[This message was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Mark 1:21-28
There are three main things to which I think today’s Gospel lesson point us.
The first is the power of Jesus’ teaching. The telephone call came, as happens so often in crisis situations, in the middle of the night. This was in my first parish. “Pastor,” the person on the other end of the line said, “We had to bring Mike to the hospital. Could you come up?”
I wasn’t surprised. Mike’s life was a mess. Apparently, all of his issues--emotional, psychological, spiritual, and medical--had come to a crisis. When Mike revealed during his intake interview at the hospital that he’d recently had thoughts of suicide, state law mandated that he remain hospitalized, even against his will.
I was there when the doctor revealed this to Mike. Folks, if I live to be a hundred-and-twenty, I will never forget the venom that spewed from Mike’s mouth at that. He acted like a cornered animal. It wasn’t just what he said, it was how he said it. There was menace in his posture, as though at any moment, he might pounce on any one of us.
Mike was admitted to the hospital for treatment and I know that all the counseling that he received in subsequent weeks helped him. But what helped most was a little devotional booklet that a friend gave to him. Every day, Mike read the booklet and the Biblical passage on which it was based. The book became dog-eared and worn during his weeks in the hospital. I remember during many a visit glancing over at him and seeing him gently move his finder over the binding of the book, so important had its contents become to him. Like many people through the centuries, Mike had moved to a place of sufficient desperation to actually pay attention to God’s Word.
This relates to our Gospel lesson: The people in the synagogue in Capernaum, where Jesus was visiting and may have even lived for a time, were “astounded" by Jesus. The original New Testament Greek says literally that they “were blown out of their minds.” The reason for their reaction, our lesson says, is that Jesus taught with “authority.” That word in Greek is exousia, which can also be translated as power. There was power and authority in Jesus’ teaching.
New Testament scholars believe that the teaching that the synagogue crowd heard from Jesus was the same teaching Jesus shared with people at the very beginning of His ministry, teaching that was summarized in words appearing in last week’s Gospel lesson: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
That’s so simple. Where’s the Wow factor? What would cause the crowd to be “blown out of their minds”?
You know the answer. As we said last week, Jesus’ Word--the Word of God--has power. When Mike heard that Word and read it and thought about it, a transformation began to happen in his life. And I believe that every time that you and I encounter God’s Word--when we truly allow ourselves to pay attention to that Word--transformations can happen.
This brings up the second thing that I want to mention regarding today’s Gospel lesson: Jesus’ teaching can call out of our lives whatever prevents us from experiencing God’s wholeness, whatever keeps us from living life with God.
That’s what happened in the synagogue in Capernaum. In the middle of Jesus’ teaching there, a man filled with a demon, a spiritual agent of the devil, showed up, disrupting everything. Apparently referring to his demon buddies, the demon, speaking through the man he possessed, asked Jesus if He had come to get all of them. “I know who you, Jesus: the Holy One of God.”
Jesus was not about to let a demon teach people at worship in a synagogue about His identity as God in the flesh. That’s something all of us must come to by faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.
Besides, whenever the devil, the sin in the world, or our sinful selves talk about Jesus, the talk always has a spin designed to undermine our faith.
That’s why Jesus called out to the demon: “Be silent! Come out of him!” Jesus called the thing that was enslaving that man out, so that the man could be free.
And whatever it is that’s enslaving you—it may be a seemingly minor thing like a habit that prevents you from being the person God made you to be, Christ can do the same thing for you.
Young people, the Savior Who went to a cross and rose from the dead for you can give you a healthy self-esteem.
Middle age folks, caught in a rut, He can help you live with contentment and joy.
Older folks, dogged by a sense of your limitations, He can overcome your self-doubts and help you use your wisdom and experience for good.
Jesus and His Word have authority. Jesus and His Word can call the worst from out of us and set us free to be with Him now and forever. Here’s the third thing I want to point out from our Gospel lesson and it may be the most important thing: When Jesus works in our lives, our lives won’t always be easy. Martin Luther said that the believer in Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit's workshop.
No matter how neat the carpenter, I’ve never seen a woodworking shop that didn’t get messy while the carpenter was making something. Wood shavings from the lathe and dust from the table saw are on the floor. As Jesus works on us, removing what separates us from God's goodness and forging and shaping our characters, things will get messy.
There are times when we don’t understand what God is doing in our lives. We resist and our faith falters.
There are moments when it’s easier to adopt the world’s ways, rather than God’s ways. We cave into selfishness.
When the chaos and confusion of our imperfect lives are submitted to the perfect love and order of Jesus Christ, the encounter can be messy. When Jesus called the demon out of the man at the Capernaum synagogue, it convulsed and cried and yelped. The evil in that man wouldn't give up without a fight!
Sinful habits and compulsions, just like all habits and compulsions, are hard to break. That’s because, as somebody has said, we form our habits and after a while, our habits form us. They get a grip on us. They wear ruts in our brains and lives.
The confrontation between Jesus’ word, which brings new life and freedom from old ways, and our sinful habits is not just explosive, but thoroughly, disturbingly unsettling and messy.
A man came to see me once. “I’m stealing from my company,” he told me, “and I know it’s wrong. But I can’t stop.” So far as I know, he never did stop. He had heard Jesus call out the evil into which he’d sunk, but he was unwilling to let it go. It would have been too messy to try.
A church member was visibly upset after worship one Sunday in my former parish. I thought that some tragedy had come his way. We went to a room where we could talk. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I’m so angry with myself,” he explained. “God is so good to me. And yet I keep sinning.” He went on to explain that every week he hoped and prayed that when it came time for Confession and Absolution in the worship service, he wouldn’t be able to think of any ways in which he’d failed to love God and failed to love his neighbor as he loved himself. “I no more than receive forgiveness from one sin and seem to have it licked than I see the power of another one over me,” he said. I smiled and put my hand on this man’s shoulder. “In this life, the only time you’ll stop feeling the need to confess sin is when you’ve grown so far from God that you sin without regret. May you never get to that point!”
I was really expressing the hope that that man’s life would remain messy from God working in his life.
Pastor Rodney Stark tells a true story from his ministry: She had drifted along spiritually for a while, but came to a point where she felt a need for God. She began to attend church, not getting much out of it at first, when one Sunday, the pastor showed how Jesus and His Word could impact her life. It was as though he was speaking directly to her. Jesus always speaks to us through His Word, if we give Him the chance to do so.
Jesus' Word has authority. Jesus’ Word can call out of us everything that isn’t from God. And when we let it, Jesus’ Word can bring the messiness of positive change to our lives.
There is a disturbing untidiness that comes to our lives when Jesus confronts all that would otherwise separate us from God. May that messiness be a central element of your life every single day!
[The three take-away ideas for this text from Mark's Gospel, which dovetail with my own thinking, were identified in a wonderful sermon by Pastor Rodney Stark which I first read several years ago.]
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Love Trumps Knowledge, Freedom Isn't License
Al, an acquaintance of mine, went out one evening with a group of people from the church he pastored.
Later, a close friend, Bill, who was part of the group asked him, "Al, I know that you like to have an occasional beer. Why didn't You have one at dinner tonight?"
"I think you may know why," Al said. His friend thought for a second and then asked, "Is it because of Ben's situation?"
Ben had recently told both Al and Bill that he had just come to terms with the fact that he was an alcoholic. Ben had met with Al and Bill, asking them to pray for him and to be among those who kept him accountable in his efforts to stay away from alcohol completely, something all alcoholics must do.
But Bill was still a bit clueless as to Al's motives. "Do you mean to say that you're not going to drink alcohol around Bill? You know that Jesus drank wine, don't you? Saint Paul recommended it for soothing the digestive tract. So long as you don't abuse your body with alcohol, it's perfectly OK to drink alcohol in moderation."
"I've read my Bible a few times," Al said with a smile. "Everything you're saying is true, Bill. But for Ben's sake, I won't drink alcohol around him. There are some things that aren't sins in themselves, but when done at the wrong times are sins."
"Sure," Bill said. "Sex is a good thing that God made. But when used selfishly or outside the marriage covenant, it's a sin. Food is a good thing from God. But if you use it to abuse your body, like with anorexia, bulimia, or overeating, it's sinful. But you're not saying that for you to drink alcohol in moderation in front of Ben is a sin, are you?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Al replied. "As a Christian, I'm free to use God's gifts properly. But if a fellow Christian or a non-believer is an alcoholic, my drinking it in his presence is a discouragement, like offering a loaded pistol to a suicidal person. Or, like putting God's stamp of approval on his alcoholism. I dare not use my freedom as license. I can't use my knowledge to hurt someone paying attention to my example. Sharing Christ's love is more important to me than my knowledge of what's right or wrong for me."
"Al," Bill said, "I couldn't disagree with you more. Why should I give up my freedom because of someone else's weakness?"
Bill would have done well to read one of the lessons for this coming Sunday, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13. You can read it below, in the words of the Contemporary English Version (CEV) translation of the Bible.
A little background: The Christian community in the first century Greek city of Corinth were a dysfunctional bunch. They were prone to use their Christian freedom in ways that were destructive to themselves and to others.
In the lesson for this coming Sunday, Paul responds to questions about food offered to idols. Often, food used in the worship of false deities would show up on the tables of the Christians as they got together for dinner and worship.
Paul said that of course, there was nothing inherently sinful in eating this food. Mature Christians knew that false idols were just that--false idols--and that the food that was offered to them was just that--food.
But, Paul said, if a mature Christian eats food offered to idols in the presence of newer Christians or people who were weak in their faith, the newbies were at risk of drawing the wrong conclusions. They might have thought that it was acceptable to spread their loyalties around among different gods.
But the Christian knows that the God revealed in Jesus Christ accepts no rivals, that God can only work in the lives of those who give him exclusive fealty as their Lord and King.
And so, Paul said, those with a more mature understanding of God and a more advanced relationship with Christ will, for the sake of those who don't know Christ as well, voluntarily forgo exercising their freedom.
Love does things like that.
In my own life, I have, too often, acted selfishly with my Christian freedom, setting a bad example or creating misimpressions of the Christian life in the eyes of nonbelievers or new believers. I ask God to help me to remember Paul's words...and Al's example.
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Later, a close friend, Bill, who was part of the group asked him, "Al, I know that you like to have an occasional beer. Why didn't You have one at dinner tonight?"
"I think you may know why," Al said. His friend thought for a second and then asked, "Is it because of Ben's situation?"
Ben had recently told both Al and Bill that he had just come to terms with the fact that he was an alcoholic. Ben had met with Al and Bill, asking them to pray for him and to be among those who kept him accountable in his efforts to stay away from alcohol completely, something all alcoholics must do.
But Bill was still a bit clueless as to Al's motives. "Do you mean to say that you're not going to drink alcohol around Bill? You know that Jesus drank wine, don't you? Saint Paul recommended it for soothing the digestive tract. So long as you don't abuse your body with alcohol, it's perfectly OK to drink alcohol in moderation."
"I've read my Bible a few times," Al said with a smile. "Everything you're saying is true, Bill. But for Ben's sake, I won't drink alcohol around him. There are some things that aren't sins in themselves, but when done at the wrong times are sins."
"Sure," Bill said. "Sex is a good thing that God made. But when used selfishly or outside the marriage covenant, it's a sin. Food is a good thing from God. But if you use it to abuse your body, like with anorexia, bulimia, or overeating, it's sinful. But you're not saying that for you to drink alcohol in moderation in front of Ben is a sin, are you?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Al replied. "As a Christian, I'm free to use God's gifts properly. But if a fellow Christian or a non-believer is an alcoholic, my drinking it in his presence is a discouragement, like offering a loaded pistol to a suicidal person. Or, like putting God's stamp of approval on his alcoholism. I dare not use my freedom as license. I can't use my knowledge to hurt someone paying attention to my example. Sharing Christ's love is more important to me than my knowledge of what's right or wrong for me."
"Al," Bill said, "I couldn't disagree with you more. Why should I give up my freedom because of someone else's weakness?"
Bill would have done well to read one of the lessons for this coming Sunday, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13. You can read it below, in the words of the Contemporary English Version (CEV) translation of the Bible.
A little background: The Christian community in the first century Greek city of Corinth were a dysfunctional bunch. They were prone to use their Christian freedom in ways that were destructive to themselves and to others.
In the lesson for this coming Sunday, Paul responds to questions about food offered to idols. Often, food used in the worship of false deities would show up on the tables of the Christians as they got together for dinner and worship.
Paul said that of course, there was nothing inherently sinful in eating this food. Mature Christians knew that false idols were just that--false idols--and that the food that was offered to them was just that--food.
But, Paul said, if a mature Christian eats food offered to idols in the presence of newer Christians or people who were weak in their faith, the newbies were at risk of drawing the wrong conclusions. They might have thought that it was acceptable to spread their loyalties around among different gods.
But the Christian knows that the God revealed in Jesus Christ accepts no rivals, that God can only work in the lives of those who give him exclusive fealty as their Lord and King.
And so, Paul said, those with a more mature understanding of God and a more advanced relationship with Christ will, for the sake of those who don't know Christ as well, voluntarily forgo exercising their freedom.
Love does things like that.
In my own life, I have, too often, acted selfishly with my Christian freedom, setting a bad example or creating misimpressions of the Christian life in the eyes of nonbelievers or new believers. I ask God to help me to remember Paul's words...and Al's example.
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
1In your letter you asked me about food offered to idols. All of us know something about this subject. But knowledge makes us proud of ourselves, while love makes us helpful to others. 2In fact, people who think they know so much don't know anything at all. 3But God has no doubts about who loves him.[UPDATE: Thanks to Pugnacious Irishman and Rediscovering the Church for linking to this post. At the Pugnacious site, Rich Bordner also offers some of his own thoughts on this subject.]4Even though food is offered to idols, we know that none of the idols in this world are alive. After all, there is only one God. 5Many things in heaven and on earth are called gods and lords, but none of them really are gods or lords. 6We have only one God, and he is the Father. He created everything, and we live for him. Jesus Christ is our only Lord. Everything was made by him, and by him life was given to us.
