I love this poem from Malcolm Guite's soon to be published new cycle of poems.
I'm especially fond of several lines.
First, this one: "Then this world’s walls no longer stay my eyes..."
When heaven invades my world in Christ, previous limitations on my vision begin to dissolve. I see beyond my stunted world to catch glimpses of the eternal, of God, of other people made in God's image, as in need of love, grace, and mercy as me, of who I am by God's grace given in Christ. To use the words of another poet-musician, Bruce Cockburn (see below), Christ, not us, as Cockburn has it, kicks at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
And then these lines:
"I see his tree, with blossom on its bough,
And nothing can be ordinary now"
Beautiful! I look on the One we crucified and pierced by our sin and see in it the way to a new life, blossoming, exploding with eternal possibilities. How after seeing that, can anything ever be ordinary again? If life can spring from so undeserved a death, God can bring undeserved new life to even me.
Showing posts with label freedom in Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom in Christ. Show all posts
Monday, October 14, 2019
Sunday, June 23, 2019
When Jesus Sets Us Free
[This message was shared during worship this morning with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Luke 8:26-39
The legion of demons possessing the man, as spiritual beings, fallen angels, immediately know who Jesus is.
Luke 8:26-39
Our son Philip was in Haiti on a mission trip a few years back. One evening, his group had several free hours. Their translator, a young man who aspired to be a doctor, gave Phil a tour of the community. They ended up at the young translator’s home. Among his family members was his sister, a young woman, who Phil said, had the most terrible vacuum in her eyes: there, but somehow disconnected and isolated from everyone else. The translator later told Philip, “She has a demon.”
We who live in a Western post-modern world hear stories like that and have our doubts. We deem ourselves too sophisticated to believe that there's such things as demons.
But listen: The book of Genesis tells us that the serpent was the most subtle, the most sneaky and sly of all creatures. If Jesus' encounter with the devil in the wilderness tells us anything, it's that the devil is a master marketer. In some cultures, he puts people under his thumb with overt demon possession. In others, he convinces people that he's not around and so gains free rein to wreak all sorts of havoc to nations, communities, families, individuals, even churches. I am firmly convinced that there really is a devil and that there really are demons.
Luke, the writer of our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 8:26-39, has traditionally been thought to be a doctor, an educated person. Of all the New Testament writers, who all composed their books and letters in the first-century world's second language, Greek, Luke writes with the greatest vocabulary and the most precision.
Luke, the writer of our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 8:26-39, has traditionally been thought to be a doctor, an educated person. Of all the New Testament writers, who all composed their books and letters in the first-century world's second language, Greek, Luke writes with the greatest vocabulary and the most precision.
When Luke writes of someone who has a physical ailment that causes them seizures, he makes it clear that the person is suffering from a physical ailment.
But when Luke reports on someone who suffers a spiritual ailment like demon possession, he gives that information as well. Luke identifies people’s problems with specificity.
In today’s gospel lesson, Luke 8:26-39, which recounts an event that occurred in Gentile territory on the eastern banks of the Galilee, where steep cliffs meet the sea, Jesus and His disciples encounter a man possessed by demons.
Not just one demon, but a legion of demons. Legion was a term used in the first-century world for a 5000-man unit of the Roman army. So, a regiment of demons had taken hold of this young man. Luke doesn’t explain how they came to take up residence in the young man.
But he does explain what happens when Jesus takes on the evil of the world, the devil, and our sinful selves that can engulf us.
And he does show us the appropriate response of those set free from evil by Jesus.
It's these two things we see in this passage.
In verses 26-29, Jesus and the disciples come ashore in the region of the ten Greek cities established in territory once conquered by Alexander the Great, the decapolis. They encounter this demon-possessed man. Of him, Luke says, “For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.” (Luke 8:37)
When evil or sin holds sway in our lives, it isolates us from God and others. The great commandment in which Jesus summarizes God’s will for human beings calls us to love God and to love others, to live in community with others. This doesn’t mean we should never have times of solitude, times when we seek out the Lord in Scripture and prayer. Jesus needed such times and we do too.
In verses 26-29, Jesus and the disciples come ashore in the region of the ten Greek cities established in territory once conquered by Alexander the Great, the decapolis. They encounter this demon-possessed man. Of him, Luke says, “For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.” (Luke 8:37)
When evil or sin holds sway in our lives, it isolates us from God and others. The great commandment in which Jesus summarizes God’s will for human beings calls us to love God and to love others, to live in community with others. This doesn’t mean we should never have times of solitude, times when we seek out the Lord in Scripture and prayer. Jesus needed such times and we do too.
