"The blackest day on Wall Street in two decades."
John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John Christmas Album Plunges Nation Into Double-Dip Recession
[Thanks to my son for sharing this with me.]
Friday, November 16, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Ready for Winter
I snapped this picture while taking a walk this afternoon. The tree here is dubbed, The Great White Oak of Logan. It's huge. (At least by the standards of southern Ohio. It's obviously no Redwood!)
After the windstorm this past July, which knocked out our power for the better part of eight days, my wife and I were concerned that the oak, said to be over 600 years old, might have been damaged. The branches of a large tree in a neighboring yard, like thousands of other trees and branches throughout Ohio, did come down during the storm. In some places around the state, the wind during that short storm measured 98-miles per hour. Fallen trees and branches brought power outages throughout the state.
But this old oak seems to have been unscathed.
Leaves fallen, it's now ready for another winter in the seventh-century of its life. It's hard to imagine all that has unfolded under its branches.
[Also see here, for a 360-degree look from beneath the tree. It gives you a good idea of its height. FYI: Logan is about a half-hour drive from Athens.]
The False Dichotomy Between Faith and Science
After quoting Elizabeth Scalia, John Schroeder comments on the false dichotomy between faith and science.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Peace with God
[This was the sermon prepared for today's 10:15 worship service with the people and friends of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Today was Friend Day at Saint Matthew.]
I once heard a man named Bill Hybels say that every human being, without exception, is looking for the same thing. Hybels called the thing we’re all looking for, “it.”
The ways human beings look for “it” vary.
Some think they can find “it” by living a life in which they stock up pleasure, committing themselves to, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.” But “it” can’t be found by that route.
Some people look for “it” by working hard for money or power or knowledge.
Others are sure that the way to “it” is by being a good person, giving to charities, or living a lifestyle of love.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with happiness, knowledge, hard work, giving, success, money, or even love. These are all good things in themselves.
But if we look to them as the means by which we find “it,” we will be disappointed.
And if we aren’t disappointed, then we are settling for much less than we were made for as human beings.
None of us should do that!
So, what is this “it”?
A man named Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, was the preeminent scholar of his day, at a time when scholars were treated like rock stars. Augustine partook of every sinful pleasure the world had to offer.
But it wasn’t enough.
In the summer of 386, deeply unhappy, Augustine threw himself down under a fig tree in desperation. There he sensed a voice, like that of a child, repeating to him over and over, “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
The voice was so real to Augustine that, at first, he thought it was that of a real nearby child playing some game. Then he understood that the voice had some other source.
At that time, Augustine was staying with some monks on a retreat where he hoped he could get things together. He wasn’t interested in being a Christian, mind you. His mother was a Christian and he had no interest in becoming a religious kook!
But, weeping under the fig tree, Augustine kept hearing that voice: “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
He later said that he could only interpret the repeated phrase to mean that he had to run into the house where he was staying, pick up a Bible from a shelf there, and read the first words he laid eyes on. He followed his instructions.
The first passage he read was in the book of Romans, chapter 13, verses 13 to 14: “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ...”
It was then that Augustine, to that point no believer in God, surrendered his life and will to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
He later said in a prayer, “Almighty God, You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
Not by any effort of His own, but solely by the effort of the God Who reached out to him and Who still reaches out to you and me today, Augustine received “it": peace with God.
You may say, “We might as well close up shop right now, preacher. I’m not at war with God. I may not pay much attention to God, but I’m not at war with God.”
Look! We are born at war with God!
We’re born wanting our own ways.
In the Old Testament, King David, a man the Bible later describes as “a man after God’s own heart,” had to admit, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
Sin is in the human gene pool. We inherit it from our parents and grandparents.
Sin is the condition of enmity toward God and of willfulness to do our own thing that caused me, when I wasn’t yet three years old, to ignore my mother when she told me not to pick up my baby sister and with Mom no more than five steps away, to pick her up and promptly drop her on her head, my very first childhood memory. Nobody had to teach me how to sin; I came equipped with that knowledge!
The condition of sin is a wall between God and us, between God and others.
It’s what makes it impossible for us, by our own reason or strength or effort, to love God or to love others as we love ourselves, even though the law of God written on our hearts tells us that living like that is what it means to be human!
Even people who have never heard of God have a sense that they were made to experience "it," what we know to be the peace of God, whether they can articulate that or not.
And some people are so desperate for peace with God that they fall for humanly-created religions like Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology.
U2 gave expression to our common desire for “it,” when they sang, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
I want to be honest with you. I don’t always live in the peace of God. I let “it” slip out of my hands.
Usually without realizing it, I go on the warpath against God.
Feelings of bitterness toward those who have hurt me get my attention. Instead of asking God to bless others, I find myself praying that God would “fix them” and make them over in an image more convenient and convivial to me.
The desire to do what I want to do instead of what God wants me to do takes first place in my life.
My sinful self, along with the sin of the world and the sinful things that Satan tempts us all to do, conspire to take over my life and rob me of peace with God.
So I come to God many times a day, to ask God to tear down the wall of sin, to help me live in peace with Him, with others, and with myself, to remember that there is no peace when we’re looking out for ourselves.
But how does peace with God come to us?
I want to share with you what’s called “the Roman road,” the way peace comes to us as described in the New Testament book of Romans, the book of the Bible from which Augustine read on that summer day when he found his rest in God. I’ll also mention a few other passages in other parts of the Bible.
How do we have peace with God? First: To have peace with God, we must realize that God loves us and He wants to have everlasting peace with Him, along with a life made new by Him, a life He wants to give to us for all eternity.
When we have bad things come into our lives, as they do in all lives, we’re tempted to think that God has it in for us. A month or so ago, when I learned I had Celiac Disease, two years after I had a heart attack that took out 40% of my heart and one year after I'd learned that my heart was so weak I needed a pacemaker and defibrillator and also had to have a small melanoma cancer removed from my leg, I confess to you that I asked God why He was piling things on.
I'm ashamed of those feelings, frankly, because the Bible teaches us that, in this fallen world, bad things happen to everyone, no exceptions.
But we can have peace with God even in hard times. Romans 5:1 says: “...having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What does this mean? Just this: The rightful fate for everyone who has sin is death. Another passage of Romans puts it this way: “the wages of sin is death.”
Think of it like this: We are all guilty of sin. If we were tried for our sin, the evidence would be overwhelming. To be justified though, is to have the verdict of “not guilty” declared over our lives.
Anyone who is declared “not guilty” of sin is at peace with God.
It was this “not guilty” verdict that changed Augustine’s life.
God wants us all to experience that.
God loves us and wants us to enjoy peace with Him. That’s why God in the flesh, Jesus, said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God wants to give us:
You and I aren’t machines. God didn’t program us to do whatever He wanted. God gives us the power to make choices in our lives. We can choose to return His love to Him or not.
The problem, of course, is that the condition of sin has us bound so tightly that even if we resolve to return God’s love or to be at peace with God, we can’t make the decision stick.
We’re like kids peering into a shop filled with candy that’s off-limits to us because our hands and feet are manacled, in this case by our sin.
We can’t get to peace with God by our own efforts, no matter how hard we try. As Romans 7:19 says, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” That's why we Lutherans say in the Order for Confession and Forgiveness: "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves." Even when we want to choose peace with God and obedience to His commands, we are incapable of making that choice.
Third: To have peace with God, we need to know that God intervenes on our behalf. Romans 5:8 says: “...God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The Old Testament sacrificial law held that an unblemished lamb could represent people on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. There, the lamb was sacrificed and the repentant believers were spattered with the blood of the lamb. The lamb took the sinners‘ rightful wages, death, and the repentant were forgiven, for that moment.
But as our second lesson for today, from Hebrews, reminds us, Jesus, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, bears the sins of all the world, once and for all.
Fourth: We must receive, by faith, Christ, the One Who has died and risen for us. Romans 10:9 says: “...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” What an incredible promise!
Because of God's charitable love for us, what the Bible calls "grace," all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ are saved from the condition of sin and its consequence--death and futility.
When you entrust your life to Jesus Christ, you will have forgiveness, life, purpose, and peace with God.
Now, I don’t want to simplify things. Having peace and eternity with God are free gifts God grants to all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ. But they are gifts we find it easy to let go of.
Faith itself, the Bible teaches, isn’t something we can talk ourselves into, but only receive just as we receive any other gift.
And as long as we live in this world, our genetic predisposition to sin will haunt us.
Jesus was and is God in the flesh, perfect and sinless, conceived not by a sinful man and a sinful woman, but by the Holy Spirit. But if Jesus was tempted and tested, we can expect to be tempted and tested too!
Jesus says though, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Jesus also promises that “the one who endures to the end” in surrender to Him “will be saved.” They will have a peace that only the God Who became one of us, died for us, and then rose from death for all eternity can guarantee.
The God we know in Jesus Christ can be your very best friend. He can give you a peace that passes all understanding.
If you would like to claim that peace for the first time or claim it again this morning, I want to invite you to pray with me right now:
That's okay: As Martin Luther said, the problem with some "born-again Christians" is that they're not born again enough. We need to keep coming back to Christ so that our old sinful self can be crucified and the new child of God can keep rising from the ashes of our sin!
But if you prayed that prayer with sincerity, know this: The war is over!
You have the "it" you’ve wanted your whole life: Peace with God!
Amen
[The four points of "the Roman Road," found in many places, and the version of "the sinner's prayer" as presented here, are based on a helpful book that has helped me share my faith many times over the past decade: Steps to Peace with God, published by the publications arm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, World Wide Publications. I don't know if it's still in print. A link to it at Amazon.com can be found above.]
[These passages of Scripture are mentioned in the sermon (most are hyperlinked above): Acts 13:22, Psalm 51:5, Romans 2:14-15, Matthew 22:36-40, Romans 5:1, Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 1:1-14, Romans 3:23, Romans 7:19, Hebrews 9:24-28, John 1:29, Romans 10:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Matthew 1:18, Hebrews 4:15, and Mark 1:12-13]
I once heard a man named Bill Hybels say that every human being, without exception, is looking for the same thing. Hybels called the thing we’re all looking for, “it.”
The ways human beings look for “it” vary.
Some think they can find “it” by living a life in which they stock up pleasure, committing themselves to, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness.” But “it” can’t be found by that route.
Some people look for “it” by working hard for money or power or knowledge.
Others are sure that the way to “it” is by being a good person, giving to charities, or living a lifestyle of love.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with happiness, knowledge, hard work, giving, success, money, or even love. These are all good things in themselves.
But if we look to them as the means by which we find “it,” we will be disappointed.
And if we aren’t disappointed, then we are settling for much less than we were made for as human beings.
None of us should do that!
So, what is this “it”?
A man named Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, was the preeminent scholar of his day, at a time when scholars were treated like rock stars. Augustine partook of every sinful pleasure the world had to offer.
But it wasn’t enough.
In the summer of 386, deeply unhappy, Augustine threw himself down under a fig tree in desperation. There he sensed a voice, like that of a child, repeating to him over and over, “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
The voice was so real to Augustine that, at first, he thought it was that of a real nearby child playing some game. Then he understood that the voice had some other source.
At that time, Augustine was staying with some monks on a retreat where he hoped he could get things together. He wasn’t interested in being a Christian, mind you. His mother was a Christian and he had no interest in becoming a religious kook!
But, weeping under the fig tree, Augustine kept hearing that voice: “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.”
He later said that he could only interpret the repeated phrase to mean that he had to run into the house where he was staying, pick up a Bible from a shelf there, and read the first words he laid eyes on. He followed his instructions.
The first passage he read was in the book of Romans, chapter 13, verses 13 to 14: “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ...”
It was then that Augustine, to that point no believer in God, surrendered his life and will to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
He later said in a prayer, “Almighty God, You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
Not by any effort of His own, but solely by the effort of the God Who reached out to him and Who still reaches out to you and me today, Augustine received “it": peace with God.
You may say, “We might as well close up shop right now, preacher. I’m not at war with God. I may not pay much attention to God, but I’m not at war with God.”
Look! We are born at war with God!
We’re born wanting our own ways.
In the Old Testament, King David, a man the Bible later describes as “a man after God’s own heart,” had to admit, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
Sin is in the human gene pool. We inherit it from our parents and grandparents.
Sin is the condition of enmity toward God and of willfulness to do our own thing that caused me, when I wasn’t yet three years old, to ignore my mother when she told me not to pick up my baby sister and with Mom no more than five steps away, to pick her up and promptly drop her on her head, my very first childhood memory. Nobody had to teach me how to sin; I came equipped with that knowledge!
The condition of sin is a wall between God and us, between God and others.
It’s what makes it impossible for us, by our own reason or strength or effort, to love God or to love others as we love ourselves, even though the law of God written on our hearts tells us that living like that is what it means to be human!
Even people who have never heard of God have a sense that they were made to experience "it," what we know to be the peace of God, whether they can articulate that or not.