7Not everyone knows these things. In fact, many people have grown up with the belief that idols have life in them. So when they eat meat offered to idols, they are bothered by a weak conscience. 8But food doesn't bring us any closer to God. We are no worse off if we don't eat, and we are no better off if we do.
9Don't cause problems for someone with a weak conscience, just because you have the right to eat anything. 10You know all this, and so it doesn't bother you to eat in the temple of an idol. But suppose a person with a weak conscience sees you and decides to eat food that has been offered to idols. 11Then what you know has destroyed someone Christ died for. 12When you sin by hurting a follower with a weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13So if I hurt one of the Lord's followers by what I eat, I will never eat meat as long as I live.
New Hope for Ohio's Schools
In yesterday's State of the State message, Governor Ted Strickland unveiled his program to reform public schools in Ohio. Included was Strickland's proposal for reforming public school funding in the state. As regular readers of this blog know, this is one of my obsessions.
Four times, the state Supreme Court has ruled Ohio's shell-game funding "plan," unconstitutional. Republican and Democratic governors and General Assemblies have tinkered without doing away with what's referred to as "phantom revenue," through which the state makes money local voters thought they dedicated to their schools through levies, disappear.
Kudos to Strickland for biting a bullet.
My previous post on this subject contains links in which I've discussed phantom revenue in greater detail.
Four times, the state Supreme Court has ruled Ohio's shell-game funding "plan," unconstitutional. Republican and Democratic governors and General Assemblies have tinkered without doing away with what's referred to as "phantom revenue," through which the state makes money local voters thought they dedicated to their schools through levies, disappear.
Kudos to Strickland for biting a bullet.
My previous post on this subject contains links in which I've discussed phantom revenue in greater detail.
I'm coming to you from an undisclosed ice chest (AKA: The State of Ohio)
There's a power outage affecting 98% of the households of the county in which I live, including ours. Hocking County, Ohio isn't alone, apparently. Also enduring major outages are a number of other counties here in Appalachian Ohio, as well as the Tristate area around Cincinnati and some parts of central Ohio.
Much of the country, it seems, is enduring the same ordeal.
And it really is an ordeal, for some more than others. Many in our county have been without power since yesterday morning. Our power went out at 5:50pm last night. We were able to sleep comfortably under layers of blankets and comforters.
Functioning outside of the sheets was a more difficult proposition. So too was digging our vehicles out of the striated layers of ice, snow, ice, and snow.
The temperature right now is 25-degrees with a chill factor much lower than that.
We're told that power may not be restored until Sunday night. We shall see.
I hope that you're staying warm and dry wherever you are.
(Our daughter, who lives in Florida, informed me today that the temp was in the eighties!)
[UPDATE, 9:00pm: The power is back on!]
Much of the country, it seems, is enduring the same ordeal.
And it really is an ordeal, for some more than others. Many in our county have been without power since yesterday morning. Our power went out at 5:50pm last night. We were able to sleep comfortably under layers of blankets and comforters.
Functioning outside of the sheets was a more difficult proposition. So too was digging our vehicles out of the striated layers of ice, snow, ice, and snow.
The temperature right now is 25-degrees with a chill factor much lower than that.
We're told that power may not be restored until Sunday night. We shall see.
I hope that you're staying warm and dry wherever you are.
(Our daughter, who lives in Florida, informed me today that the temp was in the eighties!)
[UPDATE, 9:00pm: The power is back on!]
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Most Powerful Word of All
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Pastor and writer John Maxwell tells about a junior high basketball coach who was smart. If he had a kid who was lackadaisical on defense, this coach would call that kid Mr. Hustle. If he had a kid who was slow of foot, he named him Speedy. He hung these nicknames on the kids not as putdowns calling attention to their deficiencies, but with a straight face and seeming seriousness. “Did you see how ferocious Mr. Hustle was on defense?” he’d ask the team during practice. “I want all of you to work at being like him!”
Guess what happened?
When combined with the proper instruction and correction, kids whom the coach called Mr. Hustle really did become hustling defenders and those he named Speedy became the fastest ones on the team, able to lead the fast break.
Somewhere this coach had learned the power of words. He understood the truth behind a confession Mark Twain made: “I can live on a good compliment for a week.”
Negative words are powerful, too. A pastor came home from worship one day in a sour mood. Her husband asked what was wrong. “I must have heard ten people tell you what a great sermon you had,” he commented. “Yeah,” she acknowledged, “but Gladys Milkenrucker hated it.”
The old saying is wrong: Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can and do sometimes hurt us. That’s because words—good words and bad words--really do have power.
But nobody’s word is more powerful than God’s Word.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Eugene Peterson translates this same passage in The Message: “[God’s] powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.”
I like this last line because, in fact, we do try to run away from God’s Word. We do it because God doesn’t always say what we want to hear.
And we don’t run away from God’s Word only when it warns us against the sins we like to commit—be they gluttony or tax evasion, sexual promiscuity or personal arrogance, lazy indifference to God’s call on our lives or gossiping about our neighbors. We also seem to run away from God’s Word when it forgives and affirms us because we convince ourselves that God couldn’t possibly forgive us.
We also run away from God’s Word when it seems to tell us to do something we don’t want to do. Forgive as we’ve been forgiven. Lend a hand to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Fight for justice and equality for those whose life styles may be sinful. Say a good word for the person nobody likes. Tell someone else about the hope we’ve found in Jesus Christ.
And on that last point, I know that more often than I care to remember, I have been hesitant about sharing Christ with others. I've been a lot like Jonah in our Old Testament lesson.
There have been many times when God’s Word has come to me as it did to Jonah, clear as a bell, whether while I’ve been reading the Bible at home or hearing it in worship. But do I heed it and do what God tells me to do? No, I’m like Paul, writing in the New Testament book of Romans: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good [that is, when I make a resolution to do what God’s Word tells me to do or to trust the grace that God’s Word conveys for me], evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self…but the evil that I do not want is what I do.”
And so, I run from God and from God’s Word. In effect, I do what our daughter Sarah sometimes playfully does when she hears an off-color joke or when someone gives her TMI—too much information: I stick my fingers in my ears and say, “La la la la,” to block God’s access to my mind, heart, and will.
This was exactly what Jonah did.
The Old Testament book of Jonah, a fun book with a serious point, describes life in Israel, the land of God’s people, the Jews, in the middle of the 8th century BC. A nation that neighbored Israel, Assyria, was less than neighborly. It was, in fact, Israel’s greatest enemy, murderous and warlike. Assyria’s capital city was a place called Nineveh. Ancient Nineveh set on the same ground as a modern city you may have heard about in the news lately: Mosul, Iraq.
At the beginning of the book of Jonah, we’re told: “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’”
In fairness to Jonah, whose reaction to this call, his hatred for the Ninevites, and his surliness toward God throughout the four-chapter book that bears his name have given him a bad press through the centuries, if God told you to go to Mosul, a city where today the murder and intimidation of Christians is so horrible and pervasive that many have fled the place to find safety, would you go?
Or would you, as Jonah did the first time God’s Word came to him, run in the opposite direction and book yourself on a Mediterranean cruise?
I think that I’d take the cruise.
But, as those of you who have read your Bibles know, God’s Word is powerful. God was emphatic that Jonah needed to do what God’s Word had told him to do.
Once the ship on which Jonah boarded was at sea, the God Who can control the wind and waves, sent a storm. Jonah convinced his shipmates that he was the cause of this life-threatening storm and that they needed to toss him into the drink so that God would bring calm seas.
The second they did that, there was a dead calm. The storm had stopped and you might think that that was the end of Jonah, now experiencing the death penalty for his rebellion against God.
But you who’ve read the book also know that God initiated a unique bailout plan for Jonah. There’s a lesson in that for you and me: God gives second chances and new starts even to people who don’t seek them. No matter how far you feel you’ve wandered from God, God wants to speak His Word of reconciliation, peace, and purpose to you. God wants you to have second chances.
That’s exactly what happened to Jonah at the beginning of our Old Testament lesson for today: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim the message that I tell you.’”
Jonah still didn’t want to do what God’s Word told him to do. But he was grateful for a second chance and he’d learned a lesson out on the stormy Mediterranean about the power of God’s Word.
So Jonah goes to Nineveh. There, he does the minimum that God tells him to do. He only walks a third of the way into the city and delivers what is in the original Hebrew a five-word sermon. Here it is: "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed." That’s it.
Now, if you had been a Ninevite and heard that sermon, how would you have reacted? Would you have laughed it off? Would you have gotten angry? Would you have ignored this strange foreigner covered with the stomach juices of the great fish that had swallowed and spit him out? I can imagine reacting in any of those ways.
But Nineveh heard it and the whole city repented. They turned from sin and turned to the God none of them had ever worshiped before. It’s not in our lesson, but the king of Nineveh even issued a decree that said, in part, “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change His mind; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
Nineveh was spared. Its people--at least the people living there in the eighth century BC--turned from sin and turned to God. God forgave them and they lived, reconciled to God.
What about that paltry sermon of Jonah’s changed the lives of all those Ninevites? It’s fairly simple and truly amazing, really: Jonah’s words weren’t just Jonah’s words; they were also the Word of God.
The Word of God is powerful.
God spoke His Word and the world and everything in it came into being.
God’s Word—the second person of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was made flesh and came into our world—came to you—in Jesus Christ.
God’s Word comes to us today in the Bible, in the water of Holy Baptism, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, in the fellowship of believers, in our confession of faith, and even in sermons, paltry and otherwise.
And God’s Word comes to you again today: to tell you “Whether to confront you for your sin, to confirm you in my forgiveness, or to send you to your own Ninevehs right here in Logan at work or home or school, believe God’s Word, trust it, and do what it tells you to do because God’s Word is still powerful, even today, even for you.” Amen
[THANKS TO: Mark at Stones Cry Out for linking to this post.]
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Pastor and writer John Maxwell tells about a junior high basketball coach who was smart. If he had a kid who was lackadaisical on defense, this coach would call that kid Mr. Hustle. If he had a kid who was slow of foot, he named him Speedy. He hung these nicknames on the kids not as putdowns calling attention to their deficiencies, but with a straight face and seeming seriousness. “Did you see how ferocious Mr. Hustle was on defense?” he’d ask the team during practice. “I want all of you to work at being like him!”
Guess what happened?
When combined with the proper instruction and correction, kids whom the coach called Mr. Hustle really did become hustling defenders and those he named Speedy became the fastest ones on the team, able to lead the fast break.
Somewhere this coach had learned the power of words. He understood the truth behind a confession Mark Twain made: “I can live on a good compliment for a week.”
Negative words are powerful, too. A pastor came home from worship one day in a sour mood. Her husband asked what was wrong. “I must have heard ten people tell you what a great sermon you had,” he commented. “Yeah,” she acknowledged, “but Gladys Milkenrucker hated it.”
The old saying is wrong: Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can and do sometimes hurt us. That’s because words—good words and bad words--really do have power.
But nobody’s word is more powerful than God’s Word.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Eugene Peterson translates this same passage in The Message: “[God’s] powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.”
I like this last line because, in fact, we do try to run away from God’s Word. We do it because God doesn’t always say what we want to hear.
And we don’t run away from God’s Word only when it warns us against the sins we like to commit—be they gluttony or tax evasion, sexual promiscuity or personal arrogance, lazy indifference to God’s call on our lives or gossiping about our neighbors. We also seem to run away from God’s Word when it forgives and affirms us because we convince ourselves that God couldn’t possibly forgive us.
We also run away from God’s Word when it seems to tell us to do something we don’t want to do. Forgive as we’ve been forgiven. Lend a hand to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Fight for justice and equality for those whose life styles may be sinful. Say a good word for the person nobody likes. Tell someone else about the hope we’ve found in Jesus Christ.
And on that last point, I know that more often than I care to remember, I have been hesitant about sharing Christ with others. I've been a lot like Jonah in our Old Testament lesson.
There have been many times when God’s Word has come to me as it did to Jonah, clear as a bell, whether while I’ve been reading the Bible at home or hearing it in worship. But do I heed it and do what God tells me to do? No, I’m like Paul, writing in the New Testament book of Romans: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good [that is, when I make a resolution to do what God’s Word tells me to do or to trust the grace that God’s Word conveys for me], evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self…but the evil that I do not want is what I do.”
And so, I run from God and from God’s Word. In effect, I do what our daughter Sarah sometimes playfully does when she hears an off-color joke or when someone gives her TMI—too much information: I stick my fingers in my ears and say, “La la la la,” to block God’s access to my mind, heart, and will.
This was exactly what Jonah did.
The Old Testament book of Jonah, a fun book with a serious point, describes life in Israel, the land of God’s people, the Jews, in the middle of the 8th century BC. A nation that neighbored Israel, Assyria, was less than neighborly. It was, in fact, Israel’s greatest enemy, murderous and warlike. Assyria’s capital city was a place called Nineveh. Ancient Nineveh set on the same ground as a modern city you may have heard about in the news lately: Mosul, Iraq.
At the beginning of the book of Jonah, we’re told: “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’”
In fairness to Jonah, whose reaction to this call, his hatred for the Ninevites, and his surliness toward God throughout the four-chapter book that bears his name have given him a bad press through the centuries, if God told you to go to Mosul, a city where today the murder and intimidation of Christians is so horrible and pervasive that many have fled the place to find safety, would you go?
Or would you, as Jonah did the first time God’s Word came to him, run in the opposite direction and book yourself on a Mediterranean cruise?
I think that I’d take the cruise.
But, as those of you who have read your Bibles know, God’s Word is powerful. God was emphatic that Jonah needed to do what God’s Word had told him to do.
Once the ship on which Jonah boarded was at sea, the God Who can control the wind and waves, sent a storm. Jonah convinced his shipmates that he was the cause of this life-threatening storm and that they needed to toss him into the drink so that God would bring calm seas.
The second they did that, there was a dead calm. The storm had stopped and you might think that that was the end of Jonah, now experiencing the death penalty for his rebellion against God.
But you who’ve read the book also know that God initiated a unique bailout plan for Jonah. There’s a lesson in that for you and me: God gives second chances and new starts even to people who don’t seek them. No matter how far you feel you’ve wandered from God, God wants to speak His Word of reconciliation, peace, and purpose to you. God wants you to have second chances.
