"So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall."

Those words from 1 Corinthians are part of what inspired today's installment of Our Daily Bread.

Both the Scripture passages on which it's based and the piece by David C. McCasland are worth reading, pondering, and praying about.

One of the primary temptations the devil, the world, and our sinful selves hold out to us is this notion that whatever goodness we may thing we possess is intrinsic to our own natures and personalities. But my observation is that the moment we think we're righteous, we're in deep trouble. No one is more prone to undertaking a whole passel of rotten thoughts and entertaining more poisonous thoughts than those who think themselves constitutionally incapable of wrongdoing.

Hitler never second-guessed himself. Saint Paul did.

Jesus had some interesting things to say along these lines:

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ²For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. ³Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? ⁴Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye." (Matthew 7:1-5)

Do those words make you feel a bit uncomfortable? Me too. Especially when I consider the enormous logs of sin I've often gathered in my own eyes, even in the three-decades-plus that I've tried to follow Jesus. "So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall."

"At the end of every day, starting when he was in high school, he would ask himself, in effect, What have I done to improve the lot of humanity?"

"The root of Shriver's self-conception was as a lay Catholic who always tried to model his life after the ethics of Jesus as expressed in the Gospels. This has not been a passive pursuit. Always he was asking himself, Am I living my life as Christ would want me to?

"What he derived from his faith was less the solace of Lord's presence, or the promise of transcendence in the hereafter (though he did derive both of those qualities from his faith) than a kind of mobilizing vision for action here on earth..."

Those are the words of Scott Stossel, biographer of R. Sargent Shriver, in a touching tribute to the one-time Peace Corps and War on Poverty chief who died on Tuesday.

Shriver was one of my favorite political figures of the last part of the twentieth century, maybe because he was so not-political. He seemed never to calculate how to advance his own personal political ambitions. And, in truth, he didn't really have to do so. His brother-in-law, with Shriver's help, was president and after John F. Kennedy's assassination, he seemed to be the one Kennedy family member Lyndon Johnson actually liked.

But, in many ways, both during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and afterward, Shriver behaved in ways I suppose most of us would have wanted to behave had we been given similar opportunities.

In 1972, George McGovern chose Shriver to be his second vice presidential running mate after the first one, Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton, was disqualified for having earlier undergone shock treatments for depression. McGovern, just days before asking Eagleton to leave the ticket, had famously remarked that he was behind the Missouri senator, "1000%." Backpedaling so public and abrupt probably eliminated whatever minute chance McGovern might have had in a year when, no matter what Americans' misgivings about the Vietnam War, a "peace candidate" had no chance of becoming president.

For McGovern, Shriver was a consolation prize. He had really wanted Ted Kennedy for his running mate. But Kennedy, just three years after Chappaquiddick, demurred. McGovern seemed to figure if he couldn't have a Kennedy on his ticket, the next best thing would be a Kennedy brother-in-law.

During the fall campaign, Shriver came to the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, where I was a sophomore. Speaking on the west grounds of the old Student Union, Shriver proved to be an enthusiastic and joyous candidate, even though this was his first run for a major office. I stuck my hand through a throng of people to try to shake his. Without being able to actually see him, I'll never know, but I think he did briefly clasp my hand the way candidates do when moving quickly through a thrall of people.

In the end, not even Shriver, with his compelling can-do attitude, could prevent the defeat, one of the worst in presidential history, suffered by the Democrats that year.

Shriver made a brief bid for the presidency himself in the next cycle, but his candidacy never got much traction. A Shriver campaign button is among my modest collection of political memorabilia.

No one knows what a Shriver presidency would have been like, of course. Except for this: He would have met the challenges with optimism and with that sense of joyous responsibility to others that were his trademarks.

Making Sense of the World

Ambrosiaster, the designation given by Erasmus to an unidentified Church Father active sometime between 366 and 384AD, is considered by many to be the most insightful, accurate commentator on Paul's writings in the New Testament before the commentaries of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and other sixteenth-century reforming Biblical scholars came along.

Ambrosiaster is cited in an entry for this coming Sunday's second Bible lesson, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, in Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings, Lectionary Cycle A.

I wish that contemporary Christians would all read these words, an encouragement to those who adhere to a reverential view of the Bible and a correction to those who regard the central teachings of Scripture (and the confessions of the Church) as optional.

Ambrosiaster also affirms the power of the Biblical witness without additions or subtractions on the parts of those trying to make the Gospel more palatable to unbelieving or skeptical people.

This is Ambrosiaster's take on why Jesus called fishers to preach His Word:

It was because Christian preaching does not need elaborate refinement of verbal expression that fishers, who were uneducated, were chosen to preach the gospel. In that way the truth of the message would be its own recommendation, and it would not depend on the cleverness or ingenuity of human wisdom. The false apostles were doing just that, and moreover they were omitting the things which the world does not believe, like the virgin birth of Christ and his resurrection from the dead.

Our call as Christians is, on the one hand, to lower those cultural barriers that might prevent others from knowing and following Jesus Christ. That's why the use of contemporary music and language in worship are good things. Doing so makes Christ accessible to those who don't know Him. (And that, for we Lutheran Christians, is a central component of the ongoing Reformation project begun by Luther.)

On the other hand, we have no authority from Christ to change the content of the Bible's teaching. As Rick Warren has memorably said of the Church's relation to the Biblical message it's called to proclaim: "The package must always change. The content of the package must never change."*

Recently, my wife Ann was asked by a friend about what is going on in Haiti, where our son, along with his girlfriend and others from the congregation of which they're a part, plan to go to work with children at a vacation Bible school this coming summer. "Why do you suppose that country can't get things together in spite of all the help they're getting?" Ann was asked. Massive poverty, massive destruction after last year's earthquake, and a long history of political corruption and despotism were all reasons Ann cited. And, she added, that one can't discount one legacy of Voodooism in the country's troubles: demon possession.

"You don't believe that?" the other person asked Ann. "Of course I do," she said.

The fact that the Bible teaches about the existence of demon-possession and that Christ, Who cast out demons, believed in this phenomenon, should be enough to convince any Christian that demons do wreak havoc in our world.

But so should experience. As a young pastor, I participated in a weekly study with a group of pastors that included Mennonites and Lutherans. One Lutheran clergy about a decade older than me said that he had never believed in angels or especially, in their fallen counterparts, demons. An older Lutheran colleague, who was far from being a Biblical fundamentalist, shocked the first pastor by saying, "If you don't believe that there are demons, you either haven't been paying attention or you're naive."

Ambrosiaster's comments indicate that the teachings of the Bible have always aroused skepticism. There's nothing new or sophisticated about the doubts we may have when the Bible speaks of angels, demons, the virgin birth of Jesus, Jesus' resurrection, and other teachings. Faith doesn't come naturally to us. It's a supernatural phenomenon created by God in believers. (That's why believers can never see themselves as being superior to unbelievers in any way.)

But if we approach the Bible and Christian faith with a willingness to believe, a willingness to trust in God and in God's Word, we might find God not only constructing faith in our lives. We might well conclude that faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the only thing that allows us to make sense of our world or ourselves.

All that and heaven too. What a deal!

*My paraphrase from memory.

Getting It Straight

Here.

What Gave the Life of Martin Luther King Jr. So Much Power?

This was his power source:

MLKJr.'s Bible

"¹²Indeed, 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" (Hebrews 4:12).

New Hampshire Legislators Can Now Pack Heat

On the House floor. What do you think of that?

While Other States Lower Taxes or Consider Doing So

Illinois has raised its income taxes. Is the State Legislature crazy or are they onto something? The jury's out, but read the whole thing and render your judgment in the comments section, if you wish.

A Nice Story About Love

Second times around when the first rounds were long and wonderful.

"Why Lutherans Can't Evangelize"

And why there's hope for the future.