But God made us to be communal beings. God created Eve, you’ll remember, because He said that it wasn’t good for Adam to live alone. “How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity!” David wrote in Psalm 133:1. The demon-possessed man lived among the tombs of the dead, in “solitary places.”
The legion of demons possessing the man, as spiritual beings, fallen angels, immediately know who Jesus is.
Jesus sets out to free the man victimized by this demonic occupation, calling the demons out. The demons are afraid that Jesus is going to send them to “the abyss,” the place of the dead and the damned, what we call hell, a place of isolation from God, a place devoid of life and love.
Since they’re in a Gentile enclave, a place not constrained by Jewish dietary laws which prohibited eating pork, there’s a herd of 2000 pigs nearby. Jesus sends the demons into the pigs, who run over the cliffs into the sea below.
Jesus has set the man free! That should have been a cause for celebration in the community. A man had been set free from evil. But all the pig herders see is that Jesus used some sort of supernatural power to send their business assets to the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. They run into town and the surrounding area to report this outrage.
One of the worst traits of our fallen human race is how readily we accept sin and evil, how easily we see the suffering of others as “normal.” As Canadian rock musician Bruce Cockburn says, “The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”
Jesus has set the man free! That should have been a cause for celebration in the community. A man had been set free from evil. But all the pig herders see is that Jesus used some sort of supernatural power to send their business assets to the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. They run into town and the surrounding area to report this outrage.
One of the worst traits of our fallen human race is how readily we accept sin and evil, how easily we see the suffering of others as “normal.” As Canadian rock musician Bruce Cockburn says, “The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”
Instead of being concerned for the demon-possessed man, the pig herders (and the other people of the nearby town, as we’ll see) had come to accept his affliction as a permanent state of being.
Are there people whose suffering we simply accept?
Are there people subjected to injustice and mistreatment about which we say nothing because we don’t want to rock any boats, especially our own?
Are there people to whose daily walk with sin and death we have simply become resigned, with no thought of praying for them, or sharing Jesus with them, or helping them?
When the people of the town go out to the fields to check things out, finding all the pigs dead and the once demon-possessed man clothed and in his right mind, they’re terrified that Jesus had disrupted their “normal.”
When the people of the town go out to the fields to check things out, finding all the pigs dead and the once demon-possessed man clothed and in his right mind, they’re terrified that Jesus had disrupted their “normal.”
“Then,” verse 37 of our gospel lesson tells us, “all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear.”
Do you know why most people, even people on the membership rolls of churches, don’t want to have too much to do with Jesus? Because they’re afraid (we all can be afraid) that Jesus is going to change our lives, our “normal”.
Set eternally free from sin and death by what Jesus has done for us, we’re afraid that He might call us to live differently, to think differently.
He might call us spend our time and money differently.
He might call us to love the unlovable, serve the needy, help others to know Jesus, fight injustice, pray for the spread of the gospel.
“Please, go away, Jesus,” the people of town beg Jesus.
Jesus will never go where He’s not invited. Which is why I make it a point on many Fridays at the end of my office hours, to walk around this building, going into every room, to invite Jesus to come and be Lord over this place and over the people who enter it.
I ask that Jesus will make the presence of God’s Holy Spirit unavoidable when people come here.
I touch every seat in the sanctuary, as well as the pulpit, the piano, the altar, the baptismal font, the music stands, the keyboard, the drum, the mixer board, and the video equipment and I ask Jesus to be Lord of everyone who sits here and of everything that’s in here that we would live in the confidence and hope of knowing that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus and that we will go into the world filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered to share Jesus with others, ready to welcome Jesus into every part of our own lives!
When Jesus leaves the Decapolis at the request of the villagers, the man from whom Jesus cast out the demons wants to go with Him. But Jesus says that the man needs to stay. “Return home and tell how much God has done for you,” Jesus says (Luke 8:39).
When Jesus leaves the Decapolis at the request of the villagers, the man from whom Jesus cast out the demons wants to go with Him. But Jesus says that the man needs to stay. “Return home and tell how much God has done for you,” Jesus says (Luke 8:39).
Jesus calls some people to be witnesses for Him as missionaries in South Africa, like Claire Brown, who will be speaking here on July 14.
