The New Testament Book of James, Part 5

The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, Part 24

The Call to Reach In (Part 4, Reach Up, Reach In, Reach Out Lenten Series)

[Below you'll find the text of part four of our Lenten series at Living Water Lutheran Church, as well as live stream video of the devotional worship during which it was shared. God bless you.]

Matthew 16:13-18

John 13:34-35

Tonight, as we continue to consider the mission of Living Water Lutheran Church, we turn to the second element of our “Reach up. Reach in. Reach out.” summary. We focus on reaching in.

Christ’s Church is meant to be more than a fellowship in which, responding to God’s grace in Christ, we reach up to God in worship, prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

And Christ’s Church is meant to be more than a fellowship from which God sends us to reach out with the good news of new and everlasting life by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ’s Church is also meant to be a fellowship in which we sinners who have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus, reach in to each other with encouragement, prayer, and an occasional fit word of correction or counsel.

Many people who call themselves Christians see the reach in element as an unnecessary add-on to their being faith life. They tire of the messiness involved when you bring together people who have different ideas, gifts, and personalities in a local congregation.

They recoil at the Biblical truth that we who have been made saints by grace through faith in Jesus are also still, and will be until our own deaths and resurrections, sinners. We drag our sinful selves with us right past the Baptismal font, which is why when we gather on Sunday mornings, we begin by, together, confessing our sins to God and receiving His Word of absolution, forgiveness.

Jesus tells us that there will always be counterfeit Christians within the Church–the weeds among the wheat–and that He will sort all that out on the day of His return. For some convinced of their righteous wheatiness though, this isn’t enough. They dismiss the Church as being filled “with a bunch of hypocrites” and are unconvinced when we invite them by saying, “And there’s always room for one more.”

For some, being a Christian is mere intellectual assent. “I believe Jesus died for my sins and rose from the dead. So why do I need to go to church?” these people ask.

One woman went round and round with me recently on her insistence that because she believed in Jesus, she didn’t need a church. She told me, “Jesus never went to church.” But when I pointed out to her that Jesus regularly participated in the life of local synagogues, whether in his home village of Nazareth or in the towns to which she traveled, she said, “You see. He went to synagogues, not to a church.” I think she missed my point.

For Jesus, God the Son, Who bore the punishment for our sin on the cross and rose from the dead to bring the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life to all, to be received by faith in Him, His Church is no mere add-on to Christian discipleship. It is essential to Christian discipleship.

We read two lessons from the Gospels tonight.

In the first, from Matthew 16, Jesus has that famous conversation with Peter and the other disciples about Who Jesus is. When Simon Peter says that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus tells him, “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)  

This is one of the most misconstrued passages in Scripture. Jesus is not saying Peter is the rock on which He will build His Church. We know that Peter was not a rock that floated; he sank! Jesus is saying that the bedrock on which He builds His Church is the confession that Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, God the Son, the King of kinds, is Lord.

We confess Jesus as Lord not because we’ve been intellectually convinced, although the life of faith isn’t opposed to the life of the mind.

We confess Jesus as Lord because, through the administration of Christ’s means of grace–the Word and the Sacraments–the Holy Spirit has given us faith in Christ.

It’s in the Church and in the Church alone that these means of grace are administered.

And that leads us to our second Gospel lesson for tonight, taken from John 13. There Jesus says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)

Now, we human beings are no good at keeping the first laws God gave to us, embodied in the Ten Commandments and summarized by Jesus in the great commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’...and…Love your neighbor as yourself…” (Matthew 22:36-40) We’ve proven pretty lousy at doing that. So, what makes Jesus think that giving us an even more stringent commandment, that we love our fellow believers with the same passion He showed by dying on a cross for us, is going to work?

Well, remember, no law can save us. No matter how strenuously or devotedly we commit ourselves to loving our fellow Christians as Christ has loved us, we will always fall short.

