Our Call, Our Privilege, Our Life ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 1)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

1 Corinthians 12:12-28

She was the wealthiest person in the small community where I served as pastor. She was also on the rolls of our church, although I’d been there several months already and hadn’t met her: She was in and out of town a lot. 

Then, one day, she met Ann at a local social gathering. She told Ann that she’d like to meet me and asked if I’d be available that afternoon. It turned out that I would be and, at the appointed time, she showed up. 

She quickly told me that she was an artist (an assertion that I came to doubt that...a lot), that she really couldn’t be bothered with the Bible, that she had a bevy of former husbands, each succeeding one more wealthy than the last, and that she intended to live her life as she wished whether God liked it or not. And, she made it clear, she wasn’t sure about the whole God thing anyway.

The purpose of her visit was plain enough. She was there to get a fix on what I was like, whether this worm in a clerical collar who sat before her was going to “play ball” with her view of the church as her own private country club, whether I was willing to compromise on Biblical truth in order to ensure that she wrote big checks for the general fund. Our conversation was pleasant enough. But I’m fairly certain that I disappointed her. Now, I’m not a perfect pastor or a perfect Christian or a perfect person, but one thing was absolutely clear to me: This woman had no idea what it meant to be a member of Christ’s Church, the body of Christ.

Over the next several weeks, with Thom Rainer’s book, I Am a Church Member, as a starting point, we’ll be considering what God, in His Word, the Bible, tells us about what it means to be a church member. I need to underscore that. While we can value Rainer’s book, it’s God’s Word that we most value. The Bible is, as we Lutherans say, the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice. 

And, in some instances, we Lutherans have different views of what God’s Word teaches than Rainer. But we will surface those issues in coming weeks.

So, where to start in talking about being a Church member? 

The first thing to be said is that while we who make up the Church may organize ourselves in ways that can look like other organizations in the world (we may even use Robert's Rules of Order), the Church is from God, it’s God’s idea and God’s creation. The Church was instituted by Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and the members who make up the Church are the only creatures or things that will survive the end of this dying old creation. 

The Church is built not on human will, human power, or human wisdom. The Church is built on the confession that Peter made when Jesus asked His apostles Who they said that He was. Peter confessed that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, God-come-to-earth. Jesus commended Peter’s confession and told him that on the rock of this confession of Jesus’ Lordship, “...I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18) 

The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional statements of Lutheran Christians, picks up on Jesus’ words to say: “The Church is the congregation of saints [that is, believers in Jesus] in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] are correctly administered...It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere…” (The Augsburg Confession, Article VII). 

The Church is made up of people who receive the gospel Word about Jesus and the Sacraments with faith.

But faith is more than intellectual assent. 

To receive the Word of new and everlasting life from the crucified and risen Jesus with faith is to live with Him, however imperfectly, however often we may need to repent and be made new. (For me, this happens at least twenty times a day!) 

Faith means more than to say, “I believe that Jesus died and rose and I occupy a spot on the membership rolls.” 

That’s the second thing to be said about the Church. It’s composed of disciples, people who daily follow Jesus and seek to honor Him.

So, what are disciples? I'm glad that you asked that question! 

Disciples are people saved by grace through faith in Christ. Their life with God in Christ is a free gift. Even their faith is a free gift. These gifts come to us when we receive the Word about Jesus and when, in the words of The Small Catechism, we “hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it” (The Small Catechism: The Third Commandment). 

Disciples are those who turn to Jesus as the only One Who can make them right with God, right with themselves, the only One Who can give them forgiveness and life eternity; like Peter, they say to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) 

Disciples are those who, like the man who came to seek help for his child told Jesus after Jesus had told him to believe, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) Anyone who says they're a disciple and that they never wrestle with doubts or challenges to their belief is a liar.

Disciples are those who have heard Jesus’ call, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 16:24). Discipleship is about dying to our old selves so that our new selves, our God-given selves, can rise to live with God now and for all eternity.

Disciples are those so grateful for God’s amazing grace saving them from death and hell through faith in Jesus that they seek to live that lifestyle we talked about last Sunday: they follow Jesus, go to the world into which He sends them, and they “fish” for people, telling others the good news--the gospel--of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

True church members then are disciples of Jesus. I seriously doubt whether people who don’t participate in a local church or who, like the woman who came to see me in my office that day long ago, really are church members. 

The Bible teaches that you and I need the church and not just when we agree with every decision made by the congregation. 

To be a Christian is to be part of Christ’s community of faith, the Church. Why is that so? 

One reason is that we need to be in fellowship with people who rub us the wrong way. We can get off on our own hobby horses and end up far from God if we aren’t part of a Christian congregation where there are people to set us straight. “As iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “so one person sharpens another.” 

Another reason is that the Church is the only fellowship in the world built around the Word of God. The preacher in Hebrews told the Church: “...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Nobody conveys the necessity of fellowship with the Church more graphically than the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12-28. These verses undergird Rainer’s first chapter. Church members realize that the Church isn’t about them, their preferences, their fears, their desires; it’s about Jesus and about our neighbors and our fellow members. 

The Church is about: 

• reaching up to God in worship and praise every day,
• reaching in to love, support, and provide accountability to our fellow members, and
• reaching out with the good news of Jesus to a dying world

Church membership then isn’t a spectator sport. Church membership is about giving of ourselves abundantly and serving in Jesus’ name without hesitation.

We don’t have time to look at 1 Corinthians 12:12-28 in depth this morning. Please read it before our Tuesday learning group, which will happen over at Christ the King at 6:30. But I want to hold up what I believe Rainer rightly points to as the four elements of being functional members of Christ’s Church given to us by Paul. 

First: “Membership means we are all necessary parts of the whole.” In describing the Church as Christ’s body, Paul drew an analogy between our physical bodies and the parts that make them up. Each part is essential for the functioning of the whole body. We need our hearts, brains, lungs, and other parts to function properly. As Bishop John and others pointed out last week in Denver, when any member of the church decides to sink down to spectator mode, we are all hurt by it; it’s like trying to function without eyes or ears, fingers or toes. 

Second: “Membership means we are different but we still work together.” Rainer cites 1 Corinthians 12:26: “...if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice.” 

Third: “Membership means that everything we say and do is based on a Biblical foundation of love.” I love what Rainer says here, “We are not to love fellow church members just because they are lovable. We are to love the unlovable as well.” I would add this. Jesus says that we are to love others as He has loved us. To see how He loves us, all we have to do is look at the cross. When I realize that Jesus went to the cross for me despite my sins, it makes it easier for me to love others. Besides, Jesus say, when we do love one another, we make the gospel real to each other and to the world around us. “By this,” Jesus tells us,  “everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) 

Fourth: “Church membership is functioning membership.” Rainer observes, “The concept of an inactive church member is an oxymoron.” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:28: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Folks, according to God’s Word, the Church is indispensable for the salvation of the world. 

Without the Church, billions of people will be separated from God in hell for eternity. 

According to that same Word, the Church is indispensable for our own salvation and lives. Without the Church, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves would certainly take us far away from God. 

The bottom line is this: In the Church, we need each other. 