And some people are so desperate for peace with God that they fall for humanly-created religions like Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology.
U2 gave expression to our common desire for “it,” when they sang, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
I want to be honest with you. I don’t always live in the peace of God. I let “it” slip out of my hands.
Usually without realizing it, I go on the warpath against God.
Feelings of bitterness toward those who have hurt me get my attention. Instead of asking God to bless others, I find myself praying that God would “fix them” and make them over in an image more convenient and convivial to me.
The desire to do what I want to do instead of what God wants me to do takes first place in my life.
My sinful self, along with the sin of the world and the sinful things that Satan tempts us all to do, conspire to take over my life and rob me of peace with God.
So I come to God many times a day, to ask God to tear down the wall of sin, to help me live in peace with Him, with others, and with myself, to remember that there is no peace when we’re looking out for ourselves.
But how does peace with God come to us?
I want to share with you what’s called “the Roman road,” the way peace comes to us as described in the New Testament book of Romans, the book of the Bible from which Augustine read on that summer day when he found his rest in God. I’ll also mention a few other passages in other parts of the Bible.
How do we have peace with God? First: To have peace with God, we must realize that God loves us and He wants to have everlasting peace with Him, along with a life made new by Him, a life He wants to give to us for all eternity.
When we have bad things come into our lives, as they do in all lives, we’re tempted to think that God has it in for us. A month or so ago, when I learned I had Celiac Disease, two years after I had a heart attack that took out 40% of my heart and one year after I'd learned that my heart was so weak I needed a pacemaker and defibrillator and also had to have a small melanoma cancer removed from my leg, I confess to you that I asked God why He was piling things on.
I'm ashamed of those feelings, frankly, because the Bible teaches us that, in this fallen world, bad things happen to everyone, no exceptions.
But we can have peace with God even in hard times. Romans 5:1 says: “...having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What does this mean? Just this: The rightful fate for everyone who has sin is death. Another passage of Romans puts it this way: “the wages of sin is death.”
Think of it like this: We are all guilty of sin. If we were tried for our sin, the evidence would be overwhelming. To be justified though, is to have the verdict of “not guilty” declared over our lives.
Anyone who is declared “not guilty” of sin is at peace with God.
It was this “not guilty” verdict that changed Augustine’s life.
God wants us all to experience that.
God loves us and wants us to enjoy peace with Him. That’s why God in the flesh, Jesus, said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God wants to give us:
- Peace with God now in this imperfect world
- Peace with God forever in a perfect eternity.
You and I aren’t machines. God didn’t program us to do whatever He wanted. God gives us the power to make choices in our lives. We can choose to return His love to Him or not.
The problem, of course, is that the condition of sin has us bound so tightly that even if we resolve to return God’s love or to be at peace with God, we can’t make the decision stick.
We’re like kids peering into a shop filled with candy that’s off-limits to us because our hands and feet are manacled, in this case by our sin.
We can’t get to peace with God by our own efforts, no matter how hard we try. As Romans 7:19 says, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” That's why we Lutherans say in the Order for Confession and Forgiveness: "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves." Even when we want to choose peace with God and obedience to His commands, we are incapable of making that choice.
Third: To have peace with God, we need to know that God intervenes on our behalf. Romans 5:8 says: “...God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The Old Testament sacrificial law held that an unblemished lamb could represent people on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. There, the lamb was sacrificed and the repentant believers were spattered with the blood of the lamb. The lamb took the sinners‘ rightful wages, death, and the repentant were forgiven, for that moment.
But as our second lesson for today, from Hebrews, reminds us, Jesus, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, bears the sins of all the world, once and for all.
Fourth: We must receive, by faith, Christ, the One Who has died and risen for us. Romans 10:9 says: “...if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” What an incredible promise!
Because of God's charitable love for us, what the Bible calls "grace," all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ are saved from the condition of sin and its consequence--death and futility.
When you entrust your life to Jesus Christ, you will have forgiveness, life, purpose, and peace with God.
Now, I don’t want to simplify things. Having peace and eternity with God are free gifts God grants to all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ. But they are gifts we find it easy to let go of.
Faith itself, the Bible teaches, isn’t something we can talk ourselves into, but only receive just as we receive any other gift.
And as long as we live in this world, our genetic predisposition to sin will haunt us.
Jesus was and is God in the flesh, perfect and sinless, conceived not by a sinful man and a sinful woman, but by the Holy Spirit. But if Jesus was tempted and tested, we can expect to be tempted and tested too!
Jesus says though, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Jesus also promises that “the one who endures to the end” in surrender to Him “will be saved.” They will have a peace that only the God Who became one of us, died for us, and then rose from death for all eternity can guarantee.
The God we know in Jesus Christ can be your very best friend. He can give you a peace that passes all understanding.
If you would like to claim that peace for the first time or claim it again this morning, I want to invite you to pray with me right now:
Lord Jesus, I am a sinner in need of the forgiveness only You can give. I believe that You died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead to open up eternity to all who will turn from their sins and let You be their God and King. I ask You to come into my life. Rule over me today and forever. Send Your Holy Spirit to me daily so that I can trust and follow You and live in Your peace. In Your Name I pray. AmenIf you're like me, you may find yourself needing to pray that prayer about twenty-five times a day.
That's okay: As Martin Luther said, the problem with some "born-again Christians" is that they're not born again enough. We need to keep coming back to Christ so that our old sinful self can be crucified and the new child of God can keep rising from the ashes of our sin!
But if you prayed that prayer with sincerity, know this: The war is over!
You have the "it" you’ve wanted your whole life: Peace with God!
Amen
[The four points of "the Roman Road," found in many places, and the version of "the sinner's prayer" as presented here, are based on a helpful book that has helped me share my faith many times over the past decade: Steps to Peace with God, published by the publications arm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, World Wide Publications. I don't know if it's still in print. A link to it at Amazon.com can be found above.]
[These passages of Scripture are mentioned in the sermon (most are hyperlinked above): Acts 13:22, Psalm 51:5, Romans 2:14-15, Matthew 22:36-40, Romans 5:1, Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 1:1-14, Romans 3:23, Romans 7:19, Hebrews 9:24-28, John 1:29, Romans 10:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Matthew 1:18, Hebrews 4:15, and Mark 1:12-13]
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Are Christian Conservatives the Big Losers of the 2012 Election?
A New York Times article asks, "Are Christian conservatives the big losers of the presidential election?"
My answer is, I don't know.
But I do think that we who are charged with the proclamation of the Gospel should refrain from being identified with particular political philosophies.
When we do so, we risk creating a false image of Jesus, turning Him into an idol made in our own images.
We also risk conveying the false impression to the world that God endorses a particular political point of view, alienating people from God unnecessarily.
The true Christian message will alienate people. Bank on it. Jesus said so more than once. Check out His words in Matthew 10:35-38, for example.
But unless a government commands us to sin or to engage in idolatry, such as happened in Nazi Germany or happens in despotic states today, there shouldn't be a whiff of politics in what the Church or Christian leaders say.
Individual Christians should be encouraged to be engaged in politics, whatever their philosophies. But the cause of Christ is too important to be made the hostage of politics.
My own denomination has made Jesus subordinate to liberal politics.
Other Christian leaders have portrayed Jesus as marching to a conservative politics.
Both notions are lies.
According to Pastor Ed Stetzer, an old saying has it right: When you mix politics and religion, you get politics. Politics is important. But only the faith commended by the Bible--faith that God in the flesh, Jesus Christ has died and risen so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him are reconciled with God, for now and for eternity--can change our lives.
And when the God we know in Christ changes our relationship with Him from enmity to friendship, He also will begin to transform the decisions we make and the reasons we make them. That includes political decisions.
Will God make us more conservative or more liberal?
The answer to that is probably, yes.
When you dare to put yourself in the hands of the sovereign God of the universe, give Him the freedom to take charge of your whole life, there's no way of predicting where He will lead you. It makes me think of the risen Jesus' words to Peter on how Peter's life would be changed by following Him: "Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).
Christians know that we are not in control. And that's a good thing, hard as it may sometimes be.
That's what we mean when we Christians pray subversively, as Jesus taught us to pray, "Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Our nation might not be in the state it's in, selfishness elevated to a paramount position, if the Church and Christian leaders were more committed to proclaiming the Gospel and less concerned about seeing their preferred candidates elected to office.
After all, we could be wrong about who to vote for.
But we will never be wrong in commending Jesus, "the Way, and the Truth, and the Life"!
So, I come back to the Times' original question. Were conservative Christians the big losers in last Tuesday's election? I hope so.
I hope equally fervently that liberal Christians were the big losers last Tuesday.
I hope that anyone who would dare to take a political position and claim, "Thus saith the Lord," got burnt so badly that they'll turn in repentance to the Lord, seek His forgiveness for trivializing the death and resurrection of Jesus, and pray that God will help all of us who bear Christ's Name to proclaim the Gospel in its purity for as long as God gives us breath.
The gospel message we are called to share is too important to be intermingled with our own political notions. We owe Christ more than that.
My answer is, I don't know.
But I do think that we who are charged with the proclamation of the Gospel should refrain from being identified with particular political philosophies.
When we do so, we risk creating a false image of Jesus, turning Him into an idol made in our own images.
We also risk conveying the false impression to the world that God endorses a particular political point of view, alienating people from God unnecessarily.
The true Christian message will alienate people. Bank on it. Jesus said so more than once. Check out His words in Matthew 10:35-38, for example.
But unless a government commands us to sin or to engage in idolatry, such as happened in Nazi Germany or happens in despotic states today, there shouldn't be a whiff of politics in what the Church or Christian leaders say.
Individual Christians should be encouraged to be engaged in politics, whatever their philosophies. But the cause of Christ is too important to be made the hostage of politics.
My own denomination has made Jesus subordinate to liberal politics.
Other Christian leaders have portrayed Jesus as marching to a conservative politics.
Both notions are lies.
According to Pastor Ed Stetzer, an old saying has it right: When you mix politics and religion, you get politics. Politics is important. But only the faith commended by the Bible--faith that God in the flesh, Jesus Christ has died and risen so that all who turn from sin and believe in Him are reconciled with God, for now and for eternity--can change our lives.
And when the God we know in Christ changes our relationship with Him from enmity to friendship, He also will begin to transform the decisions we make and the reasons we make them. That includes political decisions.
Will God make us more conservative or more liberal?
The answer to that is probably, yes.
When you dare to put yourself in the hands of the sovereign God of the universe, give Him the freedom to take charge of your whole life, there's no way of predicting where He will lead you. It makes me think of the risen Jesus' words to Peter on how Peter's life would be changed by following Him: "Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).
Christians know that we are not in control. And that's a good thing, hard as it may sometimes be.
That's what we mean when we Christians pray subversively, as Jesus taught us to pray, "Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Our nation might not be in the state it's in, selfishness elevated to a paramount position, if the Church and Christian leaders were more committed to proclaiming the Gospel and less concerned about seeing their preferred candidates elected to office.
After all, we could be wrong about who to vote for.
But we will never be wrong in commending Jesus, "the Way, and the Truth, and the Life"!
So, I come back to the Times' original question. Were conservative Christians the big losers in last Tuesday's election? I hope so.
I hope equally fervently that liberal Christians were the big losers last Tuesday.
I hope that anyone who would dare to take a political position and claim, "Thus saith the Lord," got burnt so badly that they'll turn in repentance to the Lord, seek His forgiveness for trivializing the death and resurrection of Jesus, and pray that God will help all of us who bear Christ's Name to proclaim the Gospel in its purity for as long as God gives us breath.
The gospel message we are called to share is too important to be intermingled with our own political notions. We owe Christ more than that.
Called to Be Faithful, Not Stupid
This was just shared by Sundries over on Facebook. It made me laugh. But then it made me think.
And this was my comment:
But while I totally get the humor, the fact is that our call is to be faithful, not stupid.
And this was my comment:
Mightn't the pope traveling around unprotected be a bit like throwing one's self off the pinnacle of a temple [in the belief that God will always protect us from the consequences of our stupid decisions]?
Or refusing a blood transfusion because you think it denotes a lack of faith in God?
Seen in this light, the Popemobile is an implicit confession by every pope, "God is God and I'm not."
We live in a fallen world in which caution is warranted and isn't a sign of faithlessness.I know: I'm a party-pooper. (Or is that party-poper?)
But while I totally get the humor, the fact is that our call is to be faithful, not stupid.
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
An Election Day Reminder from God's Word
The psalm that many of us will be reading together this coming
Sunday, Psalm 146, is perfect for this election week! (Funny how often
God works out these "coincidences"!)
The psalm includes these lines:
It's only God Who can give us what we most need: forgiveness, life, and hope for today and for eternity.
The Bible makes it clear, of course, that the Christian's duty is to honor those holding the reins of political power.
Government leaders serve an important function in God's plans, battening down the chaos that would otherwise engulf the world when our sins against one another had the freedom to do its worst.