That’s exactly what happened to Jonah at the beginning of our Old Testament lesson for today: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim the message that I tell you.’”
Jonah still didn’t want to do what God’s Word told him to do. But he was grateful for a second chance and he’d learned a lesson out on the stormy Mediterranean about the power of God’s Word.
So Jonah goes to Nineveh. There, he does the minimum that God tells him to do. He only walks a third of the way into the city and delivers what is in the original Hebrew a five-word sermon. Here it is: "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed." That’s it.
Now, if you had been a Ninevite and heard that sermon, how would you have reacted? Would you have laughed it off? Would you have gotten angry? Would you have ignored this strange foreigner covered with the stomach juices of the great fish that had swallowed and spit him out? I can imagine reacting in any of those ways.
But Nineveh heard it and the whole city repented. They turned from sin and turned to the God none of them had ever worshiped before. It’s not in our lesson, but the king of Nineveh even issued a decree that said, in part, “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change His mind; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
Nineveh was spared. Its people--at least the people living there in the eighth century BC--turned from sin and turned to God. God forgave them and they lived, reconciled to God.
What about that paltry sermon of Jonah’s changed the lives of all those Ninevites? It’s fairly simple and truly amazing, really: Jonah’s words weren’t just Jonah’s words; they were also the Word of God.
The Word of God is powerful.
God spoke His Word and the world and everything in it came into being.
God’s Word—the second person of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was made flesh and came into our world—came to you—in Jesus Christ.
God’s Word comes to us today in the Bible, in the water of Holy Baptism, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, in the fellowship of believers, in our confession of faith, and even in sermons, paltry and otherwise.
And God’s Word comes to you again today: to tell you “Whether to confront you for your sin, to confirm you in my forgiveness, or to send you to your own Ninevehs right here in Logan at work or home or school, believe God’s Word, trust it, and do what it tells you to do because God’s Word is still powerful, even today, even for you.” Amen
[THANKS TO: Mark at Stones Cry Out for linking to this post.]
This cracked me up...and amazed me!
A member of the congregation I serve as pastor sent the link to this amazing video to me. It showcases some NFL players showing off, trying to convince fantasy football leaguers to pick them for their teams. I'm not a fantasy player...but I'm convinced!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Breathing for the Christian
[This is my friend Glen VanderKloot's daily emailed inspiration for today.]
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. (Martin Luther King Jr.)
Scripture: Romans 12:12 NCV
“Be joyful because you have hope. Be patient when trouble comes, and pray at all times.”
Prayer:
Lord, help me to make prayer a priority in my life. Amen
Thought for the Day
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. (Martin Luther King Jr.)
Scripture: Romans 12:12 NCV
“Be joyful because you have hope. Be patient when trouble comes, and pray at all times.”
Prayer:
Lord, help me to make prayer a priority in my life. Amen
New Battle in War Over Turkey's Future
Is Islamic fundamentalism Turkey's future, with secularism, what we in the West would call democratic pluralism, its past?
Apparently secularists who plotted a coup against Turkey's democratically-elected Islamic fundamentalist government fear that seemingly topsy-turvy scenario. Many have been arrested for plotting against the government there.
Many in the West have presumed that because democracies have tended to be less aggressive or oppressive, having elections will necessarily result in less aggressive or oppressive regimes. But that's faulty logic. Without what I would call the idea base, the metaphysical turf from which true pluralism arises, being in place, exercises in democracy may be little more than legitimized mob rule, the proverbial lipstick on a pig.
Most democratic and pluralistic societies have arisen from ways of thinking that support the value of individuals and free inquiry, not values upheld by fundamentalists of any religious tradition, really. (Historian Rodney Stark argues in The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, that democratic pluralism and capitalism arose in Europe and North America arose because Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, encouraged a belief in reason.) If those basic cultural assumptions don't exist or if they're questioned by large enough numbers of people, regimes that don't conform to Western notions of democracy or pluralism may be duly installed.
Is that what's happened in Turkey, a country that, unlike many of its neighbors, has had a tradition of democratic pluralism? And are the Turkish secularists wrong or right to plot the current government's downfall?
Whatever the answers to those questions, the battle over Turkey's future continues.
[See also here and here.]
Apparently secularists who plotted a coup against Turkey's democratically-elected Islamic fundamentalist government fear that seemingly topsy-turvy scenario. Many have been arrested for plotting against the government there.
Many in the West have presumed that because democracies have tended to be less aggressive or oppressive, having elections will necessarily result in less aggressive or oppressive regimes. But that's faulty logic. Without what I would call the idea base, the metaphysical turf from which true pluralism arises, being in place, exercises in democracy may be little more than legitimized mob rule, the proverbial lipstick on a pig.
Most democratic and pluralistic societies have arisen from ways of thinking that support the value of individuals and free inquiry, not values upheld by fundamentalists of any religious tradition, really. (Historian Rodney Stark argues in The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, that democratic pluralism and capitalism arose in Europe and North America arose because Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, encouraged a belief in reason.) If those basic cultural assumptions don't exist or if they're questioned by large enough numbers of people, regimes that don't conform to Western notions of democracy or pluralism may be duly installed.
Is that what's happened in Turkey, a country that, unlike many of its neighbors, has had a tradition of democratic pluralism? And are the Turkish secularists wrong or right to plot the current government's downfall?
Whatever the answers to those questions, the battle over Turkey's future continues.
[See also here and here.]
Is Israel Losing the PR War in Gaza?
It appears so.
By disallowing much in the way of journalist-imbedding with their fighting units, Israeli government officials clearly tried to avoid being played as the heavies as they were in Lebanon several years ago. Their efforts seem to not be working now in Gaza.
By disallowing much in the way of journalist-imbedding with their fighting units, Israeli government officials clearly tried to avoid being played as the heavies as they were in Lebanon several years ago. Their efforts seem to not be working now in Gaza.
Gitmo Closings: Now Comes the Hard Part
The Obama Administration yesterday began circulating a draft executive order that would close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But doing that could prove difficult as explained here by Columbia University law prof Matthew Waxman.
What Do You Make of This Dream?
This is the dream from which I awakened this morning.
I've apparently become a trucker hauling heavy equipment to be used by a road construction crew on Montgomery Road in Cincinnati and I'm heading north on I-71. My truck breaks down on the Montgomery Road ramp. Traffic starts stacking up behind me immediately. But I notice that it's also jammed ahead on the ramp.
Apparently, the construction crew needs the equipment I'm hauling quickly. So, I go to the back of my truck, unstrap the equipment, roll it off, and start pushing it up the ramp toward Montgomery.
On the way, I pull out my cell phone to tell my wife, who evidently works at or near Kenwood Town Centre at Montgomery and Kenwood Roads, that I may be running late. But, I tell her, I'll be walking to her, rather than driving. "That's OK, honey," she says, "I'll see you when you get here."
Mind you, I have no sense of struggling with this massive piece of equipment. I'm just moving along and it's gliding like the two-wheeled fork hand trucks we used whenever I worked at warehouses or loading docks. Only, it glides like those little trucks do when they were empty.
After I get off the phone with Ann, still pushing, I decide to call the truck driver ahead. How I know him or his number, is a mystery. But I call him and hear, at the other end of the line, the voice of Alan Greenspan. Evidently, we're old buddies and he's generous in sharing a working person's philosophical ruminations. Greenspan tells me that the key to enjoying life is to change jobs about every three years. "That's what I did," he tells me, "and I've had a ball."
By this time, I've pushed the equipment to where Greenspan is standing next to his truck, presumably awaiting help. We laugh, engaging in the kind of the yelling back-and-forth I remember workers engaging in back in my factory days, the dialog of people who can't wait to get home and away from their grimy jobs. They laugh to forestall the sense of futility they feel about their work.
Just then it dawns on me and I tell Greenspan: "Hey, you worked for years at the Federal Reserve. You were there more than three years." He throws his head back in uproarious laughter and we both wave as I push on.
By this point, I'm moving onto Montgomery Road, westbound toward Kenwood. I can see the road crew ahead.
But suddenly, there's a scene change. Evidently, it wasn't the crew itself that needed the equipment I'm pushing, but the company for which it works.
I find myself pushing this thing onto the grounds of the construction company's offices. There's a gravel parking lot, surrounded by twelve-foot fencing topped by barbed wire.
I stop pushing in order to report to someone in a small, squat, brick office building. Along the way, another trucker--remember I'm a trucker in this dream--starts walking alongside me. I find the guy annoying. I don't know him from Adam. But he's acting as though we're old pals. "Hey," he says, "I wonder when they'll let us off." He keeps up his patter, yapping at me like one of those little annoying puppies that won't go away when all you want to do is take a walk.
His question riles me up. I want to get out of this place in a hurry. I'm already late for meeting my wife.
We go into the building, which looks like any dispatching center you've ever seen, whether for a trucking company, smalltown police department, or highway patrol outpost.
There's one guy in charge there, bustling around. My annoying companion asks the bustler, "Hey, are we going to get out of here before 9:30 tonight?" "9:30?!" I cry, "I can't be here until 9:30. I'm meeting my wife for dinner."
"Hey!" the annoying guy says to me--and he's still smiling--"they always feed us dinner here." He says it as though it's a real privilege, a perk of the job. He enjoys it. I feel trapped. I want to be with my wife.
It's then that two things dawn on me. First, I'm an independent trucker. I don't work for this company. Having duly delivered their equipment, I don't have to hang around. I can walk away. Second, this is a stupid dream. So, I stopped it.
Now, several points should be made about the dream itself.
First: When we lived in Cincinnati, we often would take the half-hour trip from our house to Kenwood Town Centre or to visit with our friends there. But we rarely would have traveled on I-71 North.
Second: I have no idea what the piece of equipment I was pushing might have been. It was yellow and about the size of the cab of a crane used on construction sites. Lots of its paint was scratched off from heavy use. It clearly wasn't new.
Third: Alan Greenspan was in work clothes when I saw him.
Fourth: While I've done many jobs over the years, before I became a pastor twenty-four years ago, I never drove truck. I've never even learned to drive a stick shift, which may explain why I was broken down on the exit ramp!
Fifth: I remember dreams infrequently and I think that few dreams are imbued with much in the way of meaning. I doubt that that this one is either.
Have you had any dreams you've remembered lately?
I've apparently become a trucker hauling heavy equipment to be used by a road construction crew on Montgomery Road in Cincinnati and I'm heading north on I-71. My truck breaks down on the Montgomery Road ramp. Traffic starts stacking up behind me immediately. But I notice that it's also jammed ahead on the ramp.
Apparently, the construction crew needs the equipment I'm hauling quickly. So, I go to the back of my truck, unstrap the equipment, roll it off, and start pushing it up the ramp toward Montgomery.
On the way, I pull out my cell phone to tell my wife, who evidently works at or near Kenwood Town Centre at Montgomery and Kenwood Roads, that I may be running late. But, I tell her, I'll be walking to her, rather than driving. "That's OK, honey," she says, "I'll see you when you get here."
Mind you, I have no sense of struggling with this massive piece of equipment. I'm just moving along and it's gliding like the two-wheeled fork hand trucks we used whenever I worked at warehouses or loading docks. Only, it glides like those little trucks do when they were empty.
After I get off the phone with Ann, still pushing, I decide to call the truck driver ahead. How I know him or his number, is a mystery. But I call him and hear, at the other end of the line, the voice of Alan Greenspan. Evidently, we're old buddies and he's generous in sharing a working person's philosophical ruminations. Greenspan tells me that the key to enjoying life is to change jobs about every three years. "That's what I did," he tells me, "and I've had a ball."
By this time, I've pushed the equipment to where Greenspan is standing next to his truck, presumably awaiting help. We laugh, engaging in the kind of the yelling back-and-forth I remember workers engaging in back in my factory days, the dialog of people who can't wait to get home and away from their grimy jobs. They laugh to forestall the sense of futility they feel about their work.
Just then it dawns on me and I tell Greenspan: "Hey, you worked for years at the Federal Reserve. You were there more than three years." He throws his head back in uproarious laughter and we both wave as I push on.
By this point, I'm moving onto Montgomery Road, westbound toward Kenwood. I can see the road crew ahead.
But suddenly, there's a scene change. Evidently, it wasn't the crew itself that needed the equipment I'm pushing, but the company for which it works.
I find myself pushing this thing onto the grounds of the construction company's offices. There's a gravel parking lot, surrounded by twelve-foot fencing topped by barbed wire.
I stop pushing in order to report to someone in a small, squat, brick office building. Along the way, another trucker--remember I'm a trucker in this dream--starts walking alongside me. I find the guy annoying. I don't know him from Adam. But he's acting as though we're old pals. "Hey," he says, "I wonder when they'll let us off." He keeps up his patter, yapping at me like one of those little annoying puppies that won't go away when all you want to do is take a walk.
His question riles me up. I want to get out of this place in a hurry. I'm already late for meeting my wife.
We go into the building, which looks like any dispatching center you've ever seen, whether for a trucking company, smalltown police department, or highway patrol outpost.
There's one guy in charge there, bustling around. My annoying companion asks the bustler, "Hey, are we going to get out of here before 9:30 tonight?" "9:30?!" I cry, "I can't be here until 9:30. I'm meeting my wife for dinner."
"Hey!" the annoying guy says to me--and he's still smiling--"they always feed us dinner here." He says it as though it's a real privilege, a perk of the job. He enjoys it. I feel trapped. I want to be with my wife.
It's then that two things dawn on me. First, I'm an independent trucker. I don't work for this company. Having duly delivered their equipment, I don't have to hang around. I can walk away. Second, this is a stupid dream. So, I stopped it.
Now, several points should be made about the dream itself.
First: When we lived in Cincinnati, we often would take the half-hour trip from our house to Kenwood Town Centre or to visit with our friends there. But we rarely would have traveled on I-71 North.
Second: I have no idea what the piece of equipment I was pushing might have been. It was yellow and about the size of the cab of a crane used on construction sites. Lots of its paint was scratched off from heavy use. It clearly wasn't new.
Third: Alan Greenspan was in work clothes when I saw him.
