On a day when the government announced troubling increases in the numbers of unemployed, statistics about joblessness and the recession were brought more sharply into view for me.
My daughter called from Florida to say that the Curves at which she works on a part-time basis and where she works out, is closing down. (She has a full-time job. So, no worries there, although her hours have been cut back.) The owner of the franchise, a woman who holds two other jobs, simply can't afford to keep the place up and running.
I learned today that a Christian publishing house is closing down all of its retail outlets. There is a general trend away from the overhead associated with physical stores, toward online sales. So, this decision may have been in the pipeline anyway. But it was probably also hastened by the economy. The decision comes as an enormous blow to an acquaintance of mine with more than thirty years with the company.
Over the course of the week, I've spoken with several people who have lost their jobs because of the shrinking economy.
It isn't just the loss of income that's so horrible when one loses a job, although that's worrisome enough. It's also the loss of self-worth.
There's a downside to tying up one's sense of worthiness to a job, of course. As I said here, we're human beings, not human doings.* In God's eyes, we're accounted worthy not because of what we do or own, but simply because we are children of God.
On the other hand, we weren't made for idleness, contrary to the bad rap that work sometimes gets. Some Christians even have the mistaken impression that work is a punishment for sin. Not so. Even before the fall into sin recorded in Genesis, God gave the first man work to do. Work isn't a punishment. It's part of our purpose for living. When it's taken away from us, it chips away at our dignity.
Tonight, I'm praying for all who are without work.
I'm praying too, that the economy not only of the United States, but that of the world, will improve, bringing new opportunities for people.
I'm also praying that once things do improve, we won't forget our vulnerability or our need for God in good times and bad. (See here.)
*The phrase isn't original with me. But I don't remember where I first read it.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Potential of Prayer
From the October 30th. edition of the daily emailed inspirations sent by my colleague and friend, Pastor Glen VanderKloot...
WELCOME to the daily issue of ONLINE WITH FAITH.
ONLINE WITH FAITH is a ministry of Faith Lutheran Church,
2313 Whittier Avenue, Springfield, IL, 62704, Glen VanderKloot,
Pastor.
We encourage you to worship and be involved in a local congregation.
If you have any questions, comments, or prayer
requests please be in touch with us at
pastor@faithlutheran.com
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Thought for the Day
In prayer the church has received power to rule the world.
The church is always the little flock.
But if it would stand together on its knees, it would
dominate world politics--from the prayer room.
O. Hallesby
+++++++++
Scripture:
James 5:16 NIV
Therefore, confess your sins to one another
and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous person has great power
as it is working.
Prayer:
Lord, use me to transform my church into a praying,
powerful church. Let me to those who will stand with me
in prayer. Amen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WELCOME to the daily issue of ONLINE WITH FAITH.
ONLINE WITH FAITH is a ministry of Faith Lutheran Church,
2313 Whittier Avenue, Springfield, IL, 62704, Glen VanderKloot,
Pastor.
We encourage you to worship and be involved in a local congregation.
If you have any questions, comments, or prayer
requests please be in touch with us at
pastor@faithlutheran.com
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Thought for the Day
In prayer the church has received power to rule the world.
The church is always the little flock.
But if it would stand together on its knees, it would
dominate world politics--from the prayer room.
O. Hallesby
+++++++++
Scripture:
James 5:16 NIV
Therefore, confess your sins to one another
and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous person has great power
as it is working.
Prayer:
Lord, use me to transform my church into a praying,
powerful church. Let me to those who will stand with me
in prayer. Amen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What are you waiting for?
The question is Joseph Stowell's in today's Our Daily Bread piece. Before you read it, read this.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
My Prediction
My projection of Electoral College...
Obama: 409
McCain: 128
[UPDATE: Okay, I got this wrong and right, I guess.]
Obama: 409
McCain: 128
[UPDATE: Okay, I got this wrong and right, I guess.]
Election Morning Prayer
Gracious, powerful God, on this election day, we pray for our country. We ask that You give those who vote today Your wisdom.
We pray, too, that You give that same wisdom to Senators McCain, Biden, and Obama and to Governor Palin. Grant that they will use that wisdom to make sound decisions about how they conduct themselves on November 4, and in the years beyond.
We ask that You would provide to them and to their families, Your protection from all danger and harm each day.
We pray that You will guide us in our voting. Give to us the President that You will for us, the President that we need for us to collectively fulfill Your purposes.
After the votes have been counted and tabulated, make us one nation, united not uniform, agreeable and committed to what is best for one another even when we disagree.
Protect those Americans who this day are in harm's way in dangerous places, whether they are military personnel in places like Afghanistan or Iraq, diplomatic emissaries representing the US around the globe, Peace Corps volunteers acting as goodwill ambassadors for our country, or missionaries carrying the Good News of Jesus Christ to peoples remote from us.
Knowing that Your promises are true, God, we pray petitions our Lord Jesus taught us to pray: Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Guide all of our leaders and us as voters and citizens as we consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, economic turmoil, the need reform of our political and financial institutions, finding alternatives to abortion as a method of birth control, encouraging mutual responsibility and accountability within the American and world communities, global warming, finding alternative energy sources, unemployment, urban sprawl, equality for all of our citizens, having the courage to stand up to tyrants, and enacting health care reform, to name just a few. Remind us again and again of Jesus' words, "Without Me, you can do no good thing" and "With God, all things are possible."
Keep our citizens safe as they vote. Grant that they will also stand in lines for as long as necessary, remembering that voting is a special privilege.
And at the end of the day, help us to remember that we are not just Americans, but children of God, created in Your image, called and commanded to love You with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbors, all of our neighbors, the world over, just as we love ourselves.
We pray all of these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen!
We pray, too, that You give that same wisdom to Senators McCain, Biden, and Obama and to Governor Palin. Grant that they will use that wisdom to make sound decisions about how they conduct themselves on November 4, and in the years beyond.
We ask that You would provide to them and to their families, Your protection from all danger and harm each day.
We pray that You will guide us in our voting. Give to us the President that You will for us, the President that we need for us to collectively fulfill Your purposes.
After the votes have been counted and tabulated, make us one nation, united not uniform, agreeable and committed to what is best for one another even when we disagree.