And unless a congregation has fallen into unrepentant sin or false teaching about God, heresy, our call as church members is clear: 

We’re each to be functioning church members, grateful for the grace that has saved us, devoted to the Lord and open to His Word, devoted to each other, and excited to prompt, encourage, and challenge one another every time we gather to go into the world and make disciples for Jesus Christ. 

That’s our call. 

That's our privilege. 

And that's our life. Amen

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

What Does It Mean to Be "Churchy"?

Yesterday, I posted a link to an article called The Church is Called to Be Church, So Deal with It and then added some of my own thoughts that were triggered by it.

But, what I meant by saying the Church should be "churchy" and what I think the article meant by that term may not be what people--church people and non-church people--may think when they hear that term.

What does it mean to be churchy?

Being "churchy" has nothing to do with worship style. Through the years as a pastor, I have happily presided over worship services that were traditional and contemporary. One isn't "churchy" while the other isn't.

I've known a number of mainline churches, for example, churches from the the traditional powerhouse denominations--Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Lutheran, among others--that were slavish in observing liturgical traditions. Not a Kyrie nor a Hallelujah, not a bow nor a litany out of place. The creeds were recited flawlessly.

But the preachers haven't necessarily accepted the authority of Scripture over the life, faith, and practice of the Church.

In these liturgically-correct churches, no one is exhorted to a sense of holy guilt that people might really repent and receive the grace God gives in Christ.

No one is told to take seriously that Jesus is the way, truth, and the life and that life with God is only given to those who believe in Christ as God and Savior.

These churches are tradition rich, but God is hardly allowed in the building.

Christ isn't King in these churches. Tolerance--the sort of tolerance that is open to everything but suggestions that the Lordship of Jesus be taken seriously--is king.

These groups of people are churches in name only.

And virtually every church and many church bodies in the world are focal points of spiritual warfare testing whether they will be churches or social clubs, churches or political action committees, Christian fellowships in which people are invited to follow Jesus through the narrow way or "hail-fellow-well-met" "big tents" in which the only sin is being so impolite as to speak God's truth in love. (See Acts 4:12 and Ephesians 4:15.)

The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic statements of faith of Lutheran Christians, contains a great definition of the Church:

...The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered...

[for] the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike. As Paul says: One faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, etc. Ephesians 4:5-6. 

So, to be "churchy" then, to be the Church is not about being traditional or contemporary. Differing worship styles are nothing more than different languages of love for God that the faithful and their guests may use when they gather to praise God, hear His Word, witness and participate in the Baptist of new children of God, and receive Christ's body and blood.

And, in truth, people who object to the church being too churchy, whether they're visitors on Sunday mornings or churches and pastors striving to be "relevant" to an often unbelieving world, accuse both traditional and contemporary churches that really seek to be faithful to Christ of being "churchy."

The article that triggered this flood of posting over the past two days contained these final words of encouragement to churches trying to hide the light of Christ under a basket of "relevant" concessions and compromises that risk leaving people as lost and damned after they come to "worship" as they are before they darken the doors of such "churches":

Church, do not hide your scriptures, your sacraments, your worship, your preaching, your service, your call to repentance, you’re lament, your urgency, or your joy in Jesus.

“But what if non-Christians don’t like us?” I hear.  If someone doesn’t like us, then that’s no reason to change who you are.  Now, if you’re a jerk, then, by all means, stop being a jerk.  But, don’t stop being the church.  Those who don’t like us must not dictate who we are.  That’s like allowing a blind man to lead a seeing man through the gauntlet.

If the church really can see, then she must lead the way.  She is to dictate the culture, not the reverse.  She is to tell media what’s cool, not the opposite.  The church is to set the trends, refusing to be a flea on the back of a dog, who merely sucks life from another organism.

Have you endured the cruelty of this world?  Have you seen evil face to face?  Are you aware of how dark life can get?  Have you held a man in his brokenness?  Wiped the flood of tears from a tormented woman?  Looked into the hopeless eyes of a child?  Stop messing around and get to Jesus as fast as possible.  Jesus is our only hope.  Jesus is the cure, the feast, the joy, the solution, the meaning, the purpose, the hope, the life, and the way.

To display Jesus is to be the church.    

So stand firm.  Be churchy.  Be Jesusy.  Be the light of the world.

Jesus says: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven" (Matthew 10:32-33).

When we acknowledge Jesus, Christians are being "churchy," faithful, God's guide lights in a world darkened by sin, darkness, selfishness, and need.

Some will definitely not like our churchy faith in Christ...after all, the world killed our Savior because they didn't like Him.

So what? Jesus rose from the dead and gives life to all who will endure with Him.

Christ's approval, given to all who trust in Him, needs to trump the world's disapproval.

Many in eternity, there with God because they hear and believe the message of new and everlasting life for all who repent of sin and believe in Jesus Christ from us, will thank us for remaining faithful to Christ; they'll be filled with exuberant, eternal joy because we were churchy. And so will we. 

God help me. God help all of us in Christ's Church. God help all Christ calls the Church to reach others in His Name to be faithful in our churchiness.

 

Do Lutherans Celebrate the Mass? Yes! (Part 16, The Augsburg Confession)

We’ve been looking at what it means to be Lutheran Christians by considering the Biblical underpinnings for one of the Lutheran movement’s basic confessional documents, The Augsburg Confession. Since all Lutheran bodies claim to accept the Confession’s understanding of Christian faith, it’s a good place to go to for guidance. Today, we come to Article 24 of the Confession, titled The Mass.

For some of you, hearing a Lutheran worship service called the Mass may seem strange. But that’s what we celebrate together when we receive Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion. The word mass comes from a Latin word for dismissal which appeared at the end of an ancient Roman Catholic liturgy for Holy Communion. “Ite missa est,” the presiding minister would say: “Go, it is the dismissal.”

We often have something similar in our own Lutheran Communion liturgy when we sing a musical setting of the words of Simeon after he had seen the eight-day-old Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem. We call it the Nunc Dimittis, another Latin phrase that means, “Now dismiss,” as in: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace...”

In the Mass, God gathers us together to literally taste and see the goodness of the Lord in Holy Communion, as well as to hear His Word receptively, allowing the gift of faith to take root and grow within us, then God sends us into the world to make disciples. Fortified by Christ’s body and blood and the forgiveness He brings to us through Holy Communion, God dismisses us to tell our neighbors that they too can have eternal life through repentance and belief in Jesus Christ.

So, yes, we Lutherans celebrate the Mass. But someone else might ask, “Didn’t we already talk about Holy Communion in this series?”

Yes, we did, back on March 3, when we looked Article 10, The Lord’s Supper. But The Augsburg Confession is divided into two sections. The first twenty-one articles deal with subjects that Philipp Melanchthon, the colleague and friend of Martin Luther who wrote the Confession, felt for certain that none of the Roman Catholic theologians he was to dialog and debate with at Augsburg, Germany in 1530, could possibly disagree with. (That turned out not to be true.)

The last seven articles dealt with subjects over which Melanchthon expected to receive more pushback. So, in Article 24, which you can find starting on page 25 in the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon deals with Lutheran understandings of the Mass he knew would be controversial.