Fourth: While I've done many jobs over the years, before I became a pastor twenty-four years ago, I never drove truck. I've never even learned to drive a stick shift, which may explain why I was broken down on the exit ramp!
Fifth: I remember dreams infrequently and I think that few dreams are imbued with much in the way of meaning. I doubt that that this one is either.
Have you had any dreams you've remembered lately?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
'What I Do When I Feel Blue'
As I was preparing my sermon for this coming Sunday, I ran across a piece I wrote nearly four years ago with that title. Here is a link to it. I hope that you find it helpful.
Monday, January 19, 2009
A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons (January 25, 2009)
Most weeks, I present a bit of something about one or more of the Bible lessons that we'll be using in worship on the following Sunday at the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. I do it to help both the people of the congregation and me to prepare for worship. But because we use the Biblical texts appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), used by most Christians in North America and elsehwere, I hope that these little jottings help others too.
The Bible Lessons:
Jonah 3:1-5
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
The Prayer of the Day
Almighty God, by grace alone You call us and accept us in Your service. Strengthen us by Your Spirit, and make us worthy of Your call, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen
General Comments
The Epiphany Season theme of the presence of God among us is continued in the lessons for this Sunday, but with a variation. The focus of the first reading and of the Gospel lesson is on God calling people into service to God and neighbor, the call of all Christians, no matter what their profession.
In the Old Testament lesson, we read of God's second call to Jonah. (More on that below.)
The Gospel lesson tells the familiar story of Jesus' calling the first four apostles to follow Him. Don't let the familiarity prevent you from seeing the unique ways in which Mark recounts this incident.
I'm only going to write comments here on the Jonah text. It may or may not be the primary text on which I preach. But even if it isn't, it will still play a prominent role in my sermon on Sunday.
Jonah 3:1-5
The book of Jonah, recounting an incident from earlier in Israel's history, was probably composed in the period after the nation's exile. It was a time of retrenchment when Israel, drawing on its status as God's chosen ones, wanted to isolate itself from the dirty world around it.
This tale of a reluctant prophet who hated the foreign people to whom God wanted him to go, told with comic overtones designed to change people's minds by making them laugh, was a challenge to Israel's penchant toward being isolated and condemnatory of others. Israel was to be a light to the nations, after all, and it couldn't be a light if it kept that light hidden under a basket in the Judean countryside. (The book of Jonah, then, is the perfect companion to the Old Testament book of Ruth. Like Jonah, Ruth only runs to four chapters and through its tale of how a foreigner became ancestor to Israel's greatest king, David, also challenges Israel's insularity and prejudice against foreigners.)
In the first chapter of Jonah, God issued a first call to Jonah. Go to Nineveh, God said, and warn them that their evil has grown so great, I intend to destroy the place.
Nineveh was situated on the site of modern day Mosul, Iraq and was the capital of the Assyrian Empire which had always been hostile to Israel. (Just last week, by the way, a Christian from Mosul was murdered. It's a place from which Christians have fled because of intimidation and killings to which their community has been subjected. Last week's murder came after many Christians had begun to return to the city and their property.)
Understandably, Jonah didn't want to go there. Not only could he be reasonably certain of not receiving a welcome in Nineveh, he was even more certain that he personally hated the Ninevites and wanted to have nothing to do with them.
You can find our what happened next, by reading the book of Jonah yourself. Suffice it to say, Jonah went through an experience he likely wouldn't have wanted to repeat. So, when God calls him this second time, instead of running in the opposite direction as he did in chapter 1, he goes to Nineveh.
The book of Jonah says that Nineveh was so huge it took three days to walk its length. According to Wendy Baumgardner, a certified marathon coach and running enthusiast who runs About.com's page on walking, the average person without any complicating medical conditions can walk about eight miles in an eight-hour stretch, probably the maximum advisable distance. (See here and here.) So, a three day walk across Nineveh, as Jonah tells it, would entail traveling about 24 miles. Assuming that the city was as wide as it was long, that would make the place just a few miles smaller in area than metropolitan Houston today.
Now, my liberal friends will criticize me if I don't add that none of the archeological digs on the site of Nineveh indicate the city was ever that large. And at 576 square miles, Jonah's Nineveh would have dwarfed any other known ancient city.
But, along with my conservative friends, I would say, "Don't discount the information given in Jonah about the city."
The bottom line, of course, is that the book of Jonah, along with the rest of Bible, isn't a book of science. It's a book of faith with, if you'll excuse a poor turn of phrase in light both of Jonah's earlier chapters and of the Gospel lesson, bigger fish to fry.
The important thing to remember is that the place to which God is calling Jonah to go is not only hostile, it's also big. Big and hostile. Would you want to go there? I wouldn't!
Jonah complies with God's call. But just barely.
He spemds just one day walking toward the center of the city and then bellows out what is a five-word sermon in the original text (v.4): "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed."
The strange thing is that on the strength of those few words, with no indication that the foreign Deity represented by Nineveh would forgive them, the whole city repented. They turned away from sin and turned to God.
The question for you to ponder until we worship together on Sunday is simple:
Why?
Why did the Ninevites repent?
I'll see you on Sunday.
Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 25, 2009
January 25, 2009
The Bible Lessons:
Jonah 3:1-5
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
The Prayer of the Day
Almighty God, by grace alone You call us and accept us in Your service. Strengthen us by Your Spirit, and make us worthy of Your call, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen
General Comments
The Epiphany Season theme of the presence of God among us is continued in the lessons for this Sunday, but with a variation. The focus of the first reading and of the Gospel lesson is on God calling people into service to God and neighbor, the call of all Christians, no matter what their profession.
In the Old Testament lesson, we read of God's second call to Jonah. (More on that below.)
The Gospel lesson tells the familiar story of Jesus' calling the first four apostles to follow Him. Don't let the familiarity prevent you from seeing the unique ways in which Mark recounts this incident.
I'm only going to write comments here on the Jonah text. It may or may not be the primary text on which I preach. But even if it isn't, it will still play a prominent role in my sermon on Sunday.
Jonah 3:1-5
The book of Jonah, recounting an incident from earlier in Israel's history, was probably composed in the period after the nation's exile. It was a time of retrenchment when Israel, drawing on its status as God's chosen ones, wanted to isolate itself from the dirty world around it.
This tale of a reluctant prophet who hated the foreign people to whom God wanted him to go, told with comic overtones designed to change people's minds by making them laugh, was a challenge to Israel's penchant toward being isolated and condemnatory of others. Israel was to be a light to the nations, after all, and it couldn't be a light if it kept that light hidden under a basket in the Judean countryside. (The book of Jonah, then, is the perfect companion to the Old Testament book of Ruth. Like Jonah, Ruth only runs to four chapters and through its tale of how a foreigner became ancestor to Israel's greatest king, David, also challenges Israel's insularity and prejudice against foreigners.)
In the first chapter of Jonah, God issued a first call to Jonah. Go to Nineveh, God said, and warn them that their evil has grown so great, I intend to destroy the place.
Nineveh was situated on the site of modern day Mosul, Iraq and was the capital of the Assyrian Empire which had always been hostile to Israel. (Just last week, by the way, a Christian from Mosul was murdered. It's a place from which Christians have fled because of intimidation and killings to which their community has been subjected. Last week's murder came after many Christians had begun to return to the city and their property.)
Understandably, Jonah didn't want to go there. Not only could he be reasonably certain of not receiving a welcome in Nineveh, he was even more certain that he personally hated the Ninevites and wanted to have nothing to do with them.
You can find our what happened next, by reading the book of Jonah yourself. Suffice it to say, Jonah went through an experience he likely wouldn't have wanted to repeat. So, when God calls him this second time, instead of running in the opposite direction as he did in chapter 1, he goes to Nineveh.
The book of Jonah says that Nineveh was so huge it took three days to walk its length. According to Wendy Baumgardner, a certified marathon coach and running enthusiast who runs About.com's page on walking, the average person without any complicating medical conditions can walk about eight miles in an eight-hour stretch, probably the maximum advisable distance. (See here and here.) So, a three day walk across Nineveh, as Jonah tells it, would entail traveling about 24 miles. Assuming that the city was as wide as it was long, that would make the place just a few miles smaller in area than metropolitan Houston today.
Now, my liberal friends will criticize me if I don't add that none of the archeological digs on the site of Nineveh indicate the city was ever that large. And at 576 square miles, Jonah's Nineveh would have dwarfed any other known ancient city.
But, along with my conservative friends, I would say, "Don't discount the information given in Jonah about the city."
The bottom line, of course, is that the book of Jonah, along with the rest of Bible, isn't a book of science. It's a book of faith with, if you'll excuse a poor turn of phrase in light both of Jonah's earlier chapters and of the Gospel lesson, bigger fish to fry.
The important thing to remember is that the place to which God is calling Jonah to go is not only hostile, it's also big. Big and hostile. Would you want to go there? I wouldn't!
Jonah complies with God's call. But just barely.
He spemds just one day walking toward the center of the city and then bellows out what is a five-word sermon in the original text (v.4): "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed."
The strange thing is that on the strength of those few words, with no indication that the foreign Deity represented by Nineveh would forgive them, the whole city repented. They turned away from sin and turned to God.
The question for you to ponder until we worship together on Sunday is simple:
Why?
Why did the Ninevites repent?
I'll see you on Sunday.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Part Two of David Wayne's Cancer Story
Here. Please continue to keep this wonderful pastor and blogger in your prayers.
As you pray for David, don't forget to also pray that researchers will find cures for cancer.
As you pray for David, don't forget to also pray that researchers will find cures for cancer.
Waterboarding...
is torture, says Attorney General-designate Eric Holder. I agree and it's wrong. Period.
(And no, I don't think that in saying this I'm violating my belief that pastors should remain apolitical. Saying that waterboarding is wrong is not a political statement. It's a moral statement about how we as a nation treat our neighbors. Even in war, we are to treat our neighbors with consideration.)
(And no, I don't think that in saying this I'm violating my belief that pastors should remain apolitical. Saying that waterboarding is wrong is not a political statement. It's a moral statement about how we as a nation treat our neighbors. Even in war, we are to treat our neighbors with consideration.)
Quote of the Day
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book.” (Groucho Marx)
Oh, Canada!
I just checked the traffic for this blog and discovered that three-fourths of the people reading it at this very moment are in Canada.
Wonder what that's about, ay?
No matter. Welcome!
Wonder what that's about, ay?
No matter. Welcome!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Israel, Palestine, and the Promise from God
Just as the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel was heating up in December, the January 13, issue of Christian Century, arrived at my house. The Century is a venerable publication whose writers are thoughtful, fair, and generally, from what's called Christianity's mainline denominations. Some would call it "liberal" by comparison with Christianity Today, a magazine of a similar ilk founded by Billy Graham and more associated with the evangelical camp of Christianity.
The January 13, cover emphasized an essay and three responses composed by four different Christian scholars of the Old Testament. The questions which the four pieces seeks to answer are simple:
The implications of my response were several. First, I didn't have to deal with the nettlesome business of God's election of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah and how that stood today in light of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Second, I didn't have to get involved in discussions of the disputes between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
If people pressed me, I would say that modern Israel had a right to exist as a matter of realpolitik.
But, without realizing it, I think that I subscribed to a kind of supercessionism, the idea that the new covenant in Jesus Christ supercedes the old covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants. I wouldn't have admitted that and, I should add that I have always abhorred antisemitism, a notorious result of past Christian adherence to overt supercessionism. But the upshot was the same: This Lutheran Christian who affirms the authority of the Word of God was, in a way, denying the authority of that Word. How? By saying that a claim God had made for all time on earth had been abrogated.
I didn't see that abrogation in the so-called "Jewish rejection of Christ," as centuries of Christian antisemitism has claimed. I have always felt that the crucifixion of Jesus came as part of the fixed plan of God and that He was killed by Gentiles and Jews, that He died for the sins of all the world, Gentile and Jewish. My sins killed Jesus. I killed Jesus.
But I saw the old covenant superceded, rendered irrelevant, by Christ and the new covenant He instituted, namely that all who turn from sin and follow Him live with God forever.
I still believe that all who repent and believe in Jesus have eternity with God, of course. I also still believe that all who reject Christ condemn themselves for eternity.
But I no longer believe that the new covenant renders the old covenant irrelevant or inoperative. As Gary Anderson asserts in his Christian Century essay, "If the promises of God are inviolable, then Israel's attachment to the land is underwritten in God's decree."
Does that mean that as Christians we are duty bound to support any and all actions undertaken by the modern Israeli government? Are we bound to support Israel in its policies in Gaza, for example? Some evangelical Christians say yes and yes to these questions. But I think that many do so for sick and selfish reasons. They want Israel to incite a conflict which, they believe, will trigger Armageddon and force the hand of God to bring about the Second Coming. There is no faith in God in that. It is faith in self, in human action, a belief that God is a puppet we can manipulate.
I won't get into the thicket of current politics and conflict here. But my bottom line answer to the two questions in the previous paragraph is no and no.
Anderson argues, and I think convincingly, that the promise to God's people is both eternal and conditional. In occupying the land that God has given them in perpetuity, they must do so justly. In Old Testament times, God's people were only to drive peoples out of the land who failed to live justly. Otherwise, they were to live as co-inhabitants of the land God gave to them, enacting God's justice and grace. When Israel failed to exercise just stewardship of its land, including worshiping God alone and the just treatment of the foreigners in its midst, the Old Testament says that, as part of God's covenant, Israel was overtaken by foreign armies, such as in 587BC.
Eminent Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that while Anderson's essay is "good," his theological framework is essentially useless in addressing the real life political situation in the modern Middle East. As deeply as I respect Brueggemann, I think that his view veers close to my own previous facile thinking. There were really no good political reasons for world powers to recognized the modern state of Israel in 1947. In other words, the underpinnings for the existence of today's Israel are theological. One cannot understand the realpolitik of the Middle East in 2009, without acknowledging the power, if not the validity, of God's promise of land to Abraham and his descendants.