Share the Light!

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

Isaiah 49:1-7
John 1:29-42
One of the problems people living in 2011 have when we read the Old Testament book of Isaiah is something the literary critics call its richness. Unlike most of the things we read each day, in any given passage of Isaiah, there may be words about more than just one thing. Sometimes, a passage may be about three things at once. It confuses us. Let me explain.

Last Sunday, I mentioned that tucked among the promises Isaiah received from God about ancient Israel’s impending release from slavery to the Babylonian Empire, were promises about the Servant Who would be sent by God to free more than just Israel from humanity’s greatest enemies: sin, death, and futility. The Servant would come to set things right for all who would welcome His rule over their lives, including you and me.

There are four "Servant Songs" in Isaiah. Today’s first lesson is one of them. As we consider this passage, along with our Gospel lesson for today, I want you to keep the image of an hourglass in your mind. It may help us to understand some of that confusing richness we encounter in Isaiah this morning.

When you stand an hourglass on end, it’s wide at the top, tapers to a narrow shape in the middle, then widens out again at the bottom. If we mapped God’s mission to bring humanity new life, from say, the moment He delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt about 1000 years before Isaiah, followed it through Jesus some 600 years after Isaiah, and then to the Church today, our map would look like an hourglass. The top of the hourglass would be the descendants of Abraham, more numerous than the stars in the heavens, before the coming of the Servant. The bottom of the hourglass would be chock-full of those who are spiritual descendants of Abraham through their faith in the Servant foretold by Isaiah.

Both ancient Israel and the Church of Jesus Christ were called to be God’s “light to the nations.” But, in a phrase used by Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten, “the flaming center” of history, the One Whose life is the light of the world, the narrow center of the hourglass, is Jesus Christ.

All the voices that spoke for God before Christ was born pointed ultimately to Him as our only hope for forgiveness and life, the Messiah who would come into our world to set the lives of all who believe in Him aright.

“Long ago,” the preacher in Hebrews said to his fellow Jewish Christians sometime before 70AD, “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son…”

Jesus, the Servant Messiah, Who suffered and died to erase sin and death as powers over our lives and rose again to rend eternity open for all who believe in Him, is God’s ultimate self-expression, His Word of love and power and restoration for fallen people and our fallen universe.

The Church is commissioned to share Christ’s light, to make disciples of Jesus Christ, and to do so by being completely focused on Jesus, the Servant King. The Celebrate introduction to our lesson from Isaiah that Ann read a few moments ago is right as far as it goes. It identifies the Servant as Israel, saying that in the lesson “the Servant Israel speaks for herself.” But that’s only part of the story.

One of my favorite seminary professors, Tryg Skarsten, once recalled looking out onto a harbor at night. A large light, visible for miles, stood high over the harbor to guide ships coming in. Strung out into the harbor for thousands of yards were smaller lights. Each of them, Tryg said, were connected to the larger light from which they derived their power. Ancient Israel was God’s servant, of course, and it was a light to the nations. But it derived its capacity to be God’s servant and its power to be God’s light for the world from the true flaming center of life, “the Light of the world,” Jesus, to Whose coming Isaiah and other prophets pointed.

That’s why contemporary New Testament scholar Christine Roy Yoder writes that Christian readers cannot read our first lesson without seeing Jesus. Please pull out the Celebrate inserts. Read along with me silently:

Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. 

Jesus, as the Gospel of John tells us, is “the Word of God.” He is God’s Word to you and me. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus tell us that every one of our lives is of infinite value to God. God so loved you—you personally and individually—that He sent Jesus to take your punishment for sin so that all who turn from sin and take Him as the Lord and ruler over their lives, trusting their lives to Him, will have life forever with God.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t mind the message of the salvation Jesus brings, but you may not be so hot to make Him the ruler over your life. Jesus as Lord will sometimes tell us to do things we don't want to do. He'll sometimes tell us not to do things that we want to do. Let’s face it: Jesus can cramp our styles. When Jesus was eight days old, a man named Simeon spotted Him in the temple in Jerusalem, where Joseph and Mary had taken the baby to be presented to God. Simeon declared that Jesus was exactly Who Israel (and he himself) had been waiting for at the top of the hourglass. Simeon quoted verse 6 of our lesson from Isaiah, calling Jesus “a light” for the nations. But then, Simeon told Mary, Jesus’ mother, “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed…”

Will we take Jesus as our King as well as our Savior or will we oppose Him?

Will we trust or selectively ignore the Word of God in the Bible and the Word of God enfleshed in Jesus?

Those aren’t abstract philosophical questions, but urgent ones on which our eternal destinies hang.

True story: Santosh was a blacksmith in India. He was part of the Dalit, the untouchables, the permanent underclass who are denied access to food, housing, clothing, education, or health care. Along with most of his people, Santosh worshiped his Biskarma (the tools he used in his work), thinking that it was them that gave him life. And Santosh led a miserable life, wasting what little money he had on getting drunk. When he came home, he beat his wife and children, who dreaded his very presence in their home.

One day, two missionaries who saw how troubled he was, invited Santosh to church. Surprisingly, the next Sunday, he took a place in the back of the sanctuary. The music was in his language and in a style he liked. Santosh kept coming back, intrigued by the word about Jesus sandwiched between this music he enjoyed.

Eventually, he gave his life to Christ and wanted to share the Good News about Him with his fellow untouchables. With the missionaries’ help, he got a scholarship to study at a Bible college. The day before he was to leave for college, a large group of villagers confronted Santosh. They threatened to beat him if he didn’t return to the worship of Biskarma and renounced his faith in Christ. Santosh didn't back down, knowing that Jesus had saved him not only from sin and death, but from the meaningless life that had driven him to drink.

After Santosh went to Bible college, the villagers threatened Santosh’s family and they eventually had to be moved to safety with him. Today, Santosh is the pastor of a thriving congregation that bravely (and joyfully) invites other untouchables to come and see and follow Jesus.

In the world and even in the Church, Jesus and His Word are signs that are spoken against. That’s no surprise. That’s because, as Hebrews 4:12, 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. And before Him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the One to Whom we must render an account.”

Jesus is the Lord Who said that while we are saved by grace, He had not removed a single one of the Ten Commandments. If we show contempt for the commands in God’s Word, we also show contempt for Him Who is God’s Word. We cannot take Jesus as Savior if we don’t also take Him as Lord. We cannot be free of what enslaves us until we surrender to Christ the way Santosh did. 

Now, look at Isaiah 49:6 on the Celebrate insert. These are words from God the Father:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

Israel was not the incubator for the Servant Jesus just for itself. Through Jesus Christ, the truth of God’s love for all humanity and His offer of eternal reconciliation with God, would go global. And that’s where you and I come in.

In our Gospel lesson today, when two disciples of John the Baptist, one of them Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, wanted to learn more about Jesus, Jesus issued a simple invitation, “Come and see.”

Later, a man named Philip told someone named Nathanael that he had found the long-awaited Servant-King. Nathanael was skeptical. Philip didn’t argue. He just said, “Come and see.”

Simon, Philip, you, and I are all at the bottom of the hourglass of God's salvation history. We are the small lights ignited by the cross and empty tomb of Jesus and by the Holy Spirit with whom baptized Christians are filled. Our power for living comes from Jesus. Jesus tells us to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven,” words we use in our Baptismal service.

The Servant Jesus came to save a dying world from itself, to save us from ourselves. He invites all to follow Him, be reconciled to God, and live eternally.

This week, this month, this year, be a light that helps others to come and see Jesus. God wants to fill eternity with people who have turned from sin and death and turned to Jesus for life and eternity. You are the lights God wants to use to guide others to the true Light of the nations, Jesus Christ. Jesus wants to fill His kingdom with those who have come and seen and believed in Him.

