Be a High-Impact Parent

[In our community, pastors share the writing of a regular column for the Logan Daily News. Here's the piece I just submitted.]

Parents have the most important jobs in the world. “You shall honor your father and mother” is the first commandment of what’s called “the second table of the Ten Commandments,” those addressing our relationships with others.

The relationships of parents and children are foundational to all other relationships in life. When parents relate well to their kids and teach their kids to relate well to others, the children are set on a path for happiness and fulfillment in life.

The responsibilities of parents boil down to two key elements:

(1) Preparing their children for responsible adult living.

(2) Sharing Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh, with them.

In fulfilling these two responsibilities, parents prepare their children for both their earthly and eternal futures. Both are important, but the second one is most important.

Jesus tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Parents who fail to give priority to sharing Christ with their children are really saying that they don’t care about their kids’ eternal destinies.

Sharing Christ with children means more than seeing that children are baptized, that they go to Vacation Bible School or an occasional Sunday School class, or that they have Christian trinkets.

Faith in Jesus Christ is caught more than taught. Parents: Your kids will learn to know and rely on Christ when they see that you know and rely on Christ. When they know that you talk over the decisions of your life with God in prayer, that you read and heed the words of God’s revealed Word, the Bible, and that you worship regularly and receive Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion regularly, it will have a powerful and eternal impact on your kids. They’ll know that you and the God revealed in Christ are for real.

 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). To know God is to know peace in our lives, even in difficult times. To know God, it’s essential to know Jesus. There is nothing more important for parents to teach their kids than the truth about the God revealed to the world in Jesus.

Be a high impact parent: Live for Christ and share Him with your kids!

We've Had the Revolution...Now What?

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

Matthew 5:13-20
This past week, we have witnessed a kind of revolution happening in Egypt. It looks as though this revolution will result in the end of a long period of iron fisted rule. But assuming that the pro-democracy demonstrators there are successful, there will be questions the people of Egypt will be asking of themselves soon. They’re questions like, “What now?” “How do we go forward?” People who go through revolutions always wrestle with questions like these in their aftermath.*

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, taken from the opening verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was a place where Jesus laid down an absolutely revolutionary life, one that puts the world’s standard operating procedures on their heads.

In it, Jesus described people as blessed the world might see us unfortunate, at best. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t just laying down God’s law in the Beatitudes, but also describing a way of life that seeps into the minds, hearts, and wills of those who cultivate daily closeness to Jesus Christ. Even if we have questions about all that though, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, because of His resurrection, and because of the new life we know He offers to all who repent and believe in Him, we hear the Beatitudes and we want to sign up for the Kingdom of heaven.

But after Jesus, through His death and resurrection, works this revolution of transforming us from the enemies of God we were when we were born into the friends of God we become when we are born from above, we have questions: What now? How do we go forward? Jesus starts to answer those questions in today’s lesson. Please take out your Celebrate bulletin inserts and look at today’s Gospel lesson.

Now, as you read the opening verses of the lesson, you’ll have to keep the Beatitudes in mind. In verses 13 and 14, Jesus is saying, “You blessed ones are the salt of the earth. You blessed ones are the light of the world.”

With that in mind, read verse 13 along with me silently, please: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Most of us love salt. It enhances the flavor of food. But salt is also a great preservative. Those who walk with Jesus preserve what is true and godly. Without moralizing or judging, true followers of Jesus remind us all of God’s will, God’s love, and God’s ability to express His power through weak people surrendered to Him.

Ernest Gordon was a young Scotsman studying Philosophy and History when World War II broke out. He joined the military and was captured by the Japanese in the summer of 1942. He and his fellow prisoners were given rations of one lump of rice each day. They were tortured daily and were worked incessantly, under blazing sun and torrential rain. The brutalization included savagery and thievery among the prisoners themselves, who stole food from other prisoners too weak to defend themselves. Gordon, suffering from multiple diseases, was sent to a holding hut, one where all those certain to die went. One prisoner though, dared to do something that no prisoner had previously done. He cared for weaker prisoners. He took Gordon under his wing, giving him massages, encouraging words, and the occasional smuggled banana. Improbably, Gordon survived and through his benefactor something else happened. Though he had never been interested in God, Gordon came to follow Jesus Christ. He would later say, “'Faith thrives when there is no hope but God.” Folks, the man who cared for Gordon, a Christian, was salt of the earth. He preserved the kingdom way of life. In a place of horrors, he preserved the life of love and compassion and righteousness Jesus sets us free to live. That’s the kind of life we’re called and commanded to live too.

Read verse 14, please: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Over the past several weeks, several of our lessons have featured variations of the phrase, "light of the world." In the Old Testament, we’re told how God called the people of Israel into being to be a light to the nations, showing the world the one true God of the universe, preparing for the arrival of the Messiah. Jesus comes and we’re told in the New Testament that He is the light of the world. In today's lesson, Jesus is saying that those who follow Him—you and me—are to give light to the world. His fellow Jews would have found Jesus’ imagery unmistakably clear. The temple in Jerusalem was built on a high mount. From it, God’s people exalted God before the world.