Marlin Jeschke rejects Anderson's notion that God's promise to Abraham was meant for the patriarch's genetic descendants or for a crescent-shaped piece of land on the eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea. Abraham was called, he claims, to show people how those who follow God are to treat whatever land they occupy and the neighbors with whom they share it. But, to me, this approach risks making God into a removed general principle-giver. Both the Old and New Testaments affirm God is One Who gets involved in specific lives--our specific lives, in specific places. God called a specific person named Abraham. God came into the world in a specific person named Jesus. It's true to say that Abraham was called to become, if you will, a prototype of faith. In Romans, Paul says that Abraham shows all people how sinners are made right with God: Abraham believed and God counted his belief as righteousness. (See here and here.) But Jeschke both universalizes and, I think, over-spiritualizes God's promise to Abraham.
Read the essays and the responses: here, here, here, here, and here.
Genesis 15:13-20
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
The January 13, cover emphasized an essay and three responses composed by four different Christian scholars of the Old Testament. The questions which the four pieces seeks to answer are simple:
- Does the promise of the land of Canaan which God gave to Abraham and his descendants, the Jews, still hold? (see Biblical passages below)
- If so, in what way does it hold?
The implications of my response were several. First, I didn't have to deal with the nettlesome business of God's election of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah and how that stood today in light of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Second, I didn't have to get involved in discussions of the disputes between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
If people pressed me, I would say that modern Israel had a right to exist as a matter of realpolitik.
But, without realizing it, I think that I subscribed to a kind of supercessionism, the idea that the new covenant in Jesus Christ supercedes the old covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants. I wouldn't have admitted that and, I should add that I have always abhorred antisemitism, a notorious result of past Christian adherence to overt supercessionism. But the upshot was the same: This Lutheran Christian who affirms the authority of the Word of God was, in a way, denying the authority of that Word. How? By saying that a claim God had made for all time on earth had been abrogated.
I didn't see that abrogation in the so-called "Jewish rejection of Christ," as centuries of Christian antisemitism has claimed. I have always felt that the crucifixion of Jesus came as part of the fixed plan of God and that He was killed by Gentiles and Jews, that He died for the sins of all the world, Gentile and Jewish. My sins killed Jesus. I killed Jesus.
But I saw the old covenant superceded, rendered irrelevant, by Christ and the new covenant He instituted, namely that all who turn from sin and follow Him live with God forever.
I still believe that all who repent and believe in Jesus have eternity with God, of course. I also still believe that all who reject Christ condemn themselves for eternity.
But I no longer believe that the new covenant renders the old covenant irrelevant or inoperative. As Gary Anderson asserts in his Christian Century essay, "If the promises of God are inviolable, then Israel's attachment to the land is underwritten in God's decree."
Does that mean that as Christians we are duty bound to support any and all actions undertaken by the modern Israeli government? Are we bound to support Israel in its policies in Gaza, for example? Some evangelical Christians say yes and yes to these questions. But I think that many do so for sick and selfish reasons. They want Israel to incite a conflict which, they believe, will trigger Armageddon and force the hand of God to bring about the Second Coming. There is no faith in God in that. It is faith in self, in human action, a belief that God is a puppet we can manipulate.
I won't get into the thicket of current politics and conflict here. But my bottom line answer to the two questions in the previous paragraph is no and no.
Anderson argues, and I think convincingly, that the promise to God's people is both eternal and conditional. In occupying the land that God has given them in perpetuity, they must do so justly. In Old Testament times, God's people were only to drive peoples out of the land who failed to live justly. Otherwise, they were to live as co-inhabitants of the land God gave to them, enacting God's justice and grace. When Israel failed to exercise just stewardship of its land, including worshiping God alone and the just treatment of the foreigners in its midst, the Old Testament says that, as part of God's covenant, Israel was overtaken by foreign armies, such as in 587BC.
Eminent Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that while Anderson's essay is "good," his theological framework is essentially useless in addressing the real life political situation in the modern Middle East. As deeply as I respect Brueggemann, I think that his view veers close to my own previous facile thinking. There were really no good political reasons for world powers to recognized the modern state of Israel in 1947. In other words, the underpinnings for the existence of today's Israel are theological. One cannot understand the realpolitik of the Middle East in 2009, without acknowledging the power, if not the validity, of God's promise of land to Abraham and his descendants.
Marlin Jeschke rejects Anderson's notion that God's promise to Abraham was meant for the patriarch's genetic descendants or for a crescent-shaped piece of land on the eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea. Abraham was called, he claims, to show people how those who follow God are to treat whatever land they occupy and the neighbors with whom they share it. But, to me, this approach risks making God into a removed general principle-giver. Both the Old and New Testaments affirm God is One Who gets involved in specific lives--our specific lives, in specific places. God called a specific person named Abraham. God came into the world in a specific person named Jesus. It's true to say that Abraham was called to become, if you will, a prototype of faith. In Romans, Paul says that Abraham shows all people how sinners are made right with God: Abraham believed and God counted his belief as righteousness. (See here and here.) But Jeschke both universalizes and, I think, over-spiritualizes God's promise to Abraham.
Read the essays and the responses: here, here, here, here, and here.
Genesis 15:13-20
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; 14but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Romans 3:1-4
Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4By no means! Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true, as it is written, “So that you may be justified in your words, and prevail in your judging.”
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Just for Fun
The Smithsonian Magazine Online today presented a "word cloud" of George Washington's first Inaugural Address. A word cloud "takes text from any source and enlarges words that appear more frequently. Conversely, words that are smaller appear less frequently. Small words, like the or of, are not included..."
The word cloud below was created from the front page of 'Better Living' before this post appeared. You can create your own word cloud from text or web sites by going to Wordle.net.
[Click on the image to enlarge.]
The word cloud below was created from the front page of 'Better Living' before this post appeared. You can create your own word cloud from text or web sites by going to Wordle.net.
[Click on the image to enlarge.]
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
222
I've enjoyed this song since it was released. But within the past few days, an official video was released. I like it.
If you read 'Better Living' once a week or more...
...I'd appreciate you letting all the people on your email lists know about the site.
I write 'Better Living' with the goal of sharing Christ in accessible ways with all sorts of people, Christian and non-Christian, leaving every kind of reader to decide for themselves what they make of Jesus and His claims to be both God and man.
On top of that, not taking positions on political issues on which I don't see God speaking clearly in the Bible, I try to cast a fair eye on the politics and trends of the day, drawing strongly on my lifelong study of history and my past life as a political activist.
Occasionally, you'll find other things that might interest you or your friend here, if not in the currently posted items, then maybe in the 3900+ pieces posted here since I started 'Better Living' back in 2003.
Please do send a link to Better Living to all your email friends...and keep coming back.
Thanks and God bless!
Mark
I write 'Better Living' with the goal of sharing Christ in accessible ways with all sorts of people, Christian and non-Christian, leaving every kind of reader to decide for themselves what they make of Jesus and His claims to be both God and man.
On top of that, not taking positions on political issues on which I don't see God speaking clearly in the Bible, I try to cast a fair eye on the politics and trends of the day, drawing strongly on my lifelong study of history and my past life as a political activist.
Occasionally, you'll find other things that might interest you or your friend here, if not in the currently posted items, then maybe in the 3900+ pieces posted here since I started 'Better Living' back in 2003.
Please do send a link to Better Living to all your email friends...and keep coming back.
Thanks and God bless!
Mark
It Starts with Christ
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, on January 11, 2009.]
Mark: 1:4-11
A preacher named Origen, who lived in the third century, once told the story of a city that received a gift. It was a huge statue, so massive that nobody could see it clearly or know for certain what it was. Finally, some people got an idea. “Why don’t we miniaturize it?” they suggested. And that, according to Origen, is exactly what they did. By making the statue smaller, the townspeople finally could look at it and say, “Oh! That’s what it really is!”
The Bible says that God did something like this to Himself in Jesus Christ. As I said last week, in Jesus, God shrinks Himself down to our size so that we can say, “Oh! That’s what God is like!” This is exactly what Martin Luther meant when he said that if we want to know what God is like, we just look to Jesus on the cross. There we see how God focused His power and compassion into a sublime act of self-sacrifice that can save the sinner who turns from sin and trusts in Christ.
We’ve just begun a season of the Church Year designed, in fact, to help us all see God clearly. The season of Epiphany began on Tuesday. January 6 is always Epiphany Day on the Church calendar. That specific day remembers the visit by the wise men (or the magi) sometime within the first two years of Jesus' life. They were led to the house where Joseph, Mary, and the baby were living by a star that shone overhead. Epiphany, epiphane in the Greek of the New Testament, means “to shine upon.”
Throughout this Epiphany Season, as we consider how Christ calls us to be disciples--followers, we’ll be seeing again and again how Jesus authenticated His right to call us to follow by showing Himself to be God.
The light of the world shines on us in Jesus and our call is to let His light shine in our lives, letting Him take control!
The Gospel lesson appointed for the first Sunday after January 6 is always about one of the strangest incidents recounted in the Bible: the baptism of Jesus by His relative, John.
I say that it’s strange because the writer of our Bible lesson, Mark, has already told us that John was calling people to “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.” But Jesus, the Bible repeatedly tells us, was completely and totally sinless. So why on earth is a sinless Savior undergoing a baptism designed for people turning from sin?
A little story may help us to understand the answer to that question. As you know, I can’t swim and in fact, I have an irrational fear of water. Once, when Philip was a year old, we went to a pool party. Everything was going well. The burgers and hot dogs were on the grill, the kids were playing in the pool, and the grown-ups were having those conversations that bore the life out of their children. And then, I don’t know how it happened, Philip fell into the pool. Right next to where I was standing!
Frankly, at that moment, I didn’t give my fears a first, let alone a second, thought. Not certain of the depth of the water, I was about to go in after Phil when somebody already in the water picked him up and handed him to me. When I thought about it later that night, I realized that in spite of my fears, I would have jumped into that water if I’d had to do so. Now, there's nothing heroic or laudable about that. I suppose that it would be instinctive to do much more than what I conemplated, even to risk their life for a family member.
But God doesn’t operate on instinctive love. God loves the unlovable. He loves the Osama bin Ladens and even the Mark Danielses of the world!
For God, love isn’t an emotion, but a commitment to do the most possible—even the impossible--to bring sinful human beings back into fellowship with Him.
God will go to the absolute depths in order to save people. And He’s anxious to spare not just the cute and cuddly from the sin and death that threaten us, but every member of the whole human race.
Jesus waded into the Jordan River so that He could reach down to us, sinners all! No wonder the New Testament has six different accounts of Jesus’ baptism and only two accounts of His birth. Jesus’ baptism is more stunning and more important than Christmas, because in His baptism, Jesus demonstrated how far God is willing to go to reach out to us!
That's the first thing I want you to remember about Jesus' baptism by John.
But, here's another thing I want you to remember: Jesus’ baptism demonstrates that when we repent--turn from sin--and confess our need of Him, something wonderful happens. Mark writes this in our Gospel lesson: “...when [Jesus] was coming out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart...”
The word for torn apart in the New Testament Greek is schizomenous. (It’s related to the word schizophrenia, which means a split, torn personality or psyche.)
The college football season has just come to an end with more bowl games than I could keep track of. Many times in those games, running backs or quarterbacks broke amazing runs resulting in first downs or touchdowns. Everybody cheered for the runners. But nine times out of ten, those runners only got big yardage because of some unsung lineman who blew a hole open in the defense.
To use a homely analogy, I would say that Jesus is our lineman! He blows the doors of heaven open for us. The tearing of the heavens at His Baptism symbolizes this.
And Mark hammers this point home later in his book when, as he describes Jesus' death on a cross, he mentions that the curtain in the Jerusalem Temple that once concealed the Holy of Holies, God’s very presence in the world, was torn from top to bottom. Through His life and His death and His resurrection, Jesus opens eternity to us!
Our call to be Jesus’ disciples starts with Christ Himself. He enters our life and He tears open the doors to heaven for us. Whatever good we do, however much we grow as people, will be rooted in our willingness, like the people who came to the Jordan River, to confess our sins, to repent, and to follow the lead of Jesus.
This is a time of year when we make all sorts of resolutions. "I'm going to lose twenty pounds," we say. Or, "I'm going to read the Bible every day. I'm going to serve my neighbor no matter how inconvenient it may be." We grit our teeth and snarl, "I'm going to be a joyous Christian!"
But by January 2, each year, we recognize that there's a problem with this approach to changing our lives. It's this: It begins with us. It's based on our faulty capacity to accomplish things on our own steam.
So, simplify and revise whatever resolutions you’ve made for the year. Resolve to follow Christ wherever He leads. Let the way you live each day start with Christ. Period.
Jesus is God made plain to the world and if we follow Him, He’ll help us do what truly needs doing and forgo everything else.
Mark: 1:4-11
A preacher named Origen, who lived in the third century, once told the story of a city that received a gift. It was a huge statue, so massive that nobody could see it clearly or know for certain what it was. Finally, some people got an idea. “Why don’t we miniaturize it?” they suggested. And that, according to Origen, is exactly what they did. By making the statue smaller, the townspeople finally could look at it and say, “Oh! That’s what it really is!”
The Bible says that God did something like this to Himself in Jesus Christ. As I said last week, in Jesus, God shrinks Himself down to our size so that we can say, “Oh! That’s what God is like!” This is exactly what Martin Luther meant when he said that if we want to know what God is like, we just look to Jesus on the cross. There we see how God focused His power and compassion into a sublime act of self-sacrifice that can save the sinner who turns from sin and trusts in Christ.
We’ve just begun a season of the Church Year designed, in fact, to help us all see God clearly. The season of Epiphany began on Tuesday. January 6 is always Epiphany Day on the Church calendar. That specific day remembers the visit by the wise men (or the magi) sometime within the first two years of Jesus' life. They were led to the house where Joseph, Mary, and the baby were living by a star that shone overhead. Epiphany, epiphane in the Greek of the New Testament, means “to shine upon.”
Throughout this Epiphany Season, as we consider how Christ calls us to be disciples--followers, we’ll be seeing again and again how Jesus authenticated His right to call us to follow by showing Himself to be God.
The light of the world shines on us in Jesus and our call is to let His light shine in our lives, letting Him take control!
The Gospel lesson appointed for the first Sunday after January 6 is always about one of the strangest incidents recounted in the Bible: the baptism of Jesus by His relative, John.
