[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
A few years ago, a woman approached me with a concern. She told me that her father, by then in his seventies, was suing a woman whose car had brushed his in a mall parking lot, where he had been waiting for his wife. Even though both he and his car were fine, he claimed to have suffered physically.
The daughter said to me, “This is the last straw for me! My dad has always gone to church, been on the church council, gone to Sunday School. But he’s also always tried to shaft other people in order to get some advantage. He even pushes people out of the way in order to be first in the grocery check-out line. But I hadn’t realized how horrible he was until he sued this poor young woman who nicked his car. How can he call himself a Christian?”
When she asked me that, I remembered an old saying: Just because the mouse lives in the cookie jar doesn’t mean it’s a cookie.
But I held my tongue. You see, it can be a very dangerous thing to judge where other people are spiritually, where they may be headed, and, in the end, it’s God’s job, not ours! And God is supremely patient with us all, only casting judgment on a life when it's complete and "in the books."
In a way, this is one of Jesus’ points in today’s Gospel lesson.
He’s had another run-in with the Pharisees, those holier-than-thou religionists who may have secretly doubted that God was good enough for them. As you know, the Pharisees didn’t like it that Jesus hung out with well-known sinners or that He said that prostitutes, thieves, extortionists, and even Gentiles, non-Jews, could have places in His kingdom when they turned from their sins and followed Him. The Pharisees would have preferred for Jesus to renounce sinners and left it at that.
Instead, Jesus tells a parable to explain His actions and to guide all those who follow Him who might, like the Pharisees or that woman who approached me after worship one day, feel tempted to look down their noses at others.
The weeds planted by the farmer’s enemy in Jesus’ story, called darnel, are poisonous plants that look like wheat. The Romans had outlawed planting this weed because it had become the practice of some to do so as an act of revenge or hatred toward neighbors.
In His explanation of the parable, Jesus designates what each character or element represents. He is the farmer, the Son of Man. The good seeds are those who follow Him. The enemy is the devil. The bad seeds are those who follow evil. The harvest is the end of this world when Jesus will pronounce final judgment on us all and the place where the bundles are burned is, we can surmise, hell.
In today’s post-modern world, we may feel squeamish in asserting that God will one day condemn some people. Jesus feels no such hesitation.
According to Jesus, the Savior Who died and rose to set sinners like you and me free to live with God eternally, those who repent and believe in Him will be with Him in His kingdom.
Those who spurn Him will live with the separation from God which they daily chose in this world when they chose to be their own gods.
But Jesus today reminds us that only He will judge people’s fitness for His kingdom, not you or me. There may be mice in the cookie jar of Christ’s Church. Those imprisoned by things like selfishness, sexual addictions, egotism, materialism, the idolatry of self, greed, failing to worship God or honor parents, or other sins that diverge from the clear will of God, revealed in the Ten Commandments, may look no different from those set free by the grace, goodness, and love of Jesus Christ. There may be many people given over to evil in our world.
But until the day of judgment, the God we know in Christ is intent on letting His enemies and His friends live side-by-side, affording each equal opportunities to know and follow the Savior Who died and rose for us.
A man once asked me if the real point of Jesus’ words for us today isn’t, “Live and let live.” But that isn't the way of life to which we're called as Christians!
For example, Jesus has given His followers the great commission. We're called to not just let our neighbors die in their sins, ignorant of the possibility of forgiveness and new, everlasting life that can belong to all who repent and believe in Christ.
And we in the Church are directed by Jesus in many ways not to live by the "ethic" of "live and let live." In Matthew 18, for example, Jesus gives explicit instructions on what you and I are to do if we feel that a fellow church member has sinned against us. Ultimately, if the whole church affirms that we have been sinned against and the one who has harmed us refuses to repent, the Church is obligated to bar such a person from the fellowship of the Church until they do repent.
Live and let live isn’t what Jesus commends or commands. As every Lutheran Catechism student knows, Jesus has given to the Church “the keys of the kingdom.” That means that the Church has the responsibility to declare Christ’s forgiveness to the repentant and Christ’s condemnation to the unrepentant. But we are to exercise care in our judgments about others, especially toward those who aren't part of the fellowship of the Church.
In this, it’s instructive to note that Jesus was hardest not on the people everyone else thought were bad, but on those who thought themselves to be good but sinned unrepentantly, people like the Pharisees. Christ didn’t call the Church into being to act as God’s vigilantes, pointing out everyone’s else’ faults. He called us to make disciples.
Pastor Leith Anderson tells of calling ChemLawn to take care of his suburban lawn, infested with weeds. The yard was so bad that ChemLawn refused to work for him. One member of his church said that, if Anderson wanted him to, he would completely remove his old sod and start a new lawn. It was an offer Anderson was ready to accept when a one-time farmer offered some advice: Don't worry so much about getting rid of the weeds. Just grow the grass, and the grass will take care of the weeds. He took the farmer’s advice. After a couple of years, the lawn looked just as good as anyone else's in the neighborhood.
As the Church, we Christians are called by Christ to grow in our own faith and help others to experience Christ’s forgiveness and love through our words, actions, and lives. We grow in our faith when we seek each day to intentionally express thanks to Jesus Christ for dying and rising for us by seeking to do God’s will for our lives and not our own and by loving and serving in His Name. We motivate others to want to follow Christ and to follow Christ at deeper levels when they see us doing our best to love and serve in His Name, all the while admitting our faults and our need for Christ.
A friend of mine once invited some neighbors to attend worship with him. He was excited when, after several invitations, these neighbors, who had never been part of a church, showed up one Sunday morning. He was even more excited when they kept attending.
He thought that his heart would pound out of his chest the day the neighbors made public affirmation of their faith, the kids were baptized, and they joined the congregation. Two of the children were members of my friend’s Sunday School class and he was amazed to see how they took hold of the faith.
The family were members of that church for several years and then, for no apparent reason, they left. They weren’t in worship or Sunday School. They stopped being involved in service projects. My friend never felt that he could discuss things with this family. He would see them in the neighborhood and they would pleasantly say, “Hello” and talk about what their kids were doing at school or in athletics. That was it.
But then, a few years later, a pastor ran into my friend and said, “The Smith kids have started coming to our church. They both mention what an impact you had on them.” My friend was glad to hear it. A few years after that, my friend received an email from the youngest Smith child. He affirmed what that pastor had told him and went on to say, “By the way, I’m starting seminary in the fall. Thank you for introducing my family to Jesus. He is everything to me!”
For years, whenever my friend considered his neighbors, he may have been tempted to see them as weeds. lost to God forever. He was impatient to see them connected to God. God though, was patient. Blessedly, my friend didn’t have to wait until the judgment day to have Jesus’ message for us today boldly underscored: All those people you’re inclined to see as weeds may turn out to be wheat that will be gathered into God’s kingdom for all eternity.
God doesn't give up on anybody. As long as any human being has breath, there is hope that they will turn to Jesus Christ and live. I know that many of you have relatives and friends you want desperately to see come to Christ or return to Christ. Trust God. Be patient. Pray for those people. Ask for and look for opportunities to be light in their darkened lives.
And judge not: Christ can still turn weeds into wheat and mice into cookies. Don't lose sight of that truth!
After all, if the God Who sent His Son to die and rise for sinners like you and me--especially, I know because I know me so well, a sinner like me--God can do it with anybody! Amen
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Freedom to Live!
This is the kind of life we can enjoy by God's grace given to all with faith in Jesus Christ!
Real freedom is living for something because we already have favor instead of living for something in order to gain favor.
— Tullian Tchividjian (@PastorTullian) July 19, 2014Sunday, July 13, 2014
Encouragement for Seed-Scatterers
[This was shared with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, during worship this morning.]
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus gives His family, the Church, encouragement.
We need encouragement. We live in a world that is often indifferent or even hostile to the good news which you and I have been sent by Jesus to share with the world through our actions and our words.
The news--the gospel--that God the Son, Jesus, has died and risen so that all who turn from sin and surrender to Him--trust in Him, believe in Him--have life with God in this world and will have an eternally perfect life with God beyond the grave is really good news, of course.
But this message, isn’t something the world always wants to hear. That can be discouraging for Christ’s Church.
But we of Christ’s Church can also become discouraged by our own self-righteousness. We know that we are saved from sin, death, and futility not by our works or our virtues, but solely by God’s grace operating through our faith in Christ. But we get confused. Self-righteousness creeps into our hearts. We start to think we are good, the rest of the world is bad, and that we’d better just stay separated from the world, the frozen chosen hermetically sealed from this bad old planet. Living in isolation from God's will that we reach out to the world behind us, thinking of the world as irredeemable, disdaining others only brings us isolation from God Himself and that brings discouragement.
Wallowing in discouragement though, will never help us to pursue the mission Christ has given to you and me.
Jesus shares a parable in the first portion of this morning’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 13:1-9. Later, He explains it in verses 18-23.
Take a look at Matthew 13:1, please: “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake.” In Matthew’s gospel, the word house often stands symbolically for the Church. The Church is the group of people who have been called into relationship with God through the good news about Jesus.
The Church, of course, is called together to hear God’s Word, to enjoy Christian fellowship, to be baptized and welcome the newly baptized (as we did this morning), and to receive Christ’s body and blood.
But as was true for Jesus Himself, we as His people, after we’ve gathered to do these things, are called to leave the safe confines of our house, our home in Christ, and go into the world.
In fact, the entire purpose for Christians to gather in worship and Bible study and prayer is to be empowered to scatter, taking the word about Jesus into our homes, places of work, schools, the places we hang out each day, the world.
If the only place we live our our faith in Christ or talk about Christ is the church or with fellow Christians, we just aren’t fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives.
Hebrews 10:24-25 says: “...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another...”
In other words, the Holy Spirit gathers us in Christ's Church in order to empower us to be scattered through the world with the Good News of Christ.
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus left the cozy confines of the Church and went out into the world to teach a crowd that had been following Him. Because Jesus had been reaching out in love to the world around Him, He had earned an audience for His message. We do the same today as Christians when, in Jesus’ Name, we love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Beginning at Matthew 13:3, Jesus tells a parable, a story that conveys lessons about the kingdom of God Jesus has come to bring to all who believe in Him. “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
Jesus’ parable is a picture of the Church moving out into the world. Like the farmer with his seeds in Jesus’ parable, you and I are meant to indiscriminately and lavishly spread the word about Jesus wherever we go, however we can.
Eleven days ago, our Conspiracy of Kindness class went to the corner of Main and Central, just a few yards from the church, and gave away 120 cans of Coke in about forty minutes. Attached to each can was a card that told recipients that this was a practical way of telling them that God loves them. As in other such outreaches, we shared with teens and twenties and little kids, with working class folks and professionals, with people who had white faces, black faces, yellow faces, old faces, young faces.
We didn’t target a particular group.
We didn’t consider how we could do our work more efficiently.
And we didn’t stop giving when some people refused the gift.
We just gave the Coke away to help people understand that the God we know in Jesus is a lavishly giving, gracious God!
As members of the Church, you and I are called to do crazy stuff like that, to keep scattering the seed, spreading the word about the gracious God we know through Jesus, who forgives our sins and opens eternity with God to all who believe. And we do that no matter what reactions we get from some people.
The apostle Paul told the young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach [that literally means proclaim or, we might say, scatter] the word; be prepared in season and out of season...” Not everyone, when we encounter them, will be receptive to receiving the word of the gospel. It may not be the right season of their lives for surrendering to Christ.
And many of God’s people will have to scatter the seed in some people’s lives for many years before the people with whom they share it begin to understand their need of the Savior and the depths of His love for them.
This is what Jesus demonstrates in the latter part of our Gospel lesson, when He explains the parable.
He says that the seed of His Word flung along the path gobbled up by birds represents those who hear about Jesus but don’t understand its importance. The evil one, the devil, removes the seed from such people.
Others, Jesus says, will initially welcome the word about Him but their faith will be shallow and they will soon forget the gospel sort of like a fashionista flushes last year’s hemlines.
Still others, Jesus tells us, will start to grow in their faith, but then get caught up in the cares of this world and lose touch with Christ.
Jesus says that some though, will receive His Word, believe in Him, grow in their faith, and have a life of faithfulness, becoming useful servants under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
There are four things I find encouraging in Jesus’ parable.
First, the power of the Church doesn’t reside in our programs. It doesn’t reside in our people. It doesn’t reside in buildings or liturgies, wonderful as those can be. The power of the Church resides in God’s Word, the Word about Jesus, alone. That takes all the pressure off of us in sharing the word about Christ with others. The seeds God gives us to scatter are the best seeds in the universe, God’s seeds of love! But as we scatter them, we’re not even required to have a good aim. We just scatter God’s love and leave the rest to God!
Second, as Christians all we have to do is spread the Word. We don’t have to be innovative. We don’t have to make up a new message. We don’t have to be marketing geniuses. God's Word about Jesus Christ doesn't mean additions or subtractions. It doesn't need to be made more palatable or politically correct. It doesn't need to be made cute. God is the only true innovator anyway: He makes new, eternal beings out of sinners otherwise destined for eternal death simply by calling them to trust in the crucified and risen Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Third, Jesus’ parable tells us that we shouldn’t be discouraged when the seeds we scatter don’t all grow.
The farmer in Jesus’ parable found that only 25% of his seeds survived, grew, and thrived. But that 25% grew like crazy and had an impact on the world in which they grew.
Whenever we invite people to events like Our Own Backyard, or serve others on our mission trips, or house the homeless, we may only plant the seed of faith in 25% of the people we touch. But what’s wrong with that?
If only 25% of the people we touched in that Kindness Outreach a week and a half ago are nudged closer to Christ, that's 31 people!
If just 25% of the men we served at Saint Vincent a few weeks ago grew closer to Christ because we served in Christ’s Name, that’s still 38 men!
And if a quarter of the 168 people served through yesterday’s kindness outreach have their wills cracked open a bit to Christ, that's 42 souls drawn closer to Christ’s orbit.
And just imagine how many people may be having the seed of faith in Christ planted in their lives through Upward, Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN), our mission trips, and the work Dan Mershon does with our community’s young people--our "parking lot kids"--day-in and day-out!
Christ depends on us. If we Christians never scatter the seed of Christ’s gospel in the world, we are guaranteed to fail. Nobody will ever know about Christ if we in the Church don’t tell others about Him, His cross, and His empty tomb.
If we do scatter the seed, we’re guaranteed that often we will fail from the world's point of view. But we are also guaranteed that we will reach some people with the news about Jesus that can change their lives for eternity.
Jesus says in Luke 15:7: “...there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” I totally dig the idea that by sharing Christ with others, I can be part of getting a party started in heaven!
