Andy Mineo and Lecrae are two of my favorite contemporary musical artists. They both rap. They are both Christians.
Here, while recommending a new book, Mineo tells about an incident that he and Lecrae were recently both involved in and then, witnesses to, while walking through a New York City neighborhood.
Please listen to the whole thing. You will be blessed.
And please choose to listen to it at all, even if it gets uncomfortable. He says some very important things.
My views on engaging in sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage are well-known by those who know me. I've made them clear here.
I hope that my belief that Christians are called to love and try to understand all people is equally well known.
Jesus says that we are to love our neighbors, no exceptions.
Jesus says that we're also to speak God's truth. And, in Ephesians, we're told to speak the truth of God in love.
We can do both of those things--love our neighbor and speak the truth, as long as we own our own imperfections and our own need of Jesus forgiveness for our sins.
Anyone who is truly grateful that they have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone will be powerfully motivated to never look down their nose is on anyone.
Like Luther, we Christians can own the fact that we are all beggars, that we are all in need of grace because we cannot save ourselves.
I love what Andy Mineo has to say here. I love the sensitivity he shows to all kinds of people here, including police officers thrust into difficult situations without knowing the context.
Please listen to what this extraordinary young man has to say. I thank God for him and for Lecrae and the ways in which they are showing the implications of the good news of Jesus Christ to all kinds of people.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
Sunday, July 31, 2016
So You Believe Jesus is Lord...Now What?
Colossians 3:1-11
As some of you know, on June 14, I began reducing the calories I take in each day. I’m starting to lose a little weight and, in doing so, learning the truth of what a friend said one day when we went to an ice cream parlor. “I’ll take two scoops of mint chocolate chip,” he said, “one for each thigh.”
Well, ice cream has never been a craving of mine and my food seems to not land on my thighs, but on my waistline. But it is true that what we put into us is going to show up in us.
That’s equally the case when it comes to our spiritual lives.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring the apostle Paul’s letter to the fledgling Asia Minor church in Colossae. In response to the preaching and teaching of one of Paul’s associates, people had come to repentance for sin and faith in Jesus as their God and Savior. But shortly after that, the Colossian Christians were abandoning Jesus as “the way and the truth and the life” for a kind of “ice cream parlor faith”: one scoop from mysticism, one from Judaism, one from angel worship, all with a small Jesus topping.
Jesus is clear when He says that “no one comes to [God] the Father” except through Him. His forgiving, eternity transforming grace is free. But when we turn to earthly thinking for spiritual nourishment, we turn away from Christ and eternity. We are either, in Paul's terminology in Colossians, "of the flesh," facing eternal separation from the God we meet in Christ, or we are "of the Spirit," filled with God’s life forever.
It was to warn the Colossian Christians of the dangerous ground on which they were building their lives by turning to the world’s faulty wisdom and dead idols, that Paul wrote to them.
In the first two chapters of Colossians, Paul makes an extensive confession of Who Jesus is: God in the flesh come to earth to die and rise and share His victory with believers. All who believe and are baptized are Christ’s resurrection people.
Now, in chapter three though, from which our second lesson is taken, Paul turns to a question that’s central to anyone who confesses Jesus as their Lord and God: Now what? Jesus hasn’t come back yet nor have we died and come face to face with Jesus yet, so how do we live today?
Paul talks about several things we need to do today and every day in order to stay close to God.
Take a look at the beginning of our second lesson, Colossians 3: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ [Remember last Sunday, we pointed out that in Holy Baptism, our old self is drowned and our new selves rise? Since you’ve been raised with Christ, Paul says], set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. [In other words, when Christ returns, you and I who believe in Him will rise again.]”
The first thing we need to do in response to how God has changed His relationship with Him through Christ and our faith in Christ, is set our hearts and set our minds not on what the world says is important, but on the things of God.
How can we do that?
Above all, we need to read God’s Word regularly. Aim for reading the Bible five days a week.
Many studies have been done about the impact that gratuitous violence in media--movies, games, and books--has not only on kids, but also on adults. It makes them less social, less sociable, more impolite, sometimes violent.
Other studies have shown--and experience bears this out, I think--that a steady diet of cable news, whatever the netwoek, will make people pessimistic, cynical, angry, and fearful.
Garbage in, garbage out. The things of this world in, the things of this world out.
Conversely, if we fill up on the Word of God, in bite size chunks on which we prayerfully reflect and seek to apply, Christ and eternity invades the ways we think and live.
Setting our hearts and minds on heavenly things will also mean bringing everything--our sins, our hopes, our fears, our cynicism, our families, our church, the people around us--to God through prayer in Jesus’ name.
A man once told me, “You know how you always talk about praying? Well, I’ve been trying it and it really seems to be helping me to deal with things each day.” He reported that he’d been able to better deal with his grumpy wife and that, since he’d started praying everyday, she seemed a bit less grumpy.
Setting our hearts and minds on Christ also happens when we worship regularly, receive the sacrament regularly, fellowship with other believers regularly, reach out and serve others in Jesus' name regularly.
After setting our hearts and minds on heavenly things, Paul says, there’s something else we need to do in response to Christ’s grace everyday. Colossians 3:5-7: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.”
A big area of our lives most of us must deal with and keep dealing with as Christians, is our sexuality.
Sex is God’s invention, part of His creation. But turn on your computer or your TV, watch Hulu or Netflix, and you’ll immediately notice something: Most of the world can’t handle sex.
We have an inborn human tendency to misuse sex, misappropriate it, overestimate its importance, or underestimate its power.
Theologian Richard Foster compares sex to a river, beautiful and useful when kept within its banks, but deadly when it floods past them.
Paul warns the Colossian Christians that their earthly rather than heavenly orientation leaves them open to the misuse of sex. In fact, he says that we are to put to death--to crucify through repentance--all of our misuses of sex, from pornography to lust, from adultery to exploitation, from unclean talk and sexual intimacy outside of marriage to making sex an idol. He says that one day, God’s wrath will burn hot against these and other sins.