I say that it’s strange because the writer of our Bible lesson, Mark, has already told us that John was calling people to “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.” But Jesus, the Bible repeatedly tells us, was completely and totally sinless. So why on earth is a sinless Savior undergoing a baptism designed for people turning from sin?
A little story may help us to understand the answer to that question. As you know, I can’t swim and in fact, I have an irrational fear of water. Once, when Philip was a year old, we went to a pool party. Everything was going well. The burgers and hot dogs were on the grill, the kids were playing in the pool, and the grown-ups were having those conversations that bore the life out of their children. And then, I don’t know how it happened, Philip fell into the pool. Right next to where I was standing!
Frankly, at that moment, I didn’t give my fears a first, let alone a second, thought. Not certain of the depth of the water, I was about to go in after Phil when somebody already in the water picked him up and handed him to me. When I thought about it later that night, I realized that in spite of my fears, I would have jumped into that water if I’d had to do so. Now, there's nothing heroic or laudable about that. I suppose that it would be instinctive to do much more than what I conemplated, even to risk their life for a family member.
But God doesn’t operate on instinctive love. God loves the unlovable. He loves the Osama bin Ladens and even the Mark Danielses of the world!
For God, love isn’t an emotion, but a commitment to do the most possible—even the impossible--to bring sinful human beings back into fellowship with Him.
God will go to the absolute depths in order to save people. And He’s anxious to spare not just the cute and cuddly from the sin and death that threaten us, but every member of the whole human race.
Jesus waded into the Jordan River so that He could reach down to us, sinners all! No wonder the New Testament has six different accounts of Jesus’ baptism and only two accounts of His birth. Jesus’ baptism is more stunning and more important than Christmas, because in His baptism, Jesus demonstrated how far God is willing to go to reach out to us!
That's the first thing I want you to remember about Jesus' baptism by John.
But, here's another thing I want you to remember: Jesus’ baptism demonstrates that when we repent--turn from sin--and confess our need of Him, something wonderful happens. Mark writes this in our Gospel lesson: “...when [Jesus] was coming out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart...”
The word for torn apart in the New Testament Greek is schizomenous. (It’s related to the word schizophrenia, which means a split, torn personality or psyche.)
The college football season has just come to an end with more bowl games than I could keep track of. Many times in those games, running backs or quarterbacks broke amazing runs resulting in first downs or touchdowns. Everybody cheered for the runners. But nine times out of ten, those runners only got big yardage because of some unsung lineman who blew a hole open in the defense.
To use a homely analogy, I would say that Jesus is our lineman! He blows the doors of heaven open for us. The tearing of the heavens at His Baptism symbolizes this.
And Mark hammers this point home later in his book when, as he describes Jesus' death on a cross, he mentions that the curtain in the Jerusalem Temple that once concealed the Holy of Holies, God’s very presence in the world, was torn from top to bottom. Through His life and His death and His resurrection, Jesus opens eternity to us!
Our call to be Jesus’ disciples starts with Christ Himself. He enters our life and He tears open the doors to heaven for us. Whatever good we do, however much we grow as people, will be rooted in our willingness, like the people who came to the Jordan River, to confess our sins, to repent, and to follow the lead of Jesus.
This is a time of year when we make all sorts of resolutions. "I'm going to lose twenty pounds," we say. Or, "I'm going to read the Bible every day. I'm going to serve my neighbor no matter how inconvenient it may be." We grit our teeth and snarl, "I'm going to be a joyous Christian!"
But by January 2, each year, we recognize that there's a problem with this approach to changing our lives. It's this: It begins with us. It's based on our faulty capacity to accomplish things on our own steam.
So, simplify and revise whatever resolutions you’ve made for the year. Resolve to follow Christ wherever He leads. Let the way you live each day start with Christ. Period.
Jesus is God made plain to the world and if we follow Him, He’ll help us do what truly needs doing and forgo everything else.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Ohio Ranks Seventh in Education
Education Week, the publication of a not-for-profit organization that seeks excellence in education, says Ohio has the seventh-best public education program among all the states. Ohio was given a B- overall.
For a severely cash-strapped state whose public school funding program has been ruled unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court on four different occasions, this is, quite frankly, amazing news.
Governor Ted Strickland, who was elected in 2006, has said that if he doesn't get the school funding mess straightened out and institute other education reforms during his tenure as chief executive is through, he will consider his term a failure. If Strickland can convince the General Assembly, the state's legislature, and all the relevant players to go along with his reform plans, he will do what none of his predecessors, Democratic or Republican, have been able to pull off.
Strickland may have a better chance of getting a reform program through in the next two years. While his first two years were marked by uncommon cooperation between the Democratic governor and the Republican assembly, the State House of Representatives will now be under the control of the Democrats, presumably smoothing passage of Strickland's agenda in that body.
Here is an interactive state report card map.
Here is detailed state data.
Here is a statement from the governor.
Here are links to several pieces I've written on Ohio's public school funding crisis over the past four years:
It's Time to Get Mad About Ohio's School Funding Crisis (March 25, 2005)
A Blueprint for Reforming Ohio's Public School Funding (March 30, 2005)
Governor Working on Master Plan for Ohio Education (October 30, 2008)
For a severely cash-strapped state whose public school funding program has been ruled unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court on four different occasions, this is, quite frankly, amazing news.
Governor Ted Strickland, who was elected in 2006, has said that if he doesn't get the school funding mess straightened out and institute other education reforms during his tenure as chief executive is through, he will consider his term a failure. If Strickland can convince the General Assembly, the state's legislature, and all the relevant players to go along with his reform plans, he will do what none of his predecessors, Democratic or Republican, have been able to pull off.
Strickland may have a better chance of getting a reform program through in the next two years. While his first two years were marked by uncommon cooperation between the Democratic governor and the Republican assembly, the State House of Representatives will now be under the control of the Democrats, presumably smoothing passage of Strickland's agenda in that body.
Here is an interactive state report card map.
Here is detailed state data.
Here is a statement from the governor.
Here are links to several pieces I've written on Ohio's public school funding crisis over the past four years:
It's Time to Get Mad About Ohio's School Funding Crisis (March 25, 2005)
A Blueprint for Reforming Ohio's Public School Funding (March 30, 2005)
Governor Working on Master Plan for Ohio Education (October 30, 2008)
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
How to Help a Grieving Friend
How do we help friends who are grieving?
Over the course of the years, I've learned some important basic lessons about this, both from personal experience and from my reading of the Bible.
If you have a friend who is grieving, whether over the death of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss, or a move that has taken them many miles from familiar faces and places, they can use your help. Fortunately, the principles I've discovered can be used in face-to-face conversations, over the telephone, and even, I have learned, in internet instant messaging. So, to help you help your grieving friend, here are seven of those lessons.
First and most importantly, listen to your friend. Frequently, whether it's because of our own discomfort or a penchant for wanting to "fix things," we can go to our grieving friends and shower them with torrents of consoling words. But what grieving people most need is to be listened to. Their pain and grief need to be acknowledged.
In the Old Testament book of Job, a man is aggrieved when he loses first, all his sources of wealth and then, all of his children in a natural disaster. Three friends come to visit Job (pronounced with a long "o"). One scholar has pointed out that the friends do something very wise at first. They let Job "vent," allowing him to give full expression to his agony, his questions, his anger. Then, they make a mistake: They open their mouths. My biggest mistakes in life and in trying to help hurting people, have never come from listening. They've always come from talking.
Second, don't try to talk people out of their grief. Grief is something which, over time, follows a more or less natural course. Sometimes more time and sometimes less is required. It depends on the person, their level of faith, and their particular grief. You can't truncate grief with words.
Some people think that they need to give the aggrieved person a "pep talk." But such talks are really designed more to make the talker feel they've done a good turn than to do any real good for anyone else. A woman's husband died. At the funeral home viewing, a man decided to "cheer her up." He said, "I know you feel bad now. But you'll get over it." That's a true story and it's truly awful.
Thirdly, don't try to explain what you don't understand. When people grieve over their losses, they wonder, as all of us do, why this has happened. The person who wants to help the friend who is asking this question must resist the temptation to answer it. In all honesty, your friend doesn't want to have a rational explanation anyway. They simply want to be able to say, "This isn't fair!"
And it isn't fair. Life often isn't fair. At the end of Job's forty-two chapters, we're left with this answer to the question of why grief befalls us: We live in a world where bad things happen. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that bad things rain on the good and the evil alike. Why that is so, no one living on this planet is wise enough to say. Only God knows the answer to the question of why and you don't need to play God by pretending to have that answer.
Lesson four is this: Let your friend be angry with God. A deeply faithful Christian man whose granddaughter had recently died told me, "Sometimes I get angry with God. I know it's horrible; but it's true." I assured him that what he was feeling wasn't horrible. I reminded him of such people in the Bible as David and Job, who always believed in God, but also got angry with God when dealing with grief or the threat of death. And I told the grieving grandfather, "The fact that you're angry with God proves your faith in God. You would never be angry with someone you didn't think was there."
Most of the time, when we respond to people's anger, no matter its source, with condemnation, it only makes them dig in their heels. God says in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Letting your friend get angry with God will prevent their anger from becoming an ongoing feature in their life.
Lesson five: Don't avoid talking about your grieving friend's loss. Often, friends fear that if they do so, they'll only make their friends feel sadder. But a grieving friend already is sad and if it seems natural to mention a friend's dead loved one, for example, or if your friend mentions that person, you should be willing to talk about them as well.
A woman once told me, "My friends avoid speaking of my late husband like a plague. What they don't seem to understand is that when they do that, it makes me feel as though they think he was unimportant or that they want to pretend he was never there." Through the years, I have heard that grieving woman's words echoed by other grieving people. You honor your friend when you're willing to discuss with them the people or circumstances they grieve.
Lesson six: Pray for your friend. You should pray that God will bring them comfort, for sure. But you also should pray that God will use you as a conduit for the blessings you want your friend to receive. Whenever I visit people who are dealing with grief, I always ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit, allowing God's love for my friend to flow through me. Jesus says that the world will know Him when His love is visible in us. Pray that God will love your friend through you.
Finally, if you're a follower of Jesus, your friend will probably eventually want to know what has allowed you to be so helpful to them. You can honestly say that it isn't you who have been helpful, that you have prayed over every step you took with them and that God has guided you. You can tell them that you belong to an eternal God Who has destroyed the power of death and that anyone who trustingly follows Jesus Christ has hope beyond the grave. At the right time, after you've lovingly taken the journey of grief with your friend, that will come as very good news.
[This piece distills two columns I wrote five years ago for The Community Journal, a suburban Cincinnati newspaper. I presented this earlier today at two gatherings, the women's group of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church and the Hocking County Cancer Support Group. This has appeared in various incarnations on the blog.]
Over the course of the years, I've learned some important basic lessons about this, both from personal experience and from my reading of the Bible.
If you have a friend who is grieving, whether over the death of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss, or a move that has taken them many miles from familiar faces and places, they can use your help. Fortunately, the principles I've discovered can be used in face-to-face conversations, over the telephone, and even, I have learned, in internet instant messaging. So, to help you help your grieving friend, here are seven of those lessons.
First and most importantly, listen to your friend. Frequently, whether it's because of our own discomfort or a penchant for wanting to "fix things," we can go to our grieving friends and shower them with torrents of consoling words. But what grieving people most need is to be listened to. Their pain and grief need to be acknowledged.
In the Old Testament book of Job, a man is aggrieved when he loses first, all his sources of wealth and then, all of his children in a natural disaster. Three friends come to visit Job (pronounced with a long "o"). One scholar has pointed out that the friends do something very wise at first. They let Job "vent," allowing him to give full expression to his agony, his questions, his anger. Then, they make a mistake: They open their mouths. My biggest mistakes in life and in trying to help hurting people, have never come from listening. They've always come from talking.
Second, don't try to talk people out of their grief. Grief is something which, over time, follows a more or less natural course. Sometimes more time and sometimes less is required. It depends on the person, their level of faith, and their particular grief. You can't truncate grief with words.
Some people think that they need to give the aggrieved person a "pep talk." But such talks are really designed more to make the talker feel they've done a good turn than to do any real good for anyone else. A woman's husband died. At the funeral home viewing, a man decided to "cheer her up." He said, "I know you feel bad now. But you'll get over it." That's a true story and it's truly awful.
Thirdly, don't try to explain what you don't understand. When people grieve over their losses, they wonder, as all of us do, why this has happened. The person who wants to help the friend who is asking this question must resist the temptation to answer it. In all honesty, your friend doesn't want to have a rational explanation anyway. They simply want to be able to say, "This isn't fair!"
And it isn't fair. Life often isn't fair. At the end of Job's forty-two chapters, we're left with this answer to the question of why grief befalls us: We live in a world where bad things happen. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that bad things rain on the good and the evil alike. Why that is so, no one living on this planet is wise enough to say. Only God knows the answer to the question of why and you don't need to play God by pretending to have that answer.
Lesson four is this: Let your friend be angry with God. A deeply faithful Christian man whose granddaughter had recently died told me, "Sometimes I get angry with God. I know it's horrible; but it's true." I assured him that what he was feeling wasn't horrible. I reminded him of such people in the Bible as David and Job, who always believed in God, but also got angry with God when dealing with grief or the threat of death. And I told the grieving grandfather, "The fact that you're angry with God proves your faith in God. You would never be angry with someone you didn't think was there."
Most of the time, when we respond to people's anger, no matter its source, with condemnation, it only makes them dig in their heels. God says in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Letting your friend get angry with God will prevent their anger from becoming an ongoing feature in their life.
Lesson five: Don't avoid talking about your grieving friend's loss. Often, friends fear that if they do so, they'll only make their friends feel sadder. But a grieving friend already is sad and if it seems natural to mention a friend's dead loved one, for example, or if your friend mentions that person, you should be willing to talk about them as well.
A woman once told me, "My friends avoid speaking of my late husband like a plague. What they don't seem to understand is that when they do that, it makes me feel as though they think he was unimportant or that they want to pretend he was never there." Through the years, I have heard that grieving woman's words echoed by other grieving people. You honor your friend when you're willing to discuss with them the people or circumstances they grieve.