Now, we Gentile Christians who, the New Testament says, have been grafted into the people of God by the grace given in Jesus and our faith in Him, are to lift Jesus up before all the world. Faith in Jesus Christ is a public thing. Jesus commands us to be lights in this darkened world; we’re to let everyone know about the new life that only comes through Jesus.

That can be a hard way to live. Many Christians, in fact, are like the young man desperate for a girlfriend who asked an unpopular young woman he didn't much like to go steady. She was elated until he said, “But let’s not tell anyone else about it. It’ll be our little secret.” “Don’t keep your relationship with Me hidden,” Jesus says. “Live it out loud.” If we keep our faith in Christ a personal thing, doesn’t Jesus have every right to think that we’re ashamed of Him?

In what Jesus has said so far, we see that we are blessed—saved by the undeserved, unearned grace of God—in order to be blessings to others. But this amazing grace does not bring an end to the commands— laws—of God given in the Old Testament.

Read what Jesus says next, starting at verse 17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished…”

So, what law is Jesus talking about? We know that the Old Testament contains dietary laws that God rescinded in the New Testament. We know that ritual laws revolving around sacrifices are no longer needed because Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, once and for all.

Jesus here is referring to the moral laws in the Ten Commandments. These laws are inviolable for all time. Want to know the will of God for your wallet, your mouth, your sex life, your soul? It’s all there in the Ten Commandments and they haven’t changed in 3500 years. Jesus says they won’t change until heaven and earth pass away. They remain as protective fences meant to steer us always toward life at its best.

But you and I know that we can’t successfully obey these laws. The law can’t save us from sin and death. Only Jesus can do that. So why does Jesus still say the law is important?

Lutheran Christians have considered this question and said that there are three purposes that the Law still has.

• First, the law acts as a curb on the sinful impulses of all people, even before they know Jesus Christ. 
• Second, the law drives us to Jesus for grace and forgiveness. When we’re honest, we acknowledge that while we understand God’s commands, we don’t keep them. Our inborn sin prevents us from keeping them. Desperate, we turn to Jesus, seeking the same mercy He showed to the repentant thief who hung on a cross next to Jesus and to whom Jesus promised, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.” 
• But for the followers of Jesus, there is a third use of the Law. It’s a guide for us. Having been freed by grace from sin and death, the Ten Commandments become a road map for us. God told the prophet Jeremiah to tell His people centuries ago: “stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies…[to] walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” God was telling the people to remember His commands for them and so be led back to Him. When God’s law drives us to Jesus, it leads us to the place where life is found, where rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves is found.

Now, look at the last verse of our lesson. Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This passage used to trouble me a lot! The Pharisees were righteous in their own eyes, but not in God’s. They thought that they were great people who had conquered their own sin. But, in their arrogance, they completely lacked the love for God and neighbor that the Law commands.

So, what, I wondered, did Jesus mean by seeming to tell all His followers to try to out-righteous the spiritual snobs He called hypocrites and whitewashed tombs?

Then I realized something: We will be more righteous than the Pharisees—we are more righteous than the Pharisees—when we are humble enough to let the shed blood of Jesus cover our sins and wash us clean. We will be righteous, right with God, when we rely completely on the God we know in Jesus Christ, and not our own wisdom, not our own pretended goodness.

For twenty years, I’ve been doing my taxes using the TurboTax computer program. And every year, I make the same mistake. I’ll be working on some part of my return and figure that I know something better than the program. I input data where I think it should go and totally mess things up. If I could get back all the hours I’ve spent on the unnecessary, grief-inducing side roads I’ve created for myself, rather than simply following the prompts the program gives, I probably could have done something productive with my life.

The Law is still important. It contains prompts from God, pointing us not only to the right way to live, but also to the One Who wants to lead us into His Kingdom. Unless we let the law lead us each day to Jesus, it will condemn us. But if we let it drive us back to Jesus whenever our lives go off course, we will be right with God, in sync with His purposes for our lives. We will be the salt of the earth who preserve what is godly and good. We will be the light of the world who show others the way to Jesus. We will be graced. We will be blessed. The Kingdom of heaven will be ours. Amen

*This approach to the sermon, how to live after the revolution, is that taken by N.T. Wright in his commentary on this text, found in Matthew for Everyone. I so liked his approach, finding that it so clarified what Jesus is doing in the sermon, that I couldn't resist using the same approach myself here.

The #1 Ohio State Buckeyes Basketball Team Display Other Skills

Michael Arace has an excellent column about the real soul of this team. Great insights!

Can the Buckeyes remain undefeated? That seems almost impossible in the Big 10 (AKA The B1G), probably the toughest conference in the country this year. But that this is a great team already is clear. And with their unselfishness and obvious personal chemistry, they are also a real joy to watch! Whether in their harrying defense, their willingness to pass the ball to get the best play, or doing Jackson 5 and Miley Cyrus covers, these guys are fun. (I hope that they have just as much fun in the classroom.)