Protect those Americans who this day are in harm's way in dangerous places, whether they are military personnel in places like Afghanistan or Iraq, diplomatic emissaries representing the US around the globe, Peace Corps volunteers acting as goodwill ambassadors for our country, or missionaries carrying the Good News of Jesus Christ to peoples remote from us.
Knowing that Your promises are true, God, we pray petitions our Lord Jesus taught us to pray: Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Guide all of our leaders and us as voters and citizens as we consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, economic turmoil, the need reform of our political and financial institutions, finding alternatives to abortion as a method of birth control, encouraging mutual responsibility and accountability within the American and world communities, global warming, finding alternative energy sources, unemployment, urban sprawl, equality for all of our citizens, having the courage to stand up to tyrants, and enacting health care reform, to name just a few. Remind us again and again of Jesus' words, "Without Me, you can do no good thing" and "With God, all things are possible."
Keep our citizens safe as they vote. Grant that they will also stand in lines for as long as necessary, remembering that voting is a special privilege.
And at the end of the day, help us to remember that we are not just Americans, but children of God, created in Your image, called and commanded to love You with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbors, all of our neighbors, the world over, just as we love ourselves.
We pray all of these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen!
Monday, November 03, 2008
What is the Christian's Responsibility When It Comes to Voting?
[The following is a piece I wrote for our congregation's November newsletter.]
While some of us may have taken advantage of early voting by now, November 4, brings election day. What is the Christian’s responsibility when it comes to voting?
For the follower of Jesus Christ living in a democracy, the command to love our neighbor, I believe, includes responsible citizenship. And responsible citizenship, in turn, can entail voting.
I say that it can entail voting because merely casting a ballot is no sign of being a good citizen.
The right to vote can be abused or misused as easily as other privileges we have in life. To cast an uninformed vote, to vote for a candidate simply because of their party affiliation, or because we like the way a candidate looks, are common ways in which we can misuse the privilege of voting.
If we’re uninformed about a particular race, we should probably not vote in that contest. We exercise good stewardship of our citizenship when we cast an informed vote. If we do feel informed though, then we should by all means, vote. One could even say that we have a Christian duty to vote.
This raises another question: What do we do if after fully informing ourselves, we feel no enthusiasm for any candidate?
Here are a few points to consider.
First: Remember that politicians are people too. Those who seek public office are, just everybody else, members of the human race of whom the Bible observes: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one...” (Romans 1:10) Perfection is not the benchmark standard for us to apply to our political leaders. I’m certainly not suggesting that you overlook what appears to be an overtly rotten character in a candidate. But I do suggest cutting candidates some slack for being human. Remember that even George Washington, as great as he undeniably was, didn’t start out with his face chiseled onto Mount Rushmore.
Second: Pray about your vote. Ask God to clarify your thinking and to give you wisdom. The Bible says, “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5).
Finally: “Sin boldly.” This strange bit of advice came from Martin Luther for Christians sincerely weighing decisions. Luther advised Christians to read God’s Word, talk things over with trusted Christian friends, and to pray. If, after all of that, your course remains unclear, do what you think is right. Your judgment could be wrong. But you can have a clear conscience because you know that your intent is to do God’s will.
While some of us may have taken advantage of early voting by now, November 4, brings election day. What is the Christian’s responsibility when it comes to voting?
For the follower of Jesus Christ living in a democracy, the command to love our neighbor, I believe, includes responsible citizenship. And responsible citizenship, in turn, can entail voting.
I say that it can entail voting because merely casting a ballot is no sign of being a good citizen.
The right to vote can be abused or misused as easily as other privileges we have in life. To cast an uninformed vote, to vote for a candidate simply because of their party affiliation, or because we like the way a candidate looks, are common ways in which we can misuse the privilege of voting.
If we’re uninformed about a particular race, we should probably not vote in that contest. We exercise good stewardship of our citizenship when we cast an informed vote. If we do feel informed though, then we should by all means, vote. One could even say that we have a Christian duty to vote.
This raises another question: What do we do if after fully informing ourselves, we feel no enthusiasm for any candidate?
Here are a few points to consider.
First: Remember that politicians are people too. Those who seek public office are, just everybody else, members of the human race of whom the Bible observes: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one...” (Romans 1:10) Perfection is not the benchmark standard for us to apply to our political leaders. I’m certainly not suggesting that you overlook what appears to be an overtly rotten character in a candidate. But I do suggest cutting candidates some slack for being human. Remember that even George Washington, as great as he undeniably was, didn’t start out with his face chiseled onto Mount Rushmore.
Second: Pray about your vote. Ask God to clarify your thinking and to give you wisdom. The Bible says, “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5).
Finally: “Sin boldly.” This strange bit of advice came from Martin Luther for Christians sincerely weighing decisions. Luther advised Christians to read God’s Word, talk things over with trusted Christian friends, and to pray. If, after all of that, your course remains unclear, do what you think is right. Your judgment could be wrong. But you can have a clear conscience because you know that your intent is to do God’s will.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
You Are Saints...Be Saints
[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio today.]
Matthew 5:1-12
Bill Hybels, pastor of the massive Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago area, tells about the final inspection of the congregation’s new campus, which he and a staff person made with the head of the construction company that built it.
Before the meeting, the staffer had secured a huge skylight, one like those used at fairs and festivals. The meeting was taking place before sunrise and the staffer intended to circle the perimeter of the entire enormous facility with that light, pointing it toward the building so that on the inside, the seals around every window, door, and seam could be confirmed to be tight. If any light shone through, he reasoned, patchwork would have to be done.
But when the contractor arrived and learned what the staffer planned, he pointed out that their contract stipulated that re-sealing would have to be done only if “natural light” shone through the structure's seams. “No building could stand up to the light you want to use,” the contractor explained. The contractor knew that in light like that, any building would be shown to be imperfect.
As I begin this morning, I have to make a confession to all of you: The closer I get to Jesus Christ, the more imperfect I can see myself to be. That’s especially true today on this All Saints Sunday, considering our Gospel lesson. It contains Matthew the Evangelist’s rendering of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”
Martin Luther looked at these words of Jesus and said that they exemplified the perfect law of God which none of us can keep. Jesus laid them out, Luther said, to hold us up to the brilliant light of God’s holy perfection and show us our many imperfections and our desperate need of grace, God’s charitable forgiveness and acceptance. It will be no surprise to any of you who know how much I respect and appreciate Luther to learn that I think Luther is right.