Lesson six: Pray for your friend. You should pray that God will bring them comfort, for sure. But you also should pray that God will use you as a conduit for the blessings you want your friend to receive. Whenever I visit people who are dealing with grief, I always ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit, allowing God's love for my friend to flow through me. Jesus says that the world will know Him when His love is visible in us. Pray that God will love your friend through you.
Finally, if you're a follower of Jesus, your friend will probably eventually want to know what has allowed you to be so helpful to them. You can honestly say that it isn't you who have been helpful, that you have prayed over every step you took with them and that God has guided you. You can tell them that you belong to an eternal God Who has destroyed the power of death and that anyone who trustingly follows Jesus Christ has hope beyond the grave. At the right time, after you've lovingly taken the journey of grief with your friend, that will come as very good news.
[This piece distills two columns I wrote five years ago for The Community Journal, a suburban Cincinnati newspaper. I presented this earlier today at two gatherings, the women's group of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church and the Hocking County Cancer Support Group. This has appeared in various incarnations on the blog.]
Getting Ready for Sunday (A Look at the Lessons for January 11, 2009)
[Each week, I try to present a few thoughts on the Bible lessons for the upcoming Sunday. I do this, in part, to help myself prepare my sermons, but also for the benefit of the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Because we use lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary, I hope that others will find what I write helpful as well.]
Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11
The Prayer of the Day:
Holy God, creator of light and giver of goodness, your voice moves over the waters. Immerse us in your grace, and transform us by your Spirit, that we may follow after your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
General Comments:
1. January 6, Epiphany Day, kicks off the season of the Church Year called Epiphany. As pointed out before, the word epiphany literally means to shine upon. It has the idea of making something clear.
The theme of the Gospel lessons appointed for the Epiphany season is the many ways in which Jesus was revealed to be not only fully human, but also fully God. The other lessons, including those drawn from the Old Testament, also help us more fully see Christ as "the Word made flesh."
2. Light is often associated with the Epiphany season. This is related to more than the star which led the magi to the baby Jesus. It also relates to how Jesus reveals the nature, character, will, presence, and intent of God, among other things. In Jesus, we see God.
3. Another theme of the Epiphany season is the call to be witnesses who point to Jesus as God, Lord, and Savior. This is precisely what Peter, a devout Jew who comes to see that through Christ, God is reaching out the entire world, does in our second lesson. Followers of Jesus are called to reveal the truth about Jesus, so that the whole world can come to be His followers and so, live with God forever.
4. This Sunday's Gospel lesson, as is always the case on this Sunday of the Church Year, is about the Baptism of the Lord. Unlike the birth of Jesus or even the Last Supper, the baptism of Jesus is recounted in all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). This underscores its importance. We'll talk about that a bit more in the next pass at these lessons.
5. Psalm 29: This psalm echoes our first lesson, a portion of the first of two creation accounts in Genesis. "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders...The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor." God speaks; life happens!
6. Acts 19:1-7: Acts is the second volume of Luke's writings found in the New Testament. Our lesson finds us deep into Luke's account of Paul's ministry in the mid-first century AD. Ancient Corinth was a wealthy seaport city where Paul founded a church. He wrote at least two letters to the congregation there which appear in the New Testament as First and Second Corinthians.
According to Luke, when Paul arrived at Corinth, he met people who, through the teaching of John the Baptizer that had somehow been shared with them, were awaiting the coming of a Savior. They reported that they had been baptized. But they told Paul that they had only undergone John's baptism. All baptized in the baptism instituted by Jesus receive the Holy Spirit, the power of God to believe in Christ and to live with God. That was happened to the believers at Corinth.
(Of course, if you're familiar with First or Second Corinthians, you also know that the Corinthian Christians were a dysfunctional lot who became obsessed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, particularly tongues. Many among them were convinced that they were spiritually superior because they possessed this gift. One reason for Paul's letters to them was to straighten them out on that score.)
7. Mark 1:4-11: Some of these verses appeared in one of our Gospel lessons for the recent Advent Season. Go here to see comments on Mark 1:1-8.
Here is my sermon from The Baptism of Our Lord Sunday in 2008. It's based on Matthew's account of Jesus' Baptism, which differs in some and amplifies what's seen in Mark's account. In the sermon, I deal a bit with the question of why Jesus, sinless, underwent a baptism of repentance.
It's important to keep in mind that John the Baptizer's baptism was for repentance. It was a symbolic act of commitment to God on the part of the person being baptized.
That is completely different from the Baptism instituted by Jesus, which is an act of God, not of the baptized. In Baptism instituted by Jesus, Christian Baptism, God's Spirit creates new life (John 3:3) in the same way that God's Spirit moved over the waters to create life in Genesis 1:1-5.
Verse-by-Verse Comments: Genesis 1:1-5
v.1: God created: In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, bara (he created) is only ever used of God. Human beings might form, fashion, or make things, but they never create them. That's the domain of God alone.
v.2: formless void: In Hebrew, the words used here convey confusion and emptiness.
the deep: Here, Genesis says that there was a chaos--picture a churning, roiling, out-of-control sea--before God created anything. This would have been a powerful image for the ancient Hebrews to whom this book was first addressed. Israel was a nation with no major seaports. For them, the sea was a frightening place, filled with sea monsters. (This also added special power to the Old Testament book of Jonah, where a giant fish would become the unlikely vehicle by which God saved a rebel Israelite.) God's creative activity brings order and peace to the chaos.
a wind swept over the face of the waters: The Hebrew word ruach can be rendered as wind, breath, or spirit. The same word is used in the second creation account in Genesis to describe God breathing life into the first man. Here, God, the only living being, omnipotent, is imparting life to His creation.
v.3: "Let there be...": God speaks and life happens.
"...light...": This is not the sun, moon, or stars. That will come later, in vv.14-19. God creates light. God creates the phemenon of light, the reality of light, the concept. The sun is just the sun. Stars are just stars. They wouldn't be possible without the phenomenon of light.
God, of course, is often described as "light." Jesus is called "the light of the world." But God is uncreated light, Whose being stands in contrast to the darkness of "the deep" and "the darkness" of sin which human beings prefer, according to Jesus in the Gospel of John.
Here, God seems to impart something of His character and nature to what He creates, in the same way that an author or a composer or a carpenter put something of themselves in their work. You wouldn't say that the things they created were actually pieces of the people, the way some religions insist that everything and everybody is part of God. But you would say that authors, composers, or carpenters invested their minds, hearts, bodies, and souls in what they make. (Of course, in the person of Jesus, God would come to actually invest Himself in us.)
This is what I believe: God, uncreated light, created light whereby His creation could come into being. In a strange, darkened room, light brings clarity and order. So maybe the light God created, reflecting His own internal order, functionality, and fullness, brought those things to the stormy chaos.
God is still doing that in our Baptism.
v.4: saw that the light was good: The idea of looking at His creative activity and declaring it good (tov, in the Hebrew) recurs throughout Genesis 1. God delights in His creation. (He delights especially in the pinnacle of His creative ventures, human beings. After creating the first humans, God declares the creation to be "very good," tov tov!)
The Baptism of Our Lord
(The First Sunday after the Epiphany)
January 11, 2009
The Bible Lessons:(The First Sunday after the Epiphany)
January 11, 2009
Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11
The Prayer of the Day:
Holy God, creator of light and giver of goodness, your voice moves over the waters. Immerse us in your grace, and transform us by your Spirit, that we may follow after your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
General Comments:
1. January 6, Epiphany Day, kicks off the season of the Church Year called Epiphany. As pointed out before, the word epiphany literally means to shine upon. It has the idea of making something clear.
The theme of the Gospel lessons appointed for the Epiphany season is the many ways in which Jesus was revealed to be not only fully human, but also fully God. The other lessons, including those drawn from the Old Testament, also help us more fully see Christ as "the Word made flesh."
2. Light is often associated with the Epiphany season. This is related to more than the star which led the magi to the baby Jesus. It also relates to how Jesus reveals the nature, character, will, presence, and intent of God, among other things. In Jesus, we see God.
3. Another theme of the Epiphany season is the call to be witnesses who point to Jesus as God, Lord, and Savior. This is precisely what Peter, a devout Jew who comes to see that through Christ, God is reaching out the entire world, does in our second lesson. Followers of Jesus are called to reveal the truth about Jesus, so that the whole world can come to be His followers and so, live with God forever.
4. This Sunday's Gospel lesson, as is always the case on this Sunday of the Church Year, is about the Baptism of the Lord. Unlike the birth of Jesus or even the Last Supper, the baptism of Jesus is recounted in all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). This underscores its importance. We'll talk about that a bit more in the next pass at these lessons.
5. Psalm 29: This psalm echoes our first lesson, a portion of the first of two creation accounts in Genesis. "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders...The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor." God speaks; life happens!
6. Acts 19:1-7: Acts is the second volume of Luke's writings found in the New Testament. Our lesson finds us deep into Luke's account of Paul's ministry in the mid-first century AD. Ancient Corinth was a wealthy seaport city where Paul founded a church. He wrote at least two letters to the congregation there which appear in the New Testament as First and Second Corinthians.
According to Luke, when Paul arrived at Corinth, he met people who, through the teaching of John the Baptizer that had somehow been shared with them, were awaiting the coming of a Savior. They reported that they had been baptized. But they told Paul that they had only undergone John's baptism. All baptized in the baptism instituted by Jesus receive the Holy Spirit, the power of God to believe in Christ and to live with God. That was happened to the believers at Corinth.
(Of course, if you're familiar with First or Second Corinthians, you also know that the Corinthian Christians were a dysfunctional lot who became obsessed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, particularly tongues. Many among them were convinced that they were spiritually superior because they possessed this gift. One reason for Paul's letters to them was to straighten them out on that score.)
7. Mark 1:4-11: Some of these verses appeared in one of our Gospel lessons for the recent Advent Season. Go here to see comments on Mark 1:1-8.
Here is my sermon from The Baptism of Our Lord Sunday in 2008. It's based on Matthew's account of Jesus' Baptism, which differs in some and amplifies what's seen in Mark's account. In the sermon, I deal a bit with the question of why Jesus, sinless, underwent a baptism of repentance.
It's important to keep in mind that John the Baptizer's baptism was for repentance. It was a symbolic act of commitment to God on the part of the person being baptized.
That is completely different from the Baptism instituted by Jesus, which is an act of God, not of the baptized. In Baptism instituted by Jesus, Christian Baptism, God's Spirit creates new life (John 3:3) in the same way that God's Spirit moved over the waters to create life in Genesis 1:1-5.
Verse-by-Verse Comments: Genesis 1:1-5
v.1: God created: In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, bara (he created) is only ever used of God. Human beings might form, fashion, or make things, but they never create them. That's the domain of God alone.
v.2: formless void: In Hebrew, the words used here convey confusion and emptiness.
the deep: Here, Genesis says that there was a chaos--picture a churning, roiling, out-of-control sea--before God created anything. This would have been a powerful image for the ancient Hebrews to whom this book was first addressed. Israel was a nation with no major seaports. For them, the sea was a frightening place, filled with sea monsters. (This also added special power to the Old Testament book of Jonah, where a giant fish would become the unlikely vehicle by which God saved a rebel Israelite.) God's creative activity brings order and peace to the chaos.
a wind swept over the face of the waters: The Hebrew word ruach can be rendered as wind, breath, or spirit. The same word is used in the second creation account in Genesis to describe God breathing life into the first man. Here, God, the only living being, omnipotent, is imparting life to His creation.
v.3: "Let there be...": God speaks and life happens.
"...light...": This is not the sun, moon, or stars. That will come later, in vv.14-19. God creates light. God creates the phemenon of light, the reality of light, the concept. The sun is just the sun. Stars are just stars. They wouldn't be possible without the phenomenon of light.
God, of course, is often described as "light." Jesus is called "the light of the world." But God is uncreated light, Whose being stands in contrast to the darkness of "the deep" and "the darkness" of sin which human beings prefer, according to Jesus in the Gospel of John.
Here, God seems to impart something of His character and nature to what He creates, in the same way that an author or a composer or a carpenter put something of themselves in their work. You wouldn't say that the things they created were actually pieces of the people, the way some religions insist that everything and everybody is part of God. But you would say that authors, composers, or carpenters invested their minds, hearts, bodies, and souls in what they make. (Of course, in the person of Jesus, God would come to actually invest Himself in us.)
This is what I believe: God, uncreated light, created light whereby His creation could come into being. In a strange, darkened room, light brings clarity and order. So maybe the light God created, reflecting His own internal order, functionality, and fullness, brought those things to the stormy chaos.
God is still doing that in our Baptism.
v.4: saw that the light was good: The idea of looking at His creative activity and declaring it good (tov, in the Hebrew) recurs throughout Genesis 1. God delights in His creation. (He delights especially in the pinnacle of His creative ventures, human beings. After creating the first humans, God declares the creation to be "very good," tov tov!)
Monday, January 05, 2009
"Lord, what do you want me to do today that I've never done before?"
[My colleague and friend, Glen VanderKloot presented the following in his daily emailed inspiration today. God wants us to attempt good and faithful things for His glory, even if they may be out our "comfort zones." They don't have to be "great things," whatever they are. They simply have to be ways of doing God's will that we never before dared to do or thought to do. It starts in prayer. Ask God, "Lord, what do you want me to do today that I've never done before?"]
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Thought for the Day
It is time to dream again.
It's time to dream of what if.
What if I climbed out of the box?
What if I let my faith out of the box?
What if my prayer life were free of the box?
What if I began asking God to work, manifesting his presence
in tangible ways?
Fred A Hartley III
Scripture:
Matthew 19:26 TNIV
Jesus looked at them and said, "With human beings this
is impossible, but with God all things are possible
Prayer
Lord, help me to break loose and dream again of
what you might do through me. Amen
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Thought for the Day
It is time to dream again.
It's time to dream of what if.
What if I climbed out of the box?
What if I let my faith out of the box?
What if my prayer life were free of the box?
What if I began asking God to work, manifesting his presence
in tangible ways?