He calls others to take mission trips to Haiti; others to visit and pray with folks at hospitals; others to help and to share the Bible with victims of tornadoes; others to meet privately with people around God’s Word to nurture them in the faith.
All of us are called to share the good news of new life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus in our everyday lives.
We’re to share what God has done for us in Jesus, even with those who want Jesus to go away.
Luke tells us that, at Jesus' command, “the man [once filled with demons] went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him” (Luke 8:39).
One day, believers will be with Jesus.
But for now, our call is the same one given to the man by Jesus that day: to live for Him and share Him with people right where we are. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Friday, March 08, 2019
Wednesday, March 06, 2019
Ash Wednesday: Free in Christ
[This message was shared during this evening's Ash Wednesday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
In our gospel lesson for tonight, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21, Jesus warns believers: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
He goes on to say that when we give to the needy, we should seek to keep it quiet. If our aim is to impress others with our giving, the greatest reward we can expect is the applause of a dead world. If our aim is to honor God, our reward will be all the gifts an eternal God can give.
When we offer prayers only to be seen by others, we may impress a dying world. But that won’t help us in eternity, where God gives eternal rewards. We should pray to connect with, confess sin to, give praise to, and seek help from God.
When we fast, it should be done for the purpose of emptying ourselves of sin or to listen to God. If we fast to get spiritual brownie points from the people before whom we play out our religious shows, those brownie points, which have zero value in this world or the next, will have to suffice as our reward.
In other words, the question of motivation is important to Christians, even on Ash Wednesday. If we come to this service, receive the mark of the cross, sing the hymns, or partake of the body and blood of Jesus to impress other people or climb a religious ladder, we may receive some earthly rewards. People in the congregation may be impressed that you came to worship on a Wednesday night. People may see you at a grocery or convenience store you stop at on the way home and, noticing the cross on your forehead, think well of you or ill of themselves because of your piety.
But Jesus says that the only reward a Christian disciple should seek is the reward Jesus Himself won for us on the cross, the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God that belongs to all who believe in Him.
Jesus’ warning to watch our motives for things like giving to the poor, fasting, or praying raises another issue for some Christians, though. It subjects them to what has been called the paralysis of self-analysis.
There’s a story told of two actors, one a seasoned veteran with many credits, the other a celebrated up-and-comer. There was a brief scene in which these two were to appear together. The older one sat in a room. The younger was to enter the room through one door and exit through another. It would take all of five seconds. But rehearsal ground to a stop when the younger actor couldn’t figure out how to “play” the scene. “What’s my motivation for walking in and out of that room at that moment?” he asked. “What has my character been doing? What is he going to do? Why does he have to go through that room to do it?” Finally, the veteran actor had enough. “Your motivation,” he shouted, “is to walk through the room and get on with the scene!”
The younger actor was paralyzed from doing anything because he obsessed over whether he had the right motivation. Listen: Our motivations matter. But if we Christians wait to do anything before we’re certain that our motives are absolutely pure, we won’t do anything for God at all.
Remember how the apostle Paul wrestled with his own sinfulness? “...I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Romans 7:21-23) Despite knowing that his motivations were adulterated by his sinful human nature, Paul continued to do the right thing he thought God was calling him to do.
Paul recognized that every baptized Christian, even the most seasoned and exemplary, has several things in common. First, we are all sinners. Second, we are all saints. We are sinners made saints not by what we do or by the pure motives with which we do them, but solely by God’s grace given to us through faith in Jesus Christ.
As we trust Christ and live in daily relationship with Him and His Church, God is transforming us. We can trust in that. He works within us as we turn to Him in daily repentance and renewal so that the sinner in us is daily subjected to death and the new us--the new you and me--is raised.
This is an ongoing process in the lives of believers in Jesus. It's called sanctification. But the final purification will only happen after we have physically died and been raised by God and we see Jesus face to face. The apostle John tells us, “Dear friends, now [today, although we’re still imperfect] we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)
Ultimately, Jesus’ call to us in our gospel lesson tonight and in the season of Lent is simple: To get our minds off of ourselves and onto Him as the only one Who can give us life, forgiveness, purpose, and the desire to do things for His glory, not our own. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” Galatians 5:1 tells us. And Colossians 3:23-24 puts it all succinctly: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
When we know that we have been saved from sin, death, darkness, and worry over ourselves through Christ, we are set free! We’re free to stop taking ourselves so seriously while taking our Savior’s call to love God, love neighbor, and love fellow believers with the utmost seriousness. We learn to be unafraid of death (even if we’re still afraid of the process of dying), unafraid of whether the world rewards us or not. Death and the opinions of us held by the world can make the final judgments over our lives only if we refuse to trust in Jesus.