Blessedly, no sin is beyond forgiveness.* And God blesses and helps anyone who wrestles with a sin, bringing it daily to the foot of Jesus Christ to be crucified and overcome. That includes sexual sins.
Then, starting at verse 8, Paul deals with another set of sins to which we’re prone when we orient ourselves to the world, the sins that emanate from our minds and our mouths. “But now,” Paul writes, “you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Get rid of--daily crucify--Paul is saying all your anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lies. That’s the third thing we need to do every day in response to God’s grace.
When we think about that list of Paul’s and get really honest, it's clear that getting rid of all of these things from our lives might mean that you and I would say a lot fewer words than we do each day. And think a lot less sinful, hurtful, destructive things.
I know that a lot of campaign ads and campaign rhetoric would go away.
This past week, we finished Jon Meacham’s biography of our forty-first president, George H.W. Bush. It's a portrait of a complicated yet essentially decent man.
Meacham recounts that in 1988, Bush won a hard-fought campaign for the presidency. One of the most important figures in that campaign was a guy named Lee Atwater.
Bush unleashed Atwater, man of hard edges, sharp elbows, and few scruples, to throw everything at Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis.
Atwater felt no hesitation about creating a false picture of Dukakis: questioning Dukakis’ patriotism, painting him as dangerously out of touch with people, and soft on crime to the point of favoring murderers over ordinary people.
Several years after the election, which Bush won, Atwater learned that he had brain cancer. Near his death, Atwater surveyed his life, repented for his sins, and received Christ. In response to Christ, Atwater apologized for lying about Dukakis and misconstruing his record in the 1988 campaign.
Atwater saw the need for crucifying his sins and doing something else. That “something else” is something you and I need to do each day as followers of Jesus Christ.
And that’s put off the old self--the sinner who tries to live a life independent of God, who wants to misuse God’s gifts for our own short-sighted pleasure, who wants to conquer others rather than love them as fellow children of God. We need to put off the old self and, Paul says, put on the new self, the new person God is making of everyone who repents and entrusts their lives to Jesus.
This new self is, as we set our minds and hearts on heaven and put away the sins of this world, going to look increasingly like Jesus, God in the flesh, Who gave His life in order to give us life. Paul explains it all in this way in 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we all...are being transformed into his [Christ’s] image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
Jesus Christ died and rose to make it possible for you and me to have an eternal relationship with God. It’s a relationship we can’t earn or perform our way to; it’s a gift for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ.
And how are we to live until the days we die or the day Christ returns? Paul puts it simply for us today:
It’s a simple proposition. Garbage in, garbage out. Christ into our lives and Christ will show out from everything about us. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was prepared this morning during the morning worship services of Living Water.]
*Of course, Jesus does speak of one sin that cannot be forgiven, the sin against the Holy Spirit. Jesus mentions this in Mark 10:28-30. The sin against the Spirit is the refusal to heed it when God's Holy Spirit points out our sins to us. It's not so much a specific sin as it is an unwillingness to accept God's definition of what constitutes a sin or our violation of it.
As some of you know, on June 14, I began reducing the calories I take in each day. I’m starting to lose a little weight and, in doing so, learning the truth of what a friend said one day when we went to an ice cream parlor. “I’ll take two scoops of mint chocolate chip,” he said, “one for each thigh.”
Well, ice cream has never been a craving of mine and my food seems to not land on my thighs, but on my waistline. But it is true that what we put into us is going to show up in us.
That’s equally the case when it comes to our spiritual lives.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring the apostle Paul’s letter to the fledgling Asia Minor church in Colossae. In response to the preaching and teaching of one of Paul’s associates, people had come to repentance for sin and faith in Jesus as their God and Savior. But shortly after that, the Colossian Christians were abandoning Jesus as “the way and the truth and the life” for a kind of “ice cream parlor faith”: one scoop from mysticism, one from Judaism, one from angel worship, all with a small Jesus topping.
Jesus is clear when He says that “no one comes to [God] the Father” except through Him. His forgiving, eternity transforming grace is free. But when we turn to earthly thinking for spiritual nourishment, we turn away from Christ and eternity. We are either, in Paul's terminology in Colossians, "of the flesh," facing eternal separation from the God we meet in Christ, or we are "of the Spirit," filled with God’s life forever.
It was to warn the Colossian Christians of the dangerous ground on which they were building their lives by turning to the world’s faulty wisdom and dead idols, that Paul wrote to them.
In the first two chapters of Colossians, Paul makes an extensive confession of Who Jesus is: God in the flesh come to earth to die and rise and share His victory with believers. All who believe and are baptized are Christ’s resurrection people.
Now, in chapter three though, from which our second lesson is taken, Paul turns to a question that’s central to anyone who confesses Jesus as their Lord and God: Now what? Jesus hasn’t come back yet nor have we died and come face to face with Jesus yet, so how do we live today?
Paul talks about several things we need to do today and every day in order to stay close to God.
Take a look at the beginning of our second lesson, Colossians 3: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ [Remember last Sunday, we pointed out that in Holy Baptism, our old self is drowned and our new selves rise? Since you’ve been raised with Christ, Paul says], set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. [In other words, when Christ returns, you and I who believe in Him will rise again.]”
The first thing we need to do in response to how God has changed His relationship with Him through Christ and our faith in Christ, is set our hearts and set our minds not on what the world says is important, but on the things of God.
How can we do that?
Above all, we need to read God’s Word regularly. Aim for reading the Bible five days a week.
Many studies have been done about the impact that gratuitous violence in media--movies, games, and books--has not only on kids, but also on adults. It makes them less social, less sociable, more impolite, sometimes violent.
Other studies have shown--and experience bears this out, I think--that a steady diet of cable news, whatever the netwoek, will make people pessimistic, cynical, angry, and fearful.