So, this is my simple plea to you this morning:

• Share Jesus. 
• Share Jesus with words and actions. 
• Share Jesus with honesty, not as self-righteous egotists, but as forgiven sinners grateful for the grace of God. 
• Share Jesus so that all the world will come and see what a wonderful God we have! 
• Share Jesus so that all the world will have peace with God and with themselves today and in eternity.

Amen!

Seeing Jesus at Panera

On Thursday night, my wife Ann and I ate at Panera in Lancaster. Through their rewards program, we'd accumulated enough credits to order a free drink. Ann only wanted a water and told me to pick something out. I was in the mood for a smoothie and ordered one flavor, only to change my mind about the flavor a nanosecond or two later. We payed for our order and took a table.

Not long after, the manager came to us with two smoothies. "I heard you order the one smoothie and had already started making it when you changed your mind. You can have the second one on us!"

Now think about that. The first one was free and the second one was on the restaurant. How often does a deal like that come along?

I was sliding one of the smoothies across the table to Ann when she pointed to the most adorable little girl, sitting with her parents at a table nearby, and said, "You could give it to her."

Ann had overheard the little girl's mom say that she was going back up to the cashier to order a smoothie for her daughter as a dessert. I offered my free gift to them and then, for the next fifteen minutes or so, enjoyed watching this twenty-one-month old sip and pour and thoroughly enjoy her smoothie, freezer headaches and all.

If Ann hadn't noticed this family sitting not more than five feet away, we wouldn't have experienced any of that joy or the brief discussion we had with this young couple.

How much joy do we miss out on in life because we're so wrapped up in our little cocoons of routine and selfishness that we don't see others? Speaking for myself, it happens a lot.

Yet, I believe that we are blessed to be blessings. The love of God in us grows the more we attend to others and give away His love.

That was underscored for me when the dad told us, "That was such a blessing to us. Thanks." When he said that, I thanked God for arranging this little rendezvous and for inspiring Ann to keep her antenna attuned to others even when I'm blind to those around me.

There's a praise song we've sung both at my former parish, Friendship in the Cincinnati area and here at Saint Matthew in Logan. It goes like this:

Open our eyes, Lord
We want to see Jesus
To reach out and touch Him
And say that we love Him
Open our ears, Lord
And help us to listen
Open our eyes, Lord
We want to see Jesus

Jesus says that we see Him in those around us, in those we serve. Maybe one reason I don't see Jesus as often as I could is that I don't serve others as often as I should. 

I'm thankful that Ann opened my eyes on Thursday night. I got to see Jesus again in a Panera! How cool is that?

Remember

[This was shared during the funeral for Dorothy, a lifelong member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, earlier today.]

Romans 8:31-39
Psalm 23
Luke 12:22-31
There are really only two legacies any of us ever leave behind, only two things we can give others that last.

One is love. The love that Dorothy bestowed on and shared with her family and friends didn’t end on Tuesday. The urgent desire of her family to be with her even in her final hours as she slept and occasionally fluttered her eyes is testimony to the love that was her gift to you, a gift you still possess and always will.

The only other enduring legacy we can bestow on others is our personal testimony about the truth of Jesus Christ. It’s a testimony we can give every day of our lives in words and actions.

The most powerful testimonies don’t usually come from people called to climb into pulpits and proclaim God’s Word. They more often come from people we see regularly, people who live their faith in the everyday places of life.

These testimonies can even come from grandmas who tell their grandchildren as they face new challenges and temptations in life, “Don’t forget who you are.” That, I’m told is something Dorothy sometimes told you, Ben and Sarah.

It seems to me that there are several ways you could have heard that simple admonition.

First, you could have heard it as a reminder of who you are in the eyes of God. Like your grandmother before you, you were baptized at the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church baptismal font. Water was poured over your head in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God was invoked, and, without any qualifications or merit on your parts, God claimed you as His own.

The title “child of God” is a privilege that, again, like your grandmother before you, you claimed as your own when you affirmed your baptismal covenant at the time of your confirmation. First John 3:1 says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

Today, I invite you to remember, Ben and Sarah, and all who mourn Dorothy’s passing, that being a child of God is a tremendous privilege. When we children of God grieve, the God Who conquered death (and sin and futility in our lives) through the death and resurrection of Jesus, can be beside us. When we wander from God’s will, as we are all prone to do, God is ready and willing to welcome us into His embrace. When we rejoice, God rejoices with us. Remember who you are.

Of course, there’s another side of that admonition. It was no doubt what Dorothy immediately had in mind when she said it to her grandchildren. Remember that you were raised in a Christian home. Remember God’s commandments. Remember the love and respect you are expected to bear toward not just family members and people you like, but toward those you dislike or those who dislike you, toward strangers. Remember God’s grace and that it is, as we sang a few moments ago, amazing.

But remember too that God’s grace isn’t cheap. To give you His presence today and His promise of tomorrow cost Jesus Christ His life on the cross and that came after He underwent intense agony and the abandonment of His friends.

The very least we owe God in response to this free gift of everlasting life for all who believe in Christ are lives of obedience and love and daily repentance, lives in which we seek, however imperfectly, to tell God thank You and to display His presence in our lives.

Remember who you are.  Dorothy has left you with powerful legacies: love, the great way of living, and the good news of new life through Jesus Christ.

But today, I want to add something to Dorothy’s admonition. Remember who you are, to be sure. But also, remember who she was. Some of who she was comes through in two of the Bible passages we’ve read today, passages I’m told were among her favorites.

One is Psalm 23. In it, the psalmist, speaking as a child of God, proclaims confidently, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for His Name’s sake.”

Because of the heart God has revealed He has for us through Jesus Christ, we can cling to these confident words. As children of God, we can trust, as our lesson from Romans reminds us, that nothing…nothing…in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Another of Dorothy’s favorite passages is found in Luke 12, where Jesus said, “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” And then Jesus says, “If God so clothes the grass of the field…alive today and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, how much more will He clothe you—you of little faith.”

Martin Luther, the great reformer of the sixteenth century, used to talk about what it will be like when we all come into the presence of God for judgment. Considering all the passages of Scripture that speak of judgment, Luther says that God will look upon two groups of sinners, the whole human race in one of these two groups.

When God looks on one group, they’ll stand naked in their sins, living in the separation from God and self-will they chose while living here on earth.

But when God looks on the other group, He won’t see their sins—though they will be just as numerous and horrible as those committed by those in the first group.

Instead, in this latter group, God will see people clothed in Jesus, people who, in this life, claimed their baptismal heritage and trusted in Jesus for life and hope and peace even in life’s dark valleys.

When Dorothy came into the immediate presence of God on Tuesday morning, she was clothed as she had always been in the righteousness of Jesus. We do a lot of unnecessary toiling and spinning in life. But all we need is Jesus Christ!. Dorothy knew that. She was a child of God. That’s who she was. And that’s why I’m confident that when God met her at 6:30AM on Tuesday morning, the Lord said to her, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Father.”

I didn’t get to know Dorothy the way I would have had I arrived at Saint Matthew years before. But despite dementia, something of her essential self came through in our monthly visits. And much of who she was can be seen in the rich legacies of love and faith she bestowed on her family. That’s why today I know that Dorothy wants all those who are here this morning to one day hear those same words—“Well done, good and faithful servant!”—from God.

And we can hear them, joining her and all the saints in eternity, if we will simply remember who we are as children of God, saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus and our faith in Him.

And whenever you need inspiration, remember who Dorothy was.

If you can commit yourself to remember these two things in all the days that lie ahead in your lives, no matter what, your joy will be full and you will never go wrong. Amen

Mother Teresa

...right again.

"Jesus wants your heart."

Here.

"Show-off" Christianity...

...is not Christianity.