Our freedom in Christ may be expressed in many ways, including, as Jesus discussed tonight, in giving to the poor, fasting, and praying. In fact, Jesus takes it as a matter of course that they will be expressed in these ways, since He says of them, “When you give, when you fast, when you pray.”
But through Jesus, we’re free from the have tos, the musts, and gotta do its of the world, the religious hoops we think we have to negotiate in order to please God (and impress others). In Jesus, we get to love. We get to be the people Christ sets us free to be. We get to live our lives in God’s charity, His grace, not by the world’s punishing standards. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” Jesus says (Mark 16:16).
You may do a spiritual discipline for Lent, something you give up or add to your life. If that’s true, try not to tell anyone about it. Seek to do it not for yourself--there are few things more boring or spiritually pointless than a discipline adopted to bring self-improvement. Do it for Christ. Do it for God’s glory. And if you do it imperfectly, talk it over with God and don’t stew about it. Christ didn’t die for perfect people. He died for you and me, mortals created by God from ashes and dust, but mortals who, as we trust in Christ, have the reward no mortal could ever earn or deserve, eternity with God. There’s freedom in that, freedom from playing to the crowd, freeing from worrying over whether we’re good enough or worthy, freedom from sin, freedom from self. Jesus gives freedom. Sisters and brothers in Christ, live in that freedom!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
In our gospel lesson for tonight, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21, Jesus warns believers: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
He goes on to say that when we give to the needy, we should seek to keep it quiet. If our aim is to impress others with our giving, the greatest reward we can expect is the applause of a dead world. If our aim is to honor God, our reward will be all the gifts an eternal God can give.
When we offer prayers only to be seen by others, we may impress a dying world. But that won’t help us in eternity, where God gives eternal rewards. We should pray to connect with, confess sin to, give praise to, and seek help from God.
When we fast, it should be done for the purpose of emptying ourselves of sin or to listen to God. If we fast to get spiritual brownie points from the people before whom we play out our religious shows, those brownie points, which have zero value in this world or the next, will have to suffice as our reward.
In other words, the question of motivation is important to Christians, even on Ash Wednesday. If we come to this service, receive the mark of the cross, sing the hymns, or partake of the body and blood of Jesus to impress other people or climb a religious ladder, we may receive some earthly rewards. People in the congregation may be impressed that you came to worship on a Wednesday night. People may see you at a grocery or convenience store you stop at on the way home and, noticing the cross on your forehead, think well of you or ill of themselves because of your piety.
But Jesus says that the only reward a Christian disciple should seek is the reward Jesus Himself won for us on the cross, the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God that belongs to all who believe in Him.
Jesus’ warning to watch our motives for things like giving to the poor, fasting, or praying raises another issue for some Christians, though. It subjects them to what has been called the paralysis of self-analysis.
There’s a story told of two actors, one a seasoned veteran with many credits, the other a celebrated up-and-comer. There was a brief scene in which these two were to appear together. The older one sat in a room. The younger was to enter the room through one door and exit through another. It would take all of five seconds. But rehearsal ground to a stop when the younger actor couldn’t figure out how to “play” the scene. “What’s my motivation for walking in and out of that room at that moment?” he asked. “What has my character been doing? What is he going to do? Why does he have to go through that room to do it?” Finally, the veteran actor had enough. “Your motivation,” he shouted, “is to walk through the room and get on with the scene!”
The younger actor was paralyzed from doing anything because he obsessed over whether he had the right motivation. Listen: Our motivations matter. But if we Christians wait to do anything before we’re certain that our motives are absolutely pure, we won’t do anything for God at all.
Remember how the apostle Paul wrestled with his own sinfulness? “...I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Romans 7:21-23) Despite knowing that his motivations were adulterated by his sinful human nature, Paul continued to do the right thing he thought God was calling him to do.
Paul recognized that every baptized Christian, even the most seasoned and exemplary, has several things in common. First, we are all sinners. Second, we are all saints. We are sinners made saints not by what we do or by the pure motives with which we do them, but solely by God’s grace given to us through faith in Jesus Christ.