Garbage in, garbage out. The things of this world in, the things of this world out.
Conversely, if we fill up on the Word of God, in bite size chunks on which we prayerfully reflect and seek to apply, Christ and eternity invades the ways we think and live.
Setting our hearts and minds on heavenly things will also mean bringing everything--our sins, our hopes, our fears, our cynicism, our families, our church, the people around us--to God through prayer in Jesus’ name.
A man once told me, “You know how you always talk about praying? Well, I’ve been trying it and it really seems to be helping me to deal with things each day.” He reported that he’d been able to better deal with his grumpy wife and that, since he’d started praying everyday, she seemed a bit less grumpy.
Setting our hearts and minds on Christ also happens when we worship regularly, receive the sacrament regularly, fellowship with other believers regularly, reach out and serve others in Jesus' name regularly.
After setting our hearts and minds on heavenly things, Paul says, there’s something else we need to do in response to Christ’s grace everyday. Colossians 3:5-7: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.”
A big area of our lives most of us must deal with and keep dealing with as Christians, is our sexuality.
Sex is God’s invention, part of His creation. But turn on your computer or your TV, watch Hulu or Netflix, and you’ll immediately notice something: Most of the world can’t handle sex.
We have an inborn human tendency to misuse sex, misappropriate it, overestimate its importance, or underestimate its power.
Theologian Richard Foster compares sex to a river, beautiful and useful when kept within its banks, but deadly when it floods past them.
Paul warns the Colossian Christians that their earthly rather than heavenly orientation leaves them open to the misuse of sex. In fact, he says that we are to put to death--to crucify through repentance--all of our misuses of sex, from pornography to lust, from adultery to exploitation, from unclean talk and sexual intimacy outside of marriage to making sex an idol. He says that one day, God’s wrath will burn hot against these and other sins.
Blessedly, no sin is beyond forgiveness.* And God blesses and helps anyone who wrestles with a sin, bringing it daily to the foot of Jesus Christ to be crucified and overcome. That includes sexual sins.
Then, starting at verse 8, Paul deals with another set of sins to which we’re prone when we orient ourselves to the world, the sins that emanate from our minds and our mouths. “But now,” Paul writes, “you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Get rid of--daily crucify--Paul is saying all your anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lies. That’s the third thing we need to do every day in response to God’s grace.
When we think about that list of Paul’s and get really honest, it's clear that getting rid of all of these things from our lives might mean that you and I would say a lot fewer words than we do each day. And think a lot less sinful, hurtful, destructive things.
I know that a lot of campaign ads and campaign rhetoric would go away.
This past week, we finished Jon Meacham’s biography of our forty-first president, George H.W. Bush. It's a portrait of a complicated yet essentially decent man.
Meacham recounts that in 1988, Bush won a hard-fought campaign for the presidency. One of the most important figures in that campaign was a guy named Lee Atwater.
Bush unleashed Atwater, man of hard edges, sharp elbows, and few scruples, to throw everything at Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis.
Atwater felt no hesitation about creating a false picture of Dukakis: questioning Dukakis’ patriotism, painting him as dangerously out of touch with people, and soft on crime to the point of favoring murderers over ordinary people.
Several years after the election, which Bush won, Atwater learned that he had brain cancer. Near his death, Atwater surveyed his life, repented for his sins, and received Christ. In response to Christ, Atwater apologized for lying about Dukakis and misconstruing his record in the 1988 campaign.
Atwater saw the need for crucifying his sins and doing something else. That “something else” is something you and I need to do each day as followers of Jesus Christ.
And that’s put off the old self--the sinner who tries to live a life independent of God, who wants to misuse God’s gifts for our own short-sighted pleasure, who wants to conquer others rather than love them as fellow children of God. We need to put off the old self and, Paul says, put on the new self, the new person God is making of everyone who repents and entrusts their lives to Jesus.
This new self is, as we set our minds and hearts on heaven and put away the sins of this world, going to look increasingly like Jesus, God in the flesh, Who gave His life in order to give us life. Paul explains it all in this way in 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we all...are being transformed into his [Christ’s] image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
Jesus Christ died and rose to make it possible for you and me to have an eternal relationship with God. It’s a relationship we can’t earn or perform our way to; it’s a gift for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ.
And how are we to live until the days we die or the day Christ returns? Paul puts it simply for us today:
- Set your heart and mind on Christ and heaven where He reigns.
- Put off sins, including the earthiest of sins, the misuse of sex and the misuse of our thoughts and words.
- And put on Christ each day. Read God’s Word. Pray. Worship. Receive the Sacrament. Live in accountable community with Christ’s Church.
It’s a simple proposition. Garbage in, garbage out. Christ into our lives and Christ will show out from everything about us. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was prepared this morning during the morning worship services of Living Water.]
*Of course, Jesus does speak of one sin that cannot be forgiven, the sin against the Holy Spirit. Jesus mentions this in Mark 10:28-30. The sin against the Spirit is the refusal to heed it when God's Holy Spirit points out our sins to us. It's not so much a specific sin as it is an unwillingness to accept God's definition of what constitutes a sin or our violation of it.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Jesus on Marriage and Divorce
[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Mark 10:2-16
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus points us to God’s intention for human beings when it comes to marriage, divorce, sexuality, and family living.
We may want to run from these words of Jesus. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes, to some people in these times, anyone who dares to publicly read Jesus’ words here “is likely to be called cruel, unfeeling, unforgiving, exclusive...'unchristian'...”
But as we dive into Jesus’ words for us today, it’s important to remember Who is speaking them. This is the God Who loved us enough to take on human flesh, Who was, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin.” This is the sinless Savior Who took our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from the dead, to offer the undeserved gift of new and everlasting life to all who willingly repent, daily submitting to the death of their own sins and sinful desires and entrusting their lives to the loving will of the God we know only in Jesus Christ.
Jesus words aren’t those of a closed-minded religious bigot, but of the God Who loves us more than anyone else could!