Only the Gospel–the good news that we are justified in God’s eyes by the grace God gives to us in Jesus–can we be obedient to this command.
As we live in the fellowship of Christ’s Church, Christ living in us by our Baptism, His presence in us quickened within us as we hear His Word and receive Christ’s body and blood, the love of Christ will be manifest in us, often without our even knowing it.

Sometimes, the most important thing we have to offer one another is our availability. When we don’t know what to say, when we can’t figure things out either, but are there in the name of Jesus with a sister or brother in Christ to remind them that Christ died and rose for them and cares for them.

You, friends, are Christ’s chosen conduits of encouragement and counsel to your sisters and brothers in Christ, to the person sitting next to you tonight.

You are as essential to his or her walk with Jesus as the Bible or the Sacraments.

And your sisters and brothers in Christ are every bit as essential to your discipleship.

God has made us for fellowship with Him and with others in His Church.

How often I have dragged my sorry old self to worship on Sunday mornings, conscious of my sins and failings, not feeling like being in worship, not wanting to preach or teach or preside at the table, when you, my fellow recovering sinners, my fellow saints, have encouraged me, have helped me to see Jesus again, and my faith in Jesus is renewed.

In The Smalcald Articles, one of the basic confessional documents of Lutheranism, Martin Luther says that, “God is superabundantly generous in His grace.” He then enumerates five ways in which God delivers the grace and love of Jesus through the Church. The first four shouldn’t be too surprising to us. 

First, there’s the Word by which the forgiveness of our sin is preached.

Second, Baptism.

Third, Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar.

Fourth, “through the power of the Keys,” the authorization Christ gives to His Church to withhold God’s forgiveness from the unrepentant and declare that forgiveness to those who turn from sin and turn to Christ.

And then, Luther mentions a fifth way that God delivers Christ and His Gospel to us in the Church: “...the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren.”

Through Bible studies, small groups, visits with friends about to have surgery, cards sent to the grieving and the ill, time spent together in the hospitality room: These are ways in which we strengthen each other in our discipleship. Jesus promises, “where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20)

We live in an era in which everybody’s sort of a free agent. Everybody seems wary of making commitments, whether it’s to churches, jobs, careers, marriages, families, children, and parents. We have an allergy to caring about each other because caring about each other can bring hassles.

But the Church is, if you will, Christ’s “hassle castle,” in which He invites us to participate so that in the messiness of life in this world, we encourage each other in the Gospel that God desperately loves us and gives us everlasting life through Christ! It’s something we need to be reminded of constantly. As you’ll remember Luther saying, “We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day.” We become a means by which God delivers Christ’s Gospel to one another.

The fellowship of the Church or, as the Apostles’ Creed puts it, “the communion of saints,” is one means God the Holy Spirit uses to encourage us to keep following Jesus.

The reach in element of our mission is essential to our lives as Jesus’ disciples.

It’s as we reach in to each other in this fellowship that we remind one another, “Through Jesus, you are a child of God forever.” Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Acts, Chapter 12

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Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 17

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 10

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of 1 John, Chapter 2

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Ephesians, Chapter 4

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of Romans 11

The Church: How God Helps Us Live Out Our Baptism

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today. This is the second part in a four-installment series on living out our Baptism.]

Acts 2:41-47
Everybody loves baptisms. In fact, we seem to bathe baptism in sentimentalities. This is true whether the baptized is a child or an adult. 

I have a feeling that much of the sentimentality about Holy Baptism involves things like the cuteness of the baptized child or the supposed uprightness of the adult submitting to baptism. In such cases, the baptized is the center of attention rather than God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Who, through water, brings His saving Word to the person being baptized.

We seem to forget what happens in Holy Baptism. 

The first thing that happens as the water connected with God’s Word hits our foreheads is that we die. Our sinful selves are drowned and we share in the death of Jesus, God the Son, on the cross. 

We die to sin and self so that a second thing can happen when we receive Holy Baptism: We rise to new and everlasting life with God. 