God appoints governments to coerce those unchanged by and resistant to the grace He gives through Jesus Christ to leave neighbors unmolested and to protect those who voluntarily accede to Christ as King of their lives. (Otherwise, Martin Luther once wrote, Christians would live in the world as hapless sheep among ravenous wolves.)
So, whoever is elected today should, according to the Bible, have the prayers and the loyalty of all Christians.
After all, if Jesus told His followers to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and if Peter and Paul, in the face of persecution, could tell Christians to pray for the emperors of a despotic Roman Empire, then we Christians in America today can surely pray for and honor the democratically elected leaders of a politically free country, whether we voted for them or not!
But the really important thing for Christians to remember today and every day is that, no matter how much we may like or dislike those elected to be our political leaders, it's stupid to put our hope in governments, politics, or leaders.
The God we know in Jesus Christ has become one of us, has died on the cross, and risen from the dead. He offers life to all who throw in with Him. The God we know in Jesus Christ will still be standing when the last king or president on earth has drawn a breath.
And if we will surrender our lives to Him, accepting His offer of forgiveness for all our sins and of new and everlasting lives to all who trust in Him, we can live in the confidence that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, given in Jesus Christ.
That's a lot more important than an election.
The psalm includes these lines:
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that day their plans perish.Who our president will be is far less important issue than Who our God will be.
Happy are they whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, Who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; Who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; Who gives food to the hungry. (Psalm 146:3-7)
It's only God Who can give us what we most need: forgiveness, life, and hope for today and for eternity.
The Bible makes it clear, of course, that the Christian's duty is to honor those holding the reins of political power.
Government leaders serve an important function in God's plans, battening down the chaos that would otherwise engulf the world when our sins against one another had the freedom to do its worst.
God appoints governments to coerce those unchanged by and resistant to the grace He gives through Jesus Christ to leave neighbors unmolested and to protect those who voluntarily accede to Christ as King of their lives. (Otherwise, Martin Luther once wrote, Christians would live in the world as hapless sheep among ravenous wolves.)
So, whoever is elected today should, according to the Bible, have the prayers and the loyalty of all Christians.
After all, if Jesus told His followers to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and if Peter and Paul, in the face of persecution, could tell Christians to pray for the emperors of a despotic Roman Empire, then we Christians in America today can surely pray for and honor the democratically elected leaders of a politically free country, whether we voted for them or not!
But the really important thing for Christians to remember today and every day is that, no matter how much we may like or dislike those elected to be our political leaders, it's stupid to put our hope in governments, politics, or leaders.
The God we know in Jesus Christ has become one of us, has died on the cross, and risen from the dead. He offers life to all who throw in with Him. The God we know in Jesus Christ will still be standing when the last king or president on earth has drawn a breath.
And if we will surrender our lives to Him, accepting His offer of forgiveness for all our sins and of new and everlasting lives to all who trust in Him, we can live in the confidence that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, given in Jesus Christ.
That's a lot more important than an election.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Let's Go to the Ohio History Center
My wife and I are on vacation this week. We were supposed to go to France. But we had to change our plans. (More about that another time.) So, we're just taking it easy and going on day trips.
Today, we went to the Ohio History Center in Columbus. It houses the main museum and offices of the Ohio Historical Society.
If you've never been to the center or if, as was true for us, it's been a few years since you last visited, I think that you would love to see it!
To tell the truth, the place looked a bit haggard the last time we were there. But, as soon as we walked through the entrance today, it was apparent that the new OHS director has made some changes. The center didn't look at all fusty and it's less cluttered and more enticing than ever.
Ann and I wanted to see several temporary exhibits going on at the center right now. Two of them were especially good!
One is The War of 1812: Ohio on the Frontline.
This may not seem like a very sexy topic. But, even granting that I'm a history nerd, the war was an important event and not just because it was while being held captive by the British that Francis Scott Key composed The Star-Spangled Banner. Many historians believe that the independence of the infant United States from Great Britain, tenuous up to that point, was finally won by the War of 1812.
And many of the most critical battles of the war occurred either in Ohio or close to its shores on Lake Erie.
Among the most interesting items on display were gifts given by native Americans to General Anthony Wayne. Wayne was the commander of US forces at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which occurred in northwest Ohio. Among the items were a wampum and a peace pipe.
Despite how well the War of 1812 turned out for the United States, it was an imbecilic conflict for the country to enter. Were it not for the fact that the Brits were also then involved in a war with Napoleon's France, the War of 1812 would almost certainly have resulted in a crushing defeat for the States and the reestablishment of British rule over the country.
One person who didn't want to go to war at the time was Thomas Worthington, the father of Ohio statehood and founder of the Ohio town in which we live these days, Logan. Worthington was serving in the US Senate when the US declared war on Britain. But he voted against the declaration, viewing the conflict as suicidal and unnecessary. Despite his misgivings though, Worthington served as a general in the conflict.
By the way, two books I recommend for getting a good understanding of the War of 1812 and the pros and cons of entering the conflict are James Madison (The American Presidents Series) by Garry Wills and Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio Statehood by Alfred Byron Sears.
A second temporary exhibit at the Ohio History Center is Controversy 2: Pieces We Don't Talk About. As the OHS website explains, this exhibit:
And if that's not disturbing enough, there also is a set of Currier and Ives prints that are grotesquely racist.
The exhibit is clearly designed to help people understand the stupidity and the destructiveness of prejudice. After walking among the displayed items, visitors come to a round open area on the walls of which are enlarged photographs of the items, hanging next to large writing pads on which visitors can write their reactions to what they've seen.
We enjoyed looking around the center's permanent exhibit areas, too. I loved seeing this Crosley automobile engineered by Powell Crosley, Jr.'s company in Cincinnati, more well known for its radios, refrigerators, and broadcast interests (starting with WLW) than its cars. I would love to have this little car or get the chance to ride in one! (You can read about the Crosleys here, the site of the Crosley Automobile Club, which has its annual gathering at the Fulton County Fairgrounds in Wauseon, in northwest Ohio.)
And, while there, we just had to see Conway, the mastodon. (He's hard to miss.)
And Ann said she needed to get this pic of me on an old Columbus streetcar.
Fun! And educational. The two things aren't mutually exclusive, you know!
Here's more on what you can see at the History Center.
Today, we went to the Ohio History Center in Columbus. It houses the main museum and offices of the Ohio Historical Society.
If you've never been to the center or if, as was true for us, it's been a few years since you last visited, I think that you would love to see it!
To tell the truth, the place looked a bit haggard the last time we were there. But, as soon as we walked through the entrance today, it was apparent that the new OHS director has made some changes. The center didn't look at all fusty and it's less cluttered and more enticing than ever.
Ann and I wanted to see several temporary exhibits going on at the center right now. Two of them were especially good!
One is The War of 1812: Ohio on the Frontline.
This may not seem like a very sexy topic. But, even granting that I'm a history nerd, the war was an important event and not just because it was while being held captive by the British that Francis Scott Key composed The Star-Spangled Banner. Many historians believe that the independence of the infant United States from Great Britain, tenuous up to that point, was finally won by the War of 1812.
And many of the most critical battles of the war occurred either in Ohio or close to its shores on Lake Erie.
Among the most interesting items on display were gifts given by native Americans to General Anthony Wayne. Wayne was the commander of US forces at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which occurred in northwest Ohio. Among the items were a wampum and a peace pipe.
Despite how well the War of 1812 turned out for the United States, it was an imbecilic conflict for the country to enter. Were it not for the fact that the Brits were also then involved in a war with Napoleon's France, the War of 1812 would almost certainly have resulted in a crushing defeat for the States and the reestablishment of British rule over the country.
One person who didn't want to go to war at the time was Thomas Worthington, the father of Ohio statehood and founder of the Ohio town in which we live these days, Logan. Worthington was serving in the US Senate when the US declared war on Britain. But he voted against the declaration, viewing the conflict as suicidal and unnecessary. Despite his misgivings though, Worthington served as a general in the conflict.
By the way, two books I recommend for getting a good understanding of the War of 1812 and the pros and cons of entering the conflict are James Madison (The American Presidents Series) by Garry Wills and Thomas Worthington: Father of Ohio Statehood by Alfred Byron Sears.
A second temporary exhibit at the Ohio History Center is Controversy 2: Pieces We Don't Talk About. As the OHS website explains, this exhibit:
...invites guests to explore...race stereotypes from a historical perspective. In 'Controversy 2: Pieces We Don’t Talk About', visitors are encouraged to reflect on how stereotypes influence personal identity.Among the items in the exhibit is a handmade set of bowling pins, each pin depicting a disparaging stereotype of various races and ethnic groups.
And if that's not disturbing enough, there also is a set of Currier and Ives prints that are grotesquely racist.
The exhibit is clearly designed to help people understand the stupidity and the destructiveness of prejudice. After walking among the displayed items, visitors come to a round open area on the walls of which are enlarged photographs of the items, hanging next to large writing pads on which visitors can write their reactions to what they've seen.
We enjoyed looking around the center's permanent exhibit areas, too. I loved seeing this Crosley automobile engineered by Powell Crosley, Jr.'s company in Cincinnati, more well known for its radios, refrigerators, and broadcast interests (starting with WLW) than its cars. I would love to have this little car or get the chance to ride in one! (You can read about the Crosleys here, the site of the Crosley Automobile Club, which has its annual gathering at the Fulton County Fairgrounds in Wauseon, in northwest Ohio.)
And, while there, we just had to see Conway, the mastodon. (He's hard to miss.)
And Ann said she needed to get this pic of me on an old Columbus streetcar.
Here's more on what you can see at the History Center.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Can You Handle the Truth?
[This is the sermon prepared for this morning's 10:15 worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Today, we celebrated one of my favorite days in the Church Year, Reformation Sunday. To learn more about Reformation Sunday, go here.]
John 8:31-36
I’ve never seen A Few Good Men, but like most people I’m familiar with one of its most famous scenes. Tom Cruise’s character yells with Marine bravado, “I want the truth!” And Jack Nicholson, on the stand, replies with even more Marine bravado, “You can’t handle the truth!”
Today’s gospel lesson asks us, “Can you handle the truth?”
The people with whom Jesus speaks in today’s lesson couldn’t.
Please turn to the lesson, John 8:31-36.
In verse 31, we read: “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.”
Truth number one, which seems to elude the people to whom Jesus is speaking, is that believing in Jesus is more than just reciting the Creed.
This is Reformation Sunday. We celebrate the simple act of a priest, monk, and Bible scholar, Martin Luther, on All Saints’ Eve (Hallowe'en), October 31, 1517, when, to the church door in Wittenberg, he nailed ninety-five theses for debate among clergy and scholars.
Luther challenged the prevailing teachings of the Church of his day, eventually unleashing a movement that pointed to the central teaching of the Bible that unrighteous, sinful human beings are made right with God not by engaging in good works, religious acts, or giving the most money to the church, but by the charity (or grace of God) through faith in Jesus Christ.
To be saved from the common human ills of sin, death, and futility, we must believe in God the Word, Who lived and died and rose among us and for us: Jesus Christ.
That’s good news!
But the truth is that believing in Jesus is more than the recitation of words or showing up for a church function.
Belief in Jesus is entrusting my whole life to Him, acceding to His total authority over my life, giving Him the first and the last word in all our decisions.
To believe in Jesus, Jesus says, is to “abide in His Word,” to live and draw our very being from Him.
Because it so decimates our pretenses of self-sufficiency, the good news of Jesus is also a tough truth.
And most people can’t handle it!
But Jesus isn’t done. Look at what He says in verse 32: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
This verse is widely quoted and almost always misunderstood.
It’s chiseled into the marble on the front face of the Law School at Ohio State as if Jesus were saying, “If you know the facts, you’ll be free people.”
That is NOT what Jesus is talking about at all!
This only shows that most of the people who misapply what Jesus says here are as confused as the Roman governor, Pilate, was when he presided over Jesus’ illegal capital trial and asked Jesus, “What is truth?”
Please turn to John 14:6. You’ve heard this passage quoted many times, too. “Jesus said to [Thomas], ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
And look also to John 1:14, part of the prologue or introduction to the gospel of John. It calls Jesus the Word, God the Son, and tells us: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Truth #2: Jesus is the foundational Truth on which the entire universe is built.
The universe is not as it should be because it is out of sync with Jesus the Truth.
But Jesus says that as we stay connected with Him, daily repenting of our sins, praying in His Name, reading His Word, fellowshipping with His people, and living under His grace alone, we will know the truth, we will know Him, and He will set us free.
Jesus’ original hearers, fellow residents of Judea who had come to believe in Jesus, could not handle any talk of their needing freedom. In verse 33, they protest: “They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will be made free?’”
Jesus may have been tempted to laugh out loud at this. The whole history of the descendants of Abraham--the Hebrews, Jews, Israelites, or Judeans--had been filled with their enslavement and subjugation under other peoples. In fact, except for a brief period between 140 and 63 BC, about seventy-seven years, God’s people had been slaves of other people for centuries!