"Hit me with your best shot"

That's the title of Pastor Jennifer Johnson's reflections on Isaiah 49:1-7. When do pastors risk being prophetic and when do we keep the arrows hidden away?

A Prayer from Saint Augustine

It's appropriate for this coming Sunday, the second one after Epiphany:

O God, the light of the hearts that see You, the life of the souls that love You, the strength of the minds that seek You; from Whom to turn is to fall, to Whom to turn is to rise and in Whom to abide is to stand fast forever: grant us Your blessing as we offer up our confessions and supplications, and though we are unworthy to approach You or to ask anything of You at all, hear and forgive us, for the sake of our great High Priest and only Mediator, Jesus Christ Your Son. Amen

Source: Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings, Lectionary Cycle A (General Editor: Thomas C. Oden; Edited by Cindy Crosby)

(Saint Augustine)

"Called from..."

Yesterday's installment from Our Daily Bread makes a great point: God not only calls us to things; God also calls us away from things.

And the things that God calls us away from can be far more frightening than the things that God calls us to. After all, rightly and wrongly, we may derive security and even fulfillment from the things God calls us to leave behind.

But God wants us to rely only on Him for security, fulfillment, and life, and to thereby learn from the Author of life what it means to truly live. That's a hard thing to learn, something I seem to need to be retaught all the time. But it's a good thing to learn.

The word of the day...

...is quondam. It means "erstwhile, former, once, onetime." I don't remember ever seeing the word until I ran across it in Ron Chernow's fantastic new biography of George Washington the other day.

He uses it in his discussion of a threat to Washington's first bid for re-election to the Colonial Era-Virginia House of Burgesses in 1761. That challenge came from a former fellow officer of Washington's from the French and Indian War, Adam Stephen. In the course of the campaign, Chernow writes:

Washington...castigated his quondam friend Stephen as "designing" and unprincipled.

Quondam is a curiosity. But I think that it's an unnecessary word. Why use quondam when former or once will do?

"I am a servant of the Lord. I am a servant of the Lord."

I have to confess that, while driving back to town after a nursing home visit today, I cringed as I heard newly-inaugurated Ohio governor John Kasich speak those words.

One reason for that is that, as a Christian, I've become wary of politicians who invoke the Name of God in their speeches. Their invocations often seem like bones thrown to their religious constituents, instead of genuine expressions of faith. And if they are "bones," then from a Biblical perspective, they violate the Second Commandment's prohibition against taking God's Name in vain. (Vain meaning for nothing.)

But I didn't click off the radio in disgust today. I kept listening to Kasich. What I heard next convinced me that he was sincere. Some may find what he said hokey or even offensive. But I found it encouraging and impressive.

I am a servant of the Lord. I am a servant of the Lord.

He has opened doors all of my life. The Lord has. He has pushed me over the mountain this time. I don't know why, but I have no doubt that he has. I've spent a large amount of my life trying to figure out how he works.

I got a message one day driving up—over by the Hoover Reservoir. It wasn't a telegram. It wasn't a phone call. It wasn't a voice. But it was clear. "Stop trying to figure it out, I'm not going to tell you."

But here's what I do know: He expects his servants to use their talents. He expects all of us, because all of us have been created with a special talent. The key to life is to use those talents, even when at times it seems daunting and it seems impossible. But boy, I'll tell you what, no pounding on the chest. No pointing in the sky. He wants us always to remember where these talents came from. He reminds us that no one person is superior to any other person because in his eyes, all are equal.

You know, sometimes I see the scrub lady, and I realize that in the next life, she's likely to have a bigger crown than I could ever dream of. Don't go past them quickly; you could be passing an angel. Quiet reflection is necessary every day so as not to get lost.

D. L. Moody wrote about a Civil War general who was facing a huge battle. He prayed for two hours. His subordinates said to him, "How could you spend two hours praying before this big battle?" He said, "How could I not." Prayer is necessary.

Truthfully, I've never been impressed with Kasich as a communicator. Part of that may be the way we all tend to underestimate our peers. I've never met Kasich, but we were on campus at Ohio State as undergraduates at the same time, both involved in student politics. He ran unsuccessfully for vice president of the Undergraduate Student Government on one slate when I, after a time as vice president of the Off Campus Students' Association, was on the ballot for student assembly, on a ticket led by Michael White. (White later became mayor of Cleveland. I wasn't elected to the assembly because I withdrew from the race just before the vote was taken; I had realized I needed to take on a new part-time job to generate the money I needed to pay my tuition. But, though it ended my time in student politics, that surrender to necessity turned out to be a very good thing for me because the job I took--on the loading dock of a department store--brought my wife-to-be, then working on the sales floor of that store, into my life!) Even after our college years, Kasich was never known for his rhetorical skills either as a state senator or as a nine-term member of Congress.

And I still don't think Kasich is a great orator. But today he seemed to speak from the heart and I liked what he said.

Of course, what we do speaks louder than what we say. And Kasich's professed faith will be sorely challenged as he prepares a new biennial budget in the face of a likely $8-billion state revenue shortfall. Everyone will be watching what he does.

Whether he means it or not, prayer will be the wisest way for him to suit up for all the tough actions he'll need to undertake in the next four years.

[You can find the whole text of Kasich's speech here.]

What disturbed you most in 2010?

I like this from today's edition of Pastor Glen VanderKloot's daily inspirations.

God Does Not Help Those Who Help Themselves

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

Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

Today, if you remember nothing else from this sermon, I beg you to remember this: God does not help those who help themselves.

God does NOT help those who help themselves. That’s the message this morning. And while I’m going to delve into all of our Bible lessons for today, our theme verse for this morning could well be Proverbs, chapter 3, verses 5 to 7, which I hope you’ll read aloud with me now. You can find it on page 360 of the pew Bibles. Read aloud with me, please:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and depart from evil. 

God does not help those who help themselves.

Instead...

• God helps those who surrender to God. 
• God helps those who place their past sins, their present lives, and their future destinies in His hands. 
• God helps those who fear, respect, and honor God. 
• God helps those who strive through daily repentance and renewal to live according to God’s will. 
• God helps those who believe in Jesus Christ. 
• God helps those who trust in the Bible as God’s perfect word for us. 
• God helps those who acknowledge their helplessness and turn to God for help. 
• God helps those who see living as a sacred privilege and an undeserved pleasure, even when racked by pain or trouble, and so seek to live lives of tenacious effort and strenuous service. 
• God helps those who draw life, fulfillment, direction, and hope from Him alone.

God does not help those who help themselves. Ancient Israel should have known that. For four hundred thirty years God’s people were slaves in Egypt, generation upon generation under the master’s whip. Yet God heard the cries of His people and against all odds, God delivered them from Egypt and then, despite their constant faithlessness and whining during a forty-year journey that should have taken just eleven days, God gave them a promised land.*

God helped this people not because there was anything special about Abraham and his descendants. One of ancient Israel’s greatest leaders was Moses, who told the people in a sermon delivered shortly before God took them from the desert into that promised land:

It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery…[Deuteronomy 7:7-8]

God loved Israel, the Bible basically says, because God loved Israel. It doesn't make sense; but love doesn't have to make sense!

God chose Israel so that somewhere on Planet Earth, there would be a people who knew Him intimately and could be, in a phrase found in today’s first lesson, “a light to the nations” and, as attested in many places in the Old Testament, the incubator, the birthing room, of the Messiah, God's anointed King of kings. This Messiah would bring God’s kingdom to people around the world who will trust in Him. God delivered Israel because He had big plans for them. God delivered Israel because He had big plans for the world. God delivered Israel because He had big plans for you and me.