This is a life that still must be apprehended by faith in Christ, to be sure, faith in Christ created within us by the Holy Spirit. 

But in Holy Baptism, the man, woman, or child who was born in sin and who has died with Christ for that sin is lifted out of sin, chaos, death, darkness, and futility by the gracious hand of God. 

The apostle Paul says in Romans 6:4: “We were therefore buried with [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.” 

Through the waters of Holy Baptism, God graciously reaches down to make new the person who dies and rises at the baptismal font.

But even new creatures can take wrong turns. (Think of Adam and Eve.) 

Baptized Christians, who are simultaneously saints by the grace of God and sinners by nature, are daily called to return to the One Who saves us. 

In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther asks what the significance God’s decision to baptize us through the means of water might be. His answer: “It signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil desires, should be drowned by daily repentance and sorrow for sin, and be put to death, and that the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” 

After we have been baptized, neither the devil, nor the world, nor our sinful selves give up on dragging us back into the chaos of sin, into ruptured relationships with God, with others, with the self, with creation. 

Luther says that our call is to daily be re-membered or reconnected with Christ so that sin, death, and the devil are unsuccessful in pulling us down again into the deep of separation from God.

But this lifestyle of discipleship--a lifestyle of daily repentance and renewal--isn’t easy, especially if we try to do it ourselves. The person who thinks that they can be a Christian or grow as a Christian without God is bound to fail.

When one’s faith life is just Jesus and me or Jesus, me, and the people I find companionable, it’s too easy to confuse my ideas and my preferences for the ideas and preference of God. It’s too easy to fall into the thought that Christian faith isn’t about what God has done for me through Jesus, but about all the things I do that I think are good by Jesus. In our own power, we can never be good enough to warrant entry into God's eternal kingdom or even have a relationship with God. Isaiah rightly says of our human race, "...all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6) 

“I guess I’ve done enough good stuff for the Church and other people to get into heaven,” a man once told me with a straight face. He could only have said that if he’d been listening to the devil, the world, and his own sinful nature more than he’d been listening to God’s Word or the testimony of the Church. 

Yet God has decisively acted to safeguard and guide us in living out our Baptism each day. And how has He done that?

Let’s take a look at Acts 2:41-47. These verses from Acts, a New Testament book written by the Gospel writer, Luke, come right after Luke’s account of the first Christian Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to Christ’s Church, then sent all of its members out to tell of God’s mighty acts. Using God’s Word in the Old Testament, Peter explained to the crowd that it was Jesus, crucified, risen, and ascended Who had sent the Holy Spirit to enable the Church to tell everyone about the new life Jesus offers, three thousand people were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the first Christian baptisms.

And all the baptized became part of the Church. Verse 42 says: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” 

Notice that the old and new believers all were sustained in living out the Baptism God had given to them in four ways. 

First, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. They spent time in God’s Word. God’s Word has the power to transform us from enemies of God to forever friends of God. Churches and individual Christians start to depart from God when they stop reading God’s Word together and individually. The apostle Paul tells the young pastor Timothy: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16) 

Second, the first Christians spent time in fellowship with each other. The word translated as fellowship from the Greek in which Acts was originally written is koinonia. This is more than having a laugh with someone in the hallway of the church. Koinonia has the idea of partnership. The Church is a group of people called together by Christ for the common mission of being and making disciples. 

Third, the first Christians devoted themselves to “the breaking of the bread.” I feel sure that this means the disciples regularly and frequently received the body and blood of Jesus, Holy Communion. In Luke 24:30, on the first Easter Sunday, two disciples who hadn’t yet figured out that they were in the presence of the risen Jesus, immediately knew Him as He broke the bread and gave it to them. In Holy Communion, the baptized are re-membered to Jesus, forgiven for our sins, and filled with His life. We are renewed in our relationship with Christ. 

Fourth, the first Christians devoted themselves to prayer. They prayed together.