The group to whom Jesus is speaking seem to forget about that 430 year stint of slavery in Egypt or the fact that even then, at that very moment, they lived under the dominion of the Roman Empire.
If we’re tempted to laugh at their denial, we might want to check that impulse.
All of us seem to be fully equipped with the capacity to not see the obvious truths about our lives that we don’t want to see. Whether the object of their addiction is alcohol, drugs, gambling, or pornography, a common first response when confronted by loved ones is to deny their slavery. “I’m not addicted,” they’ll say. “I can quit any time.”
We all tend to respond similarly when confronted with our faults. An old Jackson Browne song puts our attitudes well, “Don’t remind me of my failures/I had not forgotten them.”
We don’t want to hear about the truth about our slavery.
But what are we slaves to?
Jesus doesn’t mince words in expressing truth #3. Look at verse 34: “Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you [in the Greek in which John originally wrote, Jesus is quoted as starting out here, “Amen, amen!” Amen, amen. It is so. It is so. That means you can bank on what He’s about to say.], whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.’”
This is the unpleasant truth the human race does not want to hear. Some months ago, the Columbus Dispatch carried the story of a woman long applauded for her work with a local charity but who, it was found, had stolen thousands of dollars from the charity. At first she took small amounts, but eventually she was taking huge chunks of cash. She was a slave to sin.
Lest we simply tsk-tsk about this woman, remember that Psalm 51:5 and the whole Bible tells us that we are born in sin. Sin is the condition of alienation from God and from other human beings, the enslavement to ourselves and our own desires that blocks out true, open, loving relationships with God and with others, that we’re talking about when we say in our confession together that “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”
From this condition of sin, we naturally commit sins. And, as we all know, the more we commit a sin, the easier it becomes to commit the same sin again: whether it’s gossiping, actively entertaining lustful thoughts about persons other than our wives or husbands, engaging in financial sleight of hand, or whatever our favorite violation of the Ten Commandments might be.
We do not, by nature, love God or love others. We are slaves to sin. And it’s from this slavery that Jesus came into the world to free us.
Now look at what Jesus says next, in verses 35 of our gospel lesson: “And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.”
Under the prevailing inheritance laws of first-century Judea, the son inherited all that his father left behind. The slaves had no property and no rights to the inheritance. There was nothing they could do about their circumstance. They would spend their entire lives as slaves.
Left to our own devices, sinners would have no hope of anything but eternal condemnation. Hard truth #4 isn’t specifically mentioned here, but if Jesus is speaking it to Jews who believed in Him, the first Christians, it’s true for you and me as well, and it’s truth that’s mentioned in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
We are all slaves who can’t free ourselves, who deserve death, as Romans 6:23 reminds us: “the wages of sin is death.” Death is what we deserve for our sin, a hard truth to handle!
Thank God for the promise that Jesus makes in verse 36 of our lesson: “...if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
When we turn from sin and turn to Jesus, when we trust Him to take our sins on His shoulders, He crucifies our old sinful selves and sets us free from their power.
Martin Luther, as you know, said that on Judgment Day, God will look out over two seas of people, both groups composed entirely of sinners.
But one group will stand naked in their sins, having chosen sin over salvation by their refusal to repent for sin and believe in Jesus. By their refusal to believe in Jesus, they will have chosen condemnation, an earthly lifetime and an eternity spent in a chosen exile from the God Who made and loved them.
But, Luther pointed out, God will also look out over another group of sinners. Because of their faith in Jesus, it isn’t them God will see. They will be clothed in the forgiveness and new life Jesus gave to them and that they received by faith in Christ.
“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the greatest truth of all, the truth that can set us free to be our better selves now and our best selves in eternity!
I recently read about the large number of emigres from Iran (Persia) who, in some German Lutheran congregations, are leaving the Muslim religion and coming to faith in Jesus Christ.
These Persians are making public profession of their faith in spite of the fact that in many of their ethnic enclaves, their fellow Persians enforce Muslim sharia law, which says that if Muslims become Christians, they must be killed.
Why would these converts risk their lives to abide in Jesus and be His disciples?
One convert to Christianity explained, “In this [Lutheran] congregation, I heard for the first time that God is a loving Father who desires a personal relationship with every human being. This was news to me, because Islam had taught me...[that] God [is] a distant deity...”
The fact that God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us and that this God took on human flesh in order to die for our sins and rise again in order to secure that relationship for now and all eternity for all who believe in Jesus Christ is the good news on which the Reformation was built.
It’s also the good news on which we can build our lives.
Those who build their lives on Christ will find that God is a mighty fortress, “a sword and shield victorious”!
That is a truth we can not only handle, but celebrate, today and forever!
Amen!
John 8:31-36
I’ve never seen A Few Good Men, but like most people I’m familiar with one of its most famous scenes. Tom Cruise’s character yells with Marine bravado, “I want the truth!” And Jack Nicholson, on the stand, replies with even more Marine bravado, “You can’t handle the truth!”
Today’s gospel lesson asks us, “Can you handle the truth?”
The people with whom Jesus speaks in today’s lesson couldn’t.
Please turn to the lesson, John 8:31-36.
In verse 31, we read: “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.”
Truth number one, which seems to elude the people to whom Jesus is speaking, is that believing in Jesus is more than just reciting the Creed.
This is Reformation Sunday. We celebrate the simple act of a priest, monk, and Bible scholar, Martin Luther, on All Saints’ Eve (Hallowe'en), October 31, 1517, when, to the church door in Wittenberg, he nailed ninety-five theses for debate among clergy and scholars.
Luther challenged the prevailing teachings of the Church of his day, eventually unleashing a movement that pointed to the central teaching of the Bible that unrighteous, sinful human beings are made right with God not by engaging in good works, religious acts, or giving the most money to the church, but by the charity (or grace of God) through faith in Jesus Christ.
To be saved from the common human ills of sin, death, and futility, we must believe in God the Word, Who lived and died and rose among us and for us: Jesus Christ.
That’s good news!
But the truth is that believing in Jesus is more than the recitation of words or showing up for a church function.
Belief in Jesus is entrusting my whole life to Him, acceding to His total authority over my life, giving Him the first and the last word in all our decisions.
To believe in Jesus, Jesus says, is to “abide in His Word,” to live and draw our very being from Him.
Because it so decimates our pretenses of self-sufficiency, the good news of Jesus is also a tough truth.
And most people can’t handle it!
But Jesus isn’t done. Look at what He says in verse 32: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
This verse is widely quoted and almost always misunderstood.
It’s chiseled into the marble on the front face of the Law School at Ohio State as if Jesus were saying, “If you know the facts, you’ll be free people.”
That is NOT what Jesus is talking about at all!
This only shows that most of the people who misapply what Jesus says here are as confused as the Roman governor, Pilate, was when he presided over Jesus’ illegal capital trial and asked Jesus, “What is truth?”
Please turn to John 14:6. You’ve heard this passage quoted many times, too. “Jesus said to [Thomas], ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
And look also to John 1:14, part of the prologue or introduction to the gospel of John. It calls Jesus the Word, God the Son, and tells us: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Truth #2: Jesus is the foundational Truth on which the entire universe is built.
The universe is not as it should be because it is out of sync with Jesus the Truth.
But Jesus says that as we stay connected with Him, daily repenting of our sins, praying in His Name, reading His Word, fellowshipping with His people, and living under His grace alone, we will know the truth, we will know Him, and He will set us free.
Jesus’ original hearers, fellow residents of Judea who had come to believe in Jesus, could not handle any talk of their needing freedom. In verse 33, they protest: “They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will be made free?’”
Jesus may have been tempted to laugh out loud at this. The whole history of the descendants of Abraham--the Hebrews, Jews, Israelites, or Judeans--had been filled with their enslavement and subjugation under other peoples. In fact, except for a brief period between 140 and 63 BC, about seventy-seven years, God’s people had been slaves of other people for centuries!
The group to whom Jesus is speaking seem to forget about that 430 year stint of slavery in Egypt or the fact that even then, at that very moment, they lived under the dominion of the Roman Empire.
If we’re tempted to laugh at their denial, we might want to check that impulse.
All of us seem to be fully equipped with the capacity to not see the obvious truths about our lives that we don’t want to see. Whether the object of their addiction is alcohol, drugs, gambling, or pornography, a common first response when confronted by loved ones is to deny their slavery. “I’m not addicted,” they’ll say. “I can quit any time.”
We all tend to respond similarly when confronted with our faults. An old Jackson Browne song puts our attitudes well, “Don’t remind me of my failures/I had not forgotten them.”
We don’t want to hear about the truth about our slavery.
But what are we slaves to?
Jesus doesn’t mince words in expressing truth #3. Look at verse 34: “Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you [in the Greek in which John originally wrote, Jesus is quoted as starting out here, “Amen, amen!” Amen, amen. It is so. It is so. That means you can bank on what He’s about to say.], whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.’”
This is the unpleasant truth the human race does not want to hear. Some months ago, the Columbus Dispatch carried the story of a woman long applauded for her work with a local charity but who, it was found, had stolen thousands of dollars from the charity. At first she took small amounts, but eventually she was taking huge chunks of cash. She was a slave to sin.
Lest we simply tsk-tsk about this woman, remember that Psalm 51:5 and the whole Bible tells us that we are born in sin. Sin is the condition of alienation from God and from other human beings, the enslavement to ourselves and our own desires that blocks out true, open, loving relationships with God and with others, that we’re talking about when we say in our confession together that “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”
From this condition of sin, we naturally commit sins. And, as we all know, the more we commit a sin, the easier it becomes to commit the same sin again: whether it’s gossiping, actively entertaining lustful thoughts about persons other than our wives or husbands, engaging in financial sleight of hand, or whatever our favorite violation of the Ten Commandments might be.
We do not, by nature, love God or love others. We are slaves to sin. And it’s from this slavery that Jesus came into the world to free us.
Now look at what Jesus says next, in verses 35 of our gospel lesson: “And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.”
Under the prevailing inheritance laws of first-century Judea, the son inherited all that his father left behind. The slaves had no property and no rights to the inheritance. There was nothing they could do about their circumstance. They would spend their entire lives as slaves.
Left to our own devices, sinners would have no hope of anything but eternal condemnation. Hard truth #4 isn’t specifically mentioned here, but if Jesus is speaking it to Jews who believed in Him, the first Christians, it’s true for you and me as well, and it’s truth that’s mentioned in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
We are all slaves who can’t free ourselves, who deserve death, as Romans 6:23 reminds us: “the wages of sin is death.” Death is what we deserve for our sin, a hard truth to handle!
Thank God for the promise that Jesus makes in verse 36 of our lesson: “...if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
When we turn from sin and turn to Jesus, when we trust Him to take our sins on His shoulders, He crucifies our old sinful selves and sets us free from their power.
Martin Luther, as you know, said that on Judgment Day, God will look out over two seas of people, both groups composed entirely of sinners.
But one group will stand naked in their sins, having chosen sin over salvation by their refusal to repent for sin and believe in Jesus. By their refusal to believe in Jesus, they will have chosen condemnation, an earthly lifetime and an eternity spent in a chosen exile from the God Who made and loved them.
But, Luther pointed out, God will also look out over another group of sinners. Because of their faith in Jesus, it isn’t them God will see. They will be clothed in the forgiveness and new life Jesus gave to them and that they received by faith in Christ.
“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the greatest truth of all, the truth that can set us free to be our better selves now and our best selves in eternity!
I recently read about the large number of emigres from Iran (Persia) who, in some German Lutheran congregations, are leaving the Muslim religion and coming to faith in Jesus Christ.
These Persians are making public profession of their faith in spite of the fact that in many of their ethnic enclaves, their fellow Persians enforce Muslim sharia law, which says that if Muslims become Christians, they must be killed.
Why would these converts risk their lives to abide in Jesus and be His disciples?
One convert to Christianity explained, “In this [Lutheran] congregation, I heard for the first time that God is a loving Father who desires a personal relationship with every human being. This was news to me, because Islam had taught me...[that] God [is] a distant deity...”
The fact that God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us and that this God took on human flesh in order to die for our sins and rise again in order to secure that relationship for now and all eternity for all who believe in Jesus Christ is the good news on which the Reformation was built.
It’s also the good news on which we can build our lives.
Those who build their lives on Christ will find that God is a mighty fortress, “a sword and shield victorious”!
That is a truth we can not only handle, but celebrate, today and forever!
Amen!
Monday, October 22, 2012
Always a Reason to Be Thankful!
Sometimes, in my disappointments and adversities, it's hard to remember that, no matter what happens to me, I have reason to always be thankful. That's why today's installment from Our Daily Bread was so good for me to read. Here's the link to it.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
The Emptiness of Power, the Power of Surrender
[This is sort of the sermon shared today at the 10:15 worship service of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.]