Braxton Miller is Committed

Braxton Miller, the incoming freshman quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes, who will vie to be the starter as QB Terrelle Pryor sits out his five-game suspension, left no doubt about his loyalties to OSU. Long before National Signing Day, he had a Block-O tattooed to his left shoulder. I don't like tattoos and can't understand why anyone would deface their bodies that way, but the OSU coaches had to breathe easy knowing that the country's #2 high school quarterback prospect was so sure so early about where he would be matriculating this fall.

We Don't Drive to Our Accidents

Here in Logan and Hocking County, Ohio, we avoided the major "shellacking" of the big winter storm that hit this state and the whole Midwest yesterday. We had icy rain and we experienced high winds, but roads were passable and we got no snow.

But at the Daniels household, we did wake up this morning to a surprise left by the extreme weather. We discovered that a branch broke off from a tree in front of the parsonage in which we live. It crashed into the windshield of our 1997 Ford Escort station wagon, a vehicle affectionately known as the Nanny Mobile.

Fortunately, a new windshield can be installed tomorrow.

But our vehicles haven't fared well when parked curbside since we moved here three-plus years ago.

Shortly after our arrival, a mirror was clipped from our van.

About a year later, our two vehicles were hit by a car that careened into them, totaling all three of them.

After that, we parked one of the replacement cars we purchased in our garage. But there's really only room for one vehicle there.

The local police department, because of what happened to out two totals (on Halloween night, I might add), has allowed us to pull our car over the curb, leaving it to straddle sidewalk and street. But no amount of straddling could have avoided that branch, weighed down by ice, last night.

It could have been worse. That it wasn't is reason for us to be thankful.

What's interesting, of course, is that all of this has happened to our cars when they were stationery and there were no drivers or passengers inside.

We don't drive to our accidents. They come to us.

Great Profile of a Cleveland Artist...

who does amazing things with an Etch-a-Sktech. Don't laugh!

Friedman: Egyptian Situation Creates Perilous Time for Israel

But also, he believes, one presenting a window of opportunity to make a deal with the Palestinians and ensure peace:

To put it bluntly, if Israelis tell themselves that Egypt’s unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state — they will be talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

There's a window of opportunity also for President Obama, he believes:

I had given up on Netanyahu’s cabinet and urged the U.S. to walk away. But that was B.E. — Before Egypt. Today, I believe President Obama should put his own peace plan on the table, bridging the Israeli and Palestinian positions, and demand that the two sides negotiate on it without any preconditions. It is vital for Israel’s future — at a time when there is already a global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state — that it disentangle itself from the Arabs’ story as much as possible. There is a huge storm coming, Israel. Get out of the way.

Read the whole thing and then tell me what you think.

The Freshman Who Got Overlooked

Eleven Warriors has an excellent article on the contributions of Ohio State freshman point guard Aaron Craft to the Buckeyes' 22-0 start, especially to the Buckeyes' wins in this B1G campaign.

Things Are Looking Up!

Pitchers, catchers, and injured players report for Spring Training in just thirteen days. Baseball season will be here before you know it!

By the Way, We're Still in the Epiphany Season

You may have wondered why the Gospel lesson for yesterday was Matthew 5:1-12. This is Epiphany Season, after all, a time when the Gospel lessons revolve around those instances in Jesus' life and ministry when His deity was revealed. What does yesterday's lesson, encompassing the opening of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, have to do with this Epiphany theme?

Consider the setting in which the sermon happens: "the mountain." It was to the top of a mountain that God called Moses back in the Old Testament book of Exodus. There, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

It was on mountain- and hill- tops that ancient peoples built shrines, altars, and temples to their deities. It was on Mount Zion in Jerusalem that God's people built the Temple. And God was deeply offended, repeatedly, when His people used other hills and mountains to erect altars to foreign deities, just to "cover all the bases."

When the one true God of the universe entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He called His followers to be with Him on the mountain to let them know more fully Who He is and what He wills. He showed Himself to be more than a "new Moses"; Jesus is God Himself calling us to be in relationship with Him.

Nevertheless Blessed

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

Matthew 5:1-12
It was Lent and the congregation I then served was holding joint midweek worship services with another Lutheran congregation. We were spending forty days talking about why bad things happen to faithful people and how we, as followers of Jesus, cope with that reality. I preached at the first service. But I looked at the pastor of the other congregation and didn’t feel good about our topic.

You see, he had already gone through so much: the untimely deaths of his mother, a daughter, and his wife, amid other sorrows.

“I don’t feel qualified to even talk about this subject,” I said, “because, compared to many of you, I have had little pain or adversity in my life.” The next week, my colleague responded to my confession in his sermon by saying, “Don’t worry. You will.”

Those were wise words. The reality that none of us is exempted from pain and adversity causes many people to give up on trusting in God. What does Jesus say to that?