Acts 2:44-47 goes on to say: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

Some suggest from this passage that the early Church was a socialist community in which all the people owned and shared “the means of production.” That’s a stretch. But what we do see clearly from this passage is that the early Church members were in community with each other and shared what they had, including the good news of new life through faith in Jesus, with each other and the world. 

To live with this kind of love and sacrifice of self is not only foreign to how society teaches us to live, it’s foreign to our very nature. 

Only people who know that they are desperately, totally loved and saved by the God we meet in Jesus, would even want to live this life of complete trust in God and love for others. 

I  confess that when God asks me to love people I find unlovable, to give to a cause from which I can’t imagine I will ever derive benefit, to spend time with someone I’d rather not be around, or to interrupt my plans by in doing something that I’d rather not do, the old Mark in me, wants to run the other direction. 

I especially want to run the other way when God calls me to trust in Him even in times of pain, adversity, or grief...or when I’m not getting my own way. 

But I find myself trusting in the God I know in Jesus, doing things that I don’t want to do because, through the Church, I have heard God’s saving Word, been called to the common mission of the Church, received Christ’s body and blood, and prayed with God’s people. 

Through the Church, I am reminded again of God’s grace given to me through Jesus, the grace in which I was washed clean at my baptism, and I am filled again with the Holy Spirit to will and to do what God wants for my life and not what I want to do.

The celebrated writer and philosophy professor Dallas Willard, a mentor to our bishop, John Bradosky, once observed, “The average church-going Christian has a headful of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin.” 

That’s why the Church is so important. 

The Church is God’s support group for baptized Christians, God's support group for recovering sinners. 

The Church, the body of Christ, helps saints and sinners saved by God’s grace to have the faith to keep following Jesus when everything in us and everything around us scream at and the devil whispers to us to go our own ways, to look out for our own perceived and earthbound interests and to forget about God or others. 

For we baptized Christians, the Church is our family, the fellowship through which Christ gives those who believe in Him the benefits of His death and resurrection.

In Holy Baptism, God makes us part of Christ’s family, the Church. We acknowledge this at every baptism. 

“Through Baptism,” the pastor says, “God has made these new sisters and brothers members of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus, that we may proclaim the praise of God and bear His creative and redeeming Word to all the world.” 

And the Church responds, “We welcome you into the Lord’s family. We receive you as fellow members of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly Father, and workers with us in the kingdom of God.”

Baptism, as I said last week, is a big deal. In it, God saves us, giving us a share in Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

But, as we see from Acts 2, He also makes us part of Christ’s eternal family, the Church. 

May we then, be avid participants in the life of the Church, supporting one another and deepening our own relationship with the God Who has baptized us by 

• being together regularly to hear God’s Word, 
• partnering together to fulfill the mission of the Church, 
• receiving Christ’s body and blood together, and 
• praying together. 

These elements, more than any other things we might name, are what God uses to help us live out our Baptism. Amen

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

Even When Steeples Are Falling

The fire that swept through Notre Dame Cathedral is, according to a reporter interviewed by NPR this afternoon, the heartbreaking culmination of years of neglect toward one of Europe's great architectural landmarks. The above picture, by Getty Images, is from The New York Times' coverage of the event.

This evening, I keep thinking of the first three stanzas of an old hymn:

Built on a Rock the Church shall stand,
Even when steeples are falling;
Crumbled have spires in every land,
Bells still are chiming and calling--
Calling the young and old to rest,
Calling the souls of those distressed,
Longing for life everlasting.

Not in our temples made with hands
God, the Almighty, is dwelling;
High in the heav'ns His temple stands,
All earthly temples excelling.
Yet He Who dwells in heav'n above
Deigns to abide with us in love,
Making our bodies His temple.

We are God's house of living stones,
Built for His own habitation;
He fills our hearts, His humble thrones, 
Granting us life and salvation.
Were two or three to seek His face,
He in their midst would show His grace,
Blessings upon them bestowing...

Jesus is the Rock on Whom the Church is built.