They still are. But like Martin Luther, we insist that unless we can be shown by Scripture and plain reason based on Scripture where we have erred, we must stand with Christ and with His Word as we understand them.

Article 24 is long. So, I want to hone in on four main points it makes.

The first is this: Anyone who receives the Sacrament should do so with the deepest reverence, love, awe, respect, and fear of God.

Starting in the second sentence of the article, we read that: “The Mass is held among us and celebrated with the highest reverence.”

I don’t need to belabor this point. Lutherans take Jesus literally when He says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.”

We may not be feeling it on the days His body and blood are offered to us.

We may not be able to understand His promise to be present “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine in the Sacrament.

It doesn’t matter!

Jesus, the One Who died for us and then rose for us, can be counted on to keep His promises.

If Jesus says that His body and blood are in the bread and the wine, you can bank on it.

This means that every time you receive the Sacrament, even on the days my sermons are off, even when the kids are restless, even when the choir or Cyndy hit a rare sour note, even if you’re tired, whatever your circumstance, you’re coming to the altar to meet the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God of the universe. He deserves our reverence.

A second and related point the Confession makes is this: Holy Communion should only be shared after we have made confession of our sins.

Slide down to the last half-sentence at the bottom of page 25. It says: “No one is admitted to the Sacrament without first being examined...”

This is stated well in Paul’s words about Holy Communion, 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this wine in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the LORD. But let a man examine himself [or a woman examine herself], and so let [them] eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. 

This is why our liturgy offers us the opportunity to confess our sins every time we receive the Sacrament.

Confessing our sins lets us, like King David in Psalm 139, pray to God:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. 

When God shows us our sins, we can confess them and lay them at the foot of Jesus’ cross, confident that they are lost forever in what some call God’s “sea of forgetfulness” and we can welcome the body and blood of Jesus as a sign and seal of God’s gracious forgiveness of our sin!

A third point the article makes is this: Everyone who is able to receive Holy Communion in public worship should do so.

Except in the cases of shut-ins, the ill, their families, or others in emergency circumstances, the term private communion should be an oxymoron. Holy Communion is meant to be a community meal partaken by all who have repented for sin, who believe that Christ is truly coming to them in the Sacrament, and trust Jesus’ promise that this Sacrament is “for you.”

There was a practice in the Church back in the days when the Confession was written of paying priests, often handsomely, to celebrate private masses. Melanchthon cites 1 Timothy 3:3 as condemning any practice designed to make money from the ministry of Word and Sacrament. There we’re told that anyone who wants to be an overseer of this ministry should not be “greedy for money.”

But greed for money on the part of clergy isn't the only wrong motive for the celebration of private Communions. I once heard of a man who wanted a pastor he liked to bring Holy Communion to him because he didn’t like the pastor of his congregation. But the pastor he contacted explained to him that as flattered as he was by the man’s admiration, the effectiveness of the Sacrament didn’t depend on which called pastor handed him the bread or the wine, but on the Word and promise of God meeting the bread and the wine. He explained: “In a way, for me to bring private Communion to you would be showing contempt for Christ and the Sacrament.” That pastor was right. But after that, the man disliked two pastors. 

The fourth and most important point the Confession makes here is this: Jesus is not sacrificed again every time we celebrate Holy Communion.

The theology of the majority Church of the sixteenth century held that Jesus’ death on the cross only covered up humanity’s original sin and that in order to cover the sins people commit each day, Jesus had to be sacrificed over and over again.

That, it was held--and is still held by Roman Catholic theology today--was what Holy Communion--the Mass--was: in essence, putting Jesus back on the cross and crucifying Him again every time the Sacrament is offered.

For Lutherans, this teaching doesn’t ring true for two reasons.

First: It drains Jesus’ crucifixion of its power, making it seem like a half-measure. Please turn to Hebrews 10:11-12. Contrasting the sacrifices the Jewish priests made constantly for people’s sins to Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross, Hebrews says:

...every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man [Jesus, God and human, Priest and sacrifice] after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God... 

Slip down to verse 14:

For by one offering [Jesus] has perfected forever those who are being sanctified [that is, being made holy, set apart for God]. 

1 Peter 3:18 affirms this same truth:

For Christ also suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God...

Second: To see Holy Communion as a sacrifice makes something less than a sacrament of it. Splitting hairs? I don’t think so.

A sacrifice, one scholar has written, “is a ceremony or act which we render to God to honor him.” But “a sacrament is a ceremony or act in which God offers us...the promise joined to the ceremony.” In sacrifices, human beings are the actors. In sacraments, God acts and we are called to receive in faith what God promises.

For example, Jesus says this about Holy Baptism in Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe is condemned.” We can’t understand how Holy Communion (or Holy Baptism, for that matter) may work. We know only that we can receive it in faith, trusting Jesus at His Word to be present in the Sacrament and to give us life and forgiveness through it. He’s already done all the work to set us free from sin, death, and the devil. He’s already done all the work to set us free from the sins we confess, known and unknown to us, that we bring to Him. He’s already died on a cross as the atoning sacrifice for all our sins. He’s already risen from death to give new lives to us. We simply receive His body and blood with a desire to be clean and a desire to trust in Him. Jesus will do the rest!

The Mass in which God calls His people in Christ together to receive His body and blood is a great gift.

It’s a gift to be received with reverence.

It assures the repentant that Christ Who died and rose for them gives them forgiveness of sin.

It’s a gift Christians should be eager to receive as often as it’s offered.

And, it’s something God does for us, not something we do for God.

There’s nothing we have to do to be worthy of this gift but to turn from sin, to turn to Christ, and trust Him when He says, “This is My body; This is My blood.” Amen

What About Saints? (Part 15, The Augsburg Confession)

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

Whenever Lutheran and Roman Catholic friends happen to talk about their churches, there’s one topic they probably both avoid more than any other. That topic is the issue of saints, who saints are, and, most especially, the place and role of deceased saints in the faith lives of Christians.

Lutherans believe that there are people who can be described as saints. After all, we celebrate All Saints Day every year and this congregation is called Saint Matthew Lutheran Church.

But what is a saint? Please turn to Philippians 1:1. This is the beginning of a letter dictated by the apostle Paul to Christians in the city of Philippi. It starts in the fashion typical of letters in those days, by naming who’s sending the letter first, then naming those to whom it’s addressed. It says: “Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops [overseers] and deacons.”

Now, go back one book, to Ephesians 1:1. This letter begins: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus...”

In both of these letters, all the members of the respective churches were called saints, hagioi in the Greek in which the New Testament was originally written, a word that literally means holy ones.

Holy ones sounds pretty special, doesn’t it?

Were all the Christians in Ephesus and Philippi special?

Were they especially virtuous and faithful?

Or was the term being used to butter the believers up for the letters that followed?

Well, anyone who reads the New Testament with any care knows that, for example, the apostle Paul never buttered people up. He always told it like it was, whether the people he addressed would like his words or not. He was honest. He told the truth in love.