As we trust Christ and live in daily relationship with Him and His Church, God is transforming us. We can trust in that. He works within us as we turn to Him in daily repentance and renewal so that the sinner in us is daily subjected to death and the new us--the new you and me--is raised.
This is an ongoing process in the lives of believers in Jesus. It's called sanctification. But the final purification will only happen after we have physically died and been raised by God and we see Jesus face to face. The apostle John tells us, “Dear friends, now [today, although we’re still imperfect] we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)
Ultimately, Jesus’ call to us in our gospel lesson tonight and in the season of Lent is simple: To get our minds off of ourselves and onto Him as the only one Who can give us life, forgiveness, purpose, and the desire to do things for His glory, not our own. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” Galatians 5:1 tells us. And Colossians 3:23-24 puts it all succinctly: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
When we know that we have been saved from sin, death, darkness, and worry over ourselves through Christ, we are set free! We’re free to stop taking ourselves so seriously while taking our Savior’s call to love God, love neighbor, and love fellow believers with the utmost seriousness. We learn to be unafraid of death (even if we’re still afraid of the process of dying), unafraid of whether the world rewards us or not. Death and the opinions of us held by the world can make the final judgments over our lives only if we refuse to trust in Jesus.
Our freedom in Christ may be expressed in many ways, including, as Jesus discussed tonight, in giving to the poor, fasting, and praying. In fact, Jesus takes it as a matter of course that they will be expressed in these ways, since He says of them, “When you give, when you fast, when you pray.”
But through Jesus, we’re free from the have tos, the musts, and gotta do its of the world, the religious hoops we think we have to negotiate in order to please God (and impress others). In Jesus, we get to love. We get to be the people Christ sets us free to be. We get to live our lives in God’s charity, His grace, not by the world’s punishing standards. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” Jesus says (Mark 16:16).
You may do a spiritual discipline for Lent, something you give up or add to your life. If that’s true, try not to tell anyone about it. Seek to do it not for yourself--there are few things more boring or spiritually pointless than a discipline adopted to bring self-improvement. Do it for Christ. Do it for God’s glory. And if you do it imperfectly, talk it over with God and don’t stew about it. Christ didn’t die for perfect people. He died for you and me, mortals created by God from ashes and dust, but mortals who, as we trust in Christ, have the reward no mortal could ever earn or deserve, eternity with God. There’s freedom in that, freedom from playing to the crowd, freeing from worrying over whether we’re good enough or worthy, freedom from sin, freedom from self. Jesus gives freedom. Sisters and brothers in Christ, live in that freedom!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, June 03, 2018
Free in Christ
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]
Mark 2:23-3:6
The Pharisees, as you know, were a sect of Judaism for hundreds of years. Pharisaism was a people’s movement, composed of mostly poor people without influence over the religious and political elites of their time. The world was a fearful, place for the Pharisees, changing all the time. Looking for stability and certainty, they turned faith in God into a moral and political program. There were many fine Pharisees, but many others used their “religious program” to shame and intimidate people into compliance with their version of God’s will. They also scrupulously observed God’s Law, or at least their version of God’s Law, as an act of defiance of the Romans, who occupied their country. We find Christians doing much the same today, whether they're conservative or liberal. Instead of proclaiming the Gospel of new, everlasting life with God for all who entrust their lives to Christ, they want to tell people what to do.
The Sabbath was mandated by God, of course. In the Third Commandment, God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” God set apart a day so that His people could rest after six days of work, just as He had rested when He created the universe.
The Sabbath had other functions as well:
They used the Sabbath also as a moral and religious bludgeon on their fellow Jews. The Pharisees acted as a kind of unofficial secret police, seeking to out anyone they deemed insufficiently Jewish, insufficiently loyal to God, or insufficiently loyal to the Judean homeland.
That’s how they act in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus and His disciples are walking through a grain field. The disciples are hungry. They pick some of the heads of grain, grind them on the palms of their hands, and eat.
Now, everybody knew that God’s law allowed hungry travelers to glean from crops in the fields through which they passed.
But the Pharisees get upset with the disciples because in their harvesting and grinding, they're doing work on the Sabbath. They're violating the Third Commandment.
When the Pharisees confront Jesus on this, Jesus doesn't deny that the disciples are doing work on the Sabbath. Nor does He deny the importance of Sabbath observance as a moral law given by God.
But Jesus does point to an Old Testament precedent to demonstrate that the Pharisees' criticism of His disciples was not of God.