And the Church isn't buildings, though buildings can be places where the Church meets for worship, prayer, praise, and the deputization of the Holy Spirit to spread the good news that all who repent and believe in Jesus as their God and Savior have life with God that never ends.

The Church is God's people, the body of Christ, living stones built into the Cornerstone, Jesus, once rejected by the world, Who died for the sins of all humanity and rose to open the way to eternity with God for all who trust in Him.

The Church always faces setbacks. But even when steeples are falling, the Church continues to call people to the life that only Jesus Christ can give. "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).”

Being a Unifier ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 2)

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

Philippians 2:1-11

We have good friends who are members of a Lutheran congregation which, while being one of the strongest and most faithful churches I’ve seen, has had a succession of seemingly bad pastors. One was paranoid. Another, a thief. Another, lazy. 

For years when we saw our friends, they would, without malice, tell us about what was happening at their church. We would listen and pray. 

Then another pastor came along. He wasn’t paranoid, a thief, or lazy. He was just there. A low energy presence. A diligent if less than inspiring preacher and teacher. A little awkward in social situations. Our friends told us about him and we couldn’t help thinking, “That poor church.” 

But a few months later, we saw our friends and while they reported that their pastor was still less than a fireball, they appreciated him. “Pastor’s faithful,” one of them said. “And he’s our pastor.” They said that they prayed for him and opened themselves up to loving him and serving alongside him. Under that pastor, seemingly un-dynamic and unpromising, the congregation has done well.

This experience is a lesson on how church unity happens. It happens when we look past the faults and idiosyncrasies each of us has, forgive one another for sins, repent for our own, and seek what is best for the faithful witness for Christ by the congregation. 

We don’t sit around waiting for the pastor or other members to become perfect. 

We seek to forgive our fellow church members as the Savior forgives us. 

We seek to accept one another, imperfections and all, just as Christ accepts us. 

It’s this mutual forgiveness, acceptance, and love that allows us to be used by Christ to fulfill our only mission as His people: to be and to make disciples.

The apostle Paul routinely advertised his flaws and imperfections. This is one of the things I love about him. For example, he wrote to young Timothy: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1:15-16) 

The unity of the Church is enhanced when we can confess that we are all in bondage to sin, incapable of freeing ourselves and that while we may at times be called to point out an abiding sin to our sister or brother in Christ, we will never do it because we think we’ve got it all together. We will do this only because of the love of Christ and because we don’t want them to lose their grip on grace. 

That’s why the homepage of Living Water shows a group of us praying together during worship with the caption, “Far from perfect: We are a church of imperfect people seeking God’s grace, love, forgiveness, and guidance.” Speaking for me, I totally own that!

In his book, I Am a Church Member, Thom Rainer talks about how, if we are to be faithful members of Christ’s Church, we must seek to live in unity with our fellow church members. 

He points to the words of Jesus which we cited last week: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) 

And, Rainer points out, before He was arrested and murdered, Jesus pleaded with God the Father for His Church, “...that all of them [His disciples] may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...” (John 17:21)

Jesus is not here pleading for organizational unity; He’s asking that His Church would always be united in Him, a people drawn to each other as they gather around His cross and His gospel. It was to be united to Christ that many of us left the organization of our former denominational body to be part of the North American Lutheran Church. 

In chapter 2 of his book, Rainer also says that there are two things we must avoid in the Church in order to live out our unity in Christ: gossip and unforgiveness.

But I want to move away from talking about things that can destroy church unity and move to talking about what builds church unity. 

Philippians 2:1-11 is a good place to learn how church unity is built. Paul’s letter to the Christians in first-century Philippi was written in about 60 AD. One group of scholars has described it as a “missionary thank you letter.” Unlike the apostle’s letters to the Corinthians, for example, there’s no problem in the Philippian church. Paul just wants to thank them and, as that same group of scholars puts, describe what makes for a life worthy of the gospel. By that, Paul didn't mean to describe what a person needed to do to be worthy of God's salvation and love. Rather, he meant to describe what kind of life people who have already been saved from sin and death by God's grace through faith in Jesus should seek to live. For Paul, a life worthy of the gospel is one built on gratitude for God's undeserved, unmerited grace that comes to us from the crucified and risen Jesus!