Mark 10:35-45
From the moment we’re born, there’s an issue that takes front and center in our lives: Who will be in charge?
Born in sin, we’re born craving power. Like Adam and Eve, we want to “be like God.”
I once heard the story of a father who took his six year old daughter to a high school basketball game. As they took their seats, the dad told her, “Now, honey, you can go anywhere you want here in the seating area. You can also go to the concession stands. You can go all the way down to the very first row of seats to talk with your friends. But you can’t cross that line down there. That’s the line between where we’re allowed to be on this side and the place where the players, coaches, and referees can be on the other side. If you cross that line, we’ll go home.”
The little girl said she understood, then promptly went down to the edge of the line her father had told her not to cross, looked back to make certain that he was watching, and stuck her toe over the line. Dad collected daughter and they went home. Her attempt to assert power without accountability failed.
Please turn to the lesson, Mark 10:35-45. Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem. Jesus knows that there, He’ll be rejected and crucified before rising from the dead.
But the disciples, thick as ever, are excited. They’ve come to believe, rightly, that Jesus is God’s promised Messiah (the Christ). But their idea of what that means is different from God’s idea.
They’re sure that Jesus will enter Jerusalem, get the crowds riled up, toss the Romans out of power, and establish Himself as the King of renewed Israel. And they’re sure that as Jesus loyalists they’ll get a piece of Jesus’ power, ruling alongside Him.
They think these things even though Jesus had already told them that the Messiah would be a suffering servant and that only those who submit to the deaths of their old selves, trusting Christ to lead them through the ultimate cross we all must endure, physical death, onto a resurrection life with Him, can experience the kingdom of God.
In Mark 10:32-34, Jesus tells them all of these things again. After Jesus’ two previous predictions of His death and resurrection, one or all of the disciples put their feet in their mouths. They just didn’t seem to understand what Jesus was telling them so clearly.
Why?
Scholars have suggested many explanations for the disciples’ thickness. But for me, one explanation stands above them all: They felt the strong magnetic pull of power.
The disciples had experienced Jesus as a powerful person, one who could make the lame walk, the blind see, the dead rise. They wanted a share in His power to set things right.
And for them, setting things right meant throwing out their Roman oppressors, toppling the religious elites, making the country happy with all the material wealth they could ever imagine.
They didn’t understand that Jesus was playing for much higher stakes than ruling over a world dying in sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, had come to turn this world upside down, to call sinners to repent for their sin, and give their whole lives to Him so that He could give a new and everlasting life in a new and everlasting creation to all who believe in Him.
Jesus came into the world to put us and the whole creation, weighed down by the decay and death unleashed by human sin, right with God, in sync with God, at peace with God and His original intentions for His creation.
That goal is a lot more important to Jesus than a piddly thing like leading a country which, like all countries, will burn at the final judgment.
Jesus is going to Jerusalem not to take control of the first century Judean equivalent of the White House. He’s going to take a cross and, as New Testament scholar N.T. Wright points out, the cross isn’t just the way God forgives our sins
In the opening verse of our lesson, two brothers, James and John, approach Jesus: “Teacher, we want you to give us whatever we ask.” These two sons of a wealthy fisherman named Zebedee want Jesus to give them a blank check. “Give us whatever we want,” they say.
But Jesus doesn’t fall for that. “What do you want me to do for you?” He asks them, knowing exactly what’s coming. Verse 37 has their request: They want seats of power in Jesus’ kingdom.
Jesus responds, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Jesus’ words here are filled with deep meaning. In the Old Testament, the image of drinking from a cup symbolized taking punishment for evil. “Drinking the cup” was a way of saying, “Receiving God’s judgment for sin.” Psalm 11:6 says: “Upon the wicked [God] will rain coals, fire and brimstone and a burning wind shall be the portion of their cup.”
Jesus was telling James and John that He was going to drink from the cup of condemnation for human sin that He didn’t deserve in order to save us from sin and death.
Jesus knew how bitter the cup would be. That’s why later, in the garden of Gethsemane, before His arrest, He would pray, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me...” But then, Jesus would pray, “Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”
Jesus would drink from the cup. And He requires all who follow Him to drink it too: We drink it when we admit our sins and our need of Christ to save us, when we confess our faith in Jesus as the only way for us to be saved, the only way for us to enter God’s kingdom today and in eternity.
Jesus’ baptism was His cross. Our baptism is the death of the old self that rises from the water as children of God and is crucified each day in the self-disciplined way of life known as daily repentance and renewal.
It isn’t easy following Jesus. It entails the death of our selfish old Adams and Eves, the renunciation of power, and the commitment to serve and love God and others. All of this is foreign to our natures and can only be accomplished through the grace and empowerment of God!
In verse 39, James and John say that, of course, they can drink the cup from which Jesus will drink and endure the baptism with which He will be baptized. Jesus tells them that, in fact, if they are intent on following Him, they will drink the cup. They will be judged by the world and suffer for their faith in Him. And, in fact, James would become the first of the twelve apostles to be executed for believing in Jesus. His brother John would die an old man, living in exile on the island of Patmos for that same faith.
We live in a country in which you can’t be killed just for being a Christian. (Though you can be ridiculed and excluded for it, all in the name of tolerance.)
But, because we belong to a King Who has conquered sin and death, no matter what happens to us for following Jesus--shady business deals we have to turn down, friendships we may lose, power we may give up, we can say with the apostle Paul who, as he pondered his own death, wrote, “...to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
Jesus tells James and John that He can’t promise them higher places in His kingdom and Jesus doesn’t promise that to us either. Just being in God’s kingdom, not because we deserve it but because Jesus died and rose to make a way for us should be enough for anyone.
Whether Jesus calls a person to be a pope, president, king, stay-at-home mom, factory worker, or shoeshine boy, if she or he can live each moment on earth as a follower of Christ and live each day in the certainty that they will spend eternity in His presence, it is enough. It’s all any of us need!
Now, the other apostles hear James and John’s cheeky request for power and, seeming not to hear Jesus’ words to them, become incensed with the Zebedee brothers. On the brink of a presidential election, the results of which will not put our world right or put those who don’t know Christ right with God, no matter who wins, Jesus’ words are important to remember. They put things in perspective. Read what Jesus says in verses 42-45 with me aloud, please:
The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s intentions for us. But all who believe in Jesus Christ don’t get what we deserve. We deserve death. Instead, we get what our servant King Jesus fought to give us by resisting the easy path, the offer of earthly power. Jesus died a criminal’s death for us so that He could rise and give us life with God that begins now and is perfected in eternity.
I’m almost 59 and I’ve been a pastor for 28 years. But I’ve only begun to learn the lesson Jesus teaches in today’s gospel lesson. We are not in control. (Since I have children, I should have known that already. But I’m a slow learner.) For me, after a lifetime of secretly wanting to be the BMOE (Big Man on Earth), the realization that I don’t need to be in charge to have good life with God has come as a relief!
From a cross and an empty tomb, Jesus Christ has paid the price for us to receive the gift of new and everlasting life. We don’t need to carry the world on our shoulders. We need not bear the burden for seeing that everything is just right. Our job is to simply do our best and then let God bless our mess!
If you’re burdened by a need to keep everything together, I hope that this comes as a freeing word for you today.
Follow our servant king Jesus by letting yourself be a servant yourself--a servant of God and a servant of others.
Trust your life to Christ alone.
Let His power fill you, inspire you, give you peace and hope.
Even when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus will always lead you the right way.
He will give you so much more than the things that power in this dying world possibly can.
He will give you life with God.
There is no greater blessing that we can aspire to than that. Amen
Mark 10:35-45
From the moment we’re born, there’s an issue that takes front and center in our lives: Who will be in charge?
Born in sin, we’re born craving power. Like Adam and Eve, we want to “be like God.”
I once heard the story of a father who took his six year old daughter to a high school basketball game. As they took their seats, the dad told her, “Now, honey, you can go anywhere you want here in the seating area. You can also go to the concession stands. You can go all the way down to the very first row of seats to talk with your friends. But you can’t cross that line down there. That’s the line between where we’re allowed to be on this side and the place where the players, coaches, and referees can be on the other side. If you cross that line, we’ll go home.”
The little girl said she understood, then promptly went down to the edge of the line her father had told her not to cross, looked back to make certain that he was watching, and stuck her toe over the line. Dad collected daughter and they went home. Her attempt to assert power without accountability failed.
Please turn to the lesson, Mark 10:35-45. Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem. Jesus knows that there, He’ll be rejected and crucified before rising from the dead.
But the disciples, thick as ever, are excited. They’ve come to believe, rightly, that Jesus is God’s promised Messiah (the Christ). But their idea of what that means is different from God’s idea.
They’re sure that Jesus will enter Jerusalem, get the crowds riled up, toss the Romans out of power, and establish Himself as the King of renewed Israel. And they’re sure that as Jesus loyalists they’ll get a piece of Jesus’ power, ruling alongside Him.
They think these things even though Jesus had already told them that the Messiah would be a suffering servant and that only those who submit to the deaths of their old selves, trusting Christ to lead them through the ultimate cross we all must endure, physical death, onto a resurrection life with Him, can experience the kingdom of God.
In Mark 10:32-34, Jesus tells them all of these things again. After Jesus’ two previous predictions of His death and resurrection, one or all of the disciples put their feet in their mouths. They just didn’t seem to understand what Jesus was telling them so clearly.
Why?
Scholars have suggested many explanations for the disciples’ thickness. But for me, one explanation stands above them all: They felt the strong magnetic pull of power.
The disciples had experienced Jesus as a powerful person, one who could make the lame walk, the blind see, the dead rise. They wanted a share in His power to set things right.
And for them, setting things right meant throwing out their Roman oppressors, toppling the religious elites, making the country happy with all the material wealth they could ever imagine.
They didn’t understand that Jesus was playing for much higher stakes than ruling over a world dying in sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, had come to turn this world upside down, to call sinners to repent for their sin, and give their whole lives to Him so that He could give a new and everlasting life in a new and everlasting creation to all who believe in Him.
Jesus came into the world to put us and the whole creation, weighed down by the decay and death unleashed by human sin, right with God, in sync with God, at peace with God and His original intentions for His creation.
That goal is a lot more important to Jesus than a piddly thing like leading a country which, like all countries, will burn at the final judgment.
Jesus is going to Jerusalem not to take control of the first century Judean equivalent of the White House. He’s going to take a cross and, as New Testament scholar N.T. Wright points out, the cross isn’t just the way God forgives our sins
...it is God’s way of putting the world, and ourselves, to rights. It challenges all the human systems which claim to put the world to rights but in fact only succeed in bringing a different set of humans on top.So, after this third prediction of His death and resurrection, Jesus knew what to expect. At least one of the disciples would surely open mouth and insert foot. They would misunderstand and they would let the human desire for power prevail in their thinking.
In the opening verse of our lesson, two brothers, James and John, approach Jesus: “Teacher, we want you to give us whatever we ask.” These two sons of a wealthy fisherman named Zebedee want Jesus to give them a blank check. “Give us whatever we want,” they say.
But Jesus doesn’t fall for that. “What do you want me to do for you?” He asks them, knowing exactly what’s coming. Verse 37 has their request: They want seats of power in Jesus’ kingdom.
Jesus responds, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Jesus’ words here are filled with deep meaning. In the Old Testament, the image of drinking from a cup symbolized taking punishment for evil. “Drinking the cup” was a way of saying, “Receiving God’s judgment for sin.” Psalm 11:6 says: “Upon the wicked [God] will rain coals, fire and brimstone and a burning wind shall be the portion of their cup.”
Jesus was telling James and John that He was going to drink from the cup of condemnation for human sin that He didn’t deserve in order to save us from sin and death.
Jesus knew how bitter the cup would be. That’s why later, in the garden of Gethsemane, before His arrest, He would pray, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me...” But then, Jesus would pray, “Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”
Jesus would drink from the cup. And He requires all who follow Him to drink it too: We drink it when we admit our sins and our need of Christ to save us, when we confess our faith in Jesus as the only way for us to be saved, the only way for us to enter God’s kingdom today and in eternity.
Jesus’ baptism was His cross. Our baptism is the death of the old self that rises from the water as children of God and is crucified each day in the self-disciplined way of life known as daily repentance and renewal.
It isn’t easy following Jesus. It entails the death of our selfish old Adams and Eves, the renunciation of power, and the commitment to serve and love God and others. All of this is foreign to our natures and can only be accomplished through the grace and empowerment of God!
In verse 39, James and John say that, of course, they can drink the cup from which Jesus will drink and endure the baptism with which He will be baptized. Jesus tells them that, in fact, if they are intent on following Him, they will drink the cup. They will be judged by the world and suffer for their faith in Him. And, in fact, James would become the first of the twelve apostles to be executed for believing in Jesus. His brother John would die an old man, living in exile on the island of Patmos for that same faith.