But I also think that Jesus meant to do much more than hold us up to His light and drive us to His grace here.
I think that Jesus means to give us not just laws, but incredible comfort.
To see what I mean, we need to hold the Beatitudes, the opening salvo of Jesus’ sermon, up to some light this morning.
The first verse sets the stage for what follows. Matthew tells us: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him…”
We usually picture the Sermon on the Mount as an oration that Jesus delivered to throngs of people. I’m not so sure about that. To me, nowadays anyway, it appears that Jesus called out to the crowds to follow and some did follow. Those who did are called disciples, the first time this word is used in the Gospel of Matthew, incidentally. The word, disciple, mathetes, in the original Greek of the New Testament, means student or follower.
To me, that creates a comforting image. Even the most saintly follower of Jesus is just learning what it means to be a child of God.
I once heard about a lecture given by a Bible scholar and theologian who, at that point, was deep into his nineties. By all accounts, he’d been a loving and enthusiastic follower of Christ his whole life. He’d spent decades studying the Bible. After his lecture, someone asked him a question. I love his answer: “I have no idea.”
The Lord Who calls us to listen to Him again this morning is the God of the entire universe, infinitely wiser, more intelligent, and more powerful than any of us. This God may have become one of us, dying and rising for us. But if any of us thinks that, short of our own deaths and resurrections, we will ever be more than learners, students, disciples, of the Christ way of living, we’re fooling ourselves.
For me, whenever I feel confused or tormented by the mysteries of life—why suffering comes to the undeserving, why we must age and die, why some seem incapable of making healthy choices for their living, it’s enough to remember that the God Who enters our life through Jesus Christ, calls me to follow Him.
Jesus calls Mark Daniels, who grew up on the Hilltop in Columbus, Ohio, to follow Him. I didn’t have to do anything to earn His attention or His love. He loves me and all I have to do is follow when He calls!
If any of this sounds familiar to those of you who have taken Catechism class within the past seventy-five years or so, it should. About 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, on a mountain, God gave the Ten Commandments for Moses to share with God’s people. But, as you know, the commandments didn’t start out with rules. They began with God’s commitment to His people and His call to the people to follow. It begins with relationship: “I am the Lord your God...” God says.
After calling people to be disciples, displaying a similar love and commitment to those who follow Him, Jesus doesn’t immediately list laws. Instead, Jesus describes two different kinds of disciples.
The first kind are those who are empty in different ways: the poor in spirit (people who, rich or poor, find no hope in the rewards offered by this world), those who mourn (by which Jesus means all who are saddened by any sort of loss), and the meek (by which Jesus means anyone who’s been shafted in any way). Jesus says of these people that they hunger and thirst to be filled with something He calls righteousness. Righteousness is rightness with God, with neighbor, with self. We all hunger and thirst for this kind of rightness, no matter how close we are to God. Jesus says that one day, God’s kingdom will come and God’s will will be done in our lives.
The second description provided by Jesus is of those God uses to fill the emptiness of others. The merciful, Jesus says, will receive mercy. Those who are “pure in heart” (which means a God-filled point of view) will see God. Those who seek to reconcile God to people and people to people, the peacemakers, will be designated children of God. Those who take it in the neck for trying to fill up an empty world with the love and grace of God will be citizens of God’s kingdom.
In the last two verses of today’s Gospel lesson, the perspective changes. Jesus shifts away from describing what disciples to whom God’s kingdom comes look like. Now, as you teachers of grammar see, Jesus speaks to those He calls away from the world’s ordinary ways of doing things. He speaks to His disciples. That’s you and me. Jesus says: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven…”
On this All Saints Sunday, it’s good to be reminded of what a saint is. A saint, you know, is just a disciple, a forgiven sinner learning how to follow Jesus.
One of Saint Matthew’s older saints died this past week. Like all the saints, Gloria Arnold was imperfect. But she was saved by the grace of God, given to us in Jesus Christ. During the one year and twenty-six visits through which I got to know Gloria, I saw her exemplify both kinds of discipleship that Jesus describes today.
Long illness had weakened her. In the past year, I only ever saw her in a chair and a bed in a single room, Room 308 of the Skilled Nursing Unit of Hocking Valley Community Hospital. Gloria hungered and thirsted for the rightness that we all lack while we live here. She craved Holy Communion. And, as Pastor Brian, with whom I did Gloria’s funeral on Friday pointed out, she never let a pastor leave her room without asking for prayer.
But in Gloria I also saw the second sort of discipleship Jesus describes today. Even sick and dying, she was full with something to give. Several days before she died, Gloria was still conscious, aware of what was going on. She told me that, although it had been a difficult concession to make, she was finally ready to go. She underscored that because she believed in Jesus, she wasn’t afraid of dying. She actually looked forward to it. Her only hesitation was about leaving her family behind.
I read a bit of Scripture to her, Romans 8:31-39. After I read it, I explained to her, as I have to you before, that I’ve told Ann that if that passage isn’t read at my funeral, I'm popping out of the box to read it myself. Then, hovering between this world and eternity, Gloria laughed, asking me to read the passage at her funeral. Before I left, she asked if I would look in on her family and if we could have a goodbye hug.
Gloria had asked for me to come to her room to fill her with the assurance of God’s help in her dying. Hopefully, she received that from me. But the fact is that, filled with the righteousness of God, Gloria had filled me with that assurance. She overcame my poverty of spirit, inspiring me with yet another confirmation of the powerful love and grace of God!
There’s only one way for you and me to be disciples—to be saints who yearn for God’s fullness and saints who fill the emptiness of others—and that’s to give up our resistance, to let Christ love us and call us His own, to allow God to use us for God’s purposes, and to simply follow when Jesus Christ calls us. We let Christ see us, sin and all, so that we can be made over in God’s image and experience reconciliation and rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves.
“Faith,” Martin Luther said, “is permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see.” Saints are those who pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and proceed to live in the assurance that, in ways they cannot always see, their prayers are being answered.
You have been made saints by Christ. Now be Christ’s saints
Matthew 5:1-12
Bill Hybels, pastor of the massive Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago area, tells about the final inspection of the congregation’s new campus, which he and a staff person made with the head of the construction company that built it.