Back when King Saul was still in power in the 11th.-century BC and trying to kill David, who had already been anointed by God to be Israel’s second king, David and his men, running for their lives, sought refuge from the high priest Abiathar. David and the others were famished and asked for food. The priest was out of everything but the consecrated bread, or the bread of the Presence, which God’s law stipulated could only be eaten by the priest.
But Abiathar may have been a bit of a liberal: He thought that feeding hungry people might be good use of bread dedicated to God. So, he let David and his men eat. This, Jesus is telling the Pharisees, was the right thing.
Then Jesus reverts to the original discussion about another one of God's laws. “The Sabbath,” Jesus tells them, “was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
God gave the Sabbath not as a badge or a flag for proud, judgmental people, but as a day for rest and celebration.
And then, to underscore His authority to teach in this way, Jesus tells them: “So the Son of Man [that’s Him, the Messiah-King foretold in Scripture] is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Listen: God gives His Law to show us what it's like to live as His children, not to make us judges of others’ lives, to show people who are grateful for His undeserved grace how best to live if we want to honor God.
Jesus isn’t just Lord of the Sabbath, He’s the Lord of everything, the great I AM. He alone has kept God’s Law perfectly so that He can set free from sin, death, and darkness all who turn from sin and surrender to Him.
On another Sabbath, our Gospel lesson says, Jesus saw that the Pharisees were out to trap Him. So, He decided that it was a good time to do some of God’s work. He had a man with a shriveled hand stand in front of the crowds following Him.
Then He asked the Pharisees: “'Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4)
Mark tells us that the Pharisees said nothing. Then we’re told, starting at verse 5: “He [Jesus] looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.”
At the very least, the Pharisees might have said, “Wow! We’re so happy for the man healed by Jesus!”
But in this miracle, they didn’t see a sign of the coming of God’s kingdom.
They didn’t comprehend that Jesus was and is God.
They didn’t stop to think that it might be OK to do good to others on the Sabbath day.
Instead, they were enraged. Mark tells us, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” (Mark 3:6)
Those are strange bedfellows, the Pharisees and the Herodians, by the way.
The Herodians were a powerful class of people who supported and were enriched by their connection to King Herod. Herod wasn’t Jewish, though he claimed to be descended from David. He had been put on his throne by the Romans. The Herodians were secular people out for power and money. The Pharisees allying themselves with the Herodians made sense for only one reason: They both wanted Jesus dead and out of the way.
What does it all mean for us? Just this. Pharisaism started out as a well-meaning movement by people of God. They wanted to follow God in a frightening, tumultuous world. But instead of clinging to God and trusting in the grace He gives to all who believe, they clung to the Law, which cannot save us because no one but Jesus has ever perfectly kept God’s Law.
The Law can point us to our need of God’s grace given in Jesus.
It can be a guide to us in our prayer lives, as we allow it to show us our sins and vulnerabilities.
But only Jesus can save us.
In the end, Pharisees, ancient and modern, are no different from secularists who don’t believe in God: They put their trust not in God, but in themselves and their own goodness.
The Pharisees saw themselves as God’s protectors and God’s enforcers. But God is bigger than all of us. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal. As believers in the God Who saves us through Jesus Christ, we don’t need to protect God and we don’t need to enforce God’s holy will on the world. When Jesus returns to the world, He will sort everything out. Remember how He said that when He returned to the world, He would separate the wheat from the weeds--the righteous from the unrepentant.
In the meantime, our call as Christians is simple:
By trusting in Christ, seeking to live our faith in Christ, and telling others about Christ and His grace, right out loud for all the world to see, we may, like our Lord, encounter opposition, not just from secularists but from modern Pharisees who claim to be Christians.
In fact, the Christian's biggest and most unforgiving critics may be other Christians. Years ago, one of my sisters told a friend of hers that her brother was a pastor. The friend was excited to hear that. "Really?" she asked. "Where is he a pastor?" "He's not in town," my sister explained. "But he served a Lutheran congregation." Her friend's attitude soured. "Oh," she replied unenthusiastically, as though she'd learned I was an underworld kingpin. "No," my sister quickly reacted. "He is a Christian."
But no matter how much shade the world or even other Christians throw our way, it's OK.
When you follow the Lord of the Sabbath, the King of all creation, Who has conquered sin and death, what’s a little opposition?
What difference does it make if we bear others’ condescension or condemnation?
What difference does it make even if we die for our faith?