The fourth encouraging thing I take from Jesus’ parable is that when we scatter the Word of God, we are fulfilling the highest calling of our lives! You and I were formed in our mothers’ wombs to give glory to God in this way!
1 Peter 2:9 says: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
As Christians, we’ve been born and reborn to be seed-scatterers!
Today, I think, Jesus wants us to learn one thing and to do one thing.
We’re to learn this: As His followers, you and I have been saved for all eternity by Jesus so that we can be indiscriminate seed-scatterers, sharing Him all the time.
And the one thing He wants us to do is to live that lifestyle, spreading the seed of God's Word about Christ everywhere.
Sign up for serving with Saint Vincent or IHN.
Show up for the next Kindness Outreach or do one yourself with some friends from the congregation.
Look for opportunities to develop relationships with spiritually disconnected people and ask God to help you share the Good News.
Share the Savior Jesus, Who loves you completely, with others He loves completely in all your words and all your actions.
That’s it.
That’s the message.
As Jesus says in our lesson, “Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
Amen
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus gives His family, the Church, encouragement.
We need encouragement. We live in a world that is often indifferent or even hostile to the good news which you and I have been sent by Jesus to share with the world through our actions and our words.
The news--the gospel--that God the Son, Jesus, has died and risen so that all who turn from sin and surrender to Him--trust in Him, believe in Him--have life with God in this world and will have an eternally perfect life with God beyond the grave is really good news, of course.
But this message, isn’t something the world always wants to hear. That can be discouraging for Christ’s Church.
But we of Christ’s Church can also become discouraged by our own self-righteousness. We know that we are saved from sin, death, and futility not by our works or our virtues, but solely by God’s grace operating through our faith in Christ. But we get confused. Self-righteousness creeps into our hearts. We start to think we are good, the rest of the world is bad, and that we’d better just stay separated from the world, the frozen chosen hermetically sealed from this bad old planet. Living in isolation from God's will that we reach out to the world behind us, thinking of the world as irredeemable, disdaining others only brings us isolation from God Himself and that brings discouragement.
Wallowing in discouragement though, will never help us to pursue the mission Christ has given to you and me.
Jesus shares a parable in the first portion of this morning’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 13:1-9. Later, He explains it in verses 18-23.
Take a look at Matthew 13:1, please: “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake.” In Matthew’s gospel, the word house often stands symbolically for the Church. The Church is the group of people who have been called into relationship with God through the good news about Jesus.
The Church, of course, is called together to hear God’s Word, to enjoy Christian fellowship, to be baptized and welcome the newly baptized (as we did this morning), and to receive Christ’s body and blood.
But as was true for Jesus Himself, we as His people, after we’ve gathered to do these things, are called to leave the safe confines of our house, our home in Christ, and go into the world.
In fact, the entire purpose for Christians to gather in worship and Bible study and prayer is to be empowered to scatter, taking the word about Jesus into our homes, places of work, schools, the places we hang out each day, the world.
If the only place we live our our faith in Christ or talk about Christ is the church or with fellow Christians, we just aren’t fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives.
Hebrews 10:24-25 says: “...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another...”
In other words, the Holy Spirit gathers us in Christ's Church in order to empower us to be scattered through the world with the Good News of Christ.
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus left the cozy confines of the Church and went out into the world to teach a crowd that had been following Him. Because Jesus had been reaching out in love to the world around Him, He had earned an audience for His message. We do the same today as Christians when, in Jesus’ Name, we love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Beginning at Matthew 13:3, Jesus tells a parable, a story that conveys lessons about the kingdom of God Jesus has come to bring to all who believe in Him. “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
Jesus’ parable is a picture of the Church moving out into the world. Like the farmer with his seeds in Jesus’ parable, you and I are meant to indiscriminately and lavishly spread the word about Jesus wherever we go, however we can.
Eleven days ago, our Conspiracy of Kindness class went to the corner of Main and Central, just a few yards from the church, and gave away 120 cans of Coke in about forty minutes. Attached to each can was a card that told recipients that this was a practical way of telling them that God loves them. As in other such outreaches, we shared with teens and twenties and little kids, with working class folks and professionals, with people who had white faces, black faces, yellow faces, old faces, young faces.
We didn’t target a particular group.
We didn’t consider how we could do our work more efficiently.
And we didn’t stop giving when some people refused the gift.
We just gave the Coke away to help people understand that the God we know in Jesus is a lavishly giving, gracious God!
As members of the Church, you and I are called to do crazy stuff like that, to keep scattering the seed, spreading the word about the gracious God we know through Jesus, who forgives our sins and opens eternity with God to all who believe. And we do that no matter what reactions we get from some people.
The apostle Paul told the young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2: “Preach [that literally means proclaim or, we might say, scatter] the word; be prepared in season and out of season...” Not everyone, when we encounter them, will be receptive to receiving the word of the gospel. It may not be the right season of their lives for surrendering to Christ.
And many of God’s people will have to scatter the seed in some people’s lives for many years before the people with whom they share it begin to understand their need of the Savior and the depths of His love for them.
This is what Jesus demonstrates in the latter part of our Gospel lesson, when He explains the parable.
He says that the seed of His Word flung along the path gobbled up by birds represents those who hear about Jesus but don’t understand its importance. The evil one, the devil, removes the seed from such people.
Others, Jesus says, will initially welcome the word about Him but their faith will be shallow and they will soon forget the gospel sort of like a fashionista flushes last year’s hemlines.
Still others, Jesus tells us, will start to grow in their faith, but then get caught up in the cares of this world and lose touch with Christ.
Jesus says that some though, will receive His Word, believe in Him, grow in their faith, and have a life of faithfulness, becoming useful servants under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
There are four things I find encouraging in Jesus’ parable.
First, the power of the Church doesn’t reside in our programs. It doesn’t reside in our people. It doesn’t reside in buildings or liturgies, wonderful as those can be. The power of the Church resides in God’s Word, the Word about Jesus, alone. That takes all the pressure off of us in sharing the word about Christ with others. The seeds God gives us to scatter are the best seeds in the universe, God’s seeds of love! But as we scatter them, we’re not even required to have a good aim. We just scatter God’s love and leave the rest to God!
Second, as Christians all we have to do is spread the Word. We don’t have to be innovative. We don’t have to make up a new message. We don’t have to be marketing geniuses. God's Word about Jesus Christ doesn't mean additions or subtractions. It doesn't need to be made more palatable or politically correct. It doesn't need to be made cute. God is the only true innovator anyway: He makes new, eternal beings out of sinners otherwise destined for eternal death simply by calling them to trust in the crucified and risen Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Third, Jesus’ parable tells us that we shouldn’t be discouraged when the seeds we scatter don’t all grow.
The farmer in Jesus’ parable found that only 25% of his seeds survived, grew, and thrived. But that 25% grew like crazy and had an impact on the world in which they grew.
Whenever we invite people to events like Our Own Backyard, or serve others on our mission trips, or house the homeless, we may only plant the seed of faith in 25% of the people we touch. But what’s wrong with that?
If only 25% of the people we touched in that Kindness Outreach a week and a half ago are nudged closer to Christ, that's 31 people!
If just 25% of the men we served at Saint Vincent a few weeks ago grew closer to Christ because we served in Christ’s Name, that’s still 38 men!
And if a quarter of the 168 people served through yesterday’s kindness outreach have their wills cracked open a bit to Christ, that's 42 souls drawn closer to Christ’s orbit.
And just imagine how many people may be having the seed of faith in Christ planted in their lives through Upward, Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN), our mission trips, and the work Dan Mershon does with our community’s young people--our "parking lot kids"--day-in and day-out!
Christ depends on us. If we Christians never scatter the seed of Christ’s gospel in the world, we are guaranteed to fail. Nobody will ever know about Christ if we in the Church don’t tell others about Him, His cross, and His empty tomb.
If we do scatter the seed, we’re guaranteed that often we will fail from the world's point of view. But we are also guaranteed that we will reach some people with the news about Jesus that can change their lives for eternity.
Jesus says in Luke 15:7: “...there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” I totally dig the idea that by sharing Christ with others, I can be part of getting a party started in heaven!
The fourth encouraging thing I take from Jesus’ parable is that when we scatter the Word of God, we are fulfilling the highest calling of our lives! You and I were formed in our mothers’ wombs to give glory to God in this way!
1 Peter 2:9 says: “...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
As Christians, we’ve been born and reborn to be seed-scatterers!
Today, I think, Jesus wants us to learn one thing and to do one thing.
We’re to learn this: As His followers, you and I have been saved for all eternity by Jesus so that we can be indiscriminate seed-scatterers, sharing Him all the time.
And the one thing He wants us to do is to live that lifestyle, spreading the seed of God's Word about Christ everywhere.
Sign up for serving with Saint Vincent or IHN.
Show up for the next Kindness Outreach or do one yourself with some friends from the congregation.
Look for opportunities to develop relationships with spiritually disconnected people and ask God to help you share the Good News.
Share the Savior Jesus, Who loves you completely, with others He loves completely in all your words and all your actions.
That’s it.
That’s the message.
As Jesus says in our lesson, “Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
Amen
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Miracle at a Speedway Station
Today, several members of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, hit the bricks to share God's love in a practical way, giving away 168 bottles of cold water to total strangers in less than an hour.
One member brought her grandsons. When one of the boys saw an elderly man filling up his gas tank at a Speedway station, he asked his grandma if they could share a water with the man. I'm convinced that the young man was responding to a prompt from God's Holy Spirit, because when he and his grandmother had given the water to the man, he was deeply touched.
"Are you the kind of church that prays for sick people," he asked. "Every week," he was told.
He then asked if they could pray for his wife, suffering from a terminal illness, and who he hoped to bring home before she passed. The group of three began to pray, right there by the pump at the Speedway station.
As it happened, a veterinarian, whose office is near the station, saw the praying group, walked over from his office, and asked if he could pray with them.
It's been my experience that when we dare to reach out to others with the love God has given to all the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus, scenes like this happen. Just think what happened in that short interchange of strangers, a miracle at a Speedway station:
One member brought her grandsons. When one of the boys saw an elderly man filling up his gas tank at a Speedway station, he asked his grandma if they could share a water with the man. I'm convinced that the young man was responding to a prompt from God's Holy Spirit, because when he and his grandmother had given the water to the man, he was deeply touched.
"Are you the kind of church that prays for sick people," he asked. "Every week," he was told.
He then asked if they could pray for his wife, suffering from a terminal illness, and who he hoped to bring home before she passed. The group of three began to pray, right there by the pump at the Speedway station.
As it happened, a veterinarian, whose office is near the station, saw the praying group, walked over from his office, and asked if he could pray with them.
It's been my experience that when we dare to reach out to others with the love God has given to all the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus, scenes like this happen. Just think what happened in that short interchange of strangers, a miracle at a Speedway station:
- The comfort of God came to a man carrying a world of hurt and grief.
- A little boy learned to respond to Jesus' call to love others as we love ourselves.
- The group of us on this outreach learned again that God uses those willing to follow His lead to spread the message of His love in our communities and in our world.
Billy Hamilton is Amazing!
"That's an easy play," said Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman. Not when you're trying to make it on Billy Hamilton!
Friday, July 11, 2014
LeBron James and Going Home
"My relationship with northeast Ohio goes beyond basketball. I didn't realize that four years ago. I do now."
That's part of LeBron James' explanation of his decision to go back to Cleveland. It reminds me of the old saying, "You don't know what you've got till you lose it."
That feeling can come to any of us. But not everyone gets the chance to return to the place or the people that constitute "home" for them. James has gotten that chance. Good for him!
(As a lifelong Ohioan, I understand how this place gets under one's skin. I'm very glad to live here.)
That's part of LeBron James' explanation of his decision to go back to Cleveland. It reminds me of the old saying, "You don't know what you've got till you lose it."
That feeling can come to any of us. But not everyone gets the chance to return to the place or the people that constitute "home" for them. James has gotten that chance. Good for him!
(As a lifelong Ohioan, I understand how this place gets under one's skin. I'm very glad to live here.)
"Reverse Paranoia"?
"What could happen if we in God’s kingdom truly acted as if the words of the apostle John were literally true: 'He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world' (1 John 4:4) [?]"
It would be "reverse paranoia."
Very helpful post by Philip Yancey in today's Our Daily Bread, here.
It would be "reverse paranoia."
Very helpful post by Philip Yancey in today's Our Daily Bread, here.
Got to See a No-Hitter Last Night...and Maybe, a Future Star
My son and I went to see the Dayton Dragons, the Single-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, play the South Bend Silver Hawks (the Arizona Diamondbacks affiliate) at Fifth-Third Ball Park in Dayton last night. South Bend pitcher Blayne Weller tossed a strange no-hitter, strange because Dayton did score one run. Weller had entered the game with a 4.66 ERA. His team won 7-1. (The exact score that made so many Brazilian soccer fans cry a few days ago.)
We were really impressed by South Bend shortstop Andrew Velezquez. The kid turns twenty this coming Monday. He went 1 for 2, with two walks. The At Bat on which he got the hit was an impressive one. After fouling off a number of pitches, he connected for a hit to right field and, with his exceptional speed, turned a double into a triple. In his other official AB, what looked like a sure home run veered slightly into foul territory. Velezquez did commit a fielding error. But I think this kid will be in the bigs some day, probably sooner than later.
We were really impressed by South Bend shortstop Andrew Velezquez. The kid turns twenty this coming Monday. He went 1 for 2, with two walks. The At Bat on which he got the hit was an impressive one. After fouling off a number of pitches, he connected for a hit to right field and, with his exceptional speed, turned a double into a triple. In his other official AB, what looked like a sure home run veered slightly into foul territory. Velezquez did commit a fielding error. But I think this kid will be in the bigs some day, probably sooner than later.
Corn on the Cob from the Microwave
Tried this last night and had fantastic results. The ear slips out of the husk, with the silk left inside, like toothpaste from a tube AND the corn tastes great!
Thursday, July 10, 2014
"Mystery Shoppers" Reveal Strengths, Weaknesses of Churches of Different Sizes
Here.
The takeaway, I think, is that there are inherent potential negatives for churches of any size. But armed with these facts, churches can prayerfully avoid the negatives and be all that God calls them to be.
The takeaway, I think, is that there are inherent potential negatives for churches of any size. But armed with these facts, churches can prayerfully avoid the negatives and be all that God calls them to be.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
True Wisdom
[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday.]
Matthew 11:25-30
Today, our topic is true wisdom.
True story: An then middle-aged white woman, a longtime follower of Christ and a devoted student of the Bible, went with women from the Methodist congregation to which she belonged to visit a group of African-American women who were members of an inner city church. They were to have a Bible study together.
The woman supposed that she and her group would do a lot of teaching during the gathering.