Jesus says to His followers, including you and me, in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” I find that when Ann, who loves me, criticizes for something I’ve said or done, I’m initially defensive. But, after awhile, I remember how much she loves me and I’m ready to listen and learn from what she has to say. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts...” So, let’s listen to what our Friend, God, and Savior Jesus has to tell us today.
Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16.
In verse 2, a group of Pharisees asks Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
It’s no coincidence that the Pharisees ask this question by the Jordan River out in the Judean wilderness, the same setting in which John the Baptist ran afoul of King Herod not long before.
John, you’ll remember, challenged the legitimacy of Herod’s rule because this Herod, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, had married his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias had divorced Herod Antipas’ brother in order to marry the king. John claimed that Antipas and Herodias had defiled marriage and the royal throne by their adultery. Herodias, you’ll also remember, took particular offense at John the Baptist calling her husband and her out for their unrepentant sin. That’s why she made sure that John was beheaded.
The Pharisees, already anxious to get rid of Jesus, hope to entrap Jesus into offending the royal couple in the dominion of Antipas in the same way John had offended them.
Notice too, the thrust of the Pharisees' question. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
But Jesus isn’t interested in talking about whether it’s lawful for a person to divorce their spouse. In Deuteronomy 24, some 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through Moses that it’s legal for a person to divorce a spouse. But as the former Pharisee turned Christian preacher and evangelist, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial...’ ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.’”
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how adultery can be a legitimate grounds for divorce.
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that when an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse--what has been called “spiritual abandonment”--the Christian may have grounds for divorce.
And no loving Christian would insist that a spouse remain tied to someone who perpetrates violence against them, since clearly an abuser isn’t interested in being married, but in dominating another human being.
But Jesus wants to move beyond the law to talk about the intention of God, the will of God, for human beings when it comes to marriage and divorce.
Jesus responds to the Pharisees by asking them, in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” Alluding to Deuteronomy 24, they reply correctly, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”
The Pharisees were sticklers for Biblical law. They checked all the right boxes. Warmed a pew? Check. Gave my offerings? Check. Did my time in Catechism? Check. Gave to the poor even though I didn’t want to? Check. But they weren’t interested in surrendering to God so much as getting God to do what they wanted Him to do and to validate what wonderful, worthy, hard-working people they were.
This is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”: the idea that I can be a good enough person to earn my way into God’s good graces. But it doesn’t work! At birth, you and I are so polluted by the sin we inherit from our fathers and mothers that, in the words of Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Instead, righteousness comes as a gift only to those who surrender to and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ. Surrender to and trust in Christ is what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Turn to Romans 3:21-22: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law [apart from the demands of the little boxes the Pharisees tried to check off] is revealed...the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...” in Christ.
Back in our gospel lesson, Jesus points to God’s original intention for marriage. Look at what Jesus says, starting at Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart [Moses] wrote you this precept.”
God gave people the option of divorce as a concession to their hard-heartedness. But look at what Jesus says next in Mark 10:6-9. He points back to the book of Genesis: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man [or woman] separate.”
Even though God makes allowances for human sin, Jesus says it’s God’s will that marriage, the union of a male and a female made one flesh by the grace of God, should be inviolate. Just as war should be a last, dreaded option for nations, to be deferred until every peaceful resolution has been tried, so divorce should be a last, dreaded option for husbands and wives who have become one flesh!
After this time of public teaching on marriage and divorce, verses 10-12 find Jesus sitting with His followers in a house. He uses the time-worn method of hyperbole, exaggeration, to underscore His teaching. Jesus says that whenever a husband or a wife divorces a spouse and the ex-spouse remarries, the ex-spouse is made an adulterer. By expressing things in this way, Jesus is telling His disciples how seriously God takes the marriage vows of husbands and wives. Divorce may be unavoidable, even justifiable at times. But it is always the result of human sin and it always spreads the misery of sin around, even to helpless bystanders.
And the most helpless of all bystanders to divorce are children, which leads inevitably to the last verses of our lesson, Mark 10:13-16.
While Jesus sits with His disciples, people bring their children to be touched by Jesus. The disciples, verse 13 says, “rebuked” people for doing this. The disciples were reprimanding parents and grandparents for bringing their children to Jesus for blessing. Jesus says to let the children come to Him. It’s to people who come to Him in childlike trust that God’s kingdom belongs.
At the end of our lesson, in verse 16, we’re told, “And [Jesus] took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.”
When we were kids, we were taught to sing, “Jesus loves the little children.” He does! But I wonder sometimes how much some parents love their children when they press for divorces from their spouses just because they’re finding life together difficult or challenging.
Unless there’s abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment, kids--even grown kids--need their parents to persevere in staying together.
Listen: In twenty-eight years as a pastor, I have seen far more people, whether children or spouses, damaged by divorce than I ever have by marriages in which the husbands and wives have gone through tough times, yet tenaciously prayed, gotten counseling, surrendered each day to Christ, and, in effect, told each other, “No matter how I feel today, by the grace of God given in Christ, I will be with you tomorrow and until death parts us. Period.”
God, I’m convinced, is not calling married people to simply “stay together” while living separate lives. That is NOT what it means for a husband and a wife to become “one flesh.”
But when wives and husbands approach Jesus each day like little children, heeding His commands, trusting in His grace, speaking the truth to one another in love, forgiving each other, praying for one another, and asking God to help them to see the best in each other every day, they will do more than, as some have put it, “divorce-proof” their marriages.
Their marriages will become, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little churches,” built on the rock of Jesus Christ, where the prayers go up and the blessings come down, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is most intimately and wonderfully known. Amen
Mark 10:2-16
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus points us to God’s intention for human beings when it comes to marriage, divorce, sexuality, and family living.
We may want to run from these words of Jesus. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes, to some people in these times, anyone who dares to publicly read Jesus’ words here “is likely to be called cruel, unfeeling, unforgiving, exclusive...'unchristian'...”