The Christian lives in the assurance enjoyed by St. Paul: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
If the world thinks we’re “a bit of a liberal” because we live, depend on, and share the love of Jesus with others, so be it.
We confess and follow Jesus, the Lord of love, and He will never let go of those who trust in Him. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Mark 2:23-3:6
Years ago, I’ve read, there was flooding happening in a section of rural Holland. Government officials determined that a small village lay in the flood’s path. The government contacted the local pastor, the closest thing to a public official there was in the village and said that the community might be spared if the people worked all that day, a Sunday, to build a temporary dam.
The pastor was caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, he wanted to lead the villagers in saving their community. That seemed like the right thing to do. On the other, it was the sabbath day, a day set aside by God for His people to rest and hear God’s Word. Building the dam would be work. Resting seemed like the right thing to do.
So, the pastor called a meeting. He asked what the villagers thought should be done. Discussion followed. To make sure that all points of view were considered, the pastor said that while he was certainly in favor of observing the Sabbath day, there were times when Jesus was confronted with what might be called “emergency” situations when He worked on the Sabbath. Might this flood be such a situation?
At this, an elderly man spoke up: “Pastor, I must say something that I have never ventured to bring up before. But sometimes, I think that our Lord was a bit of a liberal.”
In today’s Gospel lesson, we see an example of why that man thought of Jesus as “a bit of a liberal.”
In today’s Gospel lesson, we see an example of why that man thought of Jesus as “a bit of a liberal.”
We also see that Jesus views things like the Sabbath, along with all the other commands of God, the law of God, from His perspective as God, not from the world’s perspective, whether the world’s perspective is that held by religious people confident of their own goodness or by secular people who think nothing of God.
Let’s take a look at our lesson, Mark 2:23-3:6. As we do so, I want to warn you that we're going to have to spend some time on the Biblical and historical background. But stick with me, as I think it will be worth it.
The Gospel lesson starts this way: “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’ He answered, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
The Gospel lesson starts this way: “One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’ He answered, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
The Pharisees, as you know, were a sect of Judaism for hundreds of years. Pharisaism was a people’s movement, composed of mostly poor people without influence over the religious and political elites of their time. The world was a fearful, place for the Pharisees, changing all the time. Looking for stability and certainty, they turned faith in God into a moral and political program. There were many fine Pharisees, but many others used their “religious program” to shame and intimidate people into compliance with their version of God’s will. They also scrupulously observed God’s Law, or at least their version of God’s Law, as an act of defiance of the Romans, who occupied their country. We find Christians doing much the same today, whether they're conservative or liberal. Instead of proclaiming the Gospel of new, everlasting life with God for all who entrust their lives to Christ, they want to tell people what to do.
The Sabbath was mandated by God, of course. In the Third Commandment, God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” God set apart a day so that His people could rest after six days of work, just as He had rested when He created the universe.
The Sabbath had other functions as well:
- to give particular focus to worshiping God;
- to gratefully remember God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt in ancient days;
- to joyfully anticipate the day when the Lord’s Messiah--the Christ, God’s Anointed One, referred to by the Old Testament book of Daniel as “the Son of Man”--would come into the world and establish His kingdom.
They used the Sabbath also as a moral and religious bludgeon on their fellow Jews. The Pharisees acted as a kind of unofficial secret police, seeking to out anyone they deemed insufficiently Jewish, insufficiently loyal to God, or insufficiently loyal to the Judean homeland.
That’s how they act in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus and His disciples are walking through a grain field. The disciples are hungry. They pick some of the heads of grain, grind them on the palms of their hands, and eat.
Now, everybody knew that God’s law allowed hungry travelers to glean from crops in the fields through which they passed.
But the Pharisees get upset with the disciples because in their harvesting and grinding, they're doing work on the Sabbath. They're violating the Third Commandment.
When the Pharisees confront Jesus on this, Jesus doesn't deny that the disciples are doing work on the Sabbath. Nor does He deny the importance of Sabbath observance as a moral law given by God.
But Jesus does point to an Old Testament precedent to demonstrate that the Pharisees' criticism of His disciples was not of God.
Back when King Saul was still in power in the 11th.-century BC and trying to kill David, who had already been anointed by God to be Israel’s second king, David and his men, running for their lives, sought refuge from the high priest Abiathar. David and the others were famished and asked for food. The priest was out of everything but the consecrated bread, or the bread of the Presence, which God’s law stipulated could only be eaten by the priest.