Fact is, Paul knew that every Christian to whom he wrote was a sinner, just like himself. (He once referred to himself as "the foremost" of sinners.)

But he also knew that every Christian he addressed was also a saint, a sinner set apart for all eternity by God because they had been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

If you are a repentant believer in Jesus Christ who knows that your hope is built on Jesus Christ alone, you are a saint.

Not perfect. Not sinless. Not flawless. A saint, a holy one of God, set apart for all eternity for the kingdom of God.

“Simply put,” ELCA Pastor D.J. Lura writes, “a saint is a Child of God, made such by God’s grace through Jesus Christ. God is in the business of making sinners into saints through faith in Christ alone.”

And this leads us, as we continue to consider what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, to Article 21 of The Augsburg Confession. Please pull a copy of the Confession from the pew rack and turn to page 21.

To start, I want to give you permission to mentally amend the copy you have in your hand. You can read it as saying, Invocation of the Saints. That’s how other translations put it, not as it appears in this translation, Worship of the Saints. Our Roman Catholic friends invoke the names of dead saints in prayer. They believe that they can enlist the prayers of dead saints on behalf of what they pray about.

To a Lutheran this seems to say that having Jesus as our advocate before the throne of God is insufficient. Or, that prayers offered to the Father in Christ alone lack the needed power to move God.

But Christ is the only advocate, Savior, and Lord anyone needs!

Let’s take a look at what the article says.

“Our [Lutheran] churches teach that the history of saints may be set before us so that we may follow the example of their faith and good works, according to our calling.”

Phillip Melanchthon, who wrote the article, then goes on to say that the Emperor Charles, to whom the article was primarily addressed, could look to King David from the Old Testament for a saintly example of how a believer in the God you and I know through crucified and risen Jesus, might best execute a war.

Then, Melanchthon writes: “But the Scriptures do not teach that we are to call on the saints or ask the saints for help. Scripture sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Atoning Sacrifice, High Priest, and Intercessor...He is to be prayed to. He has promised that He will hear our prayer...This is the worship that He approves above all other worship, that He is to be called upon in all afflictions. [Then, Melanchthon cites 1 John 2:1:] “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate [Jesus, God the Son] with the Father.”

Go, please to 1 Timothy 2:5-6, one of the passages cited in the article. It says:

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and [humanity], the Man, Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified [or attested to, confirmed by His return to the earth in glory on the last Day] in due time. 

What does this mean? It means that the only way a human being can communicate with or can know God is through Jesus Christ. Out of God’s great love for all of us, Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, died for your sin and mine, then rose from the dead in order to give forgiveness and everlasting life, freedom from sin, death, and the devil to all who entrust their lives to Him.

There is nothing more powerful than Jesus’ Name! Philippians 2 tells us that because Jesus willingly left the glories of heaven in order to become the Servant of the human race He created, enduring the indignity of suffering and death, He was given by God the Father “the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on the earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

If we want a relationship with God, to talk with God, to seek God’s blessings, help, or strength, there is only one way to seek these things: through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

Many of you have heard me speak of my great grandmother. She had a profound impact on my life. She taught me about the love of God given through Jesus Christ. She was a committed follower of Jesus, a Methodist, who sought to live her faith. She was a saint.

She could also be domineering and petulant toward her family members. She was a sinner.

When I pray, I do not ask Saint Elva to put in a good word for me. I don’t need to. Why would I invoke the help of a dead saint when I can go directly to God through Jesus Christ?

This is why Lutherans have always rejected invoking the names of saints in their prayers. Jesus says, “If you ask anything in My Name [which doesn’t mean using Jesus’ Name like a magical word, but praying in accordance with His will, His timing, His priorities, His grace, and His character. “If you ask anything in My Name...] I will do it.”

But, as the Confession reminds us, the Bible, God’s Word, doesn’t teach that we should just forget about saints who have gone before us. In another part of our Lutheran Confessions, Melanchthon summarizes the three ways in which Christians can and should honor the saints.

First, we honor the saints in thanksgiving. We should be thankful for the examples of Christian faithfulness we see in saints no longer on this earth. Becky mentioned Saint Matthew saints no longer with us in her presentation a few Sundays ago.

Personally, I think of saints like Pastor Bruce Schein, one of my professors at seminary, who, despite the challenges of Parkinson’s Disease, devoted himself totally to imparting the truth about Christ and the new life that only Christ can give to his students and everyone he knew. He reminded us that our job as Christians and as Christian leaders was, in a phrase from Paul's first letter to the young pastor, Timothy, to “fight the good fight,” combating things like spiritual indifference, idolatry, and evil so that people could be set free by the good news of new life given to all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.

Several years after I had been ordained, I got a note from him. He had been going through major health challenges and had, for a time, been clinically dead. He wrote by saying that he was happy that the "saints" at Bethlehem in Okolona had a "faithful shepherd." By the way, he wrote, he had been in God's throne room. "I put in a good word for you," he said.

Pastor Schein died at 42, having fought that loving fight for people’s eternal destinies to the end!

Another saint I remember with thankfulness is Martha Schneider. When I came to faith in my early twenties, Martha was already in her late sixties. Improbably, she took me under her wing. She taught me how to pray. She taught me what it means to follow Jesus. She was incredibly patient with me. And when, a few years later, I sensed God calling me to become a pastor, Martha was my biggest cheerleader. She never failed to end every conversation we had together by saying, "I love you."

Saints like these always point us to Jesus Christ, the only way to God. We honor them by thanking God for their example. We would dishonor them by praying through them rather than through the Lord they honored, served, worshiped, and trusted and to Whom they pointed!

A second way we honor saints is through veneration. To venerate saints, D.J. Lura points out, is to be comforted by how, despite their sins, the saints who have preceded us to eternity experienced the grace and forgiveness of God that comes to those who repent and believe.

• Moses murdered a man, yet led God’s people to the promised land. 
• Rahab was a prostitute who came to believe in the God of Israel and so, saved her family when the Israelites conquered Jericho. 
• King David was called a man after God’s own heart even though he murdered and committed adultery. 
• The life of Mary Magdalene was such a spiritual vacuum that she became filled with seven demons from which Jesus freed her. Then made her one of the first to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection, to preach the good news of Easter! 
• Peter was empowered to preach the Word about Jesus Christ and even honored with martyrdom in Christ’s Name despite having turned his back on Jesus on the night of Jesus’ arrest. 
• Paul approved the murder of Christians and yet, by God’s grace in Christ, became an apostle, the greatest evangelist in history. 

The saints show us that God willingly forgives sinners. I don’t know about you, but that gives me hope because I am a sinner in daily need of Christ’s forgiveness and the renewal that comes from the Holy Spirit!

Finally, we honor saints when we imitate their faith. As another commentator on The Augsburg Confession, Leif Grane, points out, the saints show us what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in our everyday lives, in our daily work, in daily interactions with others, in our ambitions and our decisions.

Do Lutherans believe in saints? Absolutely! We believe that every person in whom the Holy Spirit has planted the gift of faith in Christ is a saint. Not perfect. Forgiven.

But when it comes to praying, worshiping, seeking the help of God, invoking the names of saintly middle men or women is as pointless as praying in the name of some idol, or a block of wood, or Elvis.