Now, when a people have been delivered by God, there are several ways they can react. As you know—and I don’t mean for this to be a hobby horse, after my heart attack last June, my cardiologist and nurses told me two things. One is that they couldn’t explain why I’d had a heart attack. The other is that couldn’t explain why I survived my heart attack. Forty percent of my heart had been damaged. Heart function was well below the danger level. Today, I can be faulted for being fanatical about my diet, daily exercise, and getting down time. But I honestly feel that God has delivered me and I want desperately to respond to that deliverance through a life of faithfulness, gratitude, witnessing, and prayer. There is nothing about me—an imperfect sinning human being—that deserves God’s help. And only time will tell if I will lean on God to sustain this grateful life style. But this is one way to respond to deliverance and grace.

The more common way for us all to react to God’s deliverance—and the one of which I have been guilty most of my life—is to take it and God for granted. Or to forget about it and move on as though God weren’t there.

Despite all of the incredible blessings God had showered on His undeserving people, this path—the path of self-will and self-reliance—was the one that Israel took.

It was the path against which the prophets were sent to warn God’s people. The prophets called them to repent of their reliance on wealth, power, alliances with foreign nations, and the worship of false gods and to instead turn again in utter dependence on God.

Jesus, God in the flesh, later gave the same message to all of us. He says that to gain life, we must enter the kingdom of God by the narrowest gates—by faith in Him alone—for “the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

With prosperity and power, God’s ancient people wandered from their focus on God. The prophets told them that to continue their wandering would lead to destruction. As we mentioned last week, it did. Repeatedly, Israel was conquered, enslaved, and exiled by foreign nations.

When we rely on anything or anyone but God, it means that the world can do its worst to us.

When we rely on God, even when the world still does its worst to us, we live in the constant confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We know that through Jesus Christ, we belong to God forever!

Our first lesson for today comes from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Most scholars agree that the the section of Isaiah from which our lesson is drawn was not written by the original Isaiah. In ancient times, it was acceptable for a student or follower of a great teacher to write in that teacher’s name. It’s thought that the author of at least chapters 40 through 53 of this 66-chapter book were written by someone the scholars call Deutero- or Second-Isaiah. (You might think of him as Isaiah, Junior.)

Deutero-Isaiah began recording his prophecies not long before the fall of the Babylonian Empire on October 29, 539BC. Sometime before, God’s people had been conquered by Babylon. When Cyrus, the king of Persia, a nation located in what is today Iran, conquered Babylon, it spelled freedom for God’s people from their slavemasters. This is precisely what Deutero-Isaiah had earlier reported that God had revealed to him. He even went so far as to say that Cyrus, an aggressive warrior king whose life was totally contrary to the life of faith in God, had been anointed by God to set Israel free.

But mingled with Deutero-Isaiah’s prophecies about Israel’s immediate future are what modern scholars call the Servant Songs. There are four of them. A portion of one of them makes up our first lesson, Isaiah 42:1-9.

In the Servant Songs, Isaiah records what God had taught him about the Anointed One—Messiah in his language of Hebrew, Christos or Christ in the New Testament’s language of Greek.

Would you pull out the Celebrate insert and look at the lesson? This is what God told Isaiah to tell us about the Savior He would send to be the narrow way by which we all can be forgiven our sins, reconciled with God, and have new, eternal lives free of sin and death and futility. Read along with me silently, please:

• “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights..." [On this Sunday when we remember the baptism of our Lord, when a voice from heaven spoke words like these of Jesus, we should have no doubt of Who the promised servant was and is: God enfleshed, Jesus the Anointed One.];
• "I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations..." [He will free repentant sinners who believe in Him not only in Israel, but all over the world, including Logan, Ohio.].
• "He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street..." [Unlike warriors who bark as they conquer, Jesus will conquer through servanthood and love.]
• "a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench..." [One scholar has said that the reed and the burning wick represent those who may seem strong on the outside, but are weak on the inside. A reed may be standing, but a bruise may threaten its life. A wick may be burning, but nearly burned out. This past week, many of us have watched the story of Ted Williams, the homeless recovering addict with a golden voice, who flew to New York to be given a second chance in life. I hope that Williams, surely a reed bruised by his life and by his own actions, will have the strength to resist the temptations of fame and all that goes with it. He can have that strength if he turns to the Servant-Messiah. To all of we bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks, God promises that unlike warriors such as Cyrus or demanding bosses or an unforgiving world, the Servant Jesus will not come to destroy us, but to restore us. That’s a wonderful promise!] ;
• "...he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching." [Jesus, the Savior Who would set His face toward Jerusalem and His cross, Second Isaiah says, would not give up until He had gone to the cross and to His resurrection so that, as our lesson from Acts tells us, “everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins [and with that God gives new life] through His Name.”]

Deutero-Isaiah, nearly six centuries before Jesus’ birth, pointed to a time when people weary with trying to face life by helping themselves would be helped, saved, delivered, and made new by God.

He doesn’t mention Jesus’ Name. As one contemporary scholar has said, the Servant’s Name isn’t given, but “his activity and character” are. And it’s more than just coincidence that the One Who came to be baptized by John the Baptist at the River Jordan, Who insisted despite His own sinlessness, on turning to the Father in the same way He one day would command that all we sinful people must in order to be saved, this Jesus, engaged in all the activities and exhibited all the character that our lesson from Isaiah associates with the Servant Messiah.

God doesn’t help those who help themselves. God helps those who take God’s help. And His help is named Jesus.

How many of you need God’s help this morning?

Trust only in Jesus and never lean on your own understanding. Fear him, trust in Him, depend on Him, and you will have all the help you’ll ever need for all eternity. Amen! 

*You can learn more about this by reading the Old Testament books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua.

How's Your Conscience?

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread prompted these thoughts.

If our consciences never bother us, it's a sign that we've wandered far from God. It means that forgetting God's design for human beings has become so habitual to us and we've grown so narcissistic that we no longer know or respond to the truth of God's revealed will.

If our consciences regularly bother us, chances are we have a good relationship with God and live in daily repentance and renewal. A conscience held captive to God's Word is like a spiritual GPS by which God turns us back to Him and to the life God gives to those surrendered to Jesus Christ.

If our consciences always bother us, in spite of confession in Jesus' Name, we're allowing the devil, the accuser, to speak louder to us than God's Word. God wants to forgive and be reconciled to us. God wants us to believe His Word when He forgives our sins.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).

"God moved first. We didn't invent love, but we can pass it along."

See here.

"Welcome to the New Year!"

Here.

"May your year be blessed with a multitude of camels!"

Unique new year's greetings from Pastor Deb Grant.

Hijacked ELCA Wants to Play Hardball

If you missed this, you may be interested: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)  is starting to play hardball with congregations wanting to consider leaving the body and join other Lutheran groups.

To me, it's not a good sign when a church body considers resorting to coercive means (the law, as Scripture would call it), to force people to stay in relationship with it, in spite of people's qualms about the errors and heresies into which the body has fallen.

Many Lutherans believe that the only way for them to step back into Christ's Church--which exists anywhere the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments are rightly administered, according to the Augsburg Confession, a basic statement of faith for Lutherans--is to leave the ELCA.

I want to reform the ELCA. And I pray for it and work for it. But, the signs increase daily that instead of repenting for its many departures from the historic Christian faith and the authority of God's Word, the Bible, that the leadership who have hijacked the body intend to pursue their agenda, moving the ELCA ever further away from the cornerstone Lutheran confessional principles, "Grace alone. Faith alone. Word alone."

They intend to dig in and force all who feel they can no longer be attached to a body that has fallen into grievous error, to stay. Why?

It's sad at so many levels.

UPDATE: Earlier today, my son Philip, shared this quote from one of the ancient church fathers, Athanasius, with me. It's utterly appropo:

"Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faith's sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrine so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ, announced in divine Scripture" (Athanasius, de Synodis, Part 1, 6) 

Human Trafficking Awareness Day, January 12

There are more people being bought and sold as slaves today than at any time in human history. Often, minors are the victims of sex trafficking. This event in Columbus, co-sponsored by the Salvation Army, is designed to help inform people about the depths of this problem and what action steps can be taken. Presumably, it will also give people a lot to pray about!