Our Gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 5:1-12 contains the opening words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, including the few verses we call the Beatitudes. It’s a bit dangerous to preach on this text. Most Christians are so familiar with these words that they may think they have no need of hearing any more about them and so, are apt to mentally check out before the preacher even starts.

But there’s another danger in looking at the Beatitudes. That’s deciding just exactly what Jesus’ intent was in giving them. Martin Luther said that in these verses, Jesus is laying down a law so formidable that none of us can keep its provisions and so, we will be driven to Jesus in repentance and so receive new life. Some have said that these are ideals for which we’re called to strive as Christians. Others say that these are the principles that Christians must manifest when taking over the reins of political power, striving to bring the kingdom of heaven into the world by the force of our wills. And there are other interpretations of Jesus' intent. Who’s right?

In spite of the danger, let’s take a look at this passage together. Please pull our your Celebrate inserts and turn to Matthew 5:1-12. Now, to get something from an individual passage of Scripture, before we look at its content, we have to look at its context: What happens in the Biblical book before the passage in question appears? And how are some of the key words in the passage usually used?

In Matthew, chapter 4, preceding the verses of our lesson, Jesus begins His ministry, John the Baptizer is arrested, and from that time, Matthew says, “Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” There are two words Jesus uses in that line that can help us make sense of the Beatitudes: Repent and Heaven.

Some people hear the word “repent” and automatically think that they’re being knocked down or judged. The call to repent is a call to all of us to examine ourselves and confess our sins to God, of course. But to repent also means to simply turn to Jesus, away from whatever might be distracting us from Him. When Jesus calls us to repent, He is calling us to turn to Him for the grace and new life only He can give.

Jesus also says that the “kingdom of heaven has come near.” We’re inclined to think of heaven as a place up in the sky where we’ll live in the sweet by-and-by. But that’s not how Jesus or most of the Bible used the word, “heaven.” In the Bible, heaven is the place where God is and God can be with us anywhere, anytime. In Jesus, heaven has invaded our world and He invades our world whenever we call His Name.

Later in Matthew, chapter 4, Jesus calls the first disciples from their fishing nets and then, to show them what the kingdom of heaven looks like, Jesus proclaims the good news and heals people.

Always a great teacher, Jesus begins by showing His students—His disciples—what His kingdom looks like. When we reach chapter 5, where this morning’s lesson is found, Jesus is ready to describe it to them, to help them to better understand not only what they have seen, but also the way of life to which they’ve now been called.

Look at verse 1 of our lesson, please. It says that Jesus went up the mountain and His disciples came to Him. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai to give Moses the Ten Commandments, the substance of the covenant God was making with His people. The people of Israel didn’t ascend the mountain. Moses was an intermediary between God and His people. But Jesus is the bringer of a new covenant from God. He invites those who want to be in a new and everlasting relationship with God to come to Him. The disciples take Jesus up on His invitation.

Jesus then gives a series of statements about who is “blessed.”

• Blessed are the poor (or humble) in spirit. 
• Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. 
• Blessed are the meek (that is, those who repudiate the world’s power trips and instead boldly follow Jesus); they will inherit this earth. 
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (that is, for a right relationship with God); they will be filled with good things in a feast of love and plenty that Jesus will serve His followers for all eternity. 
• Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, those who bring the reconciliation of God available to all through Jesus Christ—the peacemakers, for they will be in Jesus’ kingdom. 
• Blessed are you when you are spurned, rejected, rebuffed for your faith in Christ. 

The word in the original Greek of our text that’s translated as “blessed” can also be translated as fortunate or the recipients of wonderful news. But not everything Jesus talks about here seems blessed, fortunate, or wonderful.

Who wants to be poor in spirit, to mourn, or to experience the world turning against us for our faithfulness to Christ?

And do we have to attain certain heavenly levels of mercifulness, purity, and disciplemaking to get into Jesus’ kingdom?

I have some bad news and some good news for you this morning, what Luther and the Lutheran Confessions might call some law and some gospel.

The bad news is that, yes, these words do have the force of God’s law. God expects us to be merciful, pure in heart, and people intent on enacting reconciliation between God and others. We’re to be God’s middlewomen and middlemen, what the New Testament calls “ambassadors for Christ.” That’s not always a comfortable position. But God wants us to occupy it.

Compounding the bad news is something all of us, in the waning days of January, our New Year’s resolutions likely already a shambles, should be able to understand: We cannot muster enough will power to be the kinds of people Jesus says are the ones who occupy the kingdom of heaven.

But, here’s the good news. Jesus isn’t telling us to shape up and act right. One author asserts that: “[Jesus’] sermon is not a list of requirements, but…a description of the life of people gathered by and around Jesus…”

People who are living the life Jesus describes in the Beatitudes are often the last to know it. I’ve mentioned before my friend, Sig, who passed away some years ago now. Sig was an engineer at Cincinnati Milacron. So was a man who was part of the church in the Cincinnati area that I served for seventeen years, Bill. Their paths crossed just a few times because they worked at different plants, on different projects. But when Sig learned that Bill had joined the congregation I pastored, Sig told me, “He had a major influence on my faith years ago.” When I told Bill, he said, “I have no idea what I might have done.”