Before the meeting, the staffer had secured a huge skylight, one like those used at fairs and festivals. The meeting was taking place before sunrise and the staffer intended to circle the perimeter of the entire enormous facility with that light, pointing it toward the building so that on the inside, the seals around every window, door, and seam could be confirmed to be tight. If any light shone through, he reasoned, patchwork would have to be done.
But when the contractor arrived and learned what the staffer planned, he pointed out that their contract stipulated that re-sealing would have to be done only if “natural light” shone through the structure's seams. “No building could stand up to the light you want to use,” the contractor explained. The contractor knew that in light like that, any building would be shown to be imperfect.
As I begin this morning, I have to make a confession to all of you: The closer I get to Jesus Christ, the more imperfect I can see myself to be. That’s especially true today on this All Saints Sunday, considering our Gospel lesson. It contains Matthew the Evangelist’s rendering of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”
Martin Luther looked at these words of Jesus and said that they exemplified the perfect law of God which none of us can keep. Jesus laid them out, Luther said, to hold us up to the brilliant light of God’s holy perfection and show us our many imperfections and our desperate need of grace, God’s charitable forgiveness and acceptance. It will be no surprise to any of you who know how much I respect and appreciate Luther to learn that I think Luther is right.
But I also think that Jesus meant to do much more than hold us up to His light and drive us to His grace here.
I think that Jesus means to give us not just laws, but incredible comfort.
To see what I mean, we need to hold the Beatitudes, the opening salvo of Jesus’ sermon, up to some light this morning.
The first verse sets the stage for what follows. Matthew tells us: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him…”
We usually picture the Sermon on the Mount as an oration that Jesus delivered to throngs of people. I’m not so sure about that. To me, nowadays anyway, it appears that Jesus called out to the crowds to follow and some did follow. Those who did are called disciples, the first time this word is used in the Gospel of Matthew, incidentally. The word, disciple, mathetes, in the original Greek of the New Testament, means student or follower.
To me, that creates a comforting image. Even the most saintly follower of Jesus is just learning what it means to be a child of God.
I once heard about a lecture given by a Bible scholar and theologian who, at that point, was deep into his nineties. By all accounts, he’d been a loving and enthusiastic follower of Christ his whole life. He’d spent decades studying the Bible. After his lecture, someone asked him a question. I love his answer: “I have no idea.”
The Lord Who calls us to listen to Him again this morning is the God of the entire universe, infinitely wiser, more intelligent, and more powerful than any of us. This God may have become one of us, dying and rising for us. But if any of us thinks that, short of our own deaths and resurrections, we will ever be more than learners, students, disciples, of the Christ way of living, we’re fooling ourselves.
For me, whenever I feel confused or tormented by the mysteries of life—why suffering comes to the undeserving, why we must age and die, why some seem incapable of making healthy choices for their living, it’s enough to remember that the God Who enters our life through Jesus Christ, calls me to follow Him.
Jesus calls Mark Daniels, who grew up on the Hilltop in Columbus, Ohio, to follow Him. I didn’t have to do anything to earn His attention or His love. He loves me and all I have to do is follow when He calls!
If any of this sounds familiar to those of you who have taken Catechism class within the past seventy-five years or so, it should. About 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, on a mountain, God gave the Ten Commandments for Moses to share with God’s people. But, as you know, the commandments didn’t start out with rules. They began with God’s commitment to His people and His call to the people to follow. It begins with relationship: “I am the Lord your God...” God says.
After calling people to be disciples, displaying a similar love and commitment to those who follow Him, Jesus doesn’t immediately list laws. Instead, Jesus describes two different kinds of disciples.
The first kind are those who are empty in different ways: the poor in spirit (people who, rich or poor, find no hope in the rewards offered by this world), those who mourn (by which Jesus means all who are saddened by any sort of loss), and the meek (by which Jesus means anyone who’s been shafted in any way). Jesus says of these people that they hunger and thirst to be filled with something He calls righteousness. Righteousness is rightness with God, with neighbor, with self. We all hunger and thirst for this kind of rightness, no matter how close we are to God. Jesus says that one day, God’s kingdom will come and God’s will will be done in our lives.
The second description provided by Jesus is of those God uses to fill the emptiness of others. The merciful, Jesus says, will receive mercy. Those who are “pure in heart” (which means a God-filled point of view) will see God. Those who seek to reconcile God to people and people to people, the peacemakers, will be designated children of God. Those who take it in the neck for trying to fill up an empty world with the love and grace of God will be citizens of God’s kingdom.
In the last two verses of today’s Gospel lesson, the perspective changes. Jesus shifts away from describing what disciples to whom God’s kingdom comes look like. Now, as you teachers of grammar see, Jesus speaks to those He calls away from the world’s ordinary ways of doing things. He speaks to His disciples. That’s you and me. Jesus says: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven…”
On this All Saints Sunday, it’s good to be reminded of what a saint is. A saint, you know, is just a disciple, a forgiven sinner learning how to follow Jesus.
One of Saint Matthew’s older saints died this past week. Like all the saints, Gloria Arnold was imperfect. But she was saved by the grace of God, given to us in Jesus Christ. During the one year and twenty-six visits through which I got to know Gloria, I saw her exemplify both kinds of discipleship that Jesus describes today.
Long illness had weakened her. In the past year, I only ever saw her in a chair and a bed in a single room, Room 308 of the Skilled Nursing Unit of Hocking Valley Community Hospital. Gloria hungered and thirsted for the rightness that we all lack while we live here. She craved Holy Communion. And, as Pastor Brian, with whom I did Gloria’s funeral on Friday pointed out, she never let a pastor leave her room without asking for prayer.
But in Gloria I also saw the second sort of discipleship Jesus describes today. Even sick and dying, she was full with something to give. Several days before she died, Gloria was still conscious, aware of what was going on. She told me that, although it had been a difficult concession to make, she was finally ready to go. She underscored that because she believed in Jesus, she wasn’t afraid of dying. She actually looked forward to it. Her only hesitation was about leaving her family behind.
I read a bit of Scripture to her, Romans 8:31-39. After I read it, I explained to her, as I have to you before, that I’ve told Ann that if that passage isn’t read at my funeral, I'm popping out of the box to read it myself. Then, hovering between this world and eternity, Gloria laughed, asking me to read the passage at her funeral. Before I left, she asked if I would look in on her family and if we could have a goodbye hug.