That, in fact, is the whole purpose of this I Am a Church Member series: to help each of us live a life worthy of the gospel, a life that can only be lived out in the often wonderful, sometimes infuriating fellowship of the Church.

So, please open your Bibles to Philippians 2:5-11 and pull out a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Paul writes: “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2) 

In other words, if Christ and His gospel, if being saved by Christ from sin and everlasting separation from God mean anything to you, then be committed to living in unity with Christ and with each other. 

When you disagree with the church, do it in love. 

When decisions are made that you don’t like, stick together anyway. 

When your elected leaders work hard, pray hard, and do their best (and we are blessed with elected lay leaders like that here at Living Water), stand with them, pray for them. 

Have “the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” 

When our aim is to look out for others because Christ has already looked out for us, we will be on the road to living as unifying church members.

Please read on: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing  by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:3-7) 

Selfish ambition and vain conceit have no place in Christ’s Church! If a church, church member, pastor, or anyone in the Church ever acts from selfish ambition or conceit, what they do will never glorify God. Never. 

Our translation says that we are to have “the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” But in the original Greek, Paul is much more radical than that. He’s not saying we should try to be like Jesus. None of us will ever be like Jesus if we try to be. We can never be like Jesus in our own power. Jesus is God incarnate. We are fleshy people, sinners by our very nature. 

What Paul is really saying here is, literally, “Let the mind of Christ be in you.” 

In other words, let the mind of Jesus Christ invade and take control of your brain. 

When the holy onslaught of God’s Word comes to you in Word and Sacrament, in sermons or in Bible reading, in conversation with other Christians or in prayer or in the singing of hymns or praise songs, don’t resist. 

Let the Word of God engulf you, conquer you, overcome you, transform you! 

Stop resisting God and let Him replace your will, your power, your thoughts, your desires with the will, power, thoughts, and desires of Jesus Christ. 

When God calls you to confess, confess. 

When God calls you to trust that through faith in Jesus, You are His child for all eternity, trust it. 

When God calls you to witness, serve or pray or study His Word, witness, serve, pray, study. Let Jesus in and you will be changed. Christ will live in you! 

This past week, I got a text from a Living Water disciple. A repairperson had been at her house and he noticed her copy of a Christian book. A whole conversation about Jesus ensued. Our member wrote to me: “You have the Kroger deli and I have Renewal by Andersen!” 

As Christ transforms us with His grace, humility will become our MO. Not because we’ve decided to be Christ-like but because, through our submission, Christ makes us over in His image. We will be Christ’s witnesses without planning it out.

We read on: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:8-11) 

Why has God the Father given Jesus the name that is above all names, the name by which we are able to speak to God in prayer, the name that is respected even by those who claim to hate God, the Bible, and Christian faith? 

The answer is simple: Jesus, though God, was also man, a human being, and was the only human being ever able to resist the temptation to strive “to be like God.” 

Jesus sought the glory of the Father, not His own, and, because of it, was able to save all who trust in Him for all eternity. When our common aim is to glorify God and not ourselves, the Church is united, and others come to faith. 

Whose glory are you seeking? 

Whose way are you rooting for, yours or God’s?

Whose thoughts are you reflecting, God's or your own?

Jesus says that in His kingdom, the first will be last and the last will be first. The way of life with God is the way of a servant in Christ’s Church!

So, how is unity built in Christ’s Church? It boils down to this: 

• When Christ calls us to be His own, we submit to Him and to each other; 
• we never count ourselves better than others; and 
• we seek to glorify the God Who has given us life and life made us new in Christ. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him, ‘Come and die.’” When each of us heed that call, dying to ourselves so that our new selves can rise with Christ, we have unity with Christ and with His body, the Church. Amen

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