I wasn’t surprised by that. In another part of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus talks about the final judgment of humanity. He pictures Himself telling one group of people that they made their choices in this lifetime; when they ignored the needs of others, they were ignoring Jesus. They would live with their choices for eternity. Jesus says He will look at another group of people and say, “When you fed the most overlooked of the world, or clothed the naked, or visited the imprisoned, or gave water to the thirsty, you were serving me. You were paying attention to Me.” This group—the righteous—Jesus says, will be baffled. They won’t remember doing any of the good things Jesus extols.*

Through Jesus, the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us and we hardly know that as we keep returning to Jesus day in and day out, in

• prayer, 
• worship, 
• the reading of Scripture, 
• receiving the Sacraments, and 
• serving and witnessing in Jesus’ Name,

we are being changed from the inside out.

When the kingdom of heaven gets inside of us, we’re not conscious of our mercy, purity, or faithfulness. We’re not making lists. We're not tracking our good deeds.

This fact is hidden in plain sight at the very beginning of our Gospel lesson, verse 1. Look at it again: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.” You might want to underline the last five words of that verse: His disciples came to Him.

The kingdom of heaven enters us,

• we are changed from the inside out, 
• we are fitted for eternity with God, 
• we enter the process of transformation to become the people God made us to be, 
• we are able to face anything this life brings, 
• we are blessed forever by one simple thing: 

By coming to Jesus, the Savior Who comes to us.

We all fall short of the glory of God; nevertheless, those who turn to Jesus Christ and who keep turning to Jesus Christ in spite of humiliations, grief, and adversity, are filled with God’s glory, now and in eternity.

A few mornings ago, Sarah told us about an acquaintance, a capable and caring manager, who was downsized out of his job in a large corporation. This was after other major setbacks in his life. Sarah asked if Ann and I would join her in prayer for this man. So there, in her bedroom, huddled together, we did just that. I don’t know how God is going to answer that prayer. But I do know that when we draw close to Jesus, the kingdom of heaven comes to us!

Here's a secret none of you probably know: Life in this world is not fair. Jesus acknowledges as much in the Beatitudes.

But when we keep turning to Jesus, we will be blessed!

And, no matter what happens in your life, you can always believe that!

*The two groups will experience very different ends, too. In Matthew 25:46, Jesus says that those who ignored others and so, ignored Him, "will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." This shouldn't surprise us. In Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, "Everyone who acknowledges Me before others, I also will acknowledge before My Father in heaven; but whoever denies Me before others, I will also deny before My Father in heaven."

Now We'll Have to See 'The Illusionist'

It had been something like three years since my last trip to a movie theater when, about a month ago, my wife and I took in The King's Speech at the Drexel Theater in Columbus. Go see that film, which exults in the gifts of marital and family love and in the healing power of friendship given and received, however unlikely our friendships may seem at their beginning.

Before the showing of The King's Speech, a trailer for The Impressionist was shown. My wife and I were intrigued by its use of conventional, rather than computer-generated, animation and the beauty and realism of its characters' movements, not to mention that the film appeared to present a story that young and old can latch onto.

This review, from Roger Ebert's new online program featuring various film reviewers, makes me want to go back to the theater soon to see The Illusionist.

Here's a link to the trailer.

She applies for a job through her blog...

...and manages to get the plea commercially sponsored, to boot. You've got to admire innovation like that, I guess.

For Baseball Geeks Like Me

If you're a baseball geek like me, you'll love Joe Posnanski's blog. (Of course, if you're baseball geek unlike me--I happen to always be a bit behind on the things everybody else seems to know about--you're already reading Joe's Blog.) Anyway, each post is packed with so much circuitous, Bill James-y, baseball nerdiness that you can't help loving it. Besides, he makes a lot of sense and knows his stuff in the minutest imaginable detail. It's a great blog!

God: Irrevocably Faithful

In his book, God Gives Second Chances, Pentecostal preacher R.T. Kendall writes about the strange phenomenon of people who have turned away from God, yet remain the Church, sometimes in positions of leadership, and still evidence the spiritual gifts God has given to them. He writes:

People ask, How can a person's gift flourish when they are living in sin [whatever the sin might be]? I can only answer with Romans 11:29: "For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable"...This verse refers principally to God's own decree that He will not change His mind, but Paul is also saying that whether or not a person has repented of their sins is not a necessary condition for receiving or maintaining a spiritual gift...Spiritual or ministerial gifts are sovereignly bestowed on a person, not because of one's good works...

I thought of Kendall's point during my morning devotions using today's installment of Our Daily Bread. Written by David C. McCasland, it's based on 1 Kings 10:23, 11:1-10. That passage is about ancient Israel's third and most powerful king, Solomon.