Gloria had asked for me to come to her room to fill her with the assurance of God’s help in her dying. Hopefully, she received that from me. But the fact is that, filled with the righteousness of God, Gloria had filled me with that assurance. She overcame my poverty of spirit, inspiring me with yet another confirmation of the powerful love and grace of God!
There’s only one way for you and me to be disciples—to be saints who yearn for God’s fullness and saints who fill the emptiness of others—and that’s to give up our resistance, to let Christ love us and call us His own, to allow God to use us for God’s purposes, and to simply follow when Jesus Christ calls us. We let Christ see us, sin and all, so that we can be made over in God’s image and experience reconciliation and rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves.
“Faith,” Martin Luther said, “is permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see.” Saints are those who pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and proceed to live in the assurance that, in ways they cannot always see, their prayers are being answered.
You have been made saints by Christ. Now be Christ’s saints
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Studs Terkel Has Died
Studs Terkel has died.Terkel was a remarkable person, a "Renaissance man" not only owing to the breadth of his activities, but also because of his boundless curiosity.
He happened too, to be a great actor, playing one fabulous Studs Terkel. Just last week, my son and I caught some of Eight Men Out, the movie about the 1919 Black Sox scandal. In it, Terkel played Hugh Fullerton, the sports writer who played a prime role in exposing the efforts of eight members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Terkel was wonderful in the part. At one point, I turned to my son and said, "He is perfect in this movie." The reason is simple: Terkel's Fullerton was Terkel's Terkel, a persona which was, at the same time, street-wise and idealistic, profound yet simple.
No doubt being a Chicagoan born, raised, and living in a certain era contributed to who Terkel became. A certain cynicism was probably inevitable in any Chicagoan surrounded by the common corruptions of machine politics. Yet, like grass growing through cement, Terkel also seemed, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, to continue to harbor hope that human beings can do better.
As a Christian, I believe that human beings can do better, but only if God is in their lives. Otherwise, that old sinner in us will get in the way. This is why reform must be a constant in human life; whether the reform is of things inside ourselves or of practices in society at large. That's because the human capacity for despoiling and ruining good things is infinite. I don't have much faith in the human race left to their own devices. But I have infinite faith in what God can and will do in human beings turned to God.
What Terkel would make of that last paragraph, I think that I can guess. But I can't be sure. He was always full of surprises.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Governor Working on Master Plan for Ohio Education
Governor Ted Strickland's embryonic master plan for the reform of Ohio's educational system, which the Dispatch blog outlines, looks good. Of particular interest to me was this point:
[For a somewhat more detailed explanation of Ohio's public school funding "formula," see here.]
Effective support strategies must be in place to provide all students with an opportunity for academic success, regardless of their personal situation, and to once and for all eliminate the achievement gap.If that means what I think it means, the governor is intent on taking on the corrupt shell-game that passes for educational funding in this state. Under the Ohio plan, in spite of the intentions of voters when they pass levies, the state effectively steals money designated for the local schools and put it all into state coffers. Several times, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled Ohio's funding formula unconstitutional by the standards of the State Constitution. Yet, decades' worth of governors and General Assemblies, members of both political parties, have failed to reform the system. Until such reform happens, no other changes in public education will make a difference for Ohio.
[For a somewhat more detailed explanation of Ohio's public school funding "formula," see here.]
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Iceland Raises Prime Interest Rate to 18%
So what? It's seen as an indication that the nation, the economy of which is in something of a freefall, has negotiated a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), often accused of making steep demands on client nations.
If the move and IMF loan can arrest Iceland's decline, that's good.
My apprehension has been that Iceland would go through with loans for which it was negotiating with Russia.
The last thing we want to see happen right now is for nations to become beholden to either Russia or China. The governments of both of those countries can be expected to attempt leveraging loan agreements for strategic advantage, destructive of the interests of both the international community and of their own peoples.
If the move and IMF loan can arrest Iceland's decline, that's good.
My apprehension has been that Iceland would go through with loans for which it was negotiating with Russia.
The last thing we want to see happen right now is for nations to become beholden to either Russia or China. The governments of both of those countries can be expected to attempt leveraging loan agreements for strategic advantage, destructive of the interests of both the international community and of their own peoples.
Monday, October 27, 2008
10 Good Things Happening in the Current Economic Downturn
From Kiplinger's. I thought that this was clever.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Set Free!
[This was shared during the Reformation Sunday celebration with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio today.]
John 8:31-36
Back in the Stone Ages, when I did my student teaching at Bishop Ready High School in Columbus, my supervising teacher was a terrific guy named Joe Palazzo. One day, after Joe observed me teach twelfth-grade Government class, he gave me two pieces of advice. First, he said: Get off of your mountain. Come down here with the kids. That’s where you can teach and they can learn. But he also gave a second and more important piece of advice. “All effective teaching, Mark, boils down to two principles: Repetition and concreteness. Repeat it in as many different ways and as many times as you can. And then, make it real. Help them to see it." The greatest teacher who ever lived was Jesus of Nazareth. He was often called rabbi, teacher, even by those who opposed Him and thought that His claims to be God and Savior of the world were out to lunch.
In our Gospel lesson for today, we find Jesus exemplifying Joe Palazzo’s principles of teaching in order to get across the most important message you and I will ever receive. Jesus tells us that He is the best friend we can have and that to be truly free, we need a connection to Him. He breaks this lesson down into three parts.
Part one: Jesus twice repeats, in different ways, a straightforward Biblical principle. Its this: Stick with Me and you’ll be free. At the beginning of our lesson, He says: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Then, at the end of our lesson, He repeats this point in a different way: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
You and I might chafe under those words a bit. Jesus’ fellow Jews, people who had believed in Him, certainly reacted to His words. They told Jesus, in spite of a history of enslavement, that they had never been slaves to anybody. This claim demonstrates that denial is more than a river in Egypt. The last thing any of us wants to admit is that we aren’t free agents, doing exactly what we want to do in life. The daughter of friends of ours, when she was two years old, would grow indignant with anyone who tried to get in her way. “Mine a do it!” she would insist loudly.
Children aren’t the only ones who feel the need to prove that they are self-contained free agents. Adults do this, even when they’re in the clutches of addiction or sin. “I can quit any time!” says the alcoholic confronted with the truth about his destructive life style. “Good,” says someone who loves him, “quit.” “I don’t want to,” they’ll say, though the truth could actually be expressed with the words, “I can’t quit. I’m a slave to my addiction.”