She and the other women of her group were amazed though, by one young black Christian whose love of Scripture and, more importantly, her depth as a follower of Jesus Christ, taught those white women more about what it means to be a disciple in a few hours than they had learned for much of the rest of their lives.
Decades later the middle aged woman, by then elderly, told a little boy who, more than twenty years later, God would, call to be a Lutheran pastor, to never confuse Bible knowledge for faithfulness, to never confuse learning about the Lord (or learning about anything else, for that matter) for wisdom from the Lord. I've never forgotten those words spoken to me by my great-grandmother.
Knowledge and worldly wisdom come from us; but true wisdom comes from God alone. And if we take our cues from the world and its ideas about what’s shrewd and smart and wise, we will end up on the wrong side of eternity.
From the wellspring of God’s wisdom given to him by God, King Solomon writes in Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
Nowhere is this more true than in the usual responses of the world to Jesus Christ.
Though the human race may not like it, Jesus, both the Bible and Jesus Himself insist, is the only way to life with God.
N.T. Wright, the Anglican scholar of the New Testament, has summarized this truth by saying that Jesus is “the window onto God.”
And five hundred years ago, Martin Luther distilled it by saying that if we want to know God and Who He is, we need to look to Christ on the cross.
Jesus is explicit about His identity as God and as the way to God in verse 27 of today’s Gospel lesson: “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Jesus is the window to God, the doorway to eternity, God come to the earth, Who is our only means to eternity.
You may have noticed that the world isn’t always keen to accept these things about Jesus.
Accepting Jesus as the ultimate self-disclosure of God and the only Savior of human souls doesn’t play well with the prevailing prejudices of the human race.
One such prejudice challenges God in Christ to prove Himself, His existence, and His power, as though His death and resurrection are insufficient proof to silence all challenges to Jesus’ lordship.
Another prejudice comes from those who prefer that God be subordinate to them and let them choose religion over faith in Christ alone.
Then there are those who simply hate the idea of surrendering to a God Who offers them salvation as a free gift, who want to prove themselves and their own worthiness, who want their will to be done and not God’s will.
Truth is, we all exhibit these prejudices, even the most committed of Christians.
Bred deep in the DNA of every human being is the desire to be like God and the suspicion that we know better than God.
And this inherited “functional atheism” will reside in every human being until the crucifixion of death comes to this earthly flesh.
In the section of Matthew’s Gospel from which this morning’s lesson comes, Jesus has been running the gauntlet of these human prejudices, through the kind of human confidence in human wisdom that often keeps human beings from trusting in Christ as God and Savior.
Take a look at Matthew 11 with me, please (page 682 in the sanctuary Bibles), and scan the incidents that give rise to the prayer of Jesus that makes up today’s lesson.
Matthew 11:3 tells us that John the Baptist, of all people, incarcerated for readying the world for the coming of the Messiah, was having his doubts about Jesus. John instructs his own disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
You see, to those of a religious bent of mind, Christianity seems too simple. They find it hard to accept that God doesn’t say, “Be good and you can earn your way into my good graces.” Instead, God says, “Repent--submit to the crucifixion of your old self and all its sins--and trust in Christ--believe that Christ erases the power of sin and death over your life, and you will have life with God for eternity.”
John, being of a religious bent of mind, was confused. He thought that the Messiah would be a conquering king. But here the One he thought was Messiah was operating as God always had stretching back to the garden and throughout the Old Testament, offering salvation by grace through faith in Him.
Later, in verses 16-18, Jesus laments the fact that “this generation,” meaning the whole human race, could never be satisfied with the ways in which God reached out to them. They said that John the Baptist, who never touched a drop of alcohol, had a demon and that Jesus, because He reached out to tax extortionists and other sinners, was “a glutton and a drunkard.” The religious know-it-alls, the good church people of Jesus’ day, were certain of their wisdom.
“But wisdom,” Jesus says in Matthew 11:19, “is proved right by her deeds.”
Despite his doubts, John the Baptist was willing to submit to death for His faith in Christ, and so was proven right.
Jesus, despite His sinlessness, was willing to take our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from death to offer life to all who follow Him, and so was proven right.
And, the Bible teaches, if we will follow Him, we too will be proven right in trusting in Him.
1 Peter 1:6-9 tells Christians: “...though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
This way of life is completely opposite to the way of life commended by the world’s wisdom.
The wisdom of this world says: “Do what seems right to you. Follow your heart. Look out for number one. Get it while you can.”
The wisdom of God tells us, “Surrender to Christ. Let God call the shots. Endure...even when it’s the last thing on earth you want to do. God will help you through the tough times. And He will give you an eternity of joy beyond all human imagining.”
Just before today’s lesson, then, Jesus denounces towns that refused to welcome Him as Lord. He says that because they were more confident in their own wisdom than the revealed wisdom of God, they would “go down to Hades,” to hell. (So much for Milquetoast Jesus.)
It’s then that Jesus prays, starting at Matthew 11:25: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.”
The people who get the Gospel, who get Jesus and get life from Him are those who are willing to get Jesus, people who submit to becoming little children and who bow to the wisdom of God.
Jesus isn’t saying that those who follow Him are to be stupid or gullible. He’s saying that they are pliant, open to God.
In the end, faith in Christ and deepened faith in Christ cannot come as the result of human wisdom or rational argument.
Faith cannot come from the begrudging fulfillment of religious duties, of taking on the burden of religious do’s and don’t’s like the heavy yoke the farmers of Jesus’ day placed on the backs of their work animals.
Faith and the new life of freedom from sin, the freedom to say no to sin, the freedom to live as the people God made us to be, the freedom to live life God’s way, the way we were designed to live, is a gift to those who turn their backs on the wisdom of the world and embrace the wisdom of God.
Of course, we must learn as Christians to live in this world like foreigners and strangers. We're not in heaven yet. That's why Jesus says that His followers are to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
But we are people who live under a new wisdom, unlike the wisdom of this world.
We know that grace is free.
The Gospel is true.
And rest for the soul comes to those who follow Christ.
So, Jesus says, beginning in verse 28, issues an invitation to all people to bow to this wisdom and His lordship: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
To some, heedless of Christ’s cross and empty tomb, these words will seem like nonsense. They will refuse to believe.
And the only way to reach them is the very way Jesus reached skeptics and unbelievers, through deeds of kindness and love and service rendered in the power and in the Name of God Himself.
That’s why our missions to places like India and Haiti, our service through agencies like Service Over Self, Interfaith Hospitality Network, and the Gateway Men’s Shelter of St. Vincent de Paul, and even our kindness outreaches, are so important.
Romans 2:4 tells us that the kindness of God is intended to bring people to repentance and new life in Christ.
Christians, living in the wisdom revealed by Christ and not in their own wisdom, are freed from all anxiety about their own worthiness, so that they can perpetrate many small and large acts of kindness in Christ’s Name and Christ’s power and so, recklessly help others know the God of the cross and the resurrection.
This actually should be very good news for us this morning!
I know it does for me.
Confession: The older I get, the less I can truly say I know.
My head may be filled with lots of facts. I may have lots of experiences. But as time goes by, the less qualified I feel to function myself or to offer advice to others.
My wisdom, I realize, is non-existent. My impulses, doubtful. My maturity, questionable.
But despite having nothing of what the world counts as wisdom, I live with confidence and hope. I know that God has all the wisdom I need to live from day to day. And from God, we can have the greatest wisdom of all: faith in Christ! This is what Jesus offers to those who submit to being little children who follow Him.
James 1:5 tells us: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
In Matthew 11:27, Jesus says: “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Jesus has chosen to reveal God and the way of salvation and hope to those who are willing to surrender.
You don’t have to earn it.
You don’t have to be brilliant or charming or strong or beautiful or accomplished.
You just have to be willing to let Him love you and follow where He leads.
I have to warn you that that sounds easier than it actually is.
Which is why the Christian lives in what Lutheran called “daily repentance and renewal,” daily surrender to Christ, daily downloading of God's wisdom.
This is the way of life. Amen
Matthew 11:25-30
Today, our topic is true wisdom.
True story: An then middle-aged white woman, a longtime follower of Christ and a devoted student of the Bible, went with women from the Methodist congregation to which she belonged to visit a group of African-American women who were members of an inner city church. They were to have a Bible study together.
The woman supposed that she and her group would do a lot of teaching during the gathering.
She and the other women of her group were amazed though, by one young black Christian whose love of Scripture and, more importantly, her depth as a follower of Jesus Christ, taught those white women more about what it means to be a disciple in a few hours than they had learned for much of the rest of their lives.
Decades later the middle aged woman, by then elderly, told a little boy who, more than twenty years later, God would, call to be a Lutheran pastor, to never confuse Bible knowledge for faithfulness, to never confuse learning about the Lord (or learning about anything else, for that matter) for wisdom from the Lord. I've never forgotten those words spoken to me by my great-grandmother.
Knowledge and worldly wisdom come from us; but true wisdom comes from God alone. And if we take our cues from the world and its ideas about what’s shrewd and smart and wise, we will end up on the wrong side of eternity.
From the wellspring of God’s wisdom given to him by God, King Solomon writes in Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”
Nowhere is this more true than in the usual responses of the world to Jesus Christ.
Though the human race may not like it, Jesus, both the Bible and Jesus Himself insist, is the only way to life with God.
N.T. Wright, the Anglican scholar of the New Testament, has summarized this truth by saying that Jesus is “the window onto God.”
And five hundred years ago, Martin Luther distilled it by saying that if we want to know God and Who He is, we need to look to Christ on the cross.
Jesus is explicit about His identity as God and as the way to God in verse 27 of today’s Gospel lesson: “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Jesus is the window to God, the doorway to eternity, God come to the earth, Who is our only means to eternity.
You may have noticed that the world isn’t always keen to accept these things about Jesus.
Accepting Jesus as the ultimate self-disclosure of God and the only Savior of human souls doesn’t play well with the prevailing prejudices of the human race.
One such prejudice challenges God in Christ to prove Himself, His existence, and His power, as though His death and resurrection are insufficient proof to silence all challenges to Jesus’ lordship.
Another prejudice comes from those who prefer that God be subordinate to them and let them choose religion over faith in Christ alone.
Then there are those who simply hate the idea of surrendering to a God Who offers them salvation as a free gift, who want to prove themselves and their own worthiness, who want their will to be done and not God’s will.
Truth is, we all exhibit these prejudices, even the most committed of Christians.
Bred deep in the DNA of every human being is the desire to be like God and the suspicion that we know better than God.
And this inherited “functional atheism” will reside in every human being until the crucifixion of death comes to this earthly flesh.
In the section of Matthew’s Gospel from which this morning’s lesson comes, Jesus has been running the gauntlet of these human prejudices, through the kind of human confidence in human wisdom that often keeps human beings from trusting in Christ as God and Savior.
Take a look at Matthew 11 with me, please (page 682 in the sanctuary Bibles), and scan the incidents that give rise to the prayer of Jesus that makes up today’s lesson.
Matthew 11:3 tells us that John the Baptist, of all people, incarcerated for readying the world for the coming of the Messiah, was having his doubts about Jesus. John instructs his own disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
You see, to those of a religious bent of mind, Christianity seems too simple. They find it hard to accept that God doesn’t say, “Be good and you can earn your way into my good graces.” Instead, God says, “Repent--submit to the crucifixion of your old self and all its sins--and trust in Christ--believe that Christ erases the power of sin and death over your life, and you will have life with God for eternity.”
John, being of a religious bent of mind, was confused. He thought that the Messiah would be a conquering king. But here the One he thought was Messiah was operating as God always had stretching back to the garden and throughout the Old Testament, offering salvation by grace through faith in Him.
Later, in verses 16-18, Jesus laments the fact that “this generation,” meaning the whole human race, could never be satisfied with the ways in which God reached out to them. They said that John the Baptist, who never touched a drop of alcohol, had a demon and that Jesus, because He reached out to tax extortionists and other sinners, was “a glutton and a drunkard.” The religious know-it-alls, the good church people of Jesus’ day, were certain of their wisdom.
“But wisdom,” Jesus says in Matthew 11:19, “is proved right by her deeds.”
Despite his doubts, John the Baptist was willing to submit to death for His faith in Christ, and so was proven right.
Jesus, despite His sinlessness, was willing to take our punishment for sin on the cross, then rose from death to offer life to all who follow Him, and so was proven right.
And, the Bible teaches, if we will follow Him, we too will be proven right in trusting in Him.
1 Peter 1:6-9 tells Christians: “...though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
This way of life is completely opposite to the way of life commended by the world’s wisdom.
The wisdom of this world says: “Do what seems right to you. Follow your heart. Look out for number one. Get it while you can.”
The wisdom of God tells us, “Surrender to Christ. Let God call the shots. Endure...even when it’s the last thing on earth you want to do. God will help you through the tough times. And He will give you an eternity of joy beyond all human imagining.”
Just before today’s lesson, then, Jesus denounces towns that refused to welcome Him as Lord. He says that because they were more confident in their own wisdom than the revealed wisdom of God, they would “go down to Hades,” to hell. (So much for Milquetoast Jesus.)
It’s then that Jesus prays, starting at Matthew 11:25: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.”
The people who get the Gospel, who get Jesus and get life from Him are those who are willing to get Jesus, people who submit to becoming little children and who bow to the wisdom of God.
Jesus isn’t saying that those who follow Him are to be stupid or gullible. He’s saying that they are pliant, open to God.
In the end, faith in Christ and deepened faith in Christ cannot come as the result of human wisdom or rational argument.
Faith cannot come from the begrudging fulfillment of religious duties, of taking on the burden of religious do’s and don’t’s like the heavy yoke the farmers of Jesus’ day placed on the backs of their work animals.
Faith and the new life of freedom from sin, the freedom to say no to sin, the freedom to live as the people God made us to be, the freedom to live life God’s way, the way we were designed to live, is a gift to those who turn their backs on the wisdom of the world and embrace the wisdom of God.
Of course, we must learn as Christians to live in this world like foreigners and strangers. We're not in heaven yet. That's why Jesus says that His followers are to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
But we are people who live under a new wisdom, unlike the wisdom of this world.
We know that grace is free.
The Gospel is true.
And rest for the soul comes to those who follow Christ.
So, Jesus says, beginning in verse 28, issues an invitation to all people to bow to this wisdom and His lordship: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
To some, heedless of Christ’s cross and empty tomb, these words will seem like nonsense. They will refuse to believe.
And the only way to reach them is the very way Jesus reached skeptics and unbelievers, through deeds of kindness and love and service rendered in the power and in the Name of God Himself.
That’s why our missions to places like India and Haiti, our service through agencies like Service Over Self, Interfaith Hospitality Network, and the Gateway Men’s Shelter of St. Vincent de Paul, and even our kindness outreaches, are so important.