When Solomon came to the throne, he was just a boy and overwhelmed by the responsibilities that had been thrust upon him. Early in his reign, Solomon was visited by God in a dream. "Ask what I should give you," God told him. Solomon told God how daunting his responsibilities were and then made his request: "Give your servant...an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil..." (1 Kings 3:3-14). Solomon asked for the gift of wisdom and God granted it to Solomon.

Solomon possessed that wisdom until the end of his days. We're told that he was the wise composer of Proverbs and of the more world-weary Ecclesiastes, which, as McCasland points out, in spite of a depressing fixation on life's supposed "vanity" (or futility), ends with this bit of wisdom:

Fear God and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

But, though given the gift of wisdom by God irrevocably, Solomon misused his gifts to walk away from God and to buttress his level of comfort and power in this world. He did this at the expense of his own relationship with God and that of his country. (See Jesus' words here.) Look at the verses on which the Our Daily Bread piece for the day is based:

Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.

King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, ²from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you; for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods”; Solomon clung to these in love. ³Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. ⁴For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. ⁵For Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. ⁶So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not completely follow the Lord, as his father David had done. ⁷Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. ⁸He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their gods.
11

⁹Then the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, ¹⁰and had commanded him concerning this matter, that he should not follow other gods; but he did not observe what the Lord commanded. 

What happened to Solomon was a personal tragedy, of course. But his splintered allegiance also impacted his people, God's chosen people. Along with Solomon and his 1000 wives, they embraced false gods, their allegiance to God alone fractured. They embraced dependence on things like power, wealth, and sexual adventurism, rather than on God alone. When spiritual leaders or people whose faith we admire turn from God, it can have a terrible effect on us all.

In fact, when any member of the Church "defects" from God, it can effect many people. And sometimes, their defection may be unknown to us and unnoticed even by the defectors themselves. That's the focus of something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about in the portion of The Cost of Discipleship I read last evening.

Bonhoeffer talks about Jesus' discussion of wolves in sheep's clothing, people who never did believe or who have departed from faith, who may be in the midst of the Church:

The disciples of Jesus must not fondly imagine that they can simply run away from the world and huddle together in a little band. False prophets will rise up among them, and amid the ensuing confusion they [that is, the the followers of Jesus in His Church] will feel more isolated than ever. There is someone standing by my side, who looks just like a member of the Church. He is a prophet and a preacher. He looks like a Christian, he talks and acts like one. But dark powers are mysteriously at work...Inwardly he is a ravening wolf: his words are lies and his works are full of deceit. He knows only too well how to keep his secret dark, and go ahead with his work. It is not faith in Jesus Christ which made him one of us, but the devil...His ambitions are set on the world, not on Jesus Christ. Knowing that Christians are credulous people, he conceals his dark purpose beneath the cloak of Christian piety, hoping that his innocuous disguise will avert detection. He knows that Christians are forbidden to judge, and he will remind them of it at the appropriate time...Thus he succeeds in seducing many from the right way. He may even be unconscious himself of what he is doing.* The devil can give him every encouragement and at the same time keep him in the dark about his own motives.

That, to me, is both chilling and instructive. Like the proverbial frogs in the kettle, unaware that the temperature of the once cold water in which they settle is being brought to a boil, we can become so accustomed to the evil around us and within us, that, without our even knowing it, we defect from the God Who sent His Son Jesus to die and rise for us and in Whom, with our words, we may even confess every Sunday morning.

But faith in Jesus is not just words.

Our Gospel lesson for tomorrow, Matthew 5:1-12, which includes the beginning portion of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus shares what are called the Beatitudes, we read this:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

We cannot and, as Christians, should not seek to, control the faith or beliefs of others. And we cannot control the things that happen to us in our lives. But we can do this: We can, like the disciples on that mountaintop, come to Jesus. And when we fail, we sin, or we get hurt by life, we keep coming to Jesus.

God is irrevocably faithful. And if we will come to Jesus each day, whatever befalls us, we will not only be blessed, we will know that we are blessed, and live in the Kingdom of heaven now and in eternity.

*My underline.

Quote of the Day

This from someone named Edgar Watson: "The most destructive criticism is indifference."

That's sort of the flip side of, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Of course, our indifference may be a judgment either on ourselves or on that to which we're indifferent. Hmm.

Happy Birthday, Marty!

Today is the birthday of my brother, Marty, who happens to be a very talented Voice Over Artist.

ADDED: Marty's blogged reflections on the recent experiences of announcer Ted Williams, who Marty knew back in the 80s.

David Frye is Dead

Back in the day, all our Nixon impressions were really impressions of Frye imitating Nixon. He suffered the same fate as that previously dealt to Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader, whose comedy career largely went away when JFK was assassinated.

Following Nixon's resignation, Frye was seldom seen or heard again. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but as a source of income, it usually has pronounced ups and downs.

Who is "Pure in Heart"?

In studying the lesson on which I'll be preaching this Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12 (The Beatitudes), I've been looking at Dietrich Bonhoeffer's chapter on the passage in The Cost of Discipleship. I love what he says about, "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God":

Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil-and by their own virtues too. The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus. 