But as we dive into Jesus’ words for us today, it’s important to remember Who is speaking them. This is the God Who loved us enough to take on human flesh, Who was, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin.” This is the sinless Savior Who took our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from the dead, to offer the undeserved gift of new and everlasting life to all who willingly repent, daily submitting to the death of their own sins and sinful desires and entrusting their lives to the loving will of the God we know only in Jesus Christ.
Jesus words aren’t those of a closed-minded religious bigot, but of the God Who loves us more than anyone else could!
Jesus says to His followers, including you and me, in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” I find that when Ann, who loves me, criticizes for something I’ve said or done, I’m initially defensive. But, after awhile, I remember how much she loves me and I’m ready to listen and learn from what she has to say. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts...” So, let’s listen to what our Friend, God, and Savior Jesus has to tell us today.
Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16.
In verse 2, a group of Pharisees asks Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
It’s no coincidence that the Pharisees ask this question by the Jordan River out in the Judean wilderness, the same setting in which John the Baptist ran afoul of King Herod not long before.
John, you’ll remember, challenged the legitimacy of Herod’s rule because this Herod, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, had married his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias had divorced Herod Antipas’ brother in order to marry the king. John claimed that Antipas and Herodias had defiled marriage and the royal throne by their adultery. Herodias, you’ll also remember, took particular offense at John the Baptist calling her husband and her out for their unrepentant sin. That’s why she made sure that John was beheaded.
The Pharisees, already anxious to get rid of Jesus, hope to entrap Jesus into offending the royal couple in the dominion of Antipas in the same way John had offended them.
Notice too, the thrust of the Pharisees' question. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
But Jesus isn’t interested in talking about whether it’s lawful for a person to divorce their spouse. In Deuteronomy 24, some 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through Moses that it’s legal for a person to divorce a spouse. But as the former Pharisee turned Christian preacher and evangelist, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial...’ ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.’”
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how adultery can be a legitimate grounds for divorce.
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that when an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse--what has been called “spiritual abandonment”--the Christian may have grounds for divorce.
And no loving Christian would insist that a spouse remain tied to someone who perpetrates violence against them, since clearly an abuser isn’t interested in being married, but in dominating another human being.
But Jesus wants to move beyond the law to talk about the intention of God, the will of God, for human beings when it comes to marriage and divorce.
Jesus responds to the Pharisees by asking them, in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” Alluding to Deuteronomy 24, they reply correctly, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”
The Pharisees were sticklers for Biblical law. They checked all the right boxes. Warmed a pew? Check. Gave my offerings? Check. Did my time in Catechism? Check. Gave to the poor even though I didn’t want to? Check. But they weren’t interested in surrendering to God so much as getting God to do what they wanted Him to do and to validate what wonderful, worthy, hard-working people they were.
This is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”: the idea that I can be a good enough person to earn my way into God’s good graces. But it doesn’t work! At birth, you and I are so polluted by the sin we inherit from our fathers and mothers that, in the words of Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Instead, righteousness comes as a gift only to those who surrender to and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ. Surrender to and trust in Christ is what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Turn to Romans 3:21-22: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law [apart from the demands of the little boxes the Pharisees tried to check off] is revealed...the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...” in Christ.
Back in our gospel lesson, Jesus points to God’s original intention for marriage. Look at what Jesus says, starting at Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart [Moses] wrote you this precept.”
God gave people the option of divorce as a concession to their hard-heartedness. But look at what Jesus says next in Mark 10:6-9. He points back to the book of Genesis: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man [or woman] separate.”
Even though God makes allowances for human sin, Jesus says it’s God’s will that marriage, the union of a male and a female made one flesh by the grace of God, should be inviolate. Just as war should be a last, dreaded option for nations, to be deferred until every peaceful resolution has been tried, so divorce should be a last, dreaded option for husbands and wives who have become one flesh!
After this time of public teaching on marriage and divorce, verses 10-12 find Jesus sitting with His followers in a house. He uses the time-worn method of hyperbole, exaggeration, to underscore His teaching. Jesus says that whenever a husband or a wife divorces a spouse and the ex-spouse remarries, the ex-spouse is made an adulterer. By expressing things in this way, Jesus is telling His disciples how seriously God takes the marriage vows of husbands and wives. Divorce may be unavoidable, even justifiable at times. But it is always the result of human sin and it always spreads the misery of sin around, even to helpless bystanders.
And the most helpless of all bystanders to divorce are children, which leads inevitably to the last verses of our lesson, Mark 10:13-16.
While Jesus sits with His disciples, people bring their children to be touched by Jesus. The disciples, verse 13 says, “rebuked” people for doing this. The disciples were reprimanding parents and grandparents for bringing their children to Jesus for blessing. Jesus says to let the children come to Him. It’s to people who come to Him in childlike trust that God’s kingdom belongs.
At the end of our lesson, in verse 16, we’re told, “And [Jesus] took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.”
When we were kids, we were taught to sing, “Jesus loves the little children.” He does! But I wonder sometimes how much some parents love their children when they press for divorces from their spouses just because they’re finding life together difficult or challenging.
Unless there’s abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment, kids--even grown kids--need their parents to persevere in staying together.
Listen: In twenty-eight years as a pastor, I have seen far more people, whether children or spouses, damaged by divorce than I ever have by marriages in which the husbands and wives have gone through tough times, yet tenaciously prayed, gotten counseling, surrendered each day to Christ, and, in effect, told each other, “No matter how I feel today, by the grace of God given in Christ, I will be with you tomorrow and until death parts us. Period.”
God, I’m convinced, is not calling married people to simply “stay together” while living separate lives. That is NOT what it means for a husband and a wife to become “one flesh.”
But when wives and husbands approach Jesus each day like little children, heeding His commands, trusting in His grace, speaking the truth to one another in love, forgiving each other, praying for one another, and asking God to help them to see the best in each other every day, they will do more than, as some have put it, “divorce-proof” their marriages.