Romans 2:4 tells us that the kindness of God is intended to bring people to repentance and new life in Christ.
Christians, living in the wisdom revealed by Christ and not in their own wisdom, are freed from all anxiety about their own worthiness, so that they can perpetrate many small and large acts of kindness in Christ’s Name and Christ’s power and so, recklessly help others know the God of the cross and the resurrection.
This actually should be very good news for us this morning!
I know it does for me.
Confession: The older I get, the less I can truly say I know.
My head may be filled with lots of facts. I may have lots of experiences. But as time goes by, the less qualified I feel to function myself or to offer advice to others.
My wisdom, I realize, is non-existent. My impulses, doubtful. My maturity, questionable.
But despite having nothing of what the world counts as wisdom, I live with confidence and hope. I know that God has all the wisdom I need to live from day to day. And from God, we can have the greatest wisdom of all: faith in Christ! This is what Jesus offers to those who submit to being little children who follow Him.
James 1:5 tells us: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
In Matthew 11:27, Jesus says: “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Jesus has chosen to reveal God and the way of salvation and hope to those who are willing to surrender.
You don’t have to earn it.
You don’t have to be brilliant or charming or strong or beautiful or accomplished.
You just have to be willing to let Him love you and follow where He leads.
I have to warn you that that sounds easier than it actually is.
Which is why the Christian lives in what Lutheran called “daily repentance and renewal,” daily surrender to Christ, daily downloading of God's wisdom.
This is the way of life. Amen
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Monday, June 30, 2014
Value her for who she is...
...not what she looks like.
That's the message of this ad produced by Verizon.
It makes me cringe to see how our culture has taken backward steps in the past few decades when it comes to its expectations of women and girls.
Yes, there are more women in the professions and in the workplace, generally. But the culture seems to tell women, "You have to be more capable than men doing the same work, June Cleaver, and a siren."
This fact strikes me whenever I turn on a cable news or sports channel. Male anchors are well-covered in suits and ties while female anchors are often scantily clad with elevated hemlines.
It's absurd.
That's the message of this ad produced by Verizon.
It makes me cringe to see how our culture has taken backward steps in the past few decades when it comes to its expectations of women and girls.
Yes, there are more women in the professions and in the workplace, generally. But the culture seems to tell women, "You have to be more capable than men doing the same work, June Cleaver, and a siren."
This fact strikes me whenever I turn on a cable news or sports channel. Male anchors are well-covered in suits and ties while female anchors are often scantily clad with elevated hemlines.
It's absurd.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Choose Your Fear
[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, on June 22, 2014.]
Matthew 10:5a, 21-33
The following news item caught my eye yesterday:
Now, if you think this is going to be anti-Islamic screed, you’d be wrong. I do believe that Christian faith, faith that the crucified and risen Jesus is God for us--Emmanuel--and that He alone is the way to a life with God. I believe that that is foundational truth. Salvation cannot be found in Islam. It can be found in Christ alone. But all of that is not what caught my eye in this news item.
The story, in fact, brought three thoughts immediately to mind.
First, I thanked God that I live in a country where I have the freedom to worship God in my own way or to not worship God at all, this latter freedom being one that something like 70% of those who identify themselves as Christians exercise every Sunday morning by not going to church. I don’t have to put my religious preference on any government papers. I’m not going to be locked up for pointing out instances when my fellow Christians are being harassed. We have freedom of religion and of irreligion in this country...and it’s a blessing.
The second thought that crossed my mind was actually a question...to myself: “How would you hold up under the pressure that has been Bishoy Armia Boulos’ lot for several years now, would you continue to boldly profess your faith or would you collapse like a cheap folding chair?”
My answer? “I don’t know.”
I don’t know what I would do if a government official, figuratively or literally, held a gun to my head and said, “Renounce your faith in Christ or die. Renounce your faith in Christ or face a lifetime of persecution, harassment, or time in prison.”
Thank God I live in a country where I’m not likely to ever face those kinds of choices. At least, not from the government.
But that leads to my third thought.
Today’s Gospel lesson comes from a section of Matthew’s gospel that recounts how Jesus sent the apostles out, two by two, to replicate His ministry. It was time for them to take off their training wheels and hit the bricks. In Jesus’ Name, they were to proclaim the good news that God’s kingdom can enter the lives of those with faith in Christ. In Jesus' Name too, they were also to heal the sick and cast out demons. And Jesus warned them that they would face opposition, maybe even from their own families.
Take a look at our lesson, starting at Matthew 10:21 (page 681 in the sanctuary Bibles): “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.”
You don’t have to go to Egypt to find Christians who are suffering in ways similar to what Jesus describes here.
Go to any middle school or high school campus and you’ll find Christian young people dealing with the pressure to conform to peers among whom God is an old myth and self is king.
Talk to parents whose adult children deride them for their faith in Christ.
Talk to the Christian in the workplace seeking to follow Christ who is pressured to fudge sales figures, product reliability claims, or measurements of productivity.
The pressure to leave Christ behind is exerted on many of us each day.
It’s exerted by those who may be gatekeepers for our worldly success or the acceptance of others.
It’s exerted too by the temptation faced by every human being to conform to a sinful world rather than having our minds and our lives transformed by Jesus Christ.
According to Jesus, these pressures are the norm, not the exception, for those who follow Him. Verse 24: “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!”
If we are members of the household of faith in Jesus Christ, if we’re His disciples, and the One we follow was crucified by a world that did not want to recognize Him as God and Savior, did not want to recognize their need of forgiveness and grace and new life that only Christ brings, did not want to accept the Lordship and authority of Jesus over their lives, how can we possibly expect that we will be treated better than He was?
If Jesus, God in the flesh, was called Beelzebul, that is, a demon, should those of us who bear His Name expect an easy time this side of our own deaths and resurrections?
The answer is, “No.”
At my first parish, we had a five week summer school program of Bible history and Catechism for kids going into the third through the eighth grades. It was required for Confirmation, in addition to weekly school year Catechism for the kids in the sixth through eighth grades. We had 85 kids in the program. It was a difference-maker in the life of that congregation. The people of that congregation know Christ and His Word very well there. I got a note just a few weeks ago from one of my old summer school students, now thirty-seven, who said that summer school was among the best experiences of her childhood. But one mom, back when I was there, didn’t want her son in summer school. I’ll never forget the meeting I had with her in which she told me that the church’s summer school was clearly demonic because it cut into her son’s fledgling baseball career.
If you’re a believer in Jesus, Jesus is telling us today, you can bank on people giving you a hard time, putting you in pigeon holes, putting you down, even calling your faith in Him evil. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, consider yourself fortunate. (And rare.)
Now, none of this sounds like very good news, does it? I mean, I don’t like the idea of being snubbed by family members and one-time friends because I try to follow Jesus. Many of us in this sanctuary know what that feels like and it isn’t pleasant. And no one likes to think that because they strive to follow Christ, they’ll lose promotions at work or experience a loss of social standing. And I certainly don’t relish the thought of losing my life on earth because I believe in Jesus.
All of that frightens me.
I imagine it frightens you too, if you think about it.
But in the midst of this truthfulness about the risks involved in following Him, Jesus tells us this: We must choose our fears. We all fear some things. Jesus says choose to fear the right thing.
Verse 26: “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
The world can destroy your bank book.
The world can take away your job and investment portfolio.
The world can make you unpopular.
The world can even take your physical life away from you.
But it cannot eternally destroy you without your permission.
That’s because God, the God we know in Jesus Christ, Who has conquered sin and death for all who acknowledge their need of God and who trust in Christ for life itself, can and will save those who fear Him and refuse to fear the world.
“The fear of the Lord,” the book of Proverbs says repeatedly, “is the beginning of wisdom.”
It’s also the beginning of life. Every other fear leads away from God and to death. The fear of God leads to life.
I’m afraid of many things, probably more than most people. That’s what comes from being a little OCD, I suppose.
My greatest fear, in some ways, is that I will die before I’ve tasted the good I’d like to most experience in this world, sometimes forgetting the eternity of joy that awaits those who fear God and trust in Christ.
So this business of choosing the fear of God over the fear of the world cuts very close to home for me. I’m made ashamed by people like Bishoy Armia Boulos. I can almost sense God telling me as He told a king through Daniel in the Old Testament: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”
But blessedly, like you, I seek to follow that same God, made plain to the world in Jesus Christ, of Whom Lamentations 3:22-23 says: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning...”
“God,” I say repeatedly in many ways every day, “forgive me for fearing the world more than I fear You. Teach me to walk through this life boldly, fearing only You.” And His forgiveness and His power come to me again.
Maybe you struggle with fears of what this finite, dying world can do to you as well.
If so, don’t worry. Jesus didn’t come to die and rise for perfect people.
He came to die and rise for people willing to admit their imperfection and of their eternal need of Him.
Christ alone can cover our imperfections and replace our old fears of the world with a holy fear--a holy awe, a holy respect--of the God Who made us, loves us, and has paid the price to buy back from sin and death all who believe in Christ.
Our call as Christians living in this world is not to endure in perfection. Our call is to endure in daily surrender to Christ.
At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”
Never be afraid to acknowledge Jesus in this world because, despite our imperfections, He will never disown those to whom He willingly gives the courage to fear God and nothing and nobody else. Amen
Matthew 10:5a, 21-33
The following news item caught my eye yesterday:
The first Egyptian to try to legally change his religious identity from Islam to Christianity on his government ID was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison.The article went on to say that Boulos, because of his conversion to Christianity and his desire to have that noted on his official IDs, is somewhat notorious in Egypt, a believer in Christ living with the constant threat of harassment and worse because of His faith.
Bishoy Armia Boulos, formerly known as Mohmmed Hegazy, received the prison term and a fine of 500 Egyptian pounds...for what the judge called ‘disturbing the peace by broadcasting false information’ after the 31-year-old Christian documented political unrest in Egypt brought on by numerous Muslim extremist attacks on Christians, attorney Wagdy Haifa said.
Now, if you think this is going to be anti-Islamic screed, you’d be wrong. I do believe that Christian faith, faith that the crucified and risen Jesus is God for us--Emmanuel--and that He alone is the way to a life with God. I believe that that is foundational truth. Salvation cannot be found in Islam. It can be found in Christ alone. But all of that is not what caught my eye in this news item.
The story, in fact, brought three thoughts immediately to mind.
First, I thanked God that I live in a country where I have the freedom to worship God in my own way or to not worship God at all, this latter freedom being one that something like 70% of those who identify themselves as Christians exercise every Sunday morning by not going to church. I don’t have to put my religious preference on any government papers. I’m not going to be locked up for pointing out instances when my fellow Christians are being harassed. We have freedom of religion and of irreligion in this country...and it’s a blessing.
The second thought that crossed my mind was actually a question...to myself: “How would you hold up under the pressure that has been Bishoy Armia Boulos’ lot for several years now, would you continue to boldly profess your faith or would you collapse like a cheap folding chair?”
My answer? “I don’t know.”
I don’t know what I would do if a government official, figuratively or literally, held a gun to my head and said, “Renounce your faith in Christ or die. Renounce your faith in Christ or face a lifetime of persecution, harassment, or time in prison.”
Thank God I live in a country where I’m not likely to ever face those kinds of choices. At least, not from the government.
But that leads to my third thought.
Today’s Gospel lesson comes from a section of Matthew’s gospel that recounts how Jesus sent the apostles out, two by two, to replicate His ministry. It was time for them to take off their training wheels and hit the bricks. In Jesus’ Name, they were to proclaim the good news that God’s kingdom can enter the lives of those with faith in Christ. In Jesus' Name too, they were also to heal the sick and cast out demons. And Jesus warned them that they would face opposition, maybe even from their own families.
Take a look at our lesson, starting at Matthew 10:21 (page 681 in the sanctuary Bibles): “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.”
You don’t have to go to Egypt to find Christians who are suffering in ways similar to what Jesus describes here.
Go to any middle school or high school campus and you’ll find Christian young people dealing with the pressure to conform to peers among whom God is an old myth and self is king.
Talk to parents whose adult children deride them for their faith in Christ.
Talk to the Christian in the workplace seeking to follow Christ who is pressured to fudge sales figures, product reliability claims, or measurements of productivity.
The pressure to leave Christ behind is exerted on many of us each day.
It’s exerted by those who may be gatekeepers for our worldly success or the acceptance of others.
It’s exerted too by the temptation faced by every human being to conform to a sinful world rather than having our minds and our lives transformed by Jesus Christ.
According to Jesus, these pressures are the norm, not the exception, for those who follow Him. Verse 24: “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!”
If we are members of the household of faith in Jesus Christ, if we’re His disciples, and the One we follow was crucified by a world that did not want to recognize Him as God and Savior, did not want to recognize their need of forgiveness and grace and new life that only Christ brings, did not want to accept the Lordship and authority of Jesus over their lives, how can we possibly expect that we will be treated better than He was?
If Jesus, God in the flesh, was called Beelzebul, that is, a demon, should those of us who bear His Name expect an easy time this side of our own deaths and resurrections?
The answer is, “No.”
At my first parish, we had a five week summer school program of Bible history and Catechism for kids going into the third through the eighth grades. It was required for Confirmation, in addition to weekly school year Catechism for the kids in the sixth through eighth grades. We had 85 kids in the program. It was a difference-maker in the life of that congregation. The people of that congregation know Christ and His Word very well there. I got a note just a few weeks ago from one of my old summer school students, now thirty-seven, who said that summer school was among the best experiences of her childhood. But one mom, back when I was there, didn’t want her son in summer school. I’ll never forget the meeting I had with her in which she told me that the church’s summer school was clearly demonic because it cut into her son’s fledgling baseball career.
If you’re a believer in Jesus, Jesus is telling us today, you can bank on people giving you a hard time, putting you in pigeon holes, putting you down, even calling your faith in Him evil. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, consider yourself fortunate. (And rare.)
Now, none of this sounds like very good news, does it? I mean, I don’t like the idea of being snubbed by family members and one-time friends because I try to follow Jesus. Many of us in this sanctuary know what that feels like and it isn’t pleasant. And no one likes to think that because they strive to follow Christ, they’ll lose promotions at work or experience a loss of social standing. And I certainly don’t relish the thought of losing my life on earth because I believe in Jesus.
All of that frightens me.
I imagine it frightens you too, if you think about it.
But in the midst of this truthfulness about the risks involved in following Him, Jesus tells us this: We must choose our fears. We all fear some things. Jesus says choose to fear the right thing.
Verse 26: “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
The world can destroy your bank book.
The world can take away your job and investment portfolio.
The world can make you unpopular.
The world can even take your physical life away from you.
But it cannot eternally destroy you without your permission.