But Abiathar may have been a bit of a liberal: He thought that feeding hungry people might be good use of bread dedicated to God. So, he let David and his men eat. This, Jesus is telling the Pharisees, was the right thing.
Then Jesus reverts to the original discussion about another one of God's laws. “The Sabbath,” Jesus tells them, “was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
God gave the Sabbath not as a badge or a flag for proud, judgmental people, but as a day for rest and celebration.
And then, to underscore His authority to teach in this way, Jesus tells them: “So the Son of Man [that’s Him, the Messiah-King foretold in Scripture] is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Listen: God gives His Law to show us what it's like to live as His children, not to make us judges of others’ lives, to show people who are grateful for His undeserved grace how best to live if we want to honor God.
Jesus isn’t just Lord of the Sabbath, He’s the Lord of everything, the great I AM. He alone has kept God’s Law perfectly so that He can set free from sin, death, and darkness all who turn from sin and surrender to Him.
On another Sabbath, our Gospel lesson says, Jesus saw that the Pharisees were out to trap Him. So, He decided that it was a good time to do some of God’s work. He had a man with a shriveled hand stand in front of the crowds following Him.
Then He asked the Pharisees: “'Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4)
Mark tells us that the Pharisees said nothing. Then we’re told, starting at verse 5: “He [Jesus] looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.”
At the very least, the Pharisees might have said, “Wow! We’re so happy for the man healed by Jesus!”
But in this miracle, they didn’t see a sign of the coming of God’s kingdom.
They didn’t comprehend that Jesus was and is God.
They didn’t stop to think that it might be OK to do good to others on the Sabbath day.
Instead, they were enraged. Mark tells us, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” (Mark 3:6)
Those are strange bedfellows, the Pharisees and the Herodians, by the way.
The Herodians were a powerful class of people who supported and were enriched by their connection to King Herod. Herod wasn’t Jewish, though he claimed to be descended from David. He had been put on his throne by the Romans. The Herodians were secular people out for power and money. The Pharisees allying themselves with the Herodians made sense for only one reason: They both wanted Jesus dead and out of the way.
What does it all mean for us? Just this. Pharisaism started out as a well-meaning movement by people of God. They wanted to follow God in a frightening, tumultuous world. But instead of clinging to God and trusting in the grace He gives to all who believe, they clung to the Law, which cannot save us because no one but Jesus has ever perfectly kept God’s Law.
The Law can point us to our need of God’s grace given in Jesus.
It can be a guide to us in our prayer lives, as we allow it to show us our sins and vulnerabilities.
But only Jesus can save us.
In the end, Pharisees, ancient and modern, are no different from secularists who don’t believe in God: They put their trust not in God, but in themselves and their own goodness.
The Pharisees saw themselves as God’s protectors and God’s enforcers. But God is bigger than all of us. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal. As believers in the God Who saves us through Jesus Christ, we don’t need to protect God and we don’t need to enforce God’s holy will on the world. When Jesus returns to the world, He will sort everything out. Remember how He said that when He returned to the world, He would separate the wheat from the weeds--the righteous from the unrepentant.
In the meantime, our call as Christians is simple:
- To trust in Christ alone.
- To live our faith in Christ.
- To tell others about Christ.
By trusting in Christ, seeking to live our faith in Christ, and telling others about Christ and His grace, right out loud for all the world to see, we may, like our Lord, encounter opposition, not just from secularists but from modern Pharisees who claim to be Christians.
In fact, the Christian's biggest and most unforgiving critics may be other Christians. Years ago, one of my sisters told a friend of hers that her brother was a pastor. The friend was excited to hear that. "Really?" she asked. "Where is he a pastor?" "He's not in town," my sister explained. "But he served a Lutheran congregation." Her friend's attitude soured. "Oh," she replied unenthusiastically, as though she'd learned I was an underworld kingpin. "No," my sister quickly reacted. "He is a Christian."
But no matter how much shade the world or even other Christians throw our way, it's OK.
When you follow the Lord of the Sabbath, the King of all creation, Who has conquered sin and death, what’s a little opposition?
What difference does it make if we bear others’ condescension or condemnation?
What difference does it make even if we die for our faith?
The Christian lives in the assurance enjoyed by St. Paul: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
If the world thinks we’re “a bit of a liberal” because we live, depend on, and share the love of Jesus with others, so be it.
We confess and follow Jesus, the Lord of love, and He will never let go of those who trust in Him. Amen
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
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