We live in a country in which you can’t be killed just for being a Christian. (Though you can be ridiculed and excluded for it, all in the name of tolerance.)
But, because we belong to a King Who has conquered sin and death, no matter what happens to us for following Jesus--shady business deals we have to turn down, friendships we may lose, power we may give up, we can say with the apostle Paul who, as he pondered his own death, wrote, “...to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
Jesus tells James and John that He can’t promise them higher places in His kingdom and Jesus doesn’t promise that to us either. Just being in God’s kingdom, not because we deserve it but because Jesus died and rose to make a way for us should be enough for anyone.
Whether Jesus calls a person to be a pope, president, king, stay-at-home mom, factory worker, or shoeshine boy, if she or he can live each moment on earth as a follower of Christ and live each day in the certainty that they will spend eternity in His presence, it is enough. It’s all any of us need!
Now, the other apostles hear James and John’s cheeky request for power and, seeming not to hear Jesus’ words to them, become incensed with the Zebedee brothers. On the brink of a presidential election, the results of which will not put our world right or put those who don’t know Christ right with God, no matter who wins, Jesus’ words are important to remember. They put things in perspective. Read what Jesus says in verses 42-45 with me aloud, please:
But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them: "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to be great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.”True power that changes the world--that changes us--comes from only one place. It comes from Jesus Christ and it only comes to those who empty themselves of all pretense to deserving special privileges or even a fair shot in life.
The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s intentions for us. But all who believe in Jesus Christ don’t get what we deserve. We deserve death. Instead, we get what our servant King Jesus fought to give us by resisting the easy path, the offer of earthly power. Jesus died a criminal’s death for us so that He could rise and give us life with God that begins now and is perfected in eternity.
I’m almost 59 and I’ve been a pastor for 28 years. But I’ve only begun to learn the lesson Jesus teaches in today’s gospel lesson. We are not in control. (Since I have children, I should have known that already. But I’m a slow learner.) For me, after a lifetime of secretly wanting to be the BMOE (Big Man on Earth), the realization that I don’t need to be in charge to have good life with God has come as a relief!
From a cross and an empty tomb, Jesus Christ has paid the price for us to receive the gift of new and everlasting life. We don’t need to carry the world on our shoulders. We need not bear the burden for seeing that everything is just right. Our job is to simply do our best and then let God bless our mess!
If you’re burdened by a need to keep everything together, I hope that this comes as a freeing word for you today.
Follow our servant king Jesus by letting yourself be a servant yourself--a servant of God and a servant of others.
Trust your life to Christ alone.
Let His power fill you, inspire you, give you peace and hope.
Even when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus will always lead you the right way.
He will give you so much more than the things that power in this dying world possibly can.
He will give you life with God.
There is no greater blessing that we can aspire to than that. Amen
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Letting Go and Letting God
[This was shared during the 10:15 worship at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Mark 10:17-31
We have a lot of territory to cover this morning. So, let’s dive right into our gospel lesson, Mark 10:17-31.
It begins: “Now as He [Jesus] was going out on the road...” The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible puts it this way: “As He was setting out on a journey...”
Jesus was setting out on a journey. This was the last trip He would take before His arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Jerusalem was His destination and He knew that His crucifixion lay ahead of Him there.
During this journey, Jesus and the disciples walked from Capernaum, a city at the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee, walked along its western shore south along the Jordan River, crossing from the west to the east side of the Jordan (in order, this time, to avoid going through Samaria), proceeding south until, again, they crossed the Jordan from the east going west, just like Joshua and the people of Israel did 1400 years earlier, then gone through Jericho, the city whose walls God destroyed, allowing the ancient Israelites to gain a foothold in the land, and onto Jerusalem. Jesus’ name in Hebrew is Yeshua, Joshua. Just as Joshua of Old Testament times led God’s people into the promised land, this Joshua--the Jesus of the New Testament, Who is God in the flesh--will lead all who follow Him through the crosses of their own deaths and the deaths of their own sin into the promised land of eternity with God.
It’s within the context of this journey, fraught with memories of Old Testament history for both Jesus and the disciples and filled with an awareness of all the torture, rejection, and temptation that await Him in Jerusalem that our lesson takes place.
Go back to the lesson, please: “...one came running before [Jesus] and asked Him, “Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
We may look at the man’s question and think he’s asking, “What do I need to do to get to heaven?” But when pious Jews, like the Pharisees, thought of “eternal life,” they thought of the life that God would bring to those who were raised from the dead and God established a new heaven and a new earth in place of this one.
They believed that for believers to rise from the dead--to go through a resurrection--didn’t mean that they were transported to some wifty world of disembodied souls. (And Jesus would later prove them to be right in that belief! When Jesus rose from the dead, He had a body that could be touched and eat a meal, although He was no longer limited by time or space.)
Jesus’ answer to the man is interesting. Jesus could have lectured the man on how there is nothing we can do to merit eternal life. It is simply the gift of God to those who turn from sin and believe in Him. That's why in the only sermon of Jesus appearing in Mark's Gospel (Mark 1:14-15), Jesus says: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Jesus teaches the same thing here. But He does it in a way that challenges the man (and us) to move beyond thinking of salvation as the result of knowing the right answer (“Repent and believe”), to seeing just how radical, how eternity-changing, how practical for the nuts and bolts of daily living it is to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ!”
Jesus says: “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but one, that is, God.” We’ll come back to these words in a moment, because it’s one of the two keys to understanding today’s entire gospel lesson. For the moment, think of this: Jesus is right. I’m a sinner. You’re sinners. Everyone you see each day is a sinner. No one is truly good but God alone. We may in everyday conversation say that someone we know is a good person. But this man is approaching Jesus like some misinformed unbelievers approach the local parish pastor. Whether he means the word or is just using it to suck up to Jesus, Jesus calls Him to the carpet for it, “Do you go throwing that word, good, around with every rabbi you encounter?” Jesus is asking the man, “Only God is worthy of being called good.” Now, you and I know that Jesus is God. We know it by faith in Christ. But the man in our gospel lesson doesn’t know this about Jesus. He wants to make deals with God and have Jesus, this “good teacher” confirm it for Him.
Then, in verse 18, Jesus says, “You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,‘ ‘Do not murder,‘ ‘Do not steal,‘ ‘Do not bear false witness,‘ ‘Do not defraud,‘ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”
Jesus here, of course, is referring to the Ten Commandments, God’s moral law for the whole human race. But, you’ll notice some interesting omissions and one change in Jesus‘ rendering of the commandments:
Does Jesus do this to avoid telling this man some uncomfortable truths?
We know Jesus better than that.
Jesus defers mention of these five commandments for a simple reason: Everyone of we sinners have what might be called “prevailing sins,” the sins we may love to commit and have grown so cold to God we don’t see them as sins any more or the sins we hate to commit but cannot, by our own power or good intentions, refrain from committing. These are the sins in which you and I specialize, on top of all our other sins.
But unless we follow Jesus every day and give Him control of our whole lives, along with all of our sins, those sins and not the grace of God that comes to those who believe in Him, will have the last words over our lives.
The Greek New Testament word for believe is pisteuo and it carries the meaning not only of believe, but also of surrendering trust. Eternal life with God comes to those who believe in Jesus, who surrender their lives to Jesus.
And that includes surrendering their favorite sins.
Back to the lesson, verse 20: “And he [the man] answered [Jesus], ‘Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.’”
Let’s not be too critical of the man here. He isn’t claiming to be sinless. He’s claiming that he’s “kept” the commandments, meaning that he has revered them and sought to to live in accordance with them, repenting when he has failed to do so. Jesus doesn’t dispute the man’s claim. But Jesus sees into this man’s heart, will, and motivations as surely as He sees into ours.
Verse 21: “Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him [the same way He looks at you even when you are lost and far from Him, wallowing in sin], and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”
Now, we understand why Jesus omitted five of the commandments earlier.
We also see why Jesus reminded him that only God is good.
The man no doubt thought of himself as an upstanding person of faith who kept God’s commandments.
But in addition to his covetousness for more wealth, this man also failed to honor God as God by idolizing the wealth that he had.
These were his prevailing sins, the sins that were walling him from eternal life with God.
This is why Jesus reminded Him that God alone is good. If this man honored the good God of all with his life as well as with his lips, he would understand that God was worthy of total, not partial surrender.
Are we surrendering totally to God each day? Or, are we holding back a little for ourselves? What are we willing to leave behind in order to have God and the life that only God can give to us?
Listen: If a person is diagnosed with cancer, the only way they can live is if the cancer is killed or removed. The only way this man could live was if he willingly laid aside the sin that controlled his life.
Jesus wanted this man to have eternal life with God, just as He wants all people to have eternal life.
By His death and resurrection, Jesus has brought eternal life to us. All we must do to receive it is be willing to lay aside our sins, allow them to be killed (which is what Jesus means by taking up our crosses), and follow Jesus.
Jesus promises in Matthew 24:13 that “the one who endures [in following Him]...will be saved.” What a promise!
But it’s hard to let go of our prevailing sins, hard to let go of the delusion of being in charge of our lives.
After her husband left her, a woman started attending worship at one of our former parishes. Devastated, she took solace in the bottle. She never missed work or worship. But the strong smell of alcohol could be detected by anyone who shared the peace with her on Sunday. The alcohol made her feel more able to deal with the pain.
She was sure she was in control until, one day, a friend happened upon her in her house, about to take her own life.
Thank God for answering the prayers of many for that woman! She went through treatment at a hospital and started going to AA meetings. She let go of her prevailing sins: the desire to be like God, covetousness for the life styles enjoyed by others, and indifference to the willful destruction of the body God gave to her.
She took up these crosses, submitted to the crucifixion of her sins, and followed Jesus. Today, she is healthy, still in recovery, and following Jesus, Whose grace brings eternal life--life with God--to those who surrender to Him.
Verse 22 of our gospel lesson tells us that the man “was sad at this word [from Jesus], and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Letting go of his little gods was a bigger price than he was willing to pay for the free gift of new life God grants to all who believe in Jesus.
Jesus too was sorrowful because He knew, as He tells the disciples in verse 27, “With men, it is impossible...” That is, the efforts of human beings to keep God’s commandments or to live lives worthy of eternal life with God will always fail. So will the efforts of others, like the man who comes to Jesus in today’s lesson, to have some of the God we know in Christ, but keep back a little for themselves.
But, Jesus says what is impossible to us is more than possible with God. “For with God,” Jesus says, “all things are possible.”
May God give us the power each day to let go of our sins and keep following Jesus. Amen
Mark 10:17-31
We have a lot of territory to cover this morning. So, let’s dive right into our gospel lesson, Mark 10:17-31.
It begins: “Now as He [Jesus] was going out on the road...” The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible puts it this way: “As He was setting out on a journey...”
Jesus was setting out on a journey. This was the last trip He would take before His arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Jerusalem was His destination and He knew that His crucifixion lay ahead of Him there.
During this journey, Jesus and the disciples walked from Capernaum, a city at the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee, walked along its western shore south along the Jordan River, crossing from the west to the east side of the Jordan (in order, this time, to avoid going through Samaria), proceeding south until, again, they crossed the Jordan from the east going west, just like Joshua and the people of Israel did 1400 years earlier, then gone through Jericho, the city whose walls God destroyed, allowing the ancient Israelites to gain a foothold in the land, and onto Jerusalem. Jesus’ name in Hebrew is Yeshua, Joshua. Just as Joshua of Old Testament times led God’s people into the promised land, this Joshua--the Jesus of the New Testament, Who is God in the flesh--will lead all who follow Him through the crosses of their own deaths and the deaths of their own sin into the promised land of eternity with God.
[The map above comes from this web site: http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/CN160-TRAVELS.htm.]
It’s within the context of this journey, fraught with memories of Old Testament history for both Jesus and the disciples and filled with an awareness of all the torture, rejection, and temptation that await Him in Jerusalem that our lesson takes place.
Go back to the lesson, please: “...one came running before [Jesus] and asked Him, “Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
We may look at the man’s question and think he’s asking, “What do I need to do to get to heaven?” But when pious Jews, like the Pharisees, thought of “eternal life,” they thought of the life that God would bring to those who were raised from the dead and God established a new heaven and a new earth in place of this one.
They believed that for believers to rise from the dead--to go through a resurrection--didn’t mean that they were transported to some wifty world of disembodied souls. (And Jesus would later prove them to be right in that belief! When Jesus rose from the dead, He had a body that could be touched and eat a meal, although He was no longer limited by time or space.)
Jesus’ answer to the man is interesting. Jesus could have lectured the man on how there is nothing we can do to merit eternal life. It is simply the gift of God to those who turn from sin and believe in Him. That's why in the only sermon of Jesus appearing in Mark's Gospel (Mark 1:14-15), Jesus says: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Jesus teaches the same thing here. But He does it in a way that challenges the man (and us) to move beyond thinking of salvation as the result of knowing the right answer (“Repent and believe”), to seeing just how radical, how eternity-changing, how practical for the nuts and bolts of daily living it is to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ!”