That’s because God, the God we know in Jesus Christ, Who has conquered sin and death for all who acknowledge their need of God and who trust in Christ for life itself, can and will save those who fear Him and refuse to fear the world.
“The fear of the Lord,” the book of Proverbs says repeatedly, “is the beginning of wisdom.”
It’s also the beginning of life. Every other fear leads away from God and to death. The fear of God leads to life.
I’m afraid of many things, probably more than most people. That’s what comes from being a little OCD, I suppose.
My greatest fear, in some ways, is that I will die before I’ve tasted the good I’d like to most experience in this world, sometimes forgetting the eternity of joy that awaits those who fear God and trust in Christ.
So this business of choosing the fear of God over the fear of the world cuts very close to home for me. I’m made ashamed by people like Bishoy Armia Boulos. I can almost sense God telling me as He told a king through Daniel in the Old Testament: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”
But blessedly, like you, I seek to follow that same God, made plain to the world in Jesus Christ, of Whom Lamentations 3:22-23 says: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning...”
“God,” I say repeatedly in many ways every day, “forgive me for fearing the world more than I fear You. Teach me to walk through this life boldly, fearing only You.” And His forgiveness and His power come to me again.
Maybe you struggle with fears of what this finite, dying world can do to you as well.
If so, don’t worry. Jesus didn’t come to die and rise for perfect people.
He came to die and rise for people willing to admit their imperfection and of their eternal need of Him.
Christ alone can cover our imperfections and replace our old fears of the world with a holy fear--a holy awe, a holy respect--of the God Who made us, loves us, and has paid the price to buy back from sin and death all who believe in Christ.
Our call as Christians living in this world is not to endure in perfection. Our call is to endure in daily surrender to Christ.
At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.”
Never be afraid to acknowledge Jesus in this world because, despite our imperfections, He will never disown those to whom He willingly gives the courage to fear God and nothing and nobody else. Amen
The Elusive Mr. Park
I have never seen a runner elude a tag and score the way Seok-Min Park does in this recent play from the Korean baseball league, KBO. Absolutely cracks me up. Good job, Mr. Park!
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Season of Pentecost Welcome
[With each new season of the Church Year, the bulletins at Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, include a special word of welcome. This welcome will appear throughout the Season after Pentecost.]
Good morning and welcome to Living Water Lutheran Church!
Along with many other churches around the world, today finds us in the Season after Pentecost, which this year runs from June 15 to November 27.
Pentecost is sort of the “Now What?” season of the Church Year. -At Christmas we celebrated God coming into the world in the Person of Jesus. -On Good Friday, we remembered that, despite His sinlessness, He died, taking the punishment for sin we deserve. -On Easter, we recall with gratitude and celebration that Jesus rose from the dead, claiming new and everlasting life with God for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ. -At Pentecost, we remember that after ascending into heaven, Jesus has not left His people alone in this world and so, sent the Holy Spirit to those who trust in Him. After all that, we might think, “That’s great! Now what?”
Pentecost is a season in which we consider practical questions like:
How do we live as Christians in our every day world?
How do we grow in our faith in Christ?
Questions like these will occupy us all through this season. We would love to welcome you as we consider these questions by focusing on God’s Word together on Sunday mornings.
God loves you. The crucified and risen Jesus is the proof of that. May God’s Holy Spirit draw you close to God as we worship Him together this morning. If you have questions about following Jesus, feel free to contact the church office and ask for the senior pastor, Mark Daniels, or pastoral assistant and director for youth ministries, Dan Mershon.
Good morning and welcome to Living Water Lutheran Church!
Along with many other churches around the world, today finds us in the Season after Pentecost, which this year runs from June 15 to November 27.
Pentecost is sort of the “Now What?” season of the Church Year. -At Christmas we celebrated God coming into the world in the Person of Jesus. -On Good Friday, we remembered that, despite His sinlessness, He died, taking the punishment for sin we deserve. -On Easter, we recall with gratitude and celebration that Jesus rose from the dead, claiming new and everlasting life with God for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ. -At Pentecost, we remember that after ascending into heaven, Jesus has not left His people alone in this world and so, sent the Holy Spirit to those who trust in Him. After all that, we might think, “That’s great! Now what?”
Pentecost is a season in which we consider practical questions like:
How do we live as Christians in our every day world?
How do we grow in our faith in Christ?
Questions like these will occupy us all through this season. We would love to welcome you as we consider these questions by focusing on God’s Word together on Sunday mornings.
God loves you. The crucified and risen Jesus is the proof of that. May God’s Holy Spirit draw you close to God as we worship Him together this morning. If you have questions about following Jesus, feel free to contact the church office and ask for the senior pastor, Mark Daniels, or pastoral assistant and director for youth ministries, Dan Mershon.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
This Beautiful Earth
Hit "full screen" and prepare to be awed by what God has created. Though marred by sin, it gives a foretaste of what God has in mind in His new heaven and new earth. To think that it's just a hint of what's to come is amazing.
The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.
The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.
Praying for Someone to Help
At the end of today's noon 'Mere Christianity' discussion group at Living Water Lutheran Church, we prayed that God would bring someone into each of our lives in the next 24 hours with whom we could share the love of Christ.
Late this afternoon, I went to my barber in Centerville. A man sat silent and aloof on the other end of the room. My barber asked how he was doing. He spoke a few words. Then my barber said, "Hey, you can tell your troubles to Mark. He's a pastor."
Within two minutes, this man was speaking animatedly about some of the trials of his life. He moved to a table closer to the chair where I was getting my hair cut. After the barber finished with me, he kept talking once he'd sat in the chair and I sat down at the table in the middle of the room to listen.
By his introduction, the barber may have made it easier for me. This guy knew that I was in Jesus' army and he decided he could trust me, even though at that point, neither of us knew each others' names.
In the cases of some people though, a wall would have been erected as soon as they'd heard I was a pastor.
But the bottom line is that God found a way, in my life anyway, to answer that prayer we offered together today in the church library.
Someone has said that the greatest ability God looks for in His people is availability. I've found that when we make ourselves available to God, He finds a way to use us...often after we've forgotten what we prayed about.
Oh, and offer a prayer for Bill tonight. God knows who he is and all about his needs.
Late this afternoon, I went to my barber in Centerville. A man sat silent and aloof on the other end of the room. My barber asked how he was doing. He spoke a few words. Then my barber said, "Hey, you can tell your troubles to Mark. He's a pastor."
Within two minutes, this man was speaking animatedly about some of the trials of his life. He moved to a table closer to the chair where I was getting my hair cut. After the barber finished with me, he kept talking once he'd sat in the chair and I sat down at the table in the middle of the room to listen.
By his introduction, the barber may have made it easier for me. This guy knew that I was in Jesus' army and he decided he could trust me, even though at that point, neither of us knew each others' names.
In the cases of some people though, a wall would have been erected as soon as they'd heard I was a pastor.
But the bottom line is that God found a way, in my life anyway, to answer that prayer we offered together today in the church library.
Someone has said that the greatest ability God looks for in His people is availability. I've found that when we make ourselves available to God, He finds a way to use us...often after we've forgotten what we prayed about.
Oh, and offer a prayer for Bill tonight. God knows who he is and all about his needs.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Why the Trinity is Important
[This was prepared to be shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, yesterday.]
Matthew 28:16-20
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost.
When I was a boy, about eight, I remember going to my Mom and asking for an explanation of the Trinity, of how God could be one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Mom punted. She told me to ask our pastor, which I did.
I asked him to explain the Trinity. “Mark,” he said, “think of water. It can come in the form of a liquid, a solid (in water’s case, ice), or gas (in this case, steam). But whatever form it takes, it’s always water. Three in one.”
That helped somewhat. But the problem with that analogy is that as Christians, we don’t believe that God takes on different forms as though God were engaged in some eternal Halloween party, changing His costume from time to time.
We confess that God is always one and always three. God is always one being; God is always three persons.
Fact is, no analogy we draw is going to exactly explain something as mysterious as the Trinity. And, of course, only God can really understand it. It’s HIS reality, after all. How could we ever get that?
But the very notion of the Trinity is so difficult for us to get our brains wrapped around that some people give up on even talking about it. I heard one pastor, for example, say that the Trinity was difficult to understand, he'd decided to never talk about the subject.
But as I’ve gotten to know God better through the pages of Scripture, the fellowship of believers, and the Lord’s Supper, I’ve come to agree with a Presbyterian friend of mine (a petroleum engineer who’s a very good theologian) who wrote on his blog a few years ago, that there may be nothing more important for us to try to “get” as Christians than the Trinity.
Not the Trinity as a doctrine to be memorized.
Not the Trinity as a teaching propped up by arcane and sometimes meaningless analogies.
But the Trinity as a reality, the Trinity as something centrally important to how you and I live every day, the Trinity as a template for how to truly live as human beings.
The word “Trinity” is never used in the Bible. But repeatedly, by inference in the Old Testament and in plain words in the New Testament, the Bible affirms that three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are co-equal, co-eternal personalities of the one and only God the universe.
For example, in our first lesson, from Genesis, God the Spirit brings the life of the universe into being.
In our second lesson, recounting the apostle Peter recalls how ancient King David referred to the Messiah--the Christ--Who would come centuries after his own death as Lord.
And, look, please at today’s Gospel lesson. It contains the Great Commission. In verse 19, Jesus says: “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” Jesus is putting Himself and the Holy Spirit on the same level as God the Father.
The Gospels also tell us that Jesus makes a point of placing Himself on an equal footing with God the Father many times.
“Before Abraham was,” He told skeptical followers, “I AM.” (“Before Abraham was,” in other words, “Yahweh,” using the Name with which God identified Himself to Moses and ancient Israel.)
“I and the Father are one,” He claims.
“Anyone who has seen Me,” He says, “you have seen the Father.”
Yet, Jesus isn’t suggesting that there are two or three Gods over the universe. Like centuries of Jews before and since, Jesus affirmed the truth of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
So, without ever using the word trinity, the Bible affirms that God is one God in three persons. By now, you may be crying, "Uncle! Enough already. The Bible teaches that God is one God in three Persons. So what?"
For those who recently read Mere Christianity, some what I’m about to say will sound familiar, but let me suggest why I think it’s so important.
You’ve heard the phrase: “I love humanity. It’s the people I can’t stand.” We find that funny because we know that there is no validity to our claims of being loving people in general if we are unwilling to love particular people in particular.
Love at its most basic level is not about affectionate feelings.
It’s not about an attitude of heart.
Love is a commitment to willing and doing what is best for the beloved.
Love that isn’t lived out practically isn’t love.
You can’t be loving if there is no object of your love. (Hang with me now.)
One of the most famous passages of the New Testament is 1 John 4:8, which says, in part, “God is love.” Now, John didn't write, "Love is God." God is not an abstraction. Nor is God tolerant of all our behaviors. Much of what we human beings is sinful and of those behaviors, God is completely intolerant, even though He never stops loving us.
In these three little words, John isn't giving us a rationale for doing whatever we want, irrespective of the will of God.
No, in saying that, "God is love," John is making an eternal statement about an eternal God.
Before God created the heavens and the earth, before Jesus died and rose so that all who believe in Him may be freed of their sins, before the Holy Spirit formed the Church, God is, God was, and God will be eternally loving. Love is at the core of God’s character and being.
But, that raises a question: Who did God love before the beginning?
The answer, I think, is that in eternity, before there was time, before there was a creation, God was already loving others. God the Father loved God the Son and God the Spirit and God the Son and God the Spirit each loved the other two members of the Trinity, have done so and will do so for all eternity.
Even the existence of this universe in which we live at least suggests that God is one, but is more than one person.
When I was twenty-five, we’d been married for five years and my parents were growing impatient. Where, they wondered, were the grandchildren we were supposed to be coming up with? Then, my dad, father of five kids, decided to have a heart to heart with me. He told me that if I were looking for the right time or the right reason for having children, to forget it. There’s never a right time. There’s never a good reason.
And that’s the point. Love doesn’t need a right time or a good reason. It’s in the very nature of love to forgo convenience to self and to give, to serve, to love, to stand by, to live for, even, if necessary, to die for. God has always known how to love.
He exists in what the theologians call a "triune" relationship of perfect love and doesn’t need more love. He’s always loved perfectly. He's always been loved. God doesn't need love. Honestly, He doesn't really need us.
But, because God is infinite and eternal in His love, God loved the universe into being. God the Word, Christ, spoke into the darkness and chaos and God the Spirit wended His Word and life sprang up.
We are the product of God’s love, unnecessary but loved nonetheless, superfluous but cherished.
Today, the Holy Trinity calls us to follow Christ right into the center of His loving fellowship. He calls us into a new relationship of love with Him and all that He has made. Sin and death and isolation from God and from others will be the last word over every human life unless people are washed clean of sin and made new through repentance and faith in Christ. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Christ calls us into life abundant and eternal.
But there is no life without love.
This is no biological observation: the unloved child, abused by her or his parents isn’t experiencing life; the couple in a loveless marriage aren’t living; the teen subjected to bullying and putdowns is experiencing a love deficit that is, inherently, a life deficit; the visitors ignored when they worship at a church they’ve never been to before are being treated both lovelessly and as though they weren’t even alive.
And this is why the Trinity is such an important reality for us to experience.
We live in a fractured, fractious world. People are divided and often hateful. Love of neighbors, including love of our enemies, is a rare thing. It’s so rare, it seems, that only Jesus and the people who, by faith, draw life from Jesus really live it. God has created the Church, the fellowship of believers in Christ, to make disciples and to usher believers into a community of love that fills us with the power of God to move toward being the loving people we were made to be and promises us eternal fellowship with God and others. In the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest, Jesus prayed to God the Father that all who followed Him, “may be one...just as you are in me and I am in you...” God wants us to live in the same selfless fellowship with others He has always known. That’s what Jesus died and rose to give to those who dare to believe in Him.
If all of this sounds airy and theoretical, removed from the hard realities of your life, consider what C.S. Lewis memorably says about how the Holy Spirit is involved in every prayer offered in the Name of Jesus, even the simplest prayers:
God in His fullness, Who cares about us even though He doesn’t have to, Who is able to stand with us in every experience, also makes it possible for us to experience fellowship, community, with Him and with His family, the Church.
This is why the Church is so important. Only the Church has been designated to connect people with the Trinity.
And in a world filled with the idea of mashing others into oblivion and lifting ourselves to the top, of crushing and being crushed by selfishness and self-will, we need the liberation from self and the connection to God and to others that only the Holy Trinity can give us.
We need, truly, more than anything else, love that changes our hearts, our minds, and our eternities.
And only the God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can give it. Amen
Matthew 28:16-20
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost.