Human trafficking must be stopped!

[Click on image to enlarge.]

"We were created to be in relationship with God..."

"...and when we take that relationship to an intimate level, it bonds us not only to His presence but also to His strength." Read the whole thing.

Turn to God...and Live!

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

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Listen to this little scenario, taken from the main reading book our Catechism students are using right now:

Imagine that it is Christmas morning and you are in church. You’ve had a good Christmas Eve and received many presents. The church is beautifully decorated and everyone seems…happy…Suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, a stranger that you have never seen before gets up and starts yelling at the pastor. He runs down the center aisle to the front of the church… The stranger begins to preach. But it is not sweet talk about the baby Jesus. Rather, he points his finger and says we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for spending so much money on Christmas presents when there are people starving to death in our community. He says that God is angry with us because we are concerned only about ourselves. We are phonies and God will not listen to our prayers or songs until we take care of those who are lonely or poor or jobless. His message is, "Repent and return to God.”

This, folks, is what life with the prophets of Old Testament times was like for God’s people, the Jews!

By the time God sent the great prophets whose names give titles to some of the Bible’s most important books, God’s people had settled into life in the promised land. The mortgage was paid on the temple dedicated to worshiping and offering sacrifices to God and, for the most part, things were going well. God’s people were on cruise control.

But the prophets reminded them that even if they sang pretty songs and did everything exactly as the hymnbooks told them when they worshiped, yet still treated others unjustly, things were not going well.

If they celebrated religious holidays, but still ignored the revealed will of God for their relationships, their finances, their possessions, their business dealings, their bodies, or their sex lives, things were not going well.

In the original Hebrew in which most of the Old Testament is written, the root word for prophet means called (by God). Prophets were called by God to remind Israel of uncomfortable truths, truths that people on cruise control would rather not hear.

Most especially, they were to remind God’s people of a truth put well by a contemporary Christian composer, Randy Stonehill. He sings:

You'll be tempted, tried and tested
There'll be wars the devil wins
But God's love is not a license to lie there in your sins
He understands the human heart
His mercy is complete
But His grace was not intended
As a place to wipe your feet. 

To flout or ignore the will of God, as we are prone to do even in the contemporary Church, where we often treat God less as our Lord than as our buddy, is dangerous. We Christians, as Martin Luther reminds us in The Small Catechism, are to drown our sinful selves in daily repentance in Jesus’ Name.

When we fail to repent regularly, we give sin and the devil toeholds in our lives, we turn Christ into a doormat, and we risk spending eternity in hell.

Centuries after the Old Testament prophets preached and taught, after God had entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul would act on the prophetic impulse when he wrote,

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit. (Galatians 6:7-9, The Message)

The ancient prophets were sent to present God's message to His people, “Don’t quit! Don’t quit turning to me for life. Don’t quit loving God and loving neighbor. Don’t quit living in the truth that only comes from Me.”

We North American Christians could spend some time in this new year paying special heed to the words of the prophets.

Like ancient Israel, we can be materialistic and selfish.

We too can think the world should revolve around us.

We too can take God for granted.

We too can look, act, and sound more like the world than like people of God.

We too, fall into error, justifying sexual behaviors God calls sin.

Maybe the most challenging of the Old Testament prophets was Jeremiah, the writer of our first lesson. Jeremiah lived about 600 years before the birth of Jesus and had a ministry that lasted some forty years. He told his countrymen that unless they repented, turning away from their injustices to others, their religious hypocrisy, and their unethical behavior, God would cause their Babylonian neighbors to the north to sweep down on them. Babylon would conquer them, destroy their armies and their temple, and turn the citizens into vassals.

God's people refused to heed Jeremiah’s warnings. When Babylon conquered Judah in 587BC, many of God's people were taken prisoner and sent back to Babylon as slaves. The eyes of the king were gouged out and he was sent in utter humiliation to Babylon. Through Babylon, God punished His people for their continued defiance of His will. In the years before these events unfolded, this was precisely what Jeremiah had warned would happen.

You can imagine how welcome Jeremiah’s sermons were! When you’re on cruise control, you don’t want God getting in the way.

But why would God let people who worshiped Him and claimed to be believers be subjected to slavery and exile?

The answer is simple: While you and I are interested in lives of comfort and ease; God is more interested in shaping our characters.

While we’re interested in getting advantages in this fleeting life, God is concerned with righting us for eternal life.

When the pursuit of happiness becomes believers’ primary end, our characters are destroyed and we slog comfortably toward hell, away from God.

But when our lives are turned God-ward, comfort, pleasure, and happiness, along with things like purpose, hope, self-discipline, and joy, are byproducts, even when life in this imperfect world is difficult, challenging, or even, tragic.

Psalm 111 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” Would that you and I would build our lives on the wisdom of a fearful respect of God!

Yet in the midst of Jeremiah’s stern prophetic oracles, we find a section of his book called the book of consolation or book of comfort. Our first lesson is drawn from this section of Jeremiah. In it, God reminds His people of His ultimate purpose for them, the reason behind His chastening, behind His orchestration of their humiliation at the hands of the Babylonians. Punishment would not be the end of their story!

Pull out the Celebrate inserts, please, and look at our lesson, Jeremiah 31:7-14. Scholars tell us that the text can be divided into three sections:

• Verses 7-9 are addressed to the Israelites who have been scattered by their conquerors. God promises that He will bring them back to the promised land, including the blind, the lame, and pregnant women, those often overlooked by a hurried world. There is nowhere that God’s love, forgiveness, and help cannot reach us! Listen: When we place ourselves in the hands of God, no adversity is too great, no mountain is too steep. God’s love is bigger than anything you and I will confront in this life or the next! 
• Verses 10 to 12 are addressed to the nations of the world. The power of God’s Word stretches to the farthest reaches of the universe, from the Pakistani woman imprisoned for her faith in Christ to any member of this congregation confronting illness or uncertainty. God bears favor for those who trust in Him, wherever they may be!
• Verses 13 to 14 describe the rejoicing that will happen when God restores the fallen. For we Christians, it’s a preview of what heaven will be like, when all who have repented and believed in Christ, enduring in faith, as God welcomes us home!

God is intent on making things right with us, on helping us to be the joyous children of God we were made to be. I hope that you believe that this morning!

Let me assure you that you can believe in God’s good will for you today!

True story: Amalia was a woman who had been through hell and back, from growing up in a violent home in which her father molested her to drug addiction, from alcoholism and poverty to being a negligent parent herself.

Yet God found Amalia! She heard the good news of the Savior Jesus, Who died and rose to set sinners right with God. She repented for her sins and trusted in Christ for His forgiveness and, despite all the temptations and old habits that dogged her, got off to a great start on her Christian life. Then, one Sunday, Amalia didn’t show up for worship. Her pastor, Jim Cymbala, was concerned. He silently prayed, “O God, watch over Amalia.”

The next Sunday, Amalia was back in worship. After the service, Cymbala asked where she had been the previous week. She’d had something to take care of, she said. She had to go to the man who had set her life down its hellish path, her father.

She had found him living in upstate New York. What did she say to this man? Amalia explained that she forced her father to put down his beer and speak seriously with her. She said she’d been thinking about those years when he abused her. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he tried butting in. “That was a long time ago. We don’t need to talk about that now.” Amalia insisted that they did need to talk about it.