When we pray, there is only one name that’s needed, only one name that will do, the name that’s above every name, the name of Jesus Christ, the One Who died and rose to make saints from sinners, set apart for God for all eternity. Amen

Free Will? (Part 14, The Augsburg Confession)

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

John 15:1-5
Do human beings have free wills?

Most people, when asked that question, would probably say, “Yes.” So, when they try to explain why two brothers from Chechnya allegedly perpetrated the Boston Patriots’ Day bombings and killed an MIT police officer, most people would likely say that their behavior was an exercise of their free will.

But under other circumstances, these same people may defend their own poor choices by saying that, in a moment, their free will was overridden by forces beyond our control.

“I know it was wrong for me to say all those cutting things,” they will explain. “But I was having a bad day.”

“I know it’s wrong to have sex outside of marriage,” others might say. “But I just got swept away by the moment.”

So, do we have free wills then?

Are we born with the ability to make the right choices in our lives?

Can we choose to walk with God and according to His will? 

Article 18 of The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional documents of Lutheran Christianity, summarizes Lutherans’ understanding of what God reveals in the Bible about the human will. The first paragraph says:

Our [Lutheran] churches teach that a person’s will has some freedom to choose civil righteousness and to do such things subject to reason. It has no power, without the Holy Spirit, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual righteousness. For [quoting 1 Corinthians 2:14 in the New Testament] the natural person [that is the person born equipped with original sin without a saving relationship with the crucified and risen Jesus Christ] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God...This righteousness is worked in the heart when the Holy Spirit is received through the Word...”

Human beings, like say, my imaginary friend Ted, have wills that are free to choose what the Confession calls civil righteousness, the kind of righteousness that causes the world to say that Ted’s a nice guy.

You see, Ted pays his taxes, holds a steady job, has never gotten a traffic ticket or been arrested, takes his family out to dinner once a week, coaches his kids’ baseball and basketball teams, shovels snow and rakes leaves for his neighbors, and gives a generous offering to the church every Sunday. When Ted dies and family and friends gather at the funeral home for the visitation, someone will likely say, “Ted was such a good man. He surely must be in heaven.”

But the people apt to say such things could well be told, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." Ted’s well-meaning friends would be guilty of judging Ted worthy of eternity because of the outward acts he chose to do. The Bible teaches that you and I are capable of choosing to do those things that elicit the applause of the world, that look good on the outside. But that’s not how God judges us!

As God told Samuel in the Old Testament: “...the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” God judges us fit for eternity not on the externals that may wow the world, but on what goes on inside of us: in our hearts, our wills, our minds. And it’s precisely inside of us that we are incapable of fearing God, believing in God, trusting in His grace, or doing what God wills.

We can decide to live with civil righteousness, worldly righteousness. But we cannot decide to live in spiritual righteousness. We are incapable of freely deciding to live as Christians. We are incapable of freely deciding to live according to the will of God.

Saint Paul puts it this way in Romans 7: “For we know that the law [of God] is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin...nothing good dwells within me...I can will what is right [that is, I can want to joyously and happily do the right thing because I want to do the right thing], but I cannot do it...”

And the prophet Isaiah spoke for the whole human race, even exemplary guys like Ted, when he wrote: “...we are all like an unclean thing, and our righteousnesses are like filthy rags...our iniquities [our sins] have taken us away.”

It’s this reality that we can only choose an external, worldly righteousness, but are incapable of choosing, much less living, with a spiritual, internal, eternal righteousness that causes you and me as Lutherans to confess each Sunday, “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves."

So, what hope do we have?

Please turn to John 15:1-5. Jesus is speaking to the disciples in the upper room on the night of His arrest. He begins: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.”

These words come a few short verses after Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

And after He says in John 10:30, “I and My Father are one.”

Here, in John 15:1, Jesus is expanding on the claims He has made about Himself earlier: He is God. He is one Person of the Trinity. And He is the vine, the new life of God invading a world dying in its sin. God the Father is the vinedresser, the One Who tends and nurtures this vine, which is the body of Christ in the world.

Look at John 15:2. Jesus says: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He [the Father] takes away and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear fruit.”

This is an amazing verse! Consider three things it tells us.

First: Everyone who believes that Jesus has died and risen to give forgiveness of sins and everlasting life to them is a branch of Christ, drawing new life and forgiveness of sins from Christ.

When we are connected to Jesus, God does the works of true spiritual righteousness through us, not because, like Ted, we’re good guys or good women, but because the goodness and life of Christ surges through the lives of those who humbly submit to Christ as their God and Savior.

Usually this will happen without our being aware of it or self-conscious about it. Many of you as followers of Jesus can probably remember times when someone has told you that that thing you did or that thing you said, something you don’t even remember doing or saying, was what shored up their faith in Christ or brought the truth of Christ to them clearly for the first time.

Many of you have heard me talk about my friend Sig, a committed Lutheran Christian man who, along with his wife, was involved in Christ Renews His Parish and marriage enrichment weekends, helping people to bring their lives and marriages under the renewing grace and love of Christ. Sig worked for a major company in the Cincinnati area. So was a man I’ll call Bob, who joined my former parish shortly after it got off the ground. During a conversation with Bob, I just happened to mention Sig and Bob told me, “Sig was a huge influence on me. I wanted to have Christ in my life the way I saw Sig did.” Though they worked for the same company, they were at different facilities, and they had only met a few times years before. Yet Sig's faith had made an indelible imprint on Bob. The next time I saw Sig, I mentioned what Bob had said. Sig was puzzled: He could barely remember meeting Bob and told me that he had no idea what he might have done to influence Bob for Christ so positively.

When you’re connected to the vine, you don’t usually think about the righteous things you do or even that what you do is righteous. Those deeds will be the simple, wonderful byproducts of staying connected to Jesus.

Second in John 15:2, Jesus says that, as we remain connected to Him, God will sometimes prune us. I don't know about you, but getting pruned is not something I particularly want God to do to me. The word in the original Greek in which John wrote his Gospel, katharizo, literally means cleanse. It's the root word for English ones, catharsis and cathartic, words often used of experiences, confessions, or conversations that cleanse our emotions or our psyches. Jesus is telling us that as we daily repent for our sin and surrender again to Christ, God cleanses us of sins committed, clarifies our thinking, purifies our living.

Sometimes, this will be extremely painful as God incites and empowers us to turn our backs on things we want to do. God replaces our corrupted, enslaved will with the will of a child of God living under the will and in the freedom of His grace! A man I know, an alcoholic, once told me of how painful it was for him to realize that he would have to give up beer for the rest of his life. There’s nothing inherently wrong with beer, of course. But as a person who suffered from an addiction, he knew that he would be ceding control of his life to the devil, the world, and his sinful self if he ever took another drink. Daily, he had to seek the power of God to make the right or righteous choice he could not make on his own. He had to submit to God’s pruning in order to stay connected to Jesus.

Finally, in John 15:2, Jesus says that God will lop off those branches that have given up on their connection to Christ. Those who refuse God’s grace won’t have God’s grace forced on them.