In telling us, “Stick with me and you’ll be free,” Jesus implicitly tells us what He makes explicit in Part Two: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin."
That rings true to me. The first time I remember a swear word passing through my lips, I was in the sixth grade. It was the day of the Halloween party and I was frustrated. Everyone had come to school in the costume they were going to wear on what we called Beggars’ Night in Columbus. I was dressed as a girl, complete with dress and make-up. I guess my mom and I were the only ones who didn't get the memo that said all students should bring a change of clothes. So, there I was at recess, playing Four Square with my classmates on the playground, the only one still in my Halloween costume. In drag!
All the other kids rode me pretty hard, which was frustrating enough. But then, Steve, a tough little guy who had started smoking when we were in the fourth grade in hopes that he could stunt his growth and become a jockey, spiked the ball in my square. I was out. “I guess you really are a girl,” one of my classmates said in words that in just a few years, we would regard not only as cruel but totally unenlightened. Frustrated that I was in a dress, upset that Steve had just knocked me out of the game, and mad about all the insults, I picked up the ball, slammed it to the pavement, and said the first curse word I ever spoke. “D-A-M-N!” I barked, not spelling it then as I did just now. “Wooo!” the kids said, “Daniels cussed!”
Here’s what I found. After I’d sworn once, misusing the gift of language and violating God’s will for human beings, it was a lot easier to do it a second time. Easier still to do it a third. Sin creates holes in our souls and unless we’re careful, sin will flood our lives, making us its slaves, sinking us into the muck of evil, far from God.
“When I first started raking money from the company, I was conscience-struck,” one man admitted. “But after awhile, it became easier. I had all sorts of justifications for it.” It’s easy to become the slave of sin. In fact, the Bible tells us that we have an inborn inclination to sin. That’s why Jesus’ promise, “Stick with me and you’ll be free,” is really good news!
So, how do we get free? Well, we don’t. Only God can free us. That leads to Part Three of Jesus’ lesson: The Son has the run of God’s kingdom. That's why when you stick with the Son, He will set you free!
I once got to know a local judge who seemed to take both his faith and his work seriously. Another man I knew was charged with a crime and brought before that judge. The man was clearly guilty. But I knew how remorseful he was and I intervened, asking the judge to go easy on him, not imposing prison time.
The judge listened to me and said, “I understand all that, Mark. I know how much he regrets his actions. But the law is the law.” “Yes, it is,” I told him, “and I know that you have no choice. I was just hoping you could think of another way to handle things. But whatever you do, I’ll respect your sentence.”
Jesus looks at us and our failure to love God and love neighbor and knows, just like that judge, that the law is the law. All sin is the failure to love God and love neighbor. And, the Bible says unequivocally that "the wages of sin"--the appropriate payment for sin--"is death."
But after finding us guilty and pronouncing our death sentence over us, Jesus does something extraordinary. He takes our punishment. That’s what He did when He voluntarily went to the cross, though He had no sin. He took the punishment that you and I deserve. All who remain with Jesus, everyone who sticks with Him, is set free from sin and death and have a life with God that never ends.
On a cross, Jesus made God’s love so concrete you can’t doubt how real it is. And from an empty tomb, He made clear His power and His desire to give us life that lasts forever. These are the greatest object lessons in human history!
Today, we celebrate the Reformation. The Reformation really began when a young monk and priest, Martin Luther, dogged by a sense of his own sin and his fear that an angry God would never forgive him, discovered the true nature of God is seen in the Good News of Jesus. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
On October 31, 1517, All Saints Eve or Hallowed Eve—we call it Halloween, Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses for debate on the church door where he served as priest in Wittenberg, Germany. It began a movement within Christianity that continues to this day, a movement that reminds the world that salvation and new life aren’t things we earn or buy or steal; God sets us free to be our true selves—the selves God made us to be—through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone!
The Bible teaches and Luther’s Small Catechism underscore that there are three things that enslave us, causing us to place our confidence in dead things like money, possessions, and religion. Those three things are the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. Jesus Christ can set us free from them.
She had a difficult childhood, sexually abused by her own father. In adulthood, she made success and pleasure her gods, anesthetizing herself with constant work, the mad chase for dollars, spending sprees that maxed out her credit cards, alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. But nothing set her free from her sense of inadequacy, from the shame she felt for her victimization, from her guilt for the choices she made for selfishness and self-will. A friend invited her to a small group Bible study.
There, she heard Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, a story that assures us that no matter how far we may stray from God, through Jesus Christ, God wants to welcome us home. God wants to set us free from all that enslaves us, kills us, or fills us with a sense of futility and meaninglessness. God wants to set us free to live abundant, eternal life with Him. “I’ve heard that story a million times,” she said. “I never realized that it was anything more than a story. I never knew it meant that God cares about me.” For the first time in her life, that woman began to sense the freedom to live that Christ wants us all to experience.
Jesus says, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” On this Reformation Sunday, my challenge to you is simple: Dare to believe that! Dare to believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection are both object lessons and the means by which God sets you and me free to be the forgiven, confident, hopeful people we were made
John 8:31-36
Back in the Stone Ages, when I did my student teaching at Bishop Ready High School in Columbus, my supervising teacher was a terrific guy named Joe Palazzo. One day, after Joe observed me teach twelfth-grade Government class, he gave me two pieces of advice. First, he said: Get off of your mountain. Come down here with the kids. That’s where you can teach and they can learn. But he also gave a second and more important piece of advice. “All effective teaching, Mark, boils down to two principles: Repetition and concreteness. Repeat it in as many different ways and as many times as you can. And then, make it real. Help them to see it." The greatest teacher who ever lived was Jesus of Nazareth. He was often called rabbi, teacher, even by those who opposed Him and thought that His claims to be God and Savior of the world were out to lunch.
In our Gospel lesson for today, we find Jesus exemplifying Joe Palazzo’s principles of teaching in order to get across the most important message you and I will ever receive. Jesus tells us that He is the best friend we can have and that to be truly free, we need a connection to Him. He breaks this lesson down into three parts.