Jesus says: “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but one, that is, God.” We’ll come back to these words in a moment, because it’s one of the two keys to understanding today’s entire gospel lesson. For the moment, think of this: Jesus is right. I’m a sinner. You’re sinners. Everyone you see each day is a sinner. No one is truly good but God alone. We may in everyday conversation say that someone we know is a good person. But this man is approaching Jesus like some misinformed unbelievers approach the local parish pastor. Whether he means the word or is just using it to suck up to Jesus, Jesus calls Him to the carpet for it, “Do you go throwing that word, good, around with every rabbi you encounter?” Jesus is asking the man, “Only God is worthy of being called good.” Now, you and I know that Jesus is God. We know it by faith in Christ. But the man in our gospel lesson doesn’t know this about Jesus. He wants to make deals with God and have Jesus, this “good teacher” confirm it for Him.
Then, in verse 18, Jesus says, “You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,‘ ‘Do not murder,‘ ‘Do not steal,‘ ‘Do not bear false witness,‘ ‘Do not defraud,‘ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”
Jesus here, of course, is referring to the Ten Commandments, God’s moral law for the whole human race. But, you’ll notice some interesting omissions and one change in Jesus‘ rendering of the commandments:
- He includes the sixth, fifth, seventh, and eighth;
- He seems to add another commandment with, ‘Do not defraud,‘ although we could argue that fraud is just another form of stealing; and
- He doesn’t mention five other commandments.
- ‘You shall have no other gods before Me’ (the First),
- ‘You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain’ (the Second),
- ‘Remember the Sabbath day [a time set aside to reverence God and hear God’s Word]’ (the Third), and
- the Ninth and Tenth commandments in which God tells us not to covet the spouses, possessions, or lives of others.
Does Jesus do this to avoid telling this man some uncomfortable truths?
We know Jesus better than that.
Jesus defers mention of these five commandments for a simple reason: Everyone of we sinners have what might be called “prevailing sins,” the sins we may love to commit and have grown so cold to God we don’t see them as sins any more or the sins we hate to commit but cannot, by our own power or good intentions, refrain from committing. These are the sins in which you and I specialize, on top of all our other sins.
But unless we follow Jesus every day and give Him control of our whole lives, along with all of our sins, those sins and not the grace of God that comes to those who believe in Him, will have the last words over our lives.
The Greek New Testament word for believe is pisteuo and it carries the meaning not only of believe, but also of surrendering trust. Eternal life with God comes to those who believe in Jesus, who surrender their lives to Jesus.
And that includes surrendering their favorite sins.
Back to the lesson, verse 20: “And he [the man] answered [Jesus], ‘Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.’”
Let’s not be too critical of the man here. He isn’t claiming to be sinless. He’s claiming that he’s “kept” the commandments, meaning that he has revered them and sought to to live in accordance with them, repenting when he has failed to do so. Jesus doesn’t dispute the man’s claim. But Jesus sees into this man’s heart, will, and motivations as surely as He sees into ours.
Verse 21: “Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him [the same way He looks at you even when you are lost and far from Him, wallowing in sin], and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”
Now, we understand why Jesus omitted five of the commandments earlier.
We also see why Jesus reminded him that only God is good.
The man no doubt thought of himself as an upstanding person of faith who kept God’s commandments.
But in addition to his covetousness for more wealth, this man also failed to honor God as God by idolizing the wealth that he had.
These were his prevailing sins, the sins that were walling him from eternal life with God.
This is why Jesus reminded Him that God alone is good. If this man honored the good God of all with his life as well as with his lips, he would understand that God was worthy of total, not partial surrender.
Are we surrendering totally to God each day? Or, are we holding back a little for ourselves? What are we willing to leave behind in order to have God and the life that only God can give to us?
Listen: If a person is diagnosed with cancer, the only way they can live is if the cancer is killed or removed. The only way this man could live was if he willingly laid aside the sin that controlled his life.
Jesus wanted this man to have eternal life with God, just as He wants all people to have eternal life.
By His death and resurrection, Jesus has brought eternal life to us. All we must do to receive it is be willing to lay aside our sins, allow them to be killed (which is what Jesus means by taking up our crosses), and follow Jesus.
Jesus promises in Matthew 24:13 that “the one who endures [in following Him]...will be saved.” What a promise!
But it’s hard to let go of our prevailing sins, hard to let go of the delusion of being in charge of our lives.
After her husband left her, a woman started attending worship at one of our former parishes. Devastated, she took solace in the bottle. She never missed work or worship. But the strong smell of alcohol could be detected by anyone who shared the peace with her on Sunday. The alcohol made her feel more able to deal with the pain.
She was sure she was in control until, one day, a friend happened upon her in her house, about to take her own life.
Thank God for answering the prayers of many for that woman! She went through treatment at a hospital and started going to AA meetings. She let go of her prevailing sins: the desire to be like God, covetousness for the life styles enjoyed by others, and indifference to the willful destruction of the body God gave to her.
She took up these crosses, submitted to the crucifixion of her sins, and followed Jesus. Today, she is healthy, still in recovery, and following Jesus, Whose grace brings eternal life--life with God--to those who surrender to Him.
Verse 22 of our gospel lesson tells us that the man “was sad at this word [from Jesus], and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Letting go of his little gods was a bigger price than he was willing to pay for the free gift of new life God grants to all who believe in Jesus.
Jesus too was sorrowful because He knew, as He tells the disciples in verse 27, “With men, it is impossible...” That is, the efforts of human beings to keep God’s commandments or to live lives worthy of eternal life with God will always fail. So will the efforts of others, like the man who comes to Jesus in today’s lesson, to have some of the God we know in Christ, but keep back a little for themselves.
But, Jesus says what is impossible to us is more than possible with God. “For with God,” Jesus says, “all things are possible.”
May God give us the power each day to let go of our sins and keep following Jesus. Amen
Agnus Day (the series from which the above comic strip is taken) appears with the permission of www.agnusday.org
Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion, all that you make
All that you build, all that you break
All that you treasure, all that you feel
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason, all that
you care,
(It's only time and I'll never fill up all my mind)
All that you sense, all that you scheme
All that you dress up, and all that you see
All you create, all that you wreck.
All that you hate.
[from Walk On by U2. Composed by Adam Clayton, Dave Evans, Paul Hewson, amd Larry Mullen, Jr.]
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Mary Lincoln Gets a Do-Over, But We Don't
Or a retrial, at least of the mock variety.
As an amateur student of history, I've always been wary any time we impose contemporary moral standards on historical events, even though as a Christian I believe a baseline of moral standards from God has long existed in the Ten Commandments.
But, it seems that even by the standards of her time, Mary Lincoln was subjected to kangaroo justice in her insanity trial. At the behest of her son, Robert, Mary Lincoln was found insane and confined to an asylum for a time. She never forgave Robert.
Catherine Clinton, author of a book on Lincoln's trial, is quoted in the linked article: "Under the laws at the time, Mrs. Lincoln was denied counsel. There is not better illustration of railroading, as the phrase goes.”
News of this mock trial comes the day after I read the cover article in the October issue of Smithsonian magazine, an excerpt from Henry Wiencek's new book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. Wiencek is unsparing in his criticism of Jefferson's treatment of slaves and his careful avoidance of any connection with the emancipation movement, even though Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that "all men [sic] are created equal."
In the early draft of that document, of course, Jefferson claimed that the "peculiar institution" of slavery was a barbaric invention of Great Britain imposed on in its North American colonies and held this to be one particular justification for breaking away from the mother country.
"So what?" you might say. "Didn't George Washington have slaves?"
Yes, he did. But, Wiencek joins several other authors who have pointed out in recent works that Washington wrestled with the morality of slavery. Jefferson never did.
Furthermore, Washington worked out a way to emancipate his slaves on his death. That was a far more difficult thing for Washington to pull off than it would have been for Jefferson. Wiencek points out that on his death, Tadeus Kosciusko, the Polish soldier who helped the thirteen colonies win their independence, left Jefferson a handsome sum of money to pay for the freedom of Jefferson's slaves (providing Jefferson with reimbursement for the loss of these "assets"), then providing funds for the freed slaves to establish new lives.
Jefferson had even drafted the Pole's will and was its executor. But, Jefferson refused to take the inheritance or free his slaves!
Besides that, according to Wiencek, in spite of attempts by generations of American historians to whitewash the truth, Jefferson was a particularly violent and cruel slaveholder.
Even by the standards of his time, if we accept Wiencek's reckoning, Jefferson, in the eighteen and early nineteenth centuries, was as guilty of injustice as the late-nineteenth century jury that found Mary Lincoln to be insane.
But this set me to thinking: What level of culpability do we who live in the twenty-first century bear at a time when there are more people bound in slavery, much of it involving the sex trafficking of young children, than any time in history?
The Lincoln jury and, before that, Thomas Jefferson were guilty of overt acts of cruel injustice toward largely defenseless persons. Theirs were the sins of commission, by the standards of any time. But what of our sins of omission, of looking the other way when hundreds of thousands are being violated so cruelly?
The Mary Lincoln "do-over" or retrial was presented for enjoyment and education. The same is true of Wiencek's work on Jefferson as a slaveholder. But there really are no do-overs in life. We can be forgiven. We can make restitution. But we can't relive this day. There are no Groundhog Days in real life. We will either stand for justice or stand in its way.
The prophet Micah, speaking on behalf of God in the eighth century BC, wrote:
And I pray that I will be quick to speak and act on behalf of the victims of injustice, whoever they may be.
UPDATE: See here.
As an amateur student of history, I've always been wary any time we impose contemporary moral standards on historical events, even though as a Christian I believe a baseline of moral standards from God has long existed in the Ten Commandments.
But, it seems that even by the standards of her time, Mary Lincoln was subjected to kangaroo justice in her insanity trial. At the behest of her son, Robert, Mary Lincoln was found insane and confined to an asylum for a time. She never forgave Robert.
Catherine Clinton, author of a book on Lincoln's trial, is quoted in the linked article: "Under the laws at the time, Mrs. Lincoln was denied counsel. There is not better illustration of railroading, as the phrase goes.”
News of this mock trial comes the day after I read the cover article in the October issue of Smithsonian magazine, an excerpt from Henry Wiencek's new book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. Wiencek is unsparing in his criticism of Jefferson's treatment of slaves and his careful avoidance of any connection with the emancipation movement, even though Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that "all men [sic] are created equal."
In the early draft of that document, of course, Jefferson claimed that the "peculiar institution" of slavery was a barbaric invention of Great Britain imposed on in its North American colonies and held this to be one particular justification for breaking away from the mother country.
"So what?" you might say. "Didn't George Washington have slaves?"
Yes, he did. But, Wiencek joins several other authors who have pointed out in recent works that Washington wrestled with the morality of slavery. Jefferson never did.
Furthermore, Washington worked out a way to emancipate his slaves on his death. That was a far more difficult thing for Washington to pull off than it would have been for Jefferson. Wiencek points out that on his death, Tadeus Kosciusko, the Polish soldier who helped the thirteen colonies win their independence, left Jefferson a handsome sum of money to pay for the freedom of Jefferson's slaves (providing Jefferson with reimbursement for the loss of these "assets"), then providing funds for the freed slaves to establish new lives.
Jefferson had even drafted the Pole's will and was its executor. But, Jefferson refused to take the inheritance or free his slaves!
Besides that, according to Wiencek, in spite of attempts by generations of American historians to whitewash the truth, Jefferson was a particularly violent and cruel slaveholder.
Even by the standards of his time, if we accept Wiencek's reckoning, Jefferson, in the eighteen and early nineteenth centuries, was as guilty of injustice as the late-nineteenth century jury that found Mary Lincoln to be insane.
But this set me to thinking: What level of culpability do we who live in the twenty-first century bear at a time when there are more people bound in slavery, much of it involving the sex trafficking of young children, than any time in history?
The Lincoln jury and, before that, Thomas Jefferson were guilty of overt acts of cruel injustice toward largely defenseless persons. Theirs were the sins of commission, by the standards of any time. But what of our sins of omission, of looking the other way when hundreds of thousands are being violated so cruelly?
The Mary Lincoln "do-over" or retrial was presented for enjoyment and education. The same is true of Wiencek's work on Jefferson as a slaveholder. But there really are no do-overs in life. We can be forgiven. We can make restitution. But we can't relive this day. There are no Groundhog Days in real life. We will either stand for justice or stand in its way.
The prophet Micah, speaking on behalf of God in the eighth century BC, wrote:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;Tonight, I'm asking for the forgiveness from God offered to us only through Jesus Christ for my sins, including the sins of injustice against my ignored neighbors around the globe.
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
And I pray that I will be quick to speak and act on behalf of the victims of injustice, whoever they may be.