Now look at John 15:3. Here, Jesus, speaking to believers in Him, like you and me, says: “You already are clean [the word here is katharoi, the adjective form of that word that can be translated also as pruned] because of the word which I have spoken to you.”

The Word about Jesus, God-enfleshed Who loves sinners so much that He shared the death for sin they deserve (that we deserve) and rose from the dead as a sign that He conquers sin, death, and the devil for all who believe in Him, this Word, creates faith in those who listen. As Romans 10:17 puts it: “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”

We can’t be saved by good works, by exercising that part of our will that’s free to do works that are pleasing to the world.

But we can be saved as we welcome into our lives God’s Word and the truth of God’s decision to die for us, to rise for us, and to count our faith in Him as righteousness, cleanses us from sin and makes us new!

Folks, that is very good news!

Our salvation and our eternal relationship with God does not depend on the good works we decide to do. These things depend entirely on the grace of God given in Jesus Christ and on the faith in Christ that the Holy Spirit creates in the lives of those willing to receive and abide in Jesus Christ, the true vine!

That’s why Jesus says what He does next in John 15:4-5: “Abide in Me [stay connected to Me, keep listening to Me, keep reading My Word, keep receiving My Sacraments, keep worshiping with like-minded believers in Christ, keep praying] and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”

Do human beings--you and I--have free wills?

The Bible and the Lutheran Confessions say we have free will when it comes to the decisions we make that relate to the kingdoms of this world--to pay our taxes, to be polite, to obey the speed laws, to obey our parents.

But we are completely lacking in free will when it comes to things of God’s kingdom.

Only God can cause us to willingly be sacrificial in loving others, joyful in giving to others, focused on God and not ourselves.

We can clean up our acts, but we can’t clean up our minds and hearts and wills, the places where sin starts, the places that God judges.

Only Christ and the Word about His death and resurrection and the new life He offers to those who believe in Him, can truly clean us up, from the inside out.

That’s why, like David in Psalm 51, we might well pray each day: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

God has come into the world in Jesus Christ so that whenever anyone who humbly trusts in Christ prays that prayer, God will answer it positively.

You see it’s God’s delight and it's God's will to give forgiveness, a purposeful life, and eternity with Him to all who humbly confess their inability to make themselves clean and ask that instead, their lives, their decisions, their wills are washed in the blood of the Lamb, Jesus, Who takes away sin.

God loves to answer that prayer, day after day till we see Him face to face! Amen

Christ's Return for Judgment (Part 13, The Augsburg Confession)

We Lutherans confess our belief in it almost every time we gather for worship.

What is the "it" we confess?

Well, in the Apostles’ Creed, we claim to believe that the risen and ascended Jesus will one day “come again to judge the living and the dead.”

In the Nicene Creed, we say that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.”

Lutheran Christians have always accepted the historic creeds as faithful expressions of, not just belief, but of essential truth revealed to the world by God. And that includes their assertion that one day Jesus Christ will return to judge every human being.

Today, as we continue to consider what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, we look at the topic of Article 16 of The Augsburg Confession, “Christ’s Return for Judgment.” The first paragraph of the article says:

Our [Lutheran] churches teach that at the end of the world Christ will appear for judgment and will raise all the dead....He will give the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys, but He will condemn ungodly people and the devils to be tormented without end... 

For those who seek to bring God under human authority or subject Christ to their own preferences, the very notion that Jesus Who made Himself our servant and bore our sin on the cross is going to one day send some people to hell is disagreeable. "All because they don’t believe in Jesus?" they wonder. “That’s awfully arbitrary,” a woman said to me once.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if she also thought it arbitrary of God to extend the possibility of forgiveness and new life to sinners who deserve condemnation and death.

If you and I are willing to accept the Jesus Who is so arbitrary that He offers eternity as a free and undeserved gift to all who turn from sin and believe in Him, we must also be willing to accept the Jesus Who acquiesces to the desires of some for lives without Him. There will come a point when Jesus will accept that as people's final answer to Him.

But should we fear judgment day? What will it be like?

Please turn to the passage that the Confession mentions first, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:2.

Paul wrote the letter from which these verses come to the Christians living in a place called Thessalonica, a Greek city set on the Aegean Sea. He wrote it in about 51 AD.

The Thessalonian Christians were disappointed, less then twenty years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, that the Lord hadn’t yet returned to bring His new creation to its final, eternal fulfillment.

In the meantime, believers had died. What, the surviving Christians wondered, would happen to those who had already passed away if they weren’t around when Jesus returned to this world?

Paul sought to calm their fears. He writes: “...I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.”

Paul is saying that the deaths of believers will bring grief to those who loved them as surely as the deaths of non-believers bring grief to their loved ones. But, he’s saying, if the one you loved was a believer in Jesus, there will also be hope in your grief, the hope of living eternally with a Savior Who conquered sin, death, and the devil for those who believe in Him!

That’s why Paul writes what he does next: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.” (In other words, those who died believing in Christ will be raised at the moment of Jesus’ return and they too will witness Jesus’ return.)

Then, Paul describes what will happen on the day of Christ's return. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of God. [There will be no mystery about it when Jesus returns. He won’t show up incognito. The whole human population, Christians and non-Christians will hear it and see it at the moment He makes His appearance.]

"Then [Paul goes on] we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

What Paul is trying to convey here is not what some people refer to as a rapture, but a reunion between Christ and His people.

After telling the Thessalonians to comfort one another with his words, he goes on: “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you.” In this, Paul reflects Jesus’ words to His apostles when speaking of the day when He returns and judges the living and the dead: No one knows when it will happen. And anyone who claims they do is lying.

In fact, Christ's return will come perhaps when the world least expects it, when most of its inhabitants have no thought of Christ. Paul says, “that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

But what will Jesus be judging on judgment day?

Jesus will be judging one thing. One thing only. It’s this: Do we have faith? That means...

• Do we trust Jesus? 
• Have we trusted Him enough to confess our sins in His Name? 
• Have we trusted in Him enough to confess our doubts about Him? 
• Have we trusted in Him enough to let Him lead and direct us through His Word, found in the Bible, even when where He leads isn’t where we want to go and what He directs us to do is the last thing we want to do? 
• Have we wanted Jesus even when we wandered down the blind alley of sin? 

Faith is what Jesus will be judging.

Faith is that gift we receive as we openly take the Word of God about Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of the Church. The just--the people made right with God--live by faith, the Bible tells us (Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38).

In Matthew 24:13, Jesus tells us how powerful this faith is within the context of talking about the day when He returns to the world: “...the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

What does it mean to endure in our faith in Christ?

There are superstars like Paul and Peter, Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten-Boom and Mother Teresa to inspire us with their enduring faith, of course. Despite persecution, sometimes in spite of their own doubts, they endured in trusting in Christ.

They kept heeding the Word about new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ, even when sin, death, and the devil accosted them.

But I want to hold up a different saint as an example of faith to you right now. You don’t know her. In fact, I’m not even going to use her real name. She was a member of one of my former parishes.

Joan had been afflicted with a disease that had kept her from doing many of the ordinary things people do in life since she was a teenager. But she had married. She had become a mother. She had become a grandmother.