Part one: Jesus twice repeats, in different ways, a straightforward Biblical principle. Its this: Stick with Me and you’ll be free. At the beginning of our lesson, He says: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Then, at the end of our lesson, He repeats this point in a different way: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
You and I might chafe under those words a bit. Jesus’ fellow Jews, people who had believed in Him, certainly reacted to His words. They told Jesus, in spite of a history of enslavement, that they had never been slaves to anybody. This claim demonstrates that denial is more than a river in Egypt. The last thing any of us wants to admit is that we aren’t free agents, doing exactly what we want to do in life. The daughter of friends of ours, when she was two years old, would grow indignant with anyone who tried to get in her way. “Mine a do it!” she would insist loudly.
Children aren’t the only ones who feel the need to prove that they are self-contained free agents. Adults do this, even when they’re in the clutches of addiction or sin. “I can quit any time!” says the alcoholic confronted with the truth about his destructive life style. “Good,” says someone who loves him, “quit.” “I don’t want to,” they’ll say, though the truth could actually be expressed with the words, “I can’t quit. I’m a slave to my addiction.”
In telling us, “Stick with me and you’ll be free,” Jesus implicitly tells us what He makes explicit in Part Two: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin."
That rings true to me. The first time I remember a swear word passing through my lips, I was in the sixth grade. It was the day of the Halloween party and I was frustrated. Everyone had come to school in the costume they were going to wear on what we called Beggars’ Night in Columbus. I was dressed as a girl, complete with dress and make-up. I guess my mom and I were the only ones who didn't get the memo that said all students should bring a change of clothes. So, there I was at recess, playing Four Square with my classmates on the playground, the only one still in my Halloween costume. In drag!
All the other kids rode me pretty hard, which was frustrating enough. But then, Steve, a tough little guy who had started smoking when we were in the fourth grade in hopes that he could stunt his growth and become a jockey, spiked the ball in my square. I was out. “I guess you really are a girl,” one of my classmates said in words that in just a few years, we would regard not only as cruel but totally unenlightened. Frustrated that I was in a dress, upset that Steve had just knocked me out of the game, and mad about all the insults, I picked up the ball, slammed it to the pavement, and said the first curse word I ever spoke. “D-A-M-N!” I barked, not spelling it then as I did just now. “Wooo!” the kids said, “Daniels cussed!”
Here’s what I found. After I’d sworn once, misusing the gift of language and violating God’s will for human beings, it was a lot easier to do it a second time. Easier still to do it a third. Sin creates holes in our souls and unless we’re careful, sin will flood our lives, making us its slaves, sinking us into the muck of evil, far from God.
“When I first started raking money from the company, I was conscience-struck,” one man admitted. “But after awhile, it became easier. I had all sorts of justifications for it.” It’s easy to become the slave of sin. In fact, the Bible tells us that we have an inborn inclination to sin. That’s why Jesus’ promise, “Stick with me and you’ll be free,” is really good news!
So, how do we get free? Well, we don’t. Only God can free us. That leads to Part Three of Jesus’ lesson: The Son has the run of God’s kingdom. That's why when you stick with the Son, He will set you free!
I once got to know a local judge who seemed to take both his faith and his work seriously. Another man I knew was charged with a crime and brought before that judge. The man was clearly guilty. But I knew how remorseful he was and I intervened, asking the judge to go easy on him, not imposing prison time.
The judge listened to me and said, “I understand all that, Mark. I know how much he regrets his actions. But the law is the law.” “Yes, it is,” I told him, “and I know that you have no choice. I was just hoping you could think of another way to handle things. But whatever you do, I’ll respect your sentence.”
Jesus looks at us and our failure to love God and love neighbor and knows, just like that judge, that the law is the law. All sin is the failure to love God and love neighbor. And, the Bible says unequivocally that "the wages of sin"--the appropriate payment for sin--"is death."
But after finding us guilty and pronouncing our death sentence over us, Jesus does something extraordinary. He takes our punishment. That’s what He did when He voluntarily went to the cross, though He had no sin. He took the punishment that you and I deserve. All who remain with Jesus, everyone who sticks with Him, is set free from sin and death and have a life with God that never ends.
On a cross, Jesus made God’s love so concrete you can’t doubt how real it is. And from an empty tomb, He made clear His power and His desire to give us life that lasts forever. These are the greatest object lessons in human history!
Today, we celebrate the Reformation. The Reformation really began when a young monk and priest, Martin Luther, dogged by a sense of his own sin and his fear that an angry God would never forgive him, discovered the true nature of God is seen in the Good News of Jesus. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
On October 31, 1517, All Saints Eve or Hallowed Eve—we call it Halloween, Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses for debate on the church door where he served as priest in Wittenberg, Germany. It began a movement within Christianity that continues to this day, a movement that reminds the world that salvation and new life aren’t things we earn or buy or steal; God sets us free to be our true selves—the selves God made us to be—through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone!
The Bible teaches and Luther’s Small Catechism underscore that there are three things that enslave us, causing us to place our confidence in dead things like money, possessions, and religion. Those three things are the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. Jesus Christ can set us free from them.
She had a difficult childhood, sexually abused by her own father. In adulthood, she made success and pleasure her gods, anesthetizing herself with constant work, the mad chase for dollars, spending sprees that maxed out her credit cards, alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. But nothing set her free from her sense of inadequacy, from the shame she felt for her victimization, from her guilt for the choices she made for selfishness and self-will. A friend invited her to a small group Bible study.
There, she heard Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, a story that assures us that no matter how far we may stray from God, through Jesus Christ, God wants to welcome us home. God wants to set us free from all that enslaves us, kills us, or fills us with a sense of futility and meaninglessness. God wants to set us free to live abundant, eternal life with Him. “I’ve heard that story a million times,” she said. “I never realized that it was anything more than a story. I never knew it meant that God cares about me.” For the first time in her life, that woman began to sense the freedom to live that Christ wants us all to experience.
Jesus says, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” On this Reformation Sunday, my challenge to you is simple: Dare to believe that! Dare to believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection are both object lessons and the means by which God sets you and me free to be the forgiven, confident, hopeful people we were made
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Martin Luther, Reformation Sunday, and the Grace That Saves Us
[This presentation about Martin Luther and the Reformation is something which I've written and taken through multiple rewrites and updates since I became a pastor in 1984. I've included it in several worship bulletins, used it as a sermon, handed it out to classes, and published it here several times. Tomorrow, October 26, will be celebrated as Reformation Sunday by Lutherans and many other Christians around the world. This explains why.]