The old saw about letting your conscience be your guide is foolish nonsense. Unless our consciences are guided by the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we will always drift into self-delusion, harm to ourselves and others, and dishonor to the One Who made us. (I know. Being an imperfect sinner, I "drift" a lot, which is why I repent--that is, turn back to Jesus for forgiveness and new direction and new life every day.)

Martin Luther famously told the Diet of Worms, "My conscience is captive to the Word of God." God grant that I will be just such a captive and so be set free to be an innocent child of God, my true self.

Let God Come to You

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

Isaiah 9:1-7
More than seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, God had a quarrel with His chosen people, Israel.

Israel, of course was called to be a light to all the nations of the world regarding God’s goodness, love, and power. But often, the people of Israel forgot who they were. That was the cause of God’s quarrel with them.

But really, when you think about it, the people of Israel were no different from you and me.

When things are going well, we get so full of ourselves that we leave no place for God. When that happens, trouble starts.

A woman Ann and I knew came to faith in Christ as an adult. She got a good start on her Christian life. But then, we saw her less and less at church. Then her husband stopped coming to church. Finally, one night, the husband called me with sad news. The wife, who had gradually left no place for God in her life and had made it uncomfortable for the husband to any longer be in worship, had taken up with another man. “Why?” the husband asked her. “I got tired of being perfect,” she explained. “Don’t worry,” he said, “you never were perfect.”

When things are going well in our lives, we can fool ourselves into thinking that it all has to do with our goodness (our perfection), rather than with God’s goodness (and God's perfection). We can lose touch with God. And when you lose touch with God, without even knowing it, you can begin to lose your integrity, your morals, your relationships, and the life that only God can give.

Ancient Israel fell out of touch with God. The eight chapters of Isaiah that precede our lesson present God’s indictment of a people so full of themselves that they had no place for God anymore. Through Isaiah, God said that the people of Israel were rife with wrong:

• Bribery was an everyday part of their life.
• They were indifferent to the plight of widows who, in those days had no property rights.
• They didn’t take care of orphans, of whom there were many in those days of short life expectancies and of childbirths often ending in the deaths of mothers.
• They had become like Gomorrah in their sexual lives, taking an “anything goes” approach.
• Instead of worshiping God alone, they took a breezy attitude that all gods and all religions were really the same.
• They relied on other things to help them to make decisions, rather than relying on God alone. 

In Isaiah, chapter 8, God warns that for living like this--choosing the world's darkness over God's light, His people would be enslaved by foreign conquerors. Israel would see, God said, “only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish…[and] be thrust into deep darkness.”

That’s where our first lesson, Isaiah 9:1-7, begins. Would you pull out the special insert?

Notice that verse 1 actually begins with the word, “But.” God is saying, “Nevertheless…In spite of…Even though. Even though you’ve brought this darkness onto yourself, I’m nevertheless going to make something new and good happen. You don’t deserve it, but I’m going to send it because I love you.”

Read verse 1 aloud with me, please:

But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

Zebulun and Naphtali, named for two of the sons of Jacob from Genesis, were regions of ancient Israel. They were well north of Jerusalem and bordered the region of Galilee where, seven hundred-plus years after Isaiah, Jesus would be raised. At the time Isaiah wrote, the people of Israel were in the clutches of foreign conquerors who stole the produce of their land and sent some of their best and brightest people back to Assyria to serve as slaves. Because of their geographic positions, Zebulun, Naphtali, and even Galilee often bore the brunt of foreign intrusions.

In this verse, God is revealing that He not only will free Israel from the Assyrians, but will also one day shine the full light of His glory and love in Zebulun and Naphtali. God will enter these places of slavery, God reveals through Isaiah, and offer freedom to the whole human race. From Galilee, a place where not only Jews, but also many Gentiles, lived, God’s light would be revealed. Gloom would be banished!

Read on, aloud please, verse 2:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 

When I was in junior and senior high school, the light in my folks’ bathroom was a regular 100-watt incandescent lightbulb. Morning and night before the mirror that hung below that bulb, I’d slather on the Noxzema, scrub myself clean, and pop my zits. In that mirror, by that light, I looked OK. But I’ll never forget my first day of classes at Ohio State, Summer Quarter, 1971. I had a class on West Campus and needed to go to the restroom. There were fluorescent lights there and I caught sight of myself in the mirror. That was the first time I realized I had a major acne problem. Later, when a girl I was dating—Ann—told me about a dermatologist, my time in that light made me open to her suggestion.

Light can show us our flaws. Get close to Jesus, read about God’s will for our lives in the Bible, or ask God in prayer to show us how our lives can better reflect His love for us, and we see things about ourselves we wouldn’t otherwise know or acknowledge. When you’re in the darkness of your own sin, you need the light of God to show you your flaws. That’s the first step into relationship with God.