But now, at just age 54, she was about to lose her life. Her hospital room was dark the day I visited her because any light seemed to cause her pain and she never opened her eyes. She barely had the strength to speak.

“Oh, pastor,” she told me, “I’m afraid to die. It’s not the dying that frightens me. It’s just that I’m an awful sinner.”

Now, we all know that all sins are violations of God’s holiness. In the eyes of a holy God, every sin we commit--from failing to keep a day for Him to taking His Name in vain, from stealing to gossiping, from sexual intimacy outside of marriage to murder--is equally damning.

But as I sat with Joan, I felt certain of two things.

First, I was certain that she was a sinner, just like me. Just like you.

And second, I felt certain that only a person who recognizes their sin and realizes how wonderful the God we know in Jesus Christ receives the forgiveness for sin God offers to those who repent and believe Christ.

As gently as I could, I asked, “Joan, do you remember what Jesus told Nicodemus? He said, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.’”

“Do you believe in Jesus?” I asked Joan. A tear poured down one of her cheeks and she said, “Yes.”

I tried to assure Joan that soon, she would see Jesus face to face.

To many of us, the biggest mystery about God is this: He has saved unworthy sinners like us.

It does show how gracious God is. But, you know what? We need to get over  thoughts like that. They’re too much about us. We need to focus on Christ instead.

Even if you and I found a way to go through a single day without sinning, we still wouldn’t deserve forgiveness or eternity. In my natural inborn self, I’m a sinner who deserves death.

Thank God that on judgment day, I will not be judged for whom I am, but for Who Jesus Christ is and that, through faith in Him, He has come to live in me.

Please look Galatians 2:20. Paul writes there: “I have been crucified [that is my old sinful self] with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Martin Luther had this passage in mind when he spoke of how he dealt with the devil's temptations to sin. When Luther sensed the devil tempting him, knocking on the door of his heart, Luther didn't dare go to to the door. Instead, he sent Jesus to answer for him. Luther sensed Jesus telling the devil, "Martin Luther doesn't live here any more. I do. Now go to where you belong!"

Listen, Lutherans: Your old sinful self died at Baptism. A new self, your Christ self, rose then.

People can commit spiritual suicide as surely as they commit physical suicide, of course. They can walk away from Christ and His promises as I did when I was an atheist. Had I died in those years, Christ would have respected my preferences and allowed me to enter eternity without Him.

But if you and I keep holding onto Jesus, I can assure you that when we are genuinely repentant for sin, on the day of Christ’s return, God the Father will look not on us as the sinners we are. Instead, He will only see Jesus Christ living in us.

God makes of every person who repents and believes in Christ another Christ--a "little Christ," as Luther put it, another child of God, each with our own personalities and gifts, but each surrendered to the God Who made us and loves them, who pray with Jesus, “nonetheless, Father, not my will, but Your will be done.”

God covers the sins of those who believe in Christ with the grace and forgiveness of Christ and imbues our lives with Christ-like purposes and pursuits.

And as we keep repenting and keep believing, the old sinner is drowned all over again in our baptismal waters and the new self is enlivened again by the Word of God and sustained again by Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion.

First John 3:2 says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed [in other words, when Jesus returns to judge the living the dead], we shall be like Him...”

We will be just like Jesus, fit for eternity, not because we did good or holy deeds, but because, like Joan, we held onto the promise of forgiveness and new life God makes to those who turn their backs on sin, death, and the devil and keep on following Jesus, when their faith is weak and when their faith is strong.

At the day of judgment, all who have endured in following Jesus will hear Jesus tell them--you who believe in Jesus will hear Him tell you: “Enter the joy of your Master.”

Could there possibly be better words than those to hear? If there are, I can’t imagine what they might be!

This week, ask God to give you the chance to share the good news of Jesus Christ with every person you can, to invite them to worship and study and pray with you, to ask them how, as a believer in Jesus, you can help them. Do those things, I beg you, so that everyone you know or love will come to believe in Jesus and hear those same words on judgment day that you want to hear: "Enter the joy of your Master!” Amen!

***********************************************************************************
 [This was shared during both of this morning's worship services at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.] 

After this morning's early service at Saint Matthew, I was asked what happened to Christians when they die: do they sleep until the resurrection or do they go immediately into the presence of God? The answer, I think is, "Yes." I talk about this question in this blog post from 2008, Where Do We Go When We Die?

What Does It Mean to Be a Lutheran Christian? The Augsburg Confession Series So Far

What does it mean to be a Lutheran Christian?

It's all about faith in Christ, trusting in His grace rather than in my performance as a human being or my conformity to religious or social norms.

That is the pervasive theme of the series of sermons inspired by The Augsburg Confession, a basic statement of the Lutheran understanding of Biblical, Christian faith, in which we've been involved over the past few weeks at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church.

Below are links to all of the sermons in the series so far, grammatical errors, missing words (usually infinitives or articles), and all. There are a few installments to go. But if you're new to the blog, you might want to check things out. I hope that you find them helpful. God bless!

The Three-in-One God
What is 'Original Sin'?
The Son of God
What is 'Justification'?
The Ministry of the Church
What About Good Works?
What Makes a Church a Church?
Holy Baptism
Holy Communion
Confession of Sin
Repentance
Are Governments Necessary?

Are Governments Necessary? (Part 12, The Augsburg Confession)

What is the role of governments in God’s plans for the world? How should Christians relate to governments? Should Christians be involved in government?

Before you go to to sleep realizing what today's sermon is about, remember that these are important questions!

The Lutheran Confessions’ answers to them come straight from God’s Word, the Bible, and are different from the answers given by other groups of Christians through the centuries.

So, what does it mean to be a Lutheran Christian living in a world of governments and politics? Please turn to John 19:10-11. These verses are part of the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, which we read during our Good Friday services last week. Jesus, under arrest, is standing before Pilate. We’re told:

...Pilate said to [Jesus], "Are you not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have the power to crucify You, and power to release You?" Jesus answered, "You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given to you from above...” 

Jesus says that Pilate’s power and the power of the Roman Empire to decide Jesus’ fate and Pilate's power to govern, didn’t come from Pilate or the emperor. In fact, contrary to what Thomas Jefferson would write in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Jesus is saying that governmental power doesn’t even come from “the consent of the governed.” It comes “from above,” from God.

The apostle Paul underscores this when he writes to Christians in Romans 13:1-7:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is [pay attention to this and in place of the word, authority, put words like president, senator, judge, sheriff, commissioner] God’s minister [The word translated as minister there is, in the Greek in which Paul first wrote it, diakanos, deacon, and it means servant. The political authority is, Paul says, God’s servant] to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’s sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

In other words, from the standpoint of God and His Word in the Bible, there is nothing evil or dirty about serving in governments. Whether Christians work as presidents, generals, VISTA volunteers, NASA engineers, fighter pilots, FBI agents, or IRS case workers, the Bible says that they’re functioning as ministers of God, installed in their positions by God Himself in order to do God’s work in the world. And Christians not in government are to obey, honor, and support their governments and pay their taxes as our service to God.