Their marriages will become, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little churches,” built on the rock of Jesus Christ, where the prayers go up and the blessings come down, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is most intimately and wonderfully known. Amen
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Thursday, August 05, 2010
When the Expression of the Bible's Teachings is Vetoed by Political Correctness
R.R. Reno says that's what is happening in academia today.
It isn't just at universities that the stifling atmosphere of political correctness inhibits or condemns the expression of Christian moral judgments about homosexual behavior.
For twenty years now, clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have felt, at the least, uncomfortable in expressing our view that, while we may support full civil rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons (as I do), we also believe that engaging in sexual behavior outside of heterosexual marriage is contrary to the will of God. We also believe that it's our duty as ministers of the Gospel to acquaint people with all that God has to say about sin, repentance, grace, and forgiveness, including what God has to say about our sexuality. Failure to do so puts the eternal destinies of those God calls us to serve in peril.
To express moral judgments on the godly use of our sexuality though, however clearly rooted in the teachings of Scripture and in two-thousand years of Christian theology, is seen among many, if not most, of my ELCA colleagues as simplistic, out of touch, or bigoted.
One ELCA colleague, hearing me say that I favored civil rights regardless of sexual orientation, asked me, with condescension, how I could say such a thing since I clearly believed gays to be "perverts." It didn't seem to matter to him that I have never said such a thing. But the purveyors of correctness love to ascribe the basest and most inhumane motives to those who don't fall into line. Making people out to be monsters is easier than actually dealing with the merits of the moral arguments they advance.
Given this two-decade history, you can see why I'm skeptical that purveyors of political correctness in the ELCA are going to be content in allowing some congregations and pastors continue to preach and teach in accordance with the Scriptures. My experience suggests that they won't be happy until they've made their unscriptural views on sexuality, sin, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ the only ones that ELCA churches and pastors can teach.
It's time for a new reformation!
It isn't just at universities that the stifling atmosphere of political correctness inhibits or condemns the expression of Christian moral judgments about homosexual behavior.
For twenty years now, clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have felt, at the least, uncomfortable in expressing our view that, while we may support full civil rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons (as I do), we also believe that engaging in sexual behavior outside of heterosexual marriage is contrary to the will of God. We also believe that it's our duty as ministers of the Gospel to acquaint people with all that God has to say about sin, repentance, grace, and forgiveness, including what God has to say about our sexuality. Failure to do so puts the eternal destinies of those God calls us to serve in peril.
To express moral judgments on the godly use of our sexuality though, however clearly rooted in the teachings of Scripture and in two-thousand years of Christian theology, is seen among many, if not most, of my ELCA colleagues as simplistic, out of touch, or bigoted.
One ELCA colleague, hearing me say that I favored civil rights regardless of sexual orientation, asked me, with condescension, how I could say such a thing since I clearly believed gays to be "perverts." It didn't seem to matter to him that I have never said such a thing. But the purveyors of correctness love to ascribe the basest and most inhumane motives to those who don't fall into line. Making people out to be monsters is easier than actually dealing with the merits of the moral arguments they advance.
Given this two-decade history, you can see why I'm skeptical that purveyors of political correctness in the ELCA are going to be content in allowing some congregations and pastors continue to preach and teach in accordance with the Scriptures. My experience suggests that they won't be happy until they've made their unscriptural views on sexuality, sin, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ the only ones that ELCA churches and pastors can teach.
It's time for a new reformation!
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Put Off the Old, Put On the New
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Colossians 3:1-17
1So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.
8But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
12As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Chapter three of the New Testament book of Colossians represents something of a break from the first two chapters of this letter on which we’ve been focused for several weeks. In the first two chapters, Paul (with the help or, at least, the assent of the young pastor Timothy) makes an extensive confession of Who Jesus is: God in the flesh come to earth to die and rise and share His victory with believers. All who believe and are baptized are Christ’s resurrection people.
In fact, just to get you in the right frame of mind, I invite everybody to make two affirmations right now:
But it’s at this point that a question should arise in our minds: Now what? Jesus hasn’t come back yet nor have we died and come face to face with Jesus yet, so how do we live today?
This was an important question for Paul and Timothy to answer for the Colossian Christians because they wanted to correct the incorrect impressions of the Christian faith created by teachers who had come to the Colossian church and told the believers there that, on top of Jesus, they also needed to obey a string of regulations. (Some of their regulations seem to have been like Jewish ritual law, some of them like a first-century version of New Age mysticism.)
No, says the letter to the Colossians, we only need Christ to be saved from our sins and to have life with God!
So, does that mean that we Christians can do anything we want? There have been some Christians who have thought so. Some of you will remember the scandal that enveloped televangelist Jim Bakker some years ago. His downfall involved extensive sexual scandal, financial misdeeds, and prison time. To his credit, Bakker later wrote a book, the title of which contained his confession: I Was Wrong. But when Bakker went to prison, one denominational group said that they would be happy to ordain him, repentance or not. Their reason: Bakker's sin was of the flesh, but as a Christian, he was only responsible for spiritual sins. I have no idea what that means; but it shows the extent to which we human beings can go to exonerate ourselves of responsibility for our sins.
Often, we all can be like the character in one of George Bernard Shaw’s plays who says, “I love to sin. God loves to forgive. It really is an admirable system.”
But in fact, the follower of Jesus Christ is called to choose an entirely different orientation for his or her life and daily decision-making. We are to live as people who, through our Baptism, have died and risen with Christ, no longer oriented to the sin and death of this world, no longer taking our cues from what the New Testament calls life in the flesh, but living lives that reflect the reality of heaven and the new life that is ours through Jesus Christ.
Now look at verses 1-4 of our lesson on the special handout we distributed this morning. Read those verses silently, while I give a more literal translation from the Greek in which it was first written:
This is what Martin Luther was talking about when he said that each day we need to come to God to repent for our sins and each day, through the forgiveness God gives through Christ, we’re to walk in the power of Christ’s new life. That's daily repentance and renewal.