UPDATE: See here.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Jesus on Marriage and Divorce
[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]
Mark 10:2-16
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus points us to God’s intention for human beings when it comes to marriage, divorce, sexuality, and family living.
We may want to run from these words of Jesus. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes, to some people in these times, anyone who dares to publicly read Jesus’ words here “is likely to be called cruel, unfeeling, unforgiving, exclusive...'unchristian'...”
But as we dive into Jesus’ words for us today, it’s important to remember Who is speaking them. This is the God Who loved us enough to take on human flesh, Who was, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin.” This is the sinless Savior Who took our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from the dead, to offer the undeserved gift of new and everlasting life to all who willingly repent, daily submitting to the death of their own sins and sinful desires and entrusting their lives to the loving will of the God we know only in Jesus Christ.
Jesus words aren’t those of a closed-minded religious bigot, but of the God Who loves us more than anyone else could!
Jesus says to His followers, including you and me, in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” I find that when Ann, who loves me, criticizes for something I’ve said or done, I’m initially defensive. But, after awhile, I remember how much she loves me and I’m ready to listen and learn from what she has to say. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts...” So, let’s listen to what our Friend, God, and Savior Jesus has to tell us today.
Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16.
In verse 2, a group of Pharisees asks Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
It’s no coincidence that the Pharisees ask this question by the Jordan River out in the Judean wilderness, the same setting in which John the Baptist ran afoul of King Herod not long before.
John, you’ll remember, challenged the legitimacy of Herod’s rule because this Herod, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, had married his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias had divorced Herod Antipas’ brother in order to marry the king. John claimed that Antipas and Herodias had defiled marriage and the royal throne by their adultery. Herodias, you’ll also remember, took particular offense at John the Baptist calling her husband and her out for their unrepentant sin. That’s why she made sure that John was beheaded.
The Pharisees, already anxious to get rid of Jesus, hope to entrap Jesus into offending the royal couple in the dominion of Antipas in the same way John had offended them.
Notice too, the thrust of the Pharisees' question. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
But Jesus isn’t interested in talking about whether it’s lawful for a person to divorce their spouse. In Deuteronomy 24, some 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through Moses that it’s legal for a person to divorce a spouse. But as the former Pharisee turned Christian preacher and evangelist, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial...’ ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.’”
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how adultery can be a legitimate grounds for divorce.
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that when an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse--what has been called “spiritual abandonment”--the Christian may have grounds for divorce.
And no loving Christian would insist that a spouse remain tied to someone who perpetrates violence against them, since clearly an abuser isn’t interested in being married, but in dominating another human being.
But Jesus wants to move beyond the law to talk about the intention of God, the will of God, for human beings when it comes to marriage and divorce.
Jesus responds to the Pharisees by asking them, in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” Alluding to Deuteronomy 24, they reply correctly, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”
The Pharisees were sticklers for Biblical law. They checked all the right boxes. Warmed a pew? Check. Gave my offerings? Check. Did my time in Catechism? Check. Gave to the poor even though I didn’t want to? Check. But they weren’t interested in surrendering to God so much as getting God to do what they wanted Him to do and to validate what wonderful, worthy, hard-working people they were.
This is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”: the idea that I can be a good enough person to earn my way into God’s good graces. But it doesn’t work! At birth, you and I are so polluted by the sin we inherit from our fathers and mothers that, in the words of Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Instead, righteousness comes as a gift only to those who surrender to and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ. Surrender to and trust in Christ is what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Turn to Romans 3:21-22: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law [apart from the demands of the little boxes the Pharisees tried to check off] is revealed...the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...” in Christ.
Back in our gospel lesson, Jesus points to God’s original intention for marriage. Look at what Jesus says, starting at Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart [Moses] wrote you this precept.”
God gave people the option of divorce as a concession to their hard-heartedness. But look at what Jesus says next in Mark 10:6-9. He points back to the book of Genesis: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man [or woman] separate.”
Even though God makes allowances for human sin, Jesus says it’s God’s will that marriage, the union of a male and a female made one flesh by the grace of God, should be inviolate. Just as war should be a last, dreaded option for nations, to be deferred until every peaceful resolution has been tried, so divorce should be a last, dreaded option for husbands and wives who have become one flesh!
After this time of public teaching on marriage and divorce, verses 10-12 find Jesus sitting with His followers in a house. He uses the time-worn method of hyperbole, exaggeration, to underscore His teaching. Jesus says that whenever a husband or a wife divorces a spouse and the ex-spouse remarries, the ex-spouse is made an adulterer. By expressing things in this way, Jesus is telling His disciples how seriously God takes the marriage vows of husbands and wives. Divorce may be unavoidable, even justifiable at times. But it is always the result of human sin and it always spreads the misery of sin around, even to helpless bystanders.
And the most helpless of all bystanders to divorce are children, which leads inevitably to the last verses of our lesson, Mark 10:13-16.
While Jesus sits with His disciples, people bring their children to be touched by Jesus. The disciples, verse 13 says, “rebuked” people for doing this. The disciples were reprimanding parents and grandparents for bringing their children to Jesus for blessing. Jesus says to let the children come to Him. It’s to people who come to Him in childlike trust that God’s kingdom belongs.
At the end of our lesson, in verse 16, we’re told, “And [Jesus] took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.”
When we were kids, we were taught to sing, “Jesus loves the little children.” He does! But I wonder sometimes how much some parents love their children when they press for divorces from their spouses just because they’re finding life together difficult or challenging.
Unless there’s abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment, kids--even grown kids--need their parents to persevere in staying together.
Listen: In twenty-eight years as a pastor, I have seen far more people, whether children or spouses, damaged by divorce than I ever have by marriages in which the husbands and wives have gone through tough times, yet tenaciously prayed, gotten counseling, surrendered each day to Christ, and, in effect, told each other, “No matter how I feel today, by the grace of God given in Christ, I will be with you tomorrow and until death parts us. Period.”
God, I’m convinced, is not calling married people to simply “stay together” while living separate lives. That is NOT what it means for a husband and a wife to become “one flesh.”
But when wives and husbands approach Jesus each day like little children, heeding His commands, trusting in His grace, speaking the truth to one another in love, forgiving each other, praying for one another, and asking God to help them to see the best in each other every day, they will do more than, as some have put it, “divorce-proof” their marriages.
Their marriages will become, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little churches,” built on the rock of Jesus Christ, where the prayers go up and the blessings come down, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is most intimately and wonderfully known. Amen
Mark 10:2-16
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus points us to God’s intention for human beings when it comes to marriage, divorce, sexuality, and family living.
We may want to run from these words of Jesus. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes, to some people in these times, anyone who dares to publicly read Jesus’ words here “is likely to be called cruel, unfeeling, unforgiving, exclusive...'unchristian'...”
But as we dive into Jesus’ words for us today, it’s important to remember Who is speaking them. This is the God Who loved us enough to take on human flesh, Who was, in the words of Hebrews 4:15, “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin.” This is the sinless Savior Who took our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from the dead, to offer the undeserved gift of new and everlasting life to all who willingly repent, daily submitting to the death of their own sins and sinful desires and entrusting their lives to the loving will of the God we know only in Jesus Christ.
Jesus words aren’t those of a closed-minded religious bigot, but of the God Who loves us more than anyone else could!
Jesus says to His followers, including you and me, in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” I find that when Ann, who loves me, criticizes for something I’ve said or done, I’m initially defensive. But, after awhile, I remember how much she loves me and I’m ready to listen and learn from what she has to say. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts...” So, let’s listen to what our Friend, God, and Savior Jesus has to tell us today.
Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 10:2-16.
In verse 2, a group of Pharisees asks Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
It’s no coincidence that the Pharisees ask this question by the Jordan River out in the Judean wilderness, the same setting in which John the Baptist ran afoul of King Herod not long before.
John, you’ll remember, challenged the legitimacy of Herod’s rule because this Herod, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, had married his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias had divorced Herod Antipas’ brother in order to marry the king. John claimed that Antipas and Herodias had defiled marriage and the royal throne by their adultery. Herodias, you’ll also remember, took particular offense at John the Baptist calling her husband and her out for their unrepentant sin. That’s why she made sure that John was beheaded.
The Pharisees, already anxious to get rid of Jesus, hope to entrap Jesus into offending the royal couple in the dominion of Antipas in the same way John had offended them.
Notice too, the thrust of the Pharisees' question. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
But Jesus isn’t interested in talking about whether it’s lawful for a person to divorce their spouse. In Deuteronomy 24, some 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed through Moses that it’s legal for a person to divorce a spouse. But as the former Pharisee turned Christian preacher and evangelist, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial...’ ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.’”
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about how adultery can be a legitimate grounds for divorce.
In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that when an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse--what has been called “spiritual abandonment”--the Christian may have grounds for divorce.
And no loving Christian would insist that a spouse remain tied to someone who perpetrates violence against them, since clearly an abuser isn’t interested in being married, but in dominating another human being.
But Jesus wants to move beyond the law to talk about the intention of God, the will of God, for human beings when it comes to marriage and divorce.
Jesus responds to the Pharisees by asking them, in Mark 10:3, “What did Moses command you?” Alluding to Deuteronomy 24, they reply correctly, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”
The Pharisees were sticklers for Biblical law. They checked all the right boxes. Warmed a pew? Check. Gave my offerings? Check. Did my time in Catechism? Check. Gave to the poor even though I didn’t want to? Check. But they weren’t interested in surrendering to God so much as getting God to do what they wanted Him to do and to validate what wonderful, worthy, hard-working people they were.
This is what Martin Luther called “works righteousness”: the idea that I can be a good enough person to earn my way into God’s good graces. But it doesn’t work! At birth, you and I are so polluted by the sin we inherit from our fathers and mothers that, in the words of Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Instead, righteousness comes as a gift only to those who surrender to and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ. Surrender to and trust in Christ is what the Bible means when it talks about faith. Turn to Romans 3:21-22: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law [apart from the demands of the little boxes the Pharisees tried to check off] is revealed...the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...” in Christ.
Back in our gospel lesson, Jesus points to God’s original intention for marriage. Look at what Jesus says, starting at Mark 10:5: “Because of the hardness of your heart [Moses] wrote you this precept.”
God gave people the option of divorce as a concession to their hard-heartedness. But look at what Jesus says next in Mark 10:6-9. He points back to the book of Genesis: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man [or woman] separate.”
Even though God makes allowances for human sin, Jesus says it’s God’s will that marriage, the union of a male and a female made one flesh by the grace of God, should be inviolate. Just as war should be a last, dreaded option for nations, to be deferred until every peaceful resolution has been tried, so divorce should be a last, dreaded option for husbands and wives who have become one flesh!
After this time of public teaching on marriage and divorce, verses 10-12 find Jesus sitting with His followers in a house. He uses the time-worn method of hyperbole, exaggeration, to underscore His teaching. Jesus says that whenever a husband or a wife divorces a spouse and the ex-spouse remarries, the ex-spouse is made an adulterer. By expressing things in this way, Jesus is telling His disciples how seriously God takes the marriage vows of husbands and wives. Divorce may be unavoidable, even justifiable at times. But it is always the result of human sin and it always spreads the misery of sin around, even to helpless bystanders.
And the most helpless of all bystanders to divorce are children, which leads inevitably to the last verses of our lesson, Mark 10:13-16.
While Jesus sits with His disciples, people bring their children to be touched by Jesus. The disciples, verse 13 says, “rebuked” people for doing this. The disciples were reprimanding parents and grandparents for bringing their children to Jesus for blessing. Jesus says to let the children come to Him. It’s to people who come to Him in childlike trust that God’s kingdom belongs.
At the end of our lesson, in verse 16, we’re told, “And [Jesus] took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.”
When we were kids, we were taught to sing, “Jesus loves the little children.” He does! But I wonder sometimes how much some parents love their children when they press for divorces from their spouses just because they’re finding life together difficult or challenging.
Unless there’s abuse, adultery, or spiritual abandonment, kids--even grown kids--need their parents to persevere in staying together.
Listen: In twenty-eight years as a pastor, I have seen far more people, whether children or spouses, damaged by divorce than I ever have by marriages in which the husbands and wives have gone through tough times, yet tenaciously prayed, gotten counseling, surrendered each day to Christ, and, in effect, told each other, “No matter how I feel today, by the grace of God given in Christ, I will be with you tomorrow and until death parts us. Period.”
God, I’m convinced, is not calling married people to simply “stay together” while living separate lives. That is NOT what it means for a husband and a wife to become “one flesh.”
But when wives and husbands approach Jesus each day like little children, heeding His commands, trusting in His grace, speaking the truth to one another in love, forgiving each other, praying for one another, and asking God to help them to see the best in each other every day, they will do more than, as some have put it, “divorce-proof” their marriages.
Their marriages will become, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “little churches,” built on the rock of Jesus Christ, where the prayers go up and the blessings come down, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is most intimately and wonderfully known. Amen
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