“It really hurt me," she told him, "and I wanted to kill you many times. But I came here this weekend to tell you that I’m a Christian now. I gave my heart to the Lord, and he changed my life…what you did was wrong. But I forgive you! God can change your life and forgive you, too…"

Amalia’s father squirmed in his chair and quickly changed the subject to superficial things. He didn’t want God to make him feel uncomfortable. But for Amalia, the weekend had been a triumph. She had let go of past hurts she didn’t earn or deserve and she was liberated to live!

God wants to liberate you to live, too!

Elsewhere in Jeremiah’s book, God says, “I know the plans I have for you..plans for your welfare and not your harm, to give you a future with hope.” In 2011, take God up on that promise for you!

Live each day in repentance and trust in Jesus Christ and watch how God turns your mourning into joy, your gladness into sorrow, and your doubts into unshakeable faith in the One Who died and rose to make you new and to give you an eternal future with God! Amen!

A Possible New Year's Resolution?

One good new year's resolution might be to ask God to help us read His Word slowly and for comprehension. "Food" for thought here.

"This is Christmas?"

That's the title of this interesting post by my son, Phil.

Grace AND Truth

Scott Hoezee on Sunday's Old Testament lesson, Jeremiah 31:7-14:

Curiously, in the Revised Common Lectionary this Old Testament passage is paired in the gospels with John 1:10-18, which includes the verse about how when the Word of God was made flesh, he came to this world “full of grace and truth.”  As noted in the set of sermon starters on that passage, we rarely find that tenacious combination of grace AND truth on display in other people (or even in our own selves).   In our “Either/Or” mentality we too often opt to be either gracious (and so we bend or elide the truth) or we tend to be truthful (even if telling the truth or standing up for the truth leads to behavior that is downright ungracious). 

Similarly in Jeremiah 31: we have a hard time believing that the same prophet who had been hammering away in judgment against the people of Judah could also—and pretty much at the same time—point forward hopefully to a day of promised blessings even greater than what the people had known before.  What may be even more striking is the idea that somehow the blessings of all that restoration would emerge from the midst of all the sorrows Jeremiah had been talking about all along.  In fact, this lection stops one verse short of the well-known verse about Rachel weeping at Ramah for her lost children.  Jeremiah does not deny for one moment the presence of weeping and sorrow in this world but somehow knows that if a word of restoration and hope is going to be spoken at all, it needs to be spoken into precisely those contexts of raw and jagged realities.

Abbey burns...

...but books and beer are saved. (And I thought Lutherans were the only Christians for whom these would be priority items.)

What I Want: A Wasted Life

This BBC report tells about one-man's fifty-year plus project, undertaken after being expelled from a monastery for contracting tuberculosis.

The story appealed to me in several ways. Justo Gallego, the builder of a church building made of junk, who has no training in art or architecture, wanted to glorify Christ even though he could no longer be a monk.

One can argue whether this not-yet-completed and extravagantly unnecessary structure does glorify Christ. Some might dismiss the whole thing, perhaps rightly, as an eyesore. Or, as a danger to any who walk in it or near it. (There have never been any architectural plans or inspections of any kind.)

But before dismissing Gallego's church structure, consider some of the things this fifty-year effort may tell us about the life of faith and about Christ Himself.

Fifty-plus years ago, massive vaccination against TB had not begun in so-called developed countries, though there were treatment facilities that had some success. My mother, just a few years younger than Gallego, contracted the disease and spent some time at the Franklin County Tuberculosis Sanitorium in Columbus, when she was young.

Maybe the monastery lacked the capacity to care for Gallego as the sanitorium did for my mom. But his dismissal will do as a metaphor for what the institutional church sometimes does with those it doesn't know how to handle.

I myself have often experienced the institutional church as an organization peopled by gatekeepers whose function seems to be to tell people, "No." No, your service is not needed. No, you can't try to get that ministry started. No, you can't ask people for money to build that building.

When I was the pastor of a start-up congregation in the Cincinnati area, at least four times, our fledgling church hit goals for membership, giving, and worship attendance we were told would bring us a loan from our denomination to build our first facility, only to be told, "No" every time. The last time occurred after we'd had a capital campaign that raised precisely what our denominational officials told us we needed to raise. Our building committee, flush with excitement over the successful campaign, was shot down on lift-off by the denominational official with whom we met. "If you think you're going to build a church now," he told us, "you're smoking something funny." He wasn't done. "You're not the first ones to make a mistake like this, folks," he told us. "I make many mistakes," I finally said, "but this was not a mistake. We did exactly what you told us to do and now, you're saying that we can't forge ahead."

That night, we decided to forgo the "No" of the gatekeepers and, with the empowerment of God, erected the church's first building unit...after fourteen years of worshiping in a school gym. We found commercial lenders more excited about what we were doing as a church than our own denominational gatekeepers were.

You can't stop glorifying Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, the lifeline to God almighty, just because people with institutional power say, "No." Justo Gallego has lived that truth!

And how about the practicality of Gallego's structure? Is it necessary? Certainly, there are other churches in the Madrid suburbs, where he's built this building. And, who's to say that a Mass will ever be said there?

If the building is extravagantly unnecessary, then it is in good company. You see, that's exactly how I think of God's love for the whole human race. Extravagantly unnecessary. Richly superfluous.

Often, when I discuss Genesis 3, which recounts the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, people get (understandably) hung up on questions like: Why did God allow the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or the serpent to be in the garden of Eden in the first place? Where did the serpent come from? Is the serpent the same as the devil?

They're all good questions which we might take up with God some day. But to me, the most baffling question is this: Why didn't God give up the whole idea of creation as a bad project right then and there?

His most beloved creatures--the only ones created in His image--turned on Him and so, consigned the whole creation to centuries of groaning under the weight of their sin.

When I was a kid, playing with clay, and didn't like what had become of my creation, I smashed it and maybe, I'd start over again or, likely as not, put it away and move onto the next thing.

God didn't move onto the next thing! He kept His focus. He keeps it still. For God only knows how many centuries, He has been focused on one thing: Bringing the lost home. Being reconciled to the rebel human race.

God hasn't done this by forcing our return or coercing a forced reconciliation. He's been patient. He let one group of people in on His plan so that they could be a light to the nations until the moment was right.

Then, the one light who is life to all people showed up to live among us. Of course, being human and thick of head and thick of heart, we didn't recognize the Light when we saw Him. God blanketed the human race and the whole universe, in fact, with His extravagant love and all we could think to do was kill it. So we did. On a bad Friday we now recognize as good, we killed the Giver of life.

But God wasn't done loving us yet. Christ, the Light of the world, rose from the dead. His love is available to all who dare to turn from sin and turn to Him in trust. God's extravagantly unnecessary love turns us from God's enemies to God's friends.

A final aspect of Gallego's story that appeals to me is junk: The entire structure is made of leavings, left-overs, junk. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote a couple of letters to a first-century church in Corinth whose members had gotten full of themselves and were starting to do the Adam and Eve thing, rebelling against God's will. Paul said some interesting things to these folks. Among them:

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

Hey, big britches, Paul was saying, the world considered you junk. God loved you anyway. Died for you. Rose for you. In Christ, God turned what the world calls junk into gold. Don't start acting like junk!

In another place, Paul, then being persecuted for sharing the love of Christ with others, tells the Corinthians about the treasure of God's love they carry in their bodies as baptized, believing Christians and says:

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:7-12)

If you don't understand everything in that passage, don't worry about it now. Take this away from it: God's extravagantly unnecessary love can come to live inside you, no matter how broken or filled with sin you may feel you are...or may actually be.

And here's the thing: God's love is a real extravagance. He's got plenty more where that came from. God's got so much love for us, in fact, that those of us who get it, can give it away and still not lose any of it.

When God's love comes to live in what the world calls "junk," the junk, like Justo Gallego's useless church building, can be a beautiful testimony to the greatness and grace of God. I want my life to be that kind of testimony.