And it's an essential continuing step for the maintenance of our relationship with God. Psalm 139: 23-24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”


This is why, if we will pay heed to them, even God's commandments are gifts of grace. Obedience to them cannot save us. But attention given to them will show us the places we need to grow in our lives, the sins of which we need to repent, the temptations we need to look out for. God's commands are a mirror that show us who we are and send us to God to help us be the people He has called us to be.*

But light does more than show us our flaws, the sins for which we need to repent. Light can also show us the way. God wants to light your way through the dark passages life sometimes brings. A woman came to me with a problem. “Have you prayed about it?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, “but God hasn’t shown me how it will all turn out.” “God never will show you how it will all turn out,” I told her. “He’ll just give you enough light to take the next step.”

That’s not entirely true: God has shown us how things will ultimately turn out. If we follow Jesus, we’ll end up with Jesus for eternity. But, along the way, we just keep following His light.

Verses 3-5, show us that one day, beyond what you and I can see right now, God is going to bring an end to this age of violence in which we live.

• One day, murders with assault rifles will end. 
• So will wars. 
• So will selfishness and insensitivity to the needs of the poor and the hungry. 
• So will child abuse and spousal abuse. 
• So will unkindness. 
• So will abortion as a form of birth control. 

All the ways in which we kill others, in fact, will come to an end.

Jesus, Who has died and risen to bring life, will ensure that all who repent and believe in Him, will be freed from the violence of this world forever.

In Matthew 5, in a portion of His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek; for they will inherit the earth." Eternity, He tells us, will belong to those bold enough to surrender their lives and wills to Christ alone, through faith alone, and God's Word alone. We can’t see the day foretold in the words God gave to Isaiah or those of Jesus yet, but that day will come when Jesus returns and makes His whole creation—including you and me—forever new.

Now, please read verse 6 with me:

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Seven hundred-plus hundred years before the birth of Jesus, God revealed that a particular child would be born and that, among other things, this human child would also be Mighty God.

Some are troubled that Jesus’ given name isn’t mentioned in the Old Testament prophecies about Him. I’m not troubled by that at all. If the prophecies had said, “Watch for Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, Whose mother is named Mary and Whose father will appear to be Joseph,” where would faith come in?

God wants us to have a relationship of love with Him, a relationship in which we choose to love Him for Who He is. And so the prophets, while never identifying Jesus by name, do identify Him by Who He would be.

That’s why people like Anna and Simeon, two people who knew God through His Word, could look at the baby Jesus when He was just eight days old and know He was the Savior, while doctors of theology, who loved earthly power and prestige, didn’t see Who Jesus was and passed a death sentence on Him.

Yesterday, in Catechism class, we watched the film, The Nativity Story, a deeply moving telling of the story of Jesus’ birth.

In one of the early scenes, the young Mary is shown with a woman in Nazareth who told the local children a part of the story of the prophet Elijah, as recounted in 1 Kings, chapter 19.

During the reign of King Ahab, an unprincipled compromiser who allowed his wife, Jezebel, to bring the worship of a foreign god called Baal into Israel, Elijah was used by God to defeat the prophets of Baal at a place called Mount Carmel. Elijah’s faith in God was vindicated.

But when Jezebel heard about what happened, she vowed to kill Elijah and, terrified, Elijah ran. He was certain that he was alone and that nothing could help him. In a panic, he desperately looked for God. After hiding in a cave, Elijah sensed God directing him to go to a mountain and look.

Then we’re told:

And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake;  and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:1-12, New King James Version)

Are you looking for God?

Be still.

Stop striving.

Quit trying so hard.

Let Him come to you, not only in prayerful silence as He did with Elijah, but most emphatically, in Jesus, the child and mighty God foretold by Isaiah seven centuries before Jesus’ birth.

Let Jesus come to you in His Word and in studying it with others as well as on your own (I wish that every adult here were in Sunday School class each week), in prayer you offer in Jesus' Name, in the fellowship of imperfect believers that is the Church, and in the Sacraments of Christ’s Church, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

You are not alone.

And in Jesus Christ, you are assured of an eternity with God.

Let Jesus guide your steps, one step at a time and you will see Him, know Him, and love Him because you know He first loved you. Amen

*In his introduction to a book of lectures from last year's conference, Seeking New Directions for Lutheranism, Lutheran theologian Carl Bratten writes:

The gospel does not nullify the law [God's commands]. After all, [Martin] Luther devoted a part of his Catechisms to teaching and explaining the Ten Commandments. It would come as a huge disappointment to him that Lutherans today are crediting him for replacing the law with the gospel...

In a lecture included in the book, Braaten speaks of "the gospel" and notes, "I do not mean the "gospel" in the narrow sense as opposed to the law, but in the wider sense that comprehends the whole counsel of God, the twofold Word of God, both law and promise." One reason that my own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has fallen into error is that it dares to denigrate God's inviolable commands, subordinating them to a culturally acceptable "gospel" that doubts or denies the need for repentance, faith in Christ alone, or an understanding of the Bible that stands under the Bible as the authoritative source or norm of our life, faith, and practice. I pray to God that this will change.