is perfected in our weakness.

Why was Sarah's witness for Christ so powerful? Why are those who suffer and die with Christ by their sides always a more powerful presence in our lives than those who seem to have the world by the string and no need of God?

For one simple reason: It's only in those courageous enough to acknowledge their weakness and need and defeat in the face of life that the full power and grace and life of God can be seen!

It's only in those who understand their own vulnerability and humanity and mortality that the crucified and risen Jesus can be fully manifest and exercise His gracious Lordship over a life transformed by His love. (I hope someday to be such a person of faith!)

Suffering in this life shouldn’t surprise us. But, as we humble ourselves under the Lordship of Christ, we will be surprised by how He can carry us even through the valleys where death shadows us.

Paul, knowing that he would die for his faith in Christ after decades of sufferings and of fighting and wrestling with himself in order to stay faithful to the Lord Who had given forgiveness, life, and eternity to him as free gifts through Christ (the greatest struggles Christians face will be with themselves), wrote this to a young pastor named Timothy back in the first century: “...the time for my departure [my death] is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

Peter's challenge us today is this: To own our weakness and so, let the power of Christ sustain us in this life and prepare us for the one to come. Amen