Fred A Hartley III
Scripture:
Matthew 19:26 TNIV
Jesus looked at them and said, "With human beings this
is impossible, but with God all things are possible
Prayer
Lord, help me to break loose and dream again of
what you might do through me. Amen
Sunday, January 04, 2009
From Rich Bordner, on marriage...
I don't know much about what else this Better Living commenter says over on his blog. But I love the post from which these lines are taken:
You also might be interested in checking out some posts I've written here on related topics:
It's Time to Dethrone Romance
Thoughts from Valentine's Day, 2006
God and Our Sex
The Deep Descent to Coarseness
How Will I Know?
...There is no such thing as "the one." Whoever you marry...well, s/he becomes "the one" when you say "I do."My late Uncle Carl gave me similar advice when I was in my teens. I think that he was right. Go to Rich's blog and read the whole thing.
"Well, maybe I didn't marry 'the one.' Maybe I married the wrong person and my soul mate is still out there."
Nope....sorry Sparky. She became your "soul mate" at the altar. You'd better take your man pill and stop sniveling about your "real soul mate" still out there.
You also might be interested in checking out some posts I've written here on related topics:
It's Time to Dethrone Romance
Thoughts from Valentine's Day, 2006
God and Our Sex
The Deep Descent to Coarseness
How Will I Know?
The Word Made Flesh
[This was shared today during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
John 1:1-18
One of my favorite parts of the Christmas Candlelight Worship Service each year happens when the lights are dimmed, we hold our lit candles aloft, and listen again to the opening verses—the prologue—to John’s Gospel.
Like the familiar opening chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, these words too, tell the story of Christmas. But in them you’ll find no inn or manger, no shepherds or wise men, no star or shepherds. John’s account of the first Christmas, comprised of the first eighteen verses of his gospel, is told in more abstract terms and it goes way back even before the universe was created.
Back then, John says, in the time before time, when God was all there was, there was the Word, the Second Person of the Triune God composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John’s use of the term The Word for the One you and I know as Jesus Christ was no accident. The Word—ho logos in the original Greek of the New Testament--was a Greek philosophical term used for the creating agent of the universe.
But that term—The Word—would have also been meaningful to the Jews who were among the first to hear and read the Gospel of John. The Jews had a deep reverence for the Word of God. God spoke His Word, the Old Testament tells us, and creation came into being. By God’s Word, Israel came into being, was set free from slavery in Egypt, was called to obedience when it strayed, was guided, was punished when it sinned, was soothed and reassured when it repented and walked with God, and was promised a Savior. The Word of God, they knew (and know) is a powerful thing!
On hearing the prologue to John’s Gospel, first century Jews and non-Jews alike would have immediately understood what was being said about Jesus. They might not have liked it that John was saying that Jesus was God in the flesh. That, they may have thought was foolish or scandalous. But they wouldn’t have misunderstood him at all.
We don’t always have or take the opportunity to look at John’s prologue on Christmas Eve. We usually consider Matthew's or Luke's narratives of Jesus' birth. And so this morning, the Second Sunday of Christmas, I want to talk about three passages within the prologue.
The first is John's telling of the Christmas story itself. It's one of the most joyful passages in the entire Bible: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” God, the Creator of the universe, came into our world, still God, but shrunk, if you will, to human size, born in a cave. Why did God do that?
Journalist Philip Yancey says that he began to understand why the Word became flesh when, as a kid, he got an aquarium. He learned that managing a marine aquarium is a lot of work. He writes, “I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels and the ammonia content. I pumped vitamins and antibiotics and sulfa drugs and enough enzymes to make a rock grow. I filtered the water through glass fibers and charcoal, and exposed it to ultraviolet light.”
He goes on: “You would think, in view of all the [work I did]…on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dove for cover into the nearest shell…Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule…they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them. I could not convince them of my true concern…”
The young Yancey came to believe that the only way to reach these fish he cared so much about would be to become one of them. He thought, “I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.”
The Word—God the Great Communicator—became flesh and communicated His love to us through His words and His actions, including sacrificing Himself on a cross.
This has great practical significance for us. The God Who refused to stand off from us, wants us to do more than sit on the sidelines in life or in the Church: The Word made flesh calls His people to put flesh and bone behind our belief that He is Lord of all.
Unfortunately, most churches seem afflicted with living by the 80/20 Rule. You know what that is. It's the observation that in most organizations, including the Church, twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work while eighty percent of the people do twenty percent of the work. Twenty percent give eighty percent of the money and eighty percent give twenty percent of the money.
Often, particularly in small towns where people have known one another their whole lives, there can be great fear about trying to break out of that eighty percent pack and taking on a ministry. We can become paralyzed by the fear that we'll be criticized. Martin Luther has advice for us. Luther said whenever we were unclear about our what to do, we should pray about, consult with Christian friends, and read Scripture. If, after all of that, we remain unclear about our course of action, we should "sin boldly," doing what we think will honor God and do right by our neighbor.
Chances are that whenever we try to do something for the cause of Christ, we will be criticized. The only people who are never criticized are the people who do nothing. But if we're intent on being true to the Word made flesh, enacting Christ's love in the world, doing nothing is not an option. We need to be involved in ministry, service in Christ's Name!
Another passage in John’s Gospel is among the saddest in the Bible. It’s this: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”
God wants to help us. God wants to love us. God wants to be in our lives. But even when He comes to us, communicating all of His grace and His truth, we want to spurn God.
We know, in the words from Micah, that God has shown us what the He expects of us, “to do justice,…to love kindness, and to walk humbly with…God.” But we prefer looking out for number one.
We know that we’re to worship only God and yet we find millions of other things that we hold in higher esteem than God—from pleasure and ease to hard work that crowds out our relationships, from children we indulge to cold hard cash, from being thought of as important by the people in our community to whatever our drug of choice may be.
We know that we’re to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But we love the sense of superiority we get when we gossip about and put others down.
We know that “a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh,” but we prefer making up on our own rules about sexuality.
In these ways and countless others, we, like the people who encountered Jesus back during His time on earth, often refuse to know Him or accept Him, rejecting His authority over our lives.
Fortunately, God is a stubborn lover. He’s like the guy I know who, without any planning or forethought, found himself one night telling a woman he had known for eight years, but only dated for a few weeks, “I love you.” At first, she said nothing in response to his declaration of love. She wasn’t sure that she loved this fellow, so quick to speak his mind and heart. Besides, she’d been hurt before. She didn’t know whether she wanted to risk loving someone else. But he was stubborn. Not certain that it would make any difference to the young woman, he kept insisting for several weeks that he loved her, that he wanted to spend his life with her. Then, one night, she embraced the man and said, “I love you.” She could have said no. But instead, Ann said yes to my love. January 11, will mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of our first date and August 2, will bring our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. I am blessed because Ann returned my stubborn love.
Now, there’s no comparing my imperfect, human love to the love that God offers to us through Christ. But, just as Ann could have said no to me, God lets us say no to Christ, the Word made flesh. But God is so stubborn in love for us that even when we do say no, He won’t give up on us.
In the prologue to his Gospel, John observes of some who encountered Jesus during his time on earth: “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
In Christ, God makes us His children.
In Christ, God stands with us, no matter what.
In Christ, God gives us an eternal inheritance that nothing and nobody can steal that from us.
No matter what you face in 2009, know that you are a child of God. The Word of God has come to you and to all who receive Him, who receive Hiis judgment and His grace, this is His simple message, “You are mine.”
John 1:1-18
One of my favorite parts of the Christmas Candlelight Worship Service each year happens when the lights are dimmed, we hold our lit candles aloft, and listen again to the opening verses—the prologue—to John’s Gospel.
Like the familiar opening chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, these words too, tell the story of Christmas. But in them you’ll find no inn or manger, no shepherds or wise men, no star or shepherds. John’s account of the first Christmas, comprised of the first eighteen verses of his gospel, is told in more abstract terms and it goes way back even before the universe was created.
Back then, John says, in the time before time, when God was all there was, there was the Word, the Second Person of the Triune God composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John’s use of the term The Word for the One you and I know as Jesus Christ was no accident. The Word—ho logos in the original Greek of the New Testament--was a Greek philosophical term used for the creating agent of the universe.
But that term—The Word—would have also been meaningful to the Jews who were among the first to hear and read the Gospel of John. The Jews had a deep reverence for the Word of God. God spoke His Word, the Old Testament tells us, and creation came into being. By God’s Word, Israel came into being, was set free from slavery in Egypt, was called to obedience when it strayed, was guided, was punished when it sinned, was soothed and reassured when it repented and walked with God, and was promised a Savior. The Word of God, they knew (and know) is a powerful thing!
On hearing the prologue to John’s Gospel, first century Jews and non-Jews alike would have immediately understood what was being said about Jesus. They might not have liked it that John was saying that Jesus was God in the flesh. That, they may have thought was foolish or scandalous. But they wouldn’t have misunderstood him at all.
We don’t always have or take the opportunity to look at John’s prologue on Christmas Eve. We usually consider Matthew's or Luke's narratives of Jesus' birth. And so this morning, the Second Sunday of Christmas, I want to talk about three passages within the prologue.
The first is John's telling of the Christmas story itself. It's one of the most joyful passages in the entire Bible: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” God, the Creator of the universe, came into our world, still God, but shrunk, if you will, to human size, born in a cave. Why did God do that?
Journalist Philip Yancey says that he began to understand why the Word became flesh when, as a kid, he got an aquarium. He learned that managing a marine aquarium is a lot of work. He writes, “I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels and the ammonia content. I pumped vitamins and antibiotics and sulfa drugs and enough enzymes to make a rock grow. I filtered the water through glass fibers and charcoal, and exposed it to ultraviolet light.”
He goes on: “You would think, in view of all the [work I did]…on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dove for cover into the nearest shell…Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule…they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them. I could not convince them of my true concern…”
The young Yancey came to believe that the only way to reach these fish he cared so much about would be to become one of them. He thought, “I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.”
The Word—God the Great Communicator—became flesh and communicated His love to us through His words and His actions, including sacrificing Himself on a cross.
This has great practical significance for us. The God Who refused to stand off from us, wants us to do more than sit on the sidelines in life or in the Church: The Word made flesh calls His people to put flesh and bone behind our belief that He is Lord of all.
Unfortunately, most churches seem afflicted with living by the 80/20 Rule. You know what that is. It's the observation that in most organizations, including the Church, twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work while eighty percent of the people do twenty percent of the work. Twenty percent give eighty percent of the money and eighty percent give twenty percent of the money.
Often, particularly in small towns where people have known one another their whole lives, there can be great fear about trying to break out of that eighty percent pack and taking on a ministry. We can become paralyzed by the fear that we'll be criticized. Martin Luther has advice for us. Luther said whenever we were unclear about our what to do, we should pray about, consult with Christian friends, and read Scripture. If, after all of that, we remain unclear about our course of action, we should "sin boldly," doing what we think will honor God and do right by our neighbor.
Chances are that whenever we try to do something for the cause of Christ, we will be criticized. The only people who are never criticized are the people who do nothing. But if we're intent on being true to the Word made flesh, enacting Christ's love in the world, doing nothing is not an option. We need to be involved in ministry, service in Christ's Name!
Another passage in John’s Gospel is among the saddest in the Bible. It’s this: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”
God wants to help us. God wants to love us. God wants to be in our lives. But even when He comes to us, communicating all of His grace and His truth, we want to spurn God.
We know, in the words from Micah, that God has shown us what the He expects of us, “to do justice,…to love kindness, and to walk humbly with…God.” But we prefer looking out for number one.
We know that we’re to worship only God and yet we find millions of other things that we hold in higher esteem than God—from pleasure and ease to hard work that crowds out our relationships, from children we indulge to cold hard cash, from being thought of as important by the people in our community to whatever our drug of choice may be.
We know that we’re to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But we love the sense of superiority we get when we gossip about and put others down.
We know that “a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh,” but we prefer making up on our own rules about sexuality.
In these ways and countless others, we, like the people who encountered Jesus back during His time on earth, often refuse to know Him or accept Him, rejecting His authority over our lives.
Fortunately, God is a stubborn lover. He’s like the guy I know who, without any planning or forethought, found himself one night telling a woman he had known for eight years, but only dated for a few weeks, “I love you.” At first, she said nothing in response to his declaration of love. She wasn’t sure that she loved this fellow, so quick to speak his mind and heart. Besides, she’d been hurt before. She didn’t know whether she wanted to risk loving someone else. But he was stubborn. Not certain that it would make any difference to the young woman, he kept insisting for several weeks that he loved her, that he wanted to spend his life with her. Then, one night, she embraced the man and said, “I love you.” She could have said no. But instead, Ann said yes to my love. January 11, will mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of our first date and August 2, will bring our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. I am blessed because Ann returned my stubborn love.
Now, there’s no comparing my imperfect, human love to the love that God offers to us through Christ. But, just as Ann could have said no to me, God lets us say no to Christ, the Word made flesh. But God is so stubborn in love for us that even when we do say no, He won’t give up on us.
In the prologue to his Gospel, John observes of some who encountered Jesus during his time on earth: “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
In Christ, God makes us His children.
In Christ, God stands with us, no matter what.
In Christ, God gives us an eternal inheritance that nothing and nobody can steal that from us.
No matter what you face in 2009, know that you are a child of God. The Word of God has come to you and to all who receive Him, who receive Hiis judgment and His grace, this is His simple message, “You are mine.”
Thursday, January 01, 2009
"Don't just read it. Live it!"
Help me, Lord Jesus, to read and live Your Word.
Ezekiel 33:30-33:
As for you, mortal, your people who talk together about you by the walls, and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to a neighbor, “Come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.” 31They come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but they will not obey them. For flattery is on their lips, but their heart is set on their gain. 32To them you are like a singer of love songs, one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; they hear what you say, but they will not do it. 33When this comes—and come it will! —then they shall know that a prophet has been among them.
Ezekiel 33:30-33:
As for you, mortal, your people who talk together about you by the walls, and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to a neighbor, “Come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.” 31They come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but they will not obey them. For flattery is on their lips, but their heart is set on their gain. 32To them you are like a singer of love songs, one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; they hear what you say, but they will not do it. 33When this comes—and come it will! —then they shall know that a prophet has been among them.
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