There's a congregation in Denver, whose name I've mentioned before on this blog, a name I absolutely love. It's called The Scum of the Earth Church. It takes its name from more words from Paul's correspondence with the Corinthians, as translated in The New International Version (TNIV) of the Bible. It says:

To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment. (1 Corinthians 4:11-13)

The church web site explains:

WHY SCUM?

It doesn’t sound like a church name … on purpose. We really want to connect with people who have no interest in “church” by society’s definition. There are plenty of churches for “normal people” and we think we have a unique calling to reach out to our otherwise unreached friends. Our name is integral to that process. Whether outcast by society (e.g., punks, skaters, ravers, homeless people…) or by the church itself, many who come can identify with the name “Scum of the Earth” since they have been previously treated as such.

More important to us, however, the name implies that being people of faith does not mean we are better than anyone else. We know many non-Christians who think Christians are out to cast judgment on them. Our name makes it clear that we aren’t about that. We are just aware of our need for God, as Scum of the Earth. Fortunately, God never sees us like that! But the name is humble and we like that.

For all I know, Justo Gallego may be certifiably looney. He may have wasted the past fifty years. And Scum of the Earth Church may be a collection of crazy people.

But I want to waste my life glorifying Christ in whatever ways I can. I want to do it out of gratitude for the God Who "wasted" His extravagantly unnecessary love--His body, His blood, His grace--on me. I want to do it so that, in the end, none of that extravagantly unnecessary love is wasted, but accomplishes all it can do when God spends it on me...and you.

The word of the day...

...is puerile.

This one is more common than the word I mentioned yesterday, but still not one used in common daily conversation. (At least not in the common daily conversations I have.)
 
Puerile came up in my s....l....o.....w reading of  Frank Freidel's one-volume biography of Franklin Roosevelt, A Rendezvous with Destiny.

Freidel describes the controversy which attended Roosevelt's attempts to raise farm prices through the doubtful ploy of buying gold above the prevailing price on the market, hoping that doing so would decrease the value of the dollar and so, make it easier for for other countries to purchase American goods, including crops.

Many "financiers, economists, and politicians" expressed disapproval of the scheme. Former FDR ally--by then, bitter enemy--Al Smith labeled the "commodity dollar," as it was being touted, the "baloney dollar." Roosevelt fired the under secretary of the Treasury, Dean Acheson, later to be Harry Truman's Secretary of State, because of Acheson's disagreement with FDR on the plan.

Also, John Maynard Keynes, godfather of deficit spending as a means of stimulating economic activity in depressed conditions, whose name is often associated with Roosevelt's approach to the Great Depression, weighed in opposing the Roosevelt gold purchases. Keynes, Freidel says, "in an open letter to Roosevelt that appeared in the New York Times at the end of the year, scoffed at the scheme as puerile...[and] irreverently remarked that the fluctuations seemed more like 'a gold standard on booze than the ideal managed currency of my dreams.'"

Puerile, boozey, or not, FDR continued the gold buying into January of 1934. "The results were disappointing, bearing out neither Roosevelt's expectations nor those of his critics," Freidel says. And isn't is that always the way things go? Nobody has a lock on wisdom.  Rarely is anybody utterly vindicated for having vision; everyone gets left with a little bragging rights.

Most agricultural commodities slipped as a result of Roosevelt's gold buyouts. The lone exception was wheat.

As Freidel tells it, Roosevelt's action was a short-term economic non-starter. But it may have bought Roosevelt and the country some time, preventing a second economic collapse.

So, was Roosevelt's gold-buying puerile or was it mature economic thinking? That's a matter of debate. But the answer seems to be somewhere between Roosevelt's sunny assertions of its efficacy and his opponents' belief that it was destructive at worst and irrelevant at best.

But the meaning of puerile is none of the above.

What I Learned Six Months Ago Today

This piece asks readers to look back on the previous year for major events in their personal lives.

Six months ago today, I went to Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus to undergo a heart catheter procedure. Sixteen days earlier, I'd had a "silent" heart attack, felt but undiagnosed. Twelve days later, my doctor seeking to eliminate possibilities, an echocardiogram was done. It was discovered that I'd had a major heart attack that damaged 40% of my heart.

I was to do nothing until the catheter procedure the following Monday, the doctor told me. This was Thursday. If I had any chest pain, I was to get to the nearest emergency room ASAP.

It was a long weekend.

But I have to confess that during the hour-long drive to Riverside from our house on the day of the procedure, I felt utterly calm. This is how I really felt: Whether I lived or died, I was in the hands of God.

I'm sure that I've written about the procedure before. But it was an amazing experience. I was awake throughout, talking with the doctor and OR personnel the entire time.

A 100% blockage was discovered in one of my arteries. The plaque material was recent enough--and therefore, soft enough--for the doctor to be able to push a stent through and I was released the next morning.

As I think I've explained before, when I arrived at the hospital, my ejection fraction, a number which measures the efficiency with which the heart is doing its job, was at 25. That's ten points below what's considered dangerous. No person's EF is 100% and average is about 65%.

So, I had been sicker than I realized, probably for longer than I realized.

Medical personnel have expressed bafflement at two things.

First: They can't understand why I had a heart attack. No relevant family history of heart disease. Great blood pressure. Good cholesterol readings. Not overweight. Exercised thirty minutes a day.

Second: They can't understand how I survived the heart attack I had. Their bafflement has to do with the location of the blockage. "There is no medical way to explain why you're still alive," a cardiac nurse told me.

Occasionally, as I reflect on the events of six months ago, Paul's words to the Phlippian Christians of the first century come to mind. His sentiments aren't precisely my own, but I do get what he was telling the members of that first century Macedonian congregation. Paul wrote it while imprisoned in a Roman jail, contemplating the very real possibility of being executed:

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith...(Philippians 1:21-25)

As I say, my sentiments weren't (and aren't) precisely the same as Paul's. But I found out how real Christ is and how real my relationship with Christ is six months ago today. I knew that Christ was there with my family and me and that He still would have been there with us had I not survived my heart attack. I learned the truth of some other words written by Paul, too:

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. (Romans 14:8)

Of course, I can take zero credit for this remarkable assurance which marks my living and my dying with a certain hope. All the credit goes to God Who sent His Son, so that all who turn away from the natural inclinations of sinful, selfish hearts and, powered by the Spirit, dare to trust their all in Christ and so, receive eternal life with God. (I still am a sinner, by the way. Christ died for sinners like me and He empowers the honest to daily push their sinful inclinations into submission to Christ. I try to be honest with God. It's better that way; God knows when I'm lying anyway.)

And that eternal life begins here and now--in hospital surgical suites and waiting rooms, in the places we live every day. The Savior Who took on flesh, Whose birth among us we are celebrating this Christmas season, has shared in our messy lives, invited us to own the blame for His undeserved execution on a cross, and commanded us to follow Him. Eternity belongs to those who dare to be honest with the God who dared everything to win us back death and sin and evil.

Six months ago today, that all became more real to me than it ever was before. And Christ--His love, His power, His grace, His righteousness, His willingness to destroy the sin I daily lay at His feet--all those things are more real to me today than the desk at which I set.

I've met the King and I'm intent on serving Him alone. He saved me for this, not just six months ago, but at the very moment He first saved me, on that cross two thousand years ago.

The word of the day...

is contumely. It's one that I run across infrequently in my reading, which is probably why I have to go to the dictionary again every time I read it. Maybe posting this will finally imprint it on my brain.

The word came up again last night in my re-reading of The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (A truly great book, enormously challenging to the Christian who wishes to live as an authentic follower of Jesus!)

It's snowing...

because of global warming. I think I understand.

"...the biggest thing is that we're not scared about leaving the house"

The words are those of a Pakistani woman talking about being able to work at a fast food restaurant. Interesting.