But, you may think, I thought Jesus Christ ruled over God's people. Why do we have to give consideration to governments?

Lutherans believe that, in passages like these and others, the Bible teaches that God rules over this world through two different kingdoms at the same time.

First, there’s the kingdom of God. It’s made up of those who have been saved from sin and death by the charitable grace that God gives to all who repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther said that the citizens of this kingdom--Christians--don’t need to be forced into treating their neighbors with Christian love. They strive to do so out of thankfulness to God for saving them from sin and death through Jesus Christ!

But not everybody in the world lives voluntarily under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. So, God also rules the world through another kingdom. This is the kingdom of worldly authority.

It exists because all human beings are sinners. We are, by nature, prone not to love God or our neighbors, but to love and only look out for ourselves.

The sinful behavior of human beings won’t be controlled by the Gospel of God's charitable grace if people don’t seek to daily surrender their lives and wills to Jesus.

Through Jesus Christ, God sets Christians eternally free from sin, death, and the devil. So, in the kingdom of God, God rules through the Gospel, through His grace.

In the kingdom of the world, God rules through the Law, through force, through penalties, fines,  regulations, incarceration.

Through the kingdom of this world, God institutes governments, in part, to make the world safer for Christians who voluntarily live with Jesus as their Lord.

But, God institutes governments for another reason: They act in service to the other kingdom, the one of which God wants all people to become citizens for all eternity, the kingdom of God.

Let me explain: Do you remember when you were kids and you had a substitute teacher, how you would always spend the first few minutes of class, seeing how much you might want to get away with that day?

When a substitute incapable of maintaining discipline took over for my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Goldsberry in Room 17 at Westgate School in Columbus, we all decided that we could act like convicts. And we did. The lunatics took over the asylum! And nothing that poor substitute tried to teach us got through.

But then something happened. Miss Grener, our principal showed up. We all loved Miss Grener. I had never even seen her angry. But when she walked into that classroom, filled with 35 fifth-graders acting up, throwing paper wads, cracking jokes, and generally misbehaving, Miss Grener was clearly mad. She made it clear that we would behave or there would be grave consequences.

All of a sudden, each of us became model students. We listened. We learned.

God rules through the kingdom of worldly authority, through law, through school principals and others in authority, in order to clear away the chaos that exists in world where sinful people behave sinfully so that, somehow, we have a chance of entering the Kingdom of God by hearing and absorbing the Word about Jesus Christ that can transform us from enemies of God to children of God and transfer us from the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of God!

So, governments aren't inherently bad, evil, or corrupt. In fact, they can serve God's purposes, tamping down chaos, immorality, and lawlessness enough to let people hear the Word of God that tells people, "God so loved you that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Jesus Christ--entrusting their sins, lives, hopes, and dreams to Him and letting Him be the authority of their lives--will not be eternally separated from God, have eternal life in God's kingdom!"

This is what Philipp Melanchthon was getting at in Article 16 of The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional documents of the Lutheran movement. It says:

Our [Lutheran] churches teach that lawful civil regulations are good works of God. They teach that it is right for Christians to hold political office, to serve as judges, to judge matters by Imperial laws and other existing laws, to impose just punishments, to engage in just wars, to serve as soldiers, to make legal contracts, to hold property, to take oaths when required by a magistrate, for a man to marry a wife, or a woman to be given in marriage...

Now, having said that, we know that governments can veer off-course from God’s intentions for them. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to us. Government personnel are human beings. That means that they are sinners tempted to sin, perpetrate injustice, even taking power only God can wield. The ruling regimes of Nazi German, the Soviet Union, or contemporary China all show how governments go wrong.

What then? Are Christians supposed to support governments like that?

Look at the last three sentences of Article 16, please. It says:

...it is necessary for Christians to be obedient to their rulers and laws. The only exception is when they are commanded to sin. Then they ought to obey God. 

Notice that Melanchthon there mentions Acts 5:29, from the New Testament. Turn to that passage, please. Peter and the apostles have been told by the temple authorities never to speak of the crucified and risen Jesus again. Acts tells us:

But Peter and the other apostles answered and said, "We ought to obey God rather than men.” 

The history of God’s people--from Old Testament figures to the Christian martyrs of today--is filled with examples of people of faith choosing to obey and honor God rather than governments who commanded that they sin or put the governing authorities in a place higher than God. Just a few examples suffice to make that point:

• Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego endured the fires of an oven rather than worship the king instead of God; 
• Daniel went to the lion’s den when he refused to stop praying to God when commanded to do so;
• Early Christians accepted martyrdom rather than renouncing Christ and worshiping the Roman emperor; 
• Martin Luther came under an Imperial Ban, meaning that anyone had the authority of both Church AND State to kill on Luther on sight because he told the truth that human beings are saved from sin, death, and the devil by the grace of God through their faith in Jesus Christ and not by adherence to laws and traditions established by churches or governments. 
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to a concentration camp, where he was executed, rather than giving homage to Adolf Hitler.

Christians are to honor governments and those who govern in order that there can be some level of civic peace within which people are able to hear the gospel of eternal life that belongs to all who turn from sin and give their lives in trust to Jesus Christ.

But when governments command their citizens to sin or when they try to take the throne that belongs only to God, Christians must speak up. In his most famous essay on this subject, Luther said that the Church is bound by God to speak out against injustices perpetrated by governments.

You and I are blessed to live in the United States. There have been massive injustices perpetrated in the history of this country. Some are ongoing. But a central theme of US history has been to always move toward the eradication of injustice, more and more, usually too slowly but still moving in the direction of greater justice. Our leaders make mistakes; they’re human. But we’ve never had a despot or a king who would command Christians to disavow Jesus Christ or violate our creeds.

And I suppose that’s made us comfortable. Maybe too comfortable.

We take the peace and order God has granted us through our government in order to share the Gospel with others and instead of sharing the Gospel, we waste much of our lives on self-indulgent pursuits.

The result is predictable. The percentage of Americans saying they have no religious affiliation rose from 15% five years ago to 20% today. And our own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, experienced a steeper decline in membership in 2012 than any other mainline Christian denomination in this country.

The book of Ephesians warns us though, “Be careful...how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” This world, remember, for all its beauty and blessings, still groans under the weight of sin. Many of the people you and I meet each day aren't yet citizens in the Kingdom of God, Jesus' kingdom of grace.

How wise are we Christians living in these evil days? (I know that I don't use as much of my daily life honoring God or spreading the good news of new life through Jesus as I could!)

In these days before Christ returns, judges the world, and fully establishes the kingdom of God, we need governments.

But whether we serve in governments or as good citizens, our call as followers of Jesus Christ is our highest priority. It’s the call the risen Jesus gave just before He ascended to heaven and told Christians like you and me:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.  (Matthew 28:19-20)

God, by His grace, allows you and me to live in a free land kept in relative peace and order by governments He establishes.

Let’s take advantage of these blessings by sharing with as many people as we can that they can have everlasting life with God when they turn away from sin, trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior and King, and become citizens of the only kingdom that will last for eternity, the kingdom of God.