He was born in November, 1483, in the German principality of Saxony. His father was a one-time coal miner who, through hard work, had risen to middle class status, the owner of several mines. His mother, who would exert so much influence over the boy was, in the custom of those times, a full-time housewife and mother.
His name was Martin Luther. From an early age, he exhibited great intelligence and many talents. As time passed, he would become an extraordinary preacher, theologian, and musician. These pursuits were far from his father’s intentions for young Martin. Hans Luther wanted the boy to become a lawyer in order to care for him and his wife in their old age.
That, in fact, was the trajectory on which Martin’s life was moving when a shattering experience intervened.
He was heading back to the university he attended when a ferocious thunderstorm arose. A lightning bolt knocked Luther to the ground. Understandably terrified, Martin cried out to the patron saint of miners. “Saint Ann,” he said, “save me; I will become a monk.”
I once told this story to Father Seavey Joyce, who served Saint Ann's parish in the same small town (Frankfort, Michigan) where I did my seminary internship. Seavey listened and wearing an impish smile, said, "I guess that goes to prove that even saints make mistakes." (He was kidding because Seavy also told me once that he was sure that one day the Roman Catholic Church would name Luther a saint.)
But of course, it wasn't Saint Ann who’d made a mistake. It was Martin Luther. In fact, in his moment of terror in the thunderstorm, he made several mistakes. Mistake one: Calling for supernatural help from anyone other than the God we know in Jesus Christ. Mistake two: Making a deal in the hopes of placating what Luther thought was an angry God. God doesn’t make deals.
But Luther became part of a long tradition of people who have done the right things for the wrong reasons.
In the Old Testament book of Genesis, for example, we find the true story of a young dreamer named Joseph. His father, Jacob, doted on the boy while virtually ignoring his ten other sons. Resentful, Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and then took the coat their father had given to him and spattered it with blood. They showed it to Jacob. He concluded that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.
The brothers had done the wrong thing. But it turned out that, unbeknownst to them, they played into God's plans for Joseph. Joseph was set down a difficult road that ultimately led him to become, in effect, the prime minister of Egypt, second in command after the Pharaoh. In that position, Joseph oversaw the storing of crops during seven bumper years in anticipation of seven years of famine, a famine that affected the entire Middle East.
Ultimately, Joseph was able to use the stored crops to save the lives of his very own family members and many others. Later, he was able to tell his brothers that when they sold him into slavery, "You meant it for evil. But God meant it for good so that many might be saved." Joseph's brothers had somehow done the right thing for the wrong reasons.
In the New Testament book of Matthew, we find the story of people who came to see the Christ Child. We call them "wise men." But they were really little more than astologers, people who made horoscopes and superstitiously believed that stars foretold occurrences on this planet. It's the sort of the practice that the Bible condemns completely. We're to depend on God and on nothing and nobody else. Yet, these wise men who followed the stars for the wrong reasons, at the end of their journey, came to the right conclusion: This baby was the Savior of the world.
Martin Luther’s entry into the monastery for the wrong reason turned out to be very right, indeed! I don’t think that his father ever forgave the young Luther for taking the vows of a monk and "abandoning" his family. When, several years later, Luther also was ordained a priest, his father, Hans, expressed the belief that Martin’s call might not have come from God, but from the devil.
Martin Luther, in fact, was a deeply disturbed young man, probably neurotic. He felt himself utterly and completely guilty of sin. He couldn’t imagine that a morally perfect God could or would forgive him. At times, Luther hated God. He believed that God was playing a vicious game with the human race: Demanding moral perfection and when none of our race were unable to attain it, gleefully sending us to hell.
Noting how disturbed Luther was, believing that a fully occupied life would crowd out his worries and fears, and recognizing how intelligent Luther was, his superiors decided that he would study to become a doctor of theology. He would teach at a new university being started in the Saxon town of Wittenberg.
At first, a new regimen of work, which included administering fourteen monasteries, pastoring a local church, and teaching at the new university, did nothing to assuage Luther’s loathing of God and of himself.
But then, something happened to change Luther’s life and world history. (And, over time, through the Reformation Luther began, my history.) Like most seminarians and priests of his day, Luther had never studied Scripture. He did so now, as he prepared for the classes he was teaching.
In the Bible, Luther found a God different from the one often preached in the Church of his day. He saw a God of grace and love Who reaches out to His children, Who charitably understands their fallen humanity, Who forgives and empowers right living, and promises eternity to all with faith in Him. He saw a God Who hates sin while loving sinners, Who calls all to repent for their sin and believe in His Son, Jesus.
He began to see this picture of God as he studied the book of Genesis in preparation for lectures to his students at Wittenberg. He met this God again in the Psalms. And, perhaps most clearly of all, Luther saw this God in the majestic New Testament book of Romans.
A key passage for him was Romans 1:16-17:
Up until this point in his life, Luther, like most of the people of his time, labored under the mistaken notion that righteousness was a state of moral perfection, a status God commanded of us, although none of us could ever attain it.
Now, Luther saw that righteousness is having a right relationship with God and that it can’t be secured by anything we do. He saw that while God does demand moral purity from us and that our sin earns us everlasting condemnation, God Himself took on flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ so that He could die in our place on the cross and all with faith in Jesus won't be condemned. Instead, God gives all with faith in Jesus forgiveness and everlasting life. That's what Romans means when it talks about salvation and salvation as God's gift to believers in Christ. Period.
Realizing all of this now, Luther, who studied in the tower of the monastery at Wittenberg had what was later called his “tower experience.” While studying God’s Word, Luther had an overpowering sense of the depths of God’s love for all of us--including himself. Coming to know that rigteousness is God’s gift which we can access when we turn from sin and entrust our lives to Christ, Luther said, was like having the gates of heaven thrown open to him! The faithful person would try to respond to the love of God given through Jesus Christ, of course. But, Luther knew, we can’t earn God’s love. It’s a gift called grace.
The once-neurotically ashamed Martin Luther became a joyful champion of the new life that God gives to all with faith in Christ. As he grew in the confidence he had in Christ and in God’s love for him, Luther grew bolder in sharing what he had learned about God from the Bible.
On October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses--or propositions--for debate on the church