Colossians then lists five interrelated, overlapping sexual sins that Christians need to put to death within themselves.
First there’s fornication. The Greek word is porneian, from which we get the English word "pornography." According to the most renowned theological dictionary of the New Testament Greek, in its entry on porneia or fornication, “the [New Testament] is characterised by an unconditional repudiation of all extra-marital and unnatural intercourse.”
The list of sins we are to put to death through repentance goes on to include uncleanness (which would include any dirty, demeaning, or sexist words about sexuality), passion (which, in this case, means the desire to use another person for one’s own desires with no regard for the other person), evil desire (which refers to improper sexual desires, such as the desire for someone else’s spouse), and greed (which is actually a covetousness that makes either sex or the object of sexual desires a god for the covetous person).
That list pretty much runs the gamut of all of humanity’s sexual sins and they all, Colossians says, are to be put to death by daily repentance. Failure to strive to put them to death, our lesson tells us, will cause even those who have been baptized to incur God’s wrath.
I know that this makes God seem like a terrible spoilsport. But, in fact, God wants us to respect the gift of sexuality He has given to us. We see God's elevated view of our sexuality throughout Scripture. Genesis, for example, says that God created us male and female. The Song of Solomon celebrates in beautiful imagery the sexual relationship of husband and wife. In the books of the prophets, God said that the relationship of spouses stood as a metaphor for His relationship with Israel: He was Israel’s husband, Israel was God’s wife, and God lamented Israel’s faithlessness in running after other gods. In the New Testament, the Church is called the Bride of Christ. God wills that Christians’ relationships with members of the opposite sex be as unadulterated as our relationship with Christ. Thank God that whenever we fail to live in purity, either sexually or in other ways, we can turn to Him in repentance and receive forgiveness.
Our lesson goes on to talk about sins of the mouth—literally, the original Greek says, sins that come from our “stomatos,” our stomach or our gut. We're told to get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language.
God takes His gift of speech to us seriously, too. This is why the Ten Commandments include the eighth commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In The Small Catechism, Luther explains the commandment in this way: “We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.” Again, thank God for the gifts of repentance and forgiveness and fresh beginnings and new starts.
Verses 9 and 10 tell us: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”
In the first century church, those who were baptized took off their old clothes, were baptized, and then received new white robes in recognition of their having put off the old orientation to this world and put on the new orientation to Christ and to heaven. Since we have put on this new way of life of being “Christ’s resurrection people,” our call is to keep putting off all the vices that our lesson lists, so that our relationship with Christ can be kept clear and clean and pure.
Now, I wanted to be sure to talk about verses 12-17, even though they're not appointed for today, because it’s important to see that a relationship with Christ is not just about the things we put off or get rid of. This is, by the way, one of the deficiencies I see in how we usually commemorate the Lenten season. Everybody talks about what they're going to give up during Lent: "I'm going to give up chocolate." "I'm going to give up swearing." That's fine if the giving up leads us to a deeper relationship with Christ. But life with Christ is also about putting on new ways of living, joyful ways of living! Read verses 12 to 15 out loud with me:
None of this is to say that Christians are to be milquetoasts. Verse 16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom…”
This passage bears directly on something coming up at Saint Matthew. You may have heard that there’s a vote on August 29. The issue at hand will be whether Saint Matthew should leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Some are worried about the vote because people have varying opinions. I’m not. As someone once said, “If two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant.”
Whether it’s on how the Church addresses social justice issues, what pastors and bishops should say on political matters, how much emphasis should be placed on evangelism and discipleship, how much heed we should give to Latin American and African Lutherans who are deeply disturbed by recent actions of Lutherans in North America and Europe, or what we teach our children about the gift of sexuality, if your opinions are rooted in the Word of God—chapter and verse—then, by all means, you need to share those views among yourselves.
When we let Christ’s word dwell richly in us, we will all have times when we have words that teach and even admonish one another and help us all to put off the ways of the world and to put on the things of Jesus Christ.
Finally, verse 17 says, “And, whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” May this be our aim every single moment of every single day. Amen
Colossians 3:1-17
1So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.
8But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
12As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Chapter three of the New Testament book of Colossians represents something of a break from the first two chapters of this letter on which we’ve been focused for several weeks. In the first two chapters, Paul (with the help or, at least, the assent of the young pastor Timothy) makes an extensive confession of Who Jesus is: God in the flesh come to earth to die and rise and share His victory with believers. All who believe and are baptized are Christ’s resurrection people.
In fact, just to get you in the right frame of mind, I invite everybody to make two affirmations right now:
- “I have died and risen with Christ!”
- “We are Christ’s resurrection people!”
But it’s at this point that a question should arise in our minds: Now what? Jesus hasn’t come back yet nor have we died and come face to face with Jesus yet, so how do we live today?
This was an important question for Paul and Timothy to answer for the Colossian Christians because they wanted to correct the incorrect impressions of the Christian faith created by teachers who had come to the Colossian church and told the believers there that, on top of Jesus, they also needed to obey a string of regulations. (Some of their regulations seem to have been like Jewish ritual law, some of them like a first-century version of New Age mysticism.)
No, says the letter to the Colossians, we only need Christ to be saved from our sins and to have life with God!
So, does that mean that we Christians can do anything we want? There have been some Christians who have thought so. Some of you will remember the scandal that enveloped televangelist Jim Bakker some years ago. His downfall involved extensive sexual scandal, financial misdeeds, and prison time. To his credit, Bakker later wrote a book, the title of which contained his confession: I Was Wrong. But when Bakker went to prison, one denominational group said that they would be happy to ordain him, repentance or not. Their reason: Bakker's sin was of the flesh, but as a Christian, he was only responsible for spiritual sins. I have no idea what that means; but it shows the extent to which we human beings can go to exonerate ourselves of responsibility for our sins.