When I was a boy, about eight, I remember going to my Mom and asking for an explanation of the Trinity, of how God could be one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Mom punted. She told me to ask our pastor, which I did.
I asked him to explain the Trinity. “Mark,” he said, “think of water. It can come in the form of a liquid, a solid (in water’s case, ice), or gas (in this case, steam). But whatever form it takes, it’s always water. Three in one.”
That helped somewhat. But the problem with that analogy is that as Christians, we don’t believe that God takes on different forms as though God were engaged in some eternal Halloween party, changing His costume from time to time.
We confess that God is always one and always three. God is always one being; God is always three persons.
Fact is, no analogy we draw is going to exactly explain something as mysterious as the Trinity. And, of course, only God can really understand it. It’s HIS reality, after all. How could we ever get that?
But the very notion of the Trinity is so difficult for us to get our brains wrapped around that some people give up on even talking about it. I heard one pastor, for example, say that the Trinity was difficult to understand, he'd decided to never talk about the subject.
But as I’ve gotten to know God better through the pages of Scripture, the fellowship of believers, and the Lord’s Supper, I’ve come to agree with a Presbyterian friend of mine (a petroleum engineer who’s a very good theologian) who wrote on his blog a few years ago, that there may be nothing more important for us to try to “get” as Christians than the Trinity.
Not the Trinity as a doctrine to be memorized.
Not the Trinity as a teaching propped up by arcane and sometimes meaningless analogies.
But the Trinity as a reality, the Trinity as something centrally important to how you and I live every day, the Trinity as a template for how to truly live as human beings.
The word “Trinity” is never used in the Bible. But repeatedly, by inference in the Old Testament and in plain words in the New Testament, the Bible affirms that three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are co-equal, co-eternal personalities of the one and only God the universe.
For example, in our first lesson, from Genesis, God the Spirit brings the life of the universe into being.
In our second lesson, recounting the apostle Peter recalls how ancient King David referred to the Messiah--the Christ--Who would come centuries after his own death as Lord.
And, look, please at today’s Gospel lesson. It contains the Great Commission. In verse 19, Jesus says: “...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” Jesus is putting Himself and the Holy Spirit on the same level as God the Father.
The Gospels also tell us that Jesus makes a point of placing Himself on an equal footing with God the Father many times.
“Before Abraham was,” He told skeptical followers, “I AM.” (“Before Abraham was,” in other words, “Yahweh,” using the Name with which God identified Himself to Moses and ancient Israel.)
“I and the Father are one,” He claims.
“Anyone who has seen Me,” He says, “you have seen the Father.”
Yet, Jesus isn’t suggesting that there are two or three Gods over the universe. Like centuries of Jews before and since, Jesus affirmed the truth of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
So, without ever using the word trinity, the Bible affirms that God is one God in three persons. By now, you may be crying, "Uncle! Enough already. The Bible teaches that God is one God in three Persons. So what?"
For those who recently read Mere Christianity, some what I’m about to say will sound familiar, but let me suggest why I think it’s so important.
You’ve heard the phrase: “I love humanity. It’s the people I can’t stand.” We find that funny because we know that there is no validity to our claims of being loving people in general if we are unwilling to love particular people in particular.
Love at its most basic level is not about affectionate feelings.
It’s not about an attitude of heart.
Love is a commitment to willing and doing what is best for the beloved.
Love that isn’t lived out practically isn’t love.
You can’t be loving if there is no object of your love. (Hang with me now.)
One of the most famous passages of the New Testament is 1 John 4:8, which says, in part, “God is love.” Now, John didn't write, "Love is God." God is not an abstraction. Nor is God tolerant of all our behaviors. Much of what we human beings is sinful and of those behaviors, God is completely intolerant, even though He never stops loving us.
In these three little words, John isn't giving us a rationale for doing whatever we want, irrespective of the will of God.
No, in saying that, "God is love," John is making an eternal statement about an eternal God.
Before God created the heavens and the earth, before Jesus died and rose so that all who believe in Him may be freed of their sins, before the Holy Spirit formed the Church, God is, God was, and God will be eternally loving. Love is at the core of God’s character and being.
But, that raises a question: Who did God love before the beginning?
The answer, I think, is that in eternity, before there was time, before there was a creation, God was already loving others. God the Father loved God the Son and God the Spirit and God the Son and God the Spirit each loved the other two members of the Trinity, have done so and will do so for all eternity.
Even the existence of this universe in which we live at least suggests that God is one, but is more than one person.
When I was twenty-five, we’d been married for five years and my parents were growing impatient. Where, they wondered, were the grandchildren we were supposed to be coming up with? Then, my dad, father of five kids, decided to have a heart to heart with me. He told me that if I were looking for the right time or the right reason for having children, to forget it. There’s never a right time. There’s never a good reason.
And that’s the point. Love doesn’t need a right time or a good reason. It’s in the very nature of love to forgo convenience to self and to give, to serve, to love, to stand by, to live for, even, if necessary, to die for. God has always known how to love.
He exists in what the theologians call a "triune" relationship of perfect love and doesn’t need more love. He’s always loved perfectly. He's always been loved. God doesn't need love. Honestly, He doesn't really need us.
But, because God is infinite and eternal in His love, God loved the universe into being. God the Word, Christ, spoke into the darkness and chaos and God the Spirit wended His Word and life sprang up.
We are the product of God’s love, unnecessary but loved nonetheless, superfluous but cherished.
Today, the Holy Trinity calls us to follow Christ right into the center of His loving fellowship. He calls us into a new relationship of love with Him and all that He has made. Sin and death and isolation from God and from others will be the last word over every human life unless people are washed clean of sin and made new through repentance and faith in Christ. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Christ calls us into life abundant and eternal.
But there is no life without love.
This is no biological observation: the unloved child, abused by her or his parents isn’t experiencing life; the couple in a loveless marriage aren’t living; the teen subjected to bullying and putdowns is experiencing a love deficit that is, inherently, a life deficit; the visitors ignored when they worship at a church they’ve never been to before are being treated both lovelessly and as though they weren’t even alive.
And this is why the Trinity is such an important reality for us to experience.
We live in a fractured, fractious world. People are divided and often hateful. Love of neighbors, including love of our enemies, is a rare thing. It’s so rare, it seems, that only Jesus and the people who, by faith, draw life from Jesus really live it. God has created the Church, the fellowship of believers in Christ, to make disciples and to usher believers into a community of love that fills us with the power of God to move toward being the loving people we were made to be and promises us eternal fellowship with God and others. In the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest, Jesus prayed to God the Father that all who followed Him, “may be one...just as you are in me and I am in you...” God wants us to live in the same selfless fellowship with others He has always known. That’s what Jesus died and rose to give to those who dare to believe in Him.
If all of this sounds airy and theoretical, removed from the hard realities of your life, consider what C.S. Lewis memorably says about how the Holy Spirit is involved in every prayer offered in the Name of Jesus, even the simplest prayers:
An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God [God the Father]. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God so to speak, inside him [God the Holy Spirit]. But he also knows that all real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God [God the Son]— that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying — the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on — the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. The whole threefold life of the three-personal Being [all three Persons of the Trinity] is actually going on in that ordinary act of prayer.The Holy Trinity can make a difference in our everyday lives if we will be open to His threefold ministry to us.
God in His fullness, Who cares about us even though He doesn’t have to, Who is able to stand with us in every experience, also makes it possible for us to experience fellowship, community, with Him and with His family, the Church.
This is why the Church is so important. Only the Church has been designated to connect people with the Trinity.
And in a world filled with the idea of mashing others into oblivion and lifting ourselves to the top, of crushing and being crushed by selfishness and self-will, we need the liberation from self and the connection to God and to others that only the Holy Trinity can give us.
We need, truly, more than anything else, love that changes our hearts, our minds, and our eternities.
And only the God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can give it. Amen
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Pentecost Welcome
[This is the welcome included in this past Sunday's bulletin to all worshipers as we celebrated Pentecost.]
Welcome to worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church! We’re happy that you’ve come to worship God with us this morning.
Today we celebrate one of the three great festivals of the Christian year, Pentecost! (The other two are Christmas and Easter.) On this day, we remember that fifty days after Jesus rose from the grave and ten days after He ascended into heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to His praying disciples. The Spirit made it possible (and makes it possible today) for sinners forgiven and given new life by grace through faith in Christ, to...
The third article of the Apostles’ Creed, that summation of Christian faith which we invite worshippers to confess each Sunday, tells us some of what the Holy Spirit does. It says that He is:.
If you would like to know more about the Holy Spirit, a very good basic yet thorough explanation can be found in the book, The Holy Spirit by Billy Graham.
Pray that each day can be a Pentecost for you, a day when the Holy Spirit fills you again and again with the new and everlasting life that Jesus died and rose to give to all who believe. Happy Pentecost!
Welcome to worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church! We’re happy that you’ve come to worship God with us this morning.
Today we celebrate one of the three great festivals of the Christian year, Pentecost! (The other two are Christmas and Easter.) On this day, we remember that fifty days after Jesus rose from the grave and ten days after He ascended into heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to His praying disciples. The Spirit made it possible (and makes it possible today) for sinners forgiven and given new life by grace through faith in Christ, to...
...know God’s presence in their livesAs Christians, we believe in “the Trinity.” That word never appears in Scripture, but it describes the God to Whom witness is given there, One God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
...be renewed and to grow in their faith in Christ
...to make disciples of all nations
...to become children of God in the first place
The third article of the Apostles’ Creed, that summation of Christian faith which we invite worshippers to confess each Sunday, tells us some of what the Holy Spirit does. It says that He is:.
..the Creator of the ChurchSomeone has called the Holy Spirit, “the shy member of the Trinity.” He never calls attention to Himself. Yet, in John 3:3, Jesus says we can only be born into the Kingdom of God He died and rose to bring through “water and the Spirit.” And 1 Corinthians 12:3, we’re assured that trust in God is so foreign to our inborn human nature that it’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit working within us that we can confess, “Jesus is Lord.”
...the One Who creates fellowship among the saints, the forgiven sinners who are part of Christ’s Church on earth and in heaven
...the One Who imparts Christ’s forgiveness to those who repent and believe
...the One Who will raise up believers when Christ returns
...the very Breath of life Who will allow believers in Jesus to live eternally with God.
If you would like to know more about the Holy Spirit, a very good basic yet thorough explanation can be found in the book, The Holy Spirit by Billy Graham.
Pray that each day can be a Pentecost for you, a day when the Holy Spirit fills you again and again with the new and everlasting life that Jesus died and rose to give to all who believe. Happy Pentecost!
Monday, June 09, 2014
Changed for the Better
Shared this song on January 25. It seems like a good time to share it again.
God's grace is imparted to us often by special people...and we are changed.
God's grace is imparted to us often by special people...and we are changed.
Sunday, June 08, 2014
"You make me want to be a better man..."
One of my all-time favorite movie lines, from As Good As It Gets.
It is a great compliment to pay someone, especially if it's true.
Once, I heard a guy say it to the people of the church of which he was a member and it was a moving moment.
It's amazing the positive effect that people can have on others, with honesty wrapped in friendship and tenderness.
It is a great compliment to pay someone, especially if it's true.
Once, I heard a guy say it to the people of the church of which he was a member and it was a moving moment.
It's amazing the positive effect that people can have on others, with honesty wrapped in friendship and tenderness.
What Exactly Does the Holy Spirit Do?
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, today.]
Acts 2:1-21
Today brings us to the third great festival of the Church Year. There’s Christmas, then Easter, and now Pentecost.
Of course, Christmas and Easter get all the press. Churches are filled for celebrations of Jesus’ birth and His resurrection from the dead. But unless young people are being confirmed on Pentecost, as happens in many Lutheran congregations on this day, attendance is rarely higher on Pentecost Sunday than it is on most other Sundays of the spring or summer.
In the secular media, magazines and cable channels seem to always use Christmas and Easter as occasions for specials claiming that they’ve found “the real Jesus.” There’ll be no special Pentecost programming about "the real Holy Spirit" on CNN or the History Channel tonight.
Maybe that’s because the Holy Spirit, the One Whose coming fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead Pentecost celebrates, doesn’t really call attention to Himself.
He’s been called the “shy member of the Trinity,”--the third Person of the Three-in-One God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—Who seems always to be in the background.
Cartoonists may show God the Father as a white-bearded old man.
And Jesus has been the focal point of endless artistic renderings for the past two-thousand years.
Though the Scriptures insist that the Spirit has a personality—Jesus calls Him a Counselor, a Comforter, an Advocate, for example, and that He is equal to and co-eternal with God the Father and God the Son, it's been hard for artists, theologians, preachers, and Christians, generally, to find ways to portray Him.
The Holy Spirit is sometimes shown as a dove. That’s because Luke’s Gospel, for example, tells us that when Jesus was baptized, the Spirit came to Him in the bodily form of a dove, a bird that the ancient Jews thought was pure, without bile.
Sometimes the Spirit is shown as fire. This is appropriate, not only because in our lesson from Acts for today, the Holy Spirit rested on 120 praying followers of Jesus like tongues of fire, but also because of some properties that fire shares with the Holy Spirit. Fire enlightens, destroys, and purifies. The Spirit of God does all of these things, depending on our needs at the time.
And sometimes, the Spirit is seen as wind. This too, is appropriate. The word translated as spirit from the Old Testament Hebrew is ruach, a word that also means wind or breath. It’s God’s ruach—wind or spirit—that moves over the waters in Genesis to create the world. It’s also God’s ruach that God breathes into dust to make the first human being.
In the Greek of the New Testament, the word pneuma has the same multiple meanings as ruach. Pneuma can also mean wind, breath, or spirit. But the problem with trying to picture something like wind or breath is that, as Jesus told Nicodemus, you may hear the sound of it—and on the first Pentecost, the Spirit must have sounded like a freight train filling the house where the first disciples had been praying--but you can’t really see it. You can only see the evidence of it.
Maybe the Spirit’s shyness and His insusceptibility to being pictured are why we attach so little importance to Pentecost.
Maybe too, it’s easier to understand what Jesus does for us than it is to understand what the Spirit does for us. At Christmas, we easily understand that Jesus, God the Son, took on the burden of being human. At Easter, we understand that after dying on a cross for us, Christ rose to give life to all who turn from sin and follow Him.
But what exactly does the Holy Spirit do for us? A lot of things, really, if we will let Him do them for us.
If you want a good starting understanding of what the Holy Spirit does to and for believers, look at the Apostles' Creed, which Christians around the world agree is a faithful presentation of the basics of Christian faith. It used to be I misunderstood the Creed. I did get that it was divided into three sections or articles of faith. I understood that the first article talks about what God the Father does and that the second article about what Jesus, God the Son, does. But I got confused by the third article: I saw it as offering a perfunctory affirmation of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of a laundry list of things Christians also believe. But, in fact, everything listed in the third article are things that the Holy Spirit does. They include:
And the Holy Spirit does much more than these things in the lives of believers. I want to talk about two things the Spirit does for us today, as seen in our first lesson, which comes from Acts 2.
First, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to live past our fears. Before the events recounted in our lesson, 120 followers of Jesus had gathered in a room to, just as Jesus had ordered them to do, wait and pray for the power of God to come upon them.
When the Spirit came upon them “like the rush of a violent wind,” they did something they probably couldn’t have imagined doing moments before: They hit the hostile streets of Jerusalem, moving out among some of the very crowds who, just a few weeks before, had cried for Jesus’ death. They told anyone who would listen about God's mighty deeds and conveying the message that all who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.
The Spirit gives courage to people who pray. Years ago, we met a woman who was the mother of three children. Once, there had been four. The oldest child died at the age of two. After that tragic death, the woman had taken solace in two things: being a super-mom to her second child, another girl, and in using God as a lucky charm. When she wasn’t doting on her daughter, watching her like a hawk, she was immersed in church activities, intent on warding off anything bad that might happen to the child. One day, the woman turned her head for an instant and when she turned back, the little girl was gone. The mother looked everywhere. When she finally found her, the little one was at the bottom of their pool. She had been there for some time. Terrified, the woman, who had been sent to a waiting area once her child had been transported to a hospital emergency room, screamed out to God. Then, panting between her shrieks of terror, she heard, in her mind, a message that must have come from the Holy Spirit: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
From the Holy Spirit, Who, Jesus says, convicts us of our sin and convinces us that Christ can forgive our sin and lead us down better paths, this woman learned that her “faith” had really been superstition, a ploy to be in control of a world not in our control. She had been worshiping her child. She needed to let go, letting God be God and letting both her daughter and her be children of God. Miraculously, the child survived. But, whether the daughter had survived or not, from the Holy Spirit, the mother knew that God had given her the courage to live past her fears. The Holy Spirit does that for us.
The Holy Spirit also gives us a reason for living. Often, elderly people will ask me, “Why hasn’t God taken me yet? What am I still doing here?”
Sadly, these questions often come from people who have been hard workers their entire lives but who are no longer able to do the things they formerly could.
And young people, tired of the seeming futility of their lives often ask me the same question. I try to remind these Christians that they (and all of us) are human beings, not human doings.
They (and we) have value not because of what we do, but because of who we are.
When we stand before the judgment seat of God in eternity, God won’t ask us, “How much money did you make? How many points did you score? How often did you clean your house, stay late on the job?” God won't even ask us, "Did you leave a happy and fulfilling life?"
Instead, God will ask, “Were you a believer in the Lord Jesus? Were you a repentant sinner? Were you a grateful disciple?”
All baptized Christians are given the gift of the Holy Spirit Who reminds us that by grace, God accepts us we are and helps us to move toward becoming who we were made to be and by that same grace, God gives us a reason for living no matter what our abilities.
The first followers of Christ must have wondered after Jesus ascended into heaven why they were still around. In Jesus, they’d glimpsed eternity and they wanted to be with Him. But here they were, stuck on a planet filled with people who would rather worship themselves, or possessions, or power, or prominence, rather than the God Who made them and died and rose for them. They were stuck living a life in which they would have to struggle and possibly suffer. They were stuck too, in their imperfections, still susceptible to sin.
But when the Holy Spirit came, He gave Jesus’ praying followers a reason for living this as fully as they could. In short, the Holy Spirit game them a vocation.
All followers of Jesus have the same vocation, whatever jobs they do, even if they can no longer do a scrap of work.
A village in southern Italy learned this in the waning days of World War 2. The German soldiers who had occupied their community after re-installing Benito Mussolini as the Fascist dictator of Italy, retreated in the face of the Allied military forces.
But as the Germans fell back, their artillery shattered a statue of Christ that had once stood in the village square. The local priest told the men of the village to search for the arms, legs, and head of the statue of Christ. In the meantime, the women would prepare a village feast.
At dusk, in despair, the men approached the priest. “Father,” one of them said, “we have tried to put the statue back together. But there are no hands for Jesus. They are in pieces.”
“Children,” the priest replied, “don’t you realize? You are His hands?”
You are the hands of Christ.
That is your vocation.
That is your reason for living.
And, as was true of the first followers of Christ, the Holy Spirit will give you the capacity to fulfill your vocation, to be Christ’s hands.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t get a lot of attention. Maybe He doesn’t want it.
He’s like the quiet saint content with a ministry of praying for others, or of giving an anonymous offering so that a child can go to a mission trip, or buying a devotional book for someone struggling with hurts in their lives, or of carting the food offerings to the local food bank.
The Spirit takes a backseat in the Trinity, content with supporting Jesus as He speaks to us, content with supporting us as we call out to Jesus, follow Him, and share Him with others. The Spirit never calls attention to Himself.
But He showers believers in Christ with gifts, including the courage to live past our fears and a reason for living, a vocation of pointing others to Christ, serving them in Jesus’ Name and inviting others to follow Christ, a vocation that lasts our whole lives.
Today, I want to tell you something you've probably not heard very often: Happy Pentecost!
May you keep in prayerful contact with the Holy Spirit so that you will have the courage to live past your fears and have a reason for living life--to be the hands of Christ, witnesses for Christ--every day of your life. Amen
Acts 2:1-21
Today brings us to the third great festival of the Church Year. There’s Christmas, then Easter, and now Pentecost.
Of course, Christmas and Easter get all the press. Churches are filled for celebrations of Jesus’ birth and His resurrection from the dead. But unless young people are being confirmed on Pentecost, as happens in many Lutheran congregations on this day, attendance is rarely higher on Pentecost Sunday than it is on most other Sundays of the spring or summer.
In the secular media, magazines and cable channels seem to always use Christmas and Easter as occasions for specials claiming that they’ve found “the real Jesus.” There’ll be no special Pentecost programming about "the real Holy Spirit" on CNN or the History Channel tonight.
Maybe that’s because the Holy Spirit, the One Whose coming fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead Pentecost celebrates, doesn’t really call attention to Himself.
He’s been called the “shy member of the Trinity,”--the third Person of the Three-in-One God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—Who seems always to be in the background.
Cartoonists may show God the Father as a white-bearded old man.
And Jesus has been the focal point of endless artistic renderings for the past two-thousand years.
Though the Scriptures insist that the Spirit has a personality—Jesus calls Him a Counselor, a Comforter, an Advocate, for example, and that He is equal to and co-eternal with God the Father and God the Son, it's been hard for artists, theologians, preachers, and Christians, generally, to find ways to portray Him.
The Holy Spirit is sometimes shown as a dove. That’s because Luke’s Gospel, for example, tells us that when Jesus was baptized, the Spirit came to Him in the bodily form of a dove, a bird that the ancient Jews thought was pure, without bile.
Sometimes the Spirit is shown as fire. This is appropriate, not only because in our lesson from Acts for today, the Holy Spirit rested on 120 praying followers of Jesus like tongues of fire, but also because of some properties that fire shares with the Holy Spirit. Fire enlightens, destroys, and purifies. The Spirit of God does all of these things, depending on our needs at the time.
And sometimes, the Spirit is seen as wind. This too, is appropriate. The word translated as spirit from the Old Testament Hebrew is ruach, a word that also means wind or breath. It’s God’s ruach—wind or spirit—that moves over the waters in Genesis to create the world. It’s also God’s ruach that God breathes into dust to make the first human being.
In the Greek of the New Testament, the word pneuma has the same multiple meanings as ruach. Pneuma can also mean wind, breath, or spirit. But the problem with trying to picture something like wind or breath is that, as Jesus told Nicodemus, you may hear the sound of it—and on the first Pentecost, the Spirit must have sounded like a freight train filling the house where the first disciples had been praying--but you can’t really see it. You can only see the evidence of it.
Maybe the Spirit’s shyness and His insusceptibility to being pictured are why we attach so little importance to Pentecost.
Maybe too, it’s easier to understand what Jesus does for us than it is to understand what the Spirit does for us. At Christmas, we easily understand that Jesus, God the Son, took on the burden of being human. At Easter, we understand that after dying on a cross for us, Christ rose to give life to all who turn from sin and follow Him.
But what exactly does the Holy Spirit do for us? A lot of things, really, if we will let Him do them for us.
If you want a good starting understanding of what the Holy Spirit does to and for believers, look at the Apostles' Creed, which Christians around the world agree is a faithful presentation of the basics of Christian faith. It used to be I misunderstood the Creed. I did get that it was divided into three sections or articles of faith. I understood that the first article talks about what God the Father does and that the second article about what Jesus, God the Son, does. But I got confused by the third article: I saw it as offering a perfunctory affirmation of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of a laundry list of things Christians also believe. But, in fact, everything listed in the third article are things that the Holy Spirit does. They include:
- Creating the whole Church on earth
- Creating communion among all forgiven believers in Christ
- Giving the forgiveness Christ won on the cross to repentant believers in Christ
- Resurrecting those with faith in Christ
- Giving eternal life to Christians
And the Holy Spirit does much more than these things in the lives of believers. I want to talk about two things the Spirit does for us today, as seen in our first lesson, which comes from Acts 2.
First, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to live past our fears. Before the events recounted in our lesson, 120 followers of Jesus had gathered in a room to, just as Jesus had ordered them to do, wait and pray for the power of God to come upon them.
When the Spirit came upon them “like the rush of a violent wind,” they did something they probably couldn’t have imagined doing moments before: They hit the hostile streets of Jerusalem, moving out among some of the very crowds who, just a few weeks before, had cried for Jesus’ death. They told anyone who would listen about God's mighty deeds and conveying the message that all who call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.
The Spirit gives courage to people who pray. Years ago, we met a woman who was the mother of three children. Once, there had been four. The oldest child died at the age of two. After that tragic death, the woman had taken solace in two things: being a super-mom to her second child, another girl, and in using God as a lucky charm. When she wasn’t doting on her daughter, watching her like a hawk, she was immersed in church activities, intent on warding off anything bad that might happen to the child. One day, the woman turned her head for an instant and when she turned back, the little girl was gone. The mother looked everywhere. When she finally found her, the little one was at the bottom of their pool. She had been there for some time. Terrified, the woman, who had been sent to a waiting area once her child had been transported to a hospital emergency room, screamed out to God. Then, panting between her shrieks of terror, she heard, in her mind, a message that must have come from the Holy Spirit: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
From the Holy Spirit, Who, Jesus says, convicts us of our sin and convinces us that Christ can forgive our sin and lead us down better paths, this woman learned that her “faith” had really been superstition, a ploy to be in control of a world not in our control. She had been worshiping her child. She needed to let go, letting God be God and letting both her daughter and her be children of God. Miraculously, the child survived. But, whether the daughter had survived or not, from the Holy Spirit, the mother knew that God had given her the courage to live past her fears. The Holy Spirit does that for us.
The Holy Spirit also gives us a reason for living. Often, elderly people will ask me, “Why hasn’t God taken me yet? What am I still doing here?”
Sadly, these questions often come from people who have been hard workers their entire lives but who are no longer able to do the things they formerly could.
And young people, tired of the seeming futility of their lives often ask me the same question. I try to remind these Christians that they (and all of us) are human beings, not human doings.
They (and we) have value not because of what we do, but because of who we are.
When we stand before the judgment seat of God in eternity, God won’t ask us, “How much money did you make? How many points did you score? How often did you clean your house, stay late on the job?” God won't even ask us, "Did you leave a happy and fulfilling life?"
Instead, God will ask, “Were you a believer in the Lord Jesus? Were you a repentant sinner? Were you a grateful disciple?”
All baptized Christians are given the gift of the Holy Spirit Who reminds us that by grace, God accepts us we are and helps us to move toward becoming who we were made to be and by that same grace, God gives us a reason for living no matter what our abilities.
The first followers of Christ must have wondered after Jesus ascended into heaven why they were still around. In Jesus, they’d glimpsed eternity and they wanted to be with Him. But here they were, stuck on a planet filled with people who would rather worship themselves, or possessions, or power, or prominence, rather than the God Who made them and died and rose for them. They were stuck living a life in which they would have to struggle and possibly suffer. They were stuck too, in their imperfections, still susceptible to sin.
But when the Holy Spirit came, He gave Jesus’ praying followers a reason for living this as fully as they could. In short, the Holy Spirit game them a vocation.
All followers of Jesus have the same vocation, whatever jobs they do, even if they can no longer do a scrap of work.
A village in southern Italy learned this in the waning days of World War 2. The German soldiers who had occupied their community after re-installing Benito Mussolini as the Fascist dictator of Italy, retreated in the face of the Allied military forces.
But as the Germans fell back, their artillery shattered a statue of Christ that had once stood in the village square. The local priest told the men of the village to search for the arms, legs, and head of the statue of Christ. In the meantime, the women would prepare a village feast.
At dusk, in despair, the men approached the priest. “Father,” one of them said, “we have tried to put the statue back together. But there are no hands for Jesus. They are in pieces.”
“Children,” the priest replied, “don’t you realize? You are His hands?”
You are the hands of Christ.
That is your vocation.
That is your reason for living.
And, as was true of the first followers of Christ, the Holy Spirit will give you the capacity to fulfill your vocation, to be Christ’s hands.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t get a lot of attention. Maybe He doesn’t want it.
He’s like the quiet saint content with a ministry of praying for others, or of giving an anonymous offering so that a child can go to a mission trip, or buying a devotional book for someone struggling with hurts in their lives, or of carting the food offerings to the local food bank.
The Spirit takes a backseat in the Trinity, content with supporting Jesus as He speaks to us, content with supporting us as we call out to Jesus, follow Him, and share Him with others. The Spirit never calls attention to Himself.
But He showers believers in Christ with gifts, including the courage to live past our fears and a reason for living, a vocation of pointing others to Christ, serving them in Jesus’ Name and inviting others to follow Christ, a vocation that lasts our whole lives.
Today, I want to tell you something you've probably not heard very often: Happy Pentecost!
May you keep in prayerful contact with the Holy Spirit so that you will have the courage to live past your fears and have a reason for living life--to be the hands of Christ, witnesses for Christ--every day of your life. Amen
A Promise for the Sad Times and Beyond
"What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.
Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised,
who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
"Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
"Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
"As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.'
"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:31-39)
"Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
"Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
"As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.'
"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:31-39)
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Suffering and the Christian
[This was prepared to be shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this past Sunday, June1.]
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
“I can see that this is coming as something of a surprise to you.”
Those were the words spoken to me by a cardiologist four years ago, after he’d told me that I’d had a heart attack that destroyed 40% of my heart.