Often, we all can be like the character in one of George Bernard Shaw’s plays who says, “I love to sin. God loves to forgive. It really is an admirable system.”
But in fact, the follower of Jesus Christ is called to choose an entirely different orientation for his or her life and daily decision-making. We are to live as people who, through our Baptism, have died and risen with Christ, no longer oriented to the sin and death of this world, no longer taking our cues from what the New Testament calls life in the flesh, but living lives that reflect the reality of heaven and the new life that is ours through Jesus Christ.
Now look at verses 1-4 of our lesson on the special handout we distributed this morning. Read those verses silently, while I give a more literal translation from the Greek in which it was first written:
If therefore, you were co-raised with the Christ, seek the things above where Christ is sitting at the right hand [that is, the power hand] of God. Fix your mind on the above things, not on the things of this earth. For you died, and your resurrection life has been hidden [in this world] with Christ through God Himself. Whenever Christ, our life, becomes visible in this world [that is, when Jesus comes back to the world], then also the glory of God living in us will be seen by all.After these verses, we’re told that if our basic orientation has shifted from earth to heaven, there is something we must do. Verse 5 expresses it this way: “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly…”
This is what Martin Luther was talking about when he said that each day we need to come to God to repent for our sins and each day, through the forgiveness God gives through Christ, we’re to walk in the power of Christ’s new life. That's daily repentance and renewal.
Colossians then lists five interrelated, overlapping sexual sins that Christians need to put to death within themselves.
First there’s fornication. The Greek word is porneian, from which we get the English word "pornography." According to the most renowned theological dictionary of the New Testament Greek, in its entry on porneia or fornication, “the [New Testament] is characterised by an unconditional repudiation of all extra-marital and unnatural intercourse.”
The list of sins we are to put to death through repentance goes on to include uncleanness (which would include any dirty, demeaning, or sexist words about sexuality), passion (which, in this case, means the desire to use another person for one’s own desires with no regard for the other person), evil desire (which refers to improper sexual desires, such as the desire for someone else’s spouse), and greed (which is actually a covetousness that makes either sex or the object of sexual desires a god for the covetous person).
That list pretty much runs the gamut of all of humanity’s sexual sins and they all, Colossians says, are to be put to death by daily repentance. Failure to strive to put them to death, our lesson tells us, will cause even those who have been baptized to incur God’s wrath.
I know that this makes God seem like a terrible spoilsport. But, in fact, God wants us to respect the gift of sexuality He has given to us. We see God's elevated view of our sexuality throughout Scripture. Genesis, for example, says that God created us male and female. The Song of Solomon celebrates in beautiful imagery the sexual relationship of husband and wife. In the books of the prophets, God said that the relationship of spouses stood as a metaphor for His relationship with Israel: He was Israel’s husband, Israel was God’s wife, and God lamented Israel’s faithlessness in running after other gods. In the New Testament, the Church is called the Bride of Christ. God wills that Christians’ relationships with members of the opposite sex be as unadulterated as our relationship with Christ. Thank God that whenever we fail to live in purity, either sexually or in other ways, we can turn to Him in repentance and receive forgiveness.
Our lesson goes on to talk about sins of the mouth—literally, the original Greek says, sins that come from our “stomatos,” our stomach or our gut. We're told to get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language.
God takes His gift of speech to us seriously, too. This is why the Ten Commandments include the eighth commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In The Small Catechism, Luther explains the commandment in this way: “We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, or lie about our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain his actions in the kindest way.” Again, thank God for the gifts of repentance and forgiveness and fresh beginnings and new starts.
Verses 9 and 10 tell us: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”
In the first century church, those who were baptized took off their old clothes, were baptized, and then received new white robes in recognition of their having put off the old orientation to this world and put on the new orientation to Christ and to heaven. Since we have put on this new way of life of being “Christ’s resurrection people,” our call is to keep putting off all the vices that our lesson lists, so that our relationship with Christ can be kept clear and clean and pure.
Now, I wanted to be sure to talk about verses 12-17, even though they're not appointed for today, because it’s important to see that a relationship with Christ is not just about the things we put off or get rid of. This is, by the way, one of the deficiencies I see in how we usually commemorate the Lenten season. Everybody talks about what they're going to give up during Lent: "I'm going to give up chocolate." "I'm going to give up swearing." That's fine if the giving up leads us to a deeper relationship with Christ. But life with Christ is also about putting on new ways of living, joyful ways of living! Read verses 12 to 15 out loud with me:
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.Just think how different the life of the world and of the Church at large would be if, in the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we chose to put on those virtues every day of our lives? That can happen as we daily surrender to Christ!
None of this is to say that Christians are to be milquetoasts. Verse 16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom…”
This passage bears directly on something coming up at Saint Matthew. You may have heard that there’s a vote on August 29. The issue at hand will be whether Saint Matthew should leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
Some are worried about the vote because people have varying opinions. I’m not. As someone once said, “If two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant.”
Whether it’s on how the Church addresses social justice issues, what pastors and bishops should say on political matters, how much emphasis should be placed on evangelism and discipleship, how much heed we should give to Latin American and African Lutherans who are deeply disturbed by recent actions of Lutherans in North America and Europe, or what we teach our children about the gift of sexuality, if your opinions are rooted in the Word of God—chapter and verse—then, by all means, you need to share those views among yourselves.
When we let Christ’s word dwell richly in us, we will all have times when we have words that teach and even admonish one another and help us all to put off the ways of the world and to put on the things of Jesus Christ.
Finally, verse 17 says, “And, whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” May this be our aim every single moment of every single day. Amen
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Faith Tidbit #46
The Bible speaks more explicitly and with greater appreciation on the subject of sex than even many Christians may know. According to the first creation account in the Old Testament book of Genesis, the first man and first woman were both created in and uniquely reflecting God's image. "So God created humankind in his image," it says, "in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
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