I was surprised.
Actually I was shocked.
I had none of the so-called risk factors. And I had tried to take reasonably good care of myself over the years. But a heart attack had come anyway.
When I look back on the events of that June four years ago, though--the 3:00 in the morning trip to a hospital ER in excruciating pain, the news that Superman (how I’d always thought of myself health-wise) had, of all things, heart disease--I wonder why I was surprised.
Did I think that I was exempt from the human condition?
Yes, I think that I did.
I think, in fact, that we all entertain that delusion sometimes. We rubberneck Interstate accidents with two thoughts coming to the fore at the same time: “It could have been me.” And, “That’s what happens to other people; not me.”
At one level, we are aware of our vulnerability to suffering and pain and death.
At another, we live in denial of our vulnerability, of our humanity.
But we live in a fallen and imperfect world. We are born with the fatal of condition of inborn sin, inborn alienation from God, inborn separation from the source of life. That must, inevitably, lead to suffering and death for every human being who draws breath on this earth.
Jesus raised His friend Lazarus from the dead, but eventually, Lazarus would die again, because there can be no resurrection to eternal life with God as Jesus won on Easter Sunday until we all cross the the threshold of death as Jesus did on Good Friday. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead as a sign that He (and He alone as God in the flesh) has power over life and death. But Lazarus still had to die again.
In other words, none of us is exempt from suffering.
Now, it’s easy for Christians to accept that truth when it applies to the the non-believing world. After all, non-believers haven’t trusted in the grace and promises of the crucified and risen Jesus. They haven’t taken Jesus up on His offer to be with them always, to give them life and that abundantly, to hear and act on their prayers. But the notion that no one is exempt from suffering is a hard pill for Christians to accept about Christians, especially themselves.
When cartoonist Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown, learned that he had cancer, he was dumbfounded. “How could God have let this happen this to me?” he asked friends, according to a documentary I once watched on PBS. “I taught Sunday School for years.”
His reaction isn’t unique. To a greater or lesser extent, probably every Christian has wondered about why God has allowed their suffering--be it physical, relational, emotional--when they’ve tried so hard to be faithful.
The book of 1 Peter, from which today’s second lesson is drawn, takes on the question of human suffering, particularly the suffering of those who trust in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It does so, in fact, more than any other book in the New Testament: 42 times in the 27 books of the New Testament a word which can be translated as suffering or sufferings appears; 12 of those times occur in the book of 1 Peter!
As we’ve mentioned before, the apostle Peter wrote this letter to be circulated among the churches in first-century Asia Minor, a region that basically encompasses today’s Turkey.
From the outset of the letter, Peter makes clear that he’s going to deal with the question of sufferings--and he always uses the plural of that word--the sufferings of Christians. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we don’t know if the Christians in Asia Minor were undergoing official persecution or simply the shunning of friends. But Peter may have had in mind much more than dealing with the opposition of other people to the Asia Minor Christians‘ faith, explaining perhaps the plural usage.
Even if he didn’t have all human suffering in mind, his words on the subject have application to us all, irrespective of the source of our sufferings.
Please take a look at the opening verses of the lesson, 1 Peter 4:12-14 (page 852 in the sanctuary Bible). Peter writes:
Now, I think it’s clear that it refers to the metaphor of the purifying fire that would come to believers in the times before the Messiah, the Christ, fully established His kingdom. Psalm 66:10 refers to a moment of happiness and victory following a time of testing and pain when it says: “For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.”
“Don’t be surprised!” Peter is telling us, “when suffering and difficulties come to you. As you bear them with Christ at your side, He is using those moments of suffering and challenge to forge your character, to draw Him closer to you.”
Jesus makes clear in the Gospels that God isn’t the author of our suffering. Satan is.
But God can use the suffering of Christians to deepen our fellowship with God in this life and to ready us for life in eternity.
And, Peter is telling us, Jesus Christ suffers with us.
And the One Who cried out from the cross, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” understands our questions, even when they can’t be answered on this side of eternity.
“Are you mad at God?” I asked a woman who was dying. “I was,” she said. “But I remember that Christ is always with me.”
The Christ Who suffered for you on His Good Friday is also the Christ Who will suffer with you on your Good Fridays, if you will let Him into your life.
That’s what Peter gets to in the latter part of our lesson, starting at 1 Peter 5:6:
One of those is referred to by Peter here when he says: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
The God made known to the world cares for you. Among all the little gods and godlets, the idols that have sprung from human imagination, in both ancient and modern times, none cared for human beings. The Greek and Roman idols from which Asia Minor Christians had been freed by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, might, in the mythology about them, manipulate or use humans or fall in love with them or abuse them. But they didn’t care for human beings.
God though, the God Who made you in His image, does care for you, even when you sin. Romans 5:8 says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Give your sins, along with your cares and your sufferings to Jesus. He will bathe you in the grace and forgiveness of God. He will stand with you. He will stand for you in the halls of heaven as you pray.
In my thirty years as a pastor, it's been my observation that suffering can do one of two big things to people.
For those with shallow faith, the kind of faith that sees Jesus as a rabbit's foot, suffering alienates them from God and embitters them.
For others though, suffering acquaints them with their weakness...and with God's strength.
In Saint Matthew in Logan, where I last served, was a young woman named Sarah. She learned when she was thirteen that she had leukemia. She fought valiantly through seven years, two bone marrow transplants, and five relapses. Once, when she was in the ICU, observing how she held onto Christ, not as a good luck charm, but as her Lord, I asked if she would preach the following Easter Sunday. Later, she joked that since, at the time, she'd been under the influence of pain-killers, she'd said yes to my request. But it was a powerful moment for us all when Sarah did preach the following Easter and reminded us that our hope is in Christ alone.
You may remember that once, the apostle Paul was suffering from what he called "a thorn in the flesh." We have no idea what it was. But Paul reported that he asked God three different times to take it away. God said, "No. My grace is sufficient. I'm all you need." And God explained to Paul that His power is perfected in our weakness.
Why was Sarah's witness for Christ so powerful? Why are those who suffer and die with Christ by their sides always a more powerful presence in our lives than those who seem to have the world by the string and no need of God?
For one simple reason: It's only in those courageous enough to acknowledge their weakness and need and defeat in the face of life that the full power and grace and life of God can be seen!
It's only in those who understand their own vulnerability and humanity and mortality that the crucified and risen Jesus can be fully manifest and exercise His gracious Lordship over a life transformed by His love. (I hope someday to be such a person of faith!)
Suffering in this life shouldn’t surprise us. But, as we humble ourselves under the Lordship of Christ, we will be surprised by how He can carry us even through the valleys where death shadows us.
Paul, knowing that he would die for his faith in Christ after decades of sufferings and of fighting and wrestling with himself in order to stay faithful to the Lord Who had given forgiveness, life, and eternity to him as free gifts through Christ (the greatest struggles Christians face will be with themselves), wrote this to a young pastor named Timothy back in the first century: “...the time for my departure [my death] is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
Peter's challenge us today is this: To own our weakness and so, let the power of Christ sustain us in this life and prepare us for the one to come. Amen
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
“I can see that this is coming as something of a surprise to you.”
Those were the words spoken to me by a cardiologist four years ago, after he’d told me that I’d had a heart attack that destroyed 40% of my heart.
I was surprised.
Actually I was shocked.
I had none of the so-called risk factors. And I had tried to take reasonably good care of myself over the years. But a heart attack had come anyway.
When I look back on the events of that June four years ago, though--the 3:00 in the morning trip to a hospital ER in excruciating pain, the news that Superman (how I’d always thought of myself health-wise) had, of all things, heart disease--I wonder why I was surprised.
Did I think that I was exempt from the human condition?
Yes, I think that I did.
I think, in fact, that we all entertain that delusion sometimes. We rubberneck Interstate accidents with two thoughts coming to the fore at the same time: “It could have been me.” And, “That’s what happens to other people; not me.”
At one level, we are aware of our vulnerability to suffering and pain and death.
At another, we live in denial of our vulnerability, of our humanity.
But we live in a fallen and imperfect world. We are born with the fatal of condition of inborn sin, inborn alienation from God, inborn separation from the source of life. That must, inevitably, lead to suffering and death for every human being who draws breath on this earth.
Jesus raised His friend Lazarus from the dead, but eventually, Lazarus would die again, because there can be no resurrection to eternal life with God as Jesus won on Easter Sunday until we all cross the the threshold of death as Jesus did on Good Friday. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead as a sign that He (and He alone as God in the flesh) has power over life and death. But Lazarus still had to die again.
In other words, none of us is exempt from suffering.
Now, it’s easy for Christians to accept that truth when it applies to the the non-believing world. After all, non-believers haven’t trusted in the grace and promises of the crucified and risen Jesus. They haven’t taken Jesus up on His offer to be with them always, to give them life and that abundantly, to hear and act on their prayers. But the notion that no one is exempt from suffering is a hard pill for Christians to accept about Christians, especially themselves.
When cartoonist Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown, learned that he had cancer, he was dumbfounded. “How could God have let this happen this to me?” he asked friends, according to a documentary I once watched on PBS. “I taught Sunday School for years.”
His reaction isn’t unique. To a greater or lesser extent, probably every Christian has wondered about why God has allowed their suffering--be it physical, relational, emotional--when they’ve tried so hard to be faithful.
The book of 1 Peter, from which today’s second lesson is drawn, takes on the question of human suffering, particularly the suffering of those who trust in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It does so, in fact, more than any other book in the New Testament: 42 times in the 27 books of the New Testament a word which can be translated as suffering or sufferings appears; 12 of those times occur in the book of 1 Peter!
As we’ve mentioned before, the apostle Peter wrote this letter to be circulated among the churches in first-century Asia Minor, a region that basically encompasses today’s Turkey.
From the outset of the letter, Peter makes clear that he’s going to deal with the question of sufferings--and he always uses the plural of that word--the sufferings of Christians. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we don’t know if the Christians in Asia Minor were undergoing official persecution or simply the shunning of friends. But Peter may have had in mind much more than dealing with the opposition of other people to the Asia Minor Christians‘ faith, explaining perhaps the plural usage.
Even if he didn’t have all human suffering in mind, his words on the subject have application to us all, irrespective of the source of our sufferings.
Please take a look at the opening verses of the lesson, 1 Peter 4:12-14 (page 852 in the sanctuary Bible). Peter writes:
Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.For years, some scholars thought that the phrase “fiery ordeal” referred to the Roman punishment of burning Christians to death. But Peter’s letter was written years before that form of punishment was instituted.
Now, I think it’s clear that it refers to the metaphor of the purifying fire that would come to believers in the times before the Messiah, the Christ, fully established His kingdom. Psalm 66:10 refers to a moment of happiness and victory following a time of testing and pain when it says: “For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.”
“Don’t be surprised!” Peter is telling us, “when suffering and difficulties come to you. As you bear them with Christ at your side, He is using those moments of suffering and challenge to forge your character, to draw Him closer to you.”
Jesus makes clear in the Gospels that God isn’t the author of our suffering. Satan is.
But God can use the suffering of Christians to deepen our fellowship with God in this life and to ready us for life in eternity.
And, Peter is telling us, Jesus Christ suffers with us.
And the One Who cried out from the cross, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” understands our questions, even when they can’t be answered on this side of eternity.
“Are you mad at God?” I asked a woman who was dying. “I was,” she said. “But I remember that Christ is always with me.”
The Christ Who suffered for you on His Good Friday is also the Christ Who will suffer with you on your Good Fridays, if you will let Him into your life.
That’s what Peter gets to in the latter part of our lesson, starting at 1 Peter 5:6:
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. [Even if this life is filled with the suffering which may come to human beings at any time in this world, we have the hope of resurrection life with Christ, where sufferings will be done and joy will be complete.] Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.Listen: Following Jesus is not an insurance policy against the realities of this life. “In this world,” Jesus says to those who follow Him, “you will have trouble...” If that’s a promise we’d rather not have from Jesus, remember that there are other promises that go with that one.
One of those is referred to by Peter here when he says: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
The God made known to the world cares for you. Among all the little gods and godlets, the idols that have sprung from human imagination, in both ancient and modern times, none cared for human beings. The Greek and Roman idols from which Asia Minor Christians had been freed by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, might, in the mythology about them, manipulate or use humans or fall in love with them or abuse them. But they didn’t care for human beings.
God though, the God Who made you in His image, does care for you, even when you sin. Romans 5:8 says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Give your sins, along with your cares and your sufferings to Jesus. He will bathe you in the grace and forgiveness of God. He will stand with you. He will stand for you in the halls of heaven as you pray.
In my thirty years as a pastor, it's been my observation that suffering can do one of two big things to people.
For those with shallow faith, the kind of faith that sees Jesus as a rabbit's foot, suffering alienates them from God and embitters them.
For others though, suffering acquaints them with their weakness...and with God's strength.
In Saint Matthew in Logan, where I last served, was a young woman named Sarah. She learned when she was thirteen that she had leukemia. She fought valiantly through seven years, two bone marrow transplants, and five relapses. Once, when she was in the ICU, observing how she held onto Christ, not as a good luck charm, but as her Lord, I asked if she would preach the following Easter Sunday. Later, she joked that since, at the time, she'd been under the influence of pain-killers, she'd said yes to my request. But it was a powerful moment for us all when Sarah did preach the following Easter and reminded us that our hope is in Christ alone.
You may remember that once, the apostle Paul was suffering from what he called "a thorn in the flesh." We have no idea what it was. But Paul reported that he asked God three different times to take it away. God said, "No. My grace is sufficient. I'm all you need." And God explained to Paul that His power is perfected in our weakness.
Why was Sarah's witness for Christ so powerful? Why are those who suffer and die with Christ by their sides always a more powerful presence in our lives than those who seem to have the world by the string and no need of God?
For one simple reason: It's only in those courageous enough to acknowledge their weakness and need and defeat in the face of life that the full power and grace and life of God can be seen!
It's only in those who understand their own vulnerability and humanity and mortality that the crucified and risen Jesus can be fully manifest and exercise His gracious Lordship over a life transformed by His love. (I hope someday to be such a person of faith!)
Suffering in this life shouldn’t surprise us. But, as we humble ourselves under the Lordship of Christ, we will be surprised by how He can carry us even through the valleys where death shadows us.
Paul, knowing that he would die for his faith in Christ after decades of sufferings and of fighting and wrestling with himself in order to stay faithful to the Lord Who had given forgiveness, life, and eternity to him as free gifts through Christ (the greatest struggles Christians face will be with themselves), wrote this to a young pastor named Timothy back in the first century: “...the time for my departure [my death] is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
Peter's challenge us today is this: To own our weakness and so, let the power of Christ sustain us in this life and prepare us for the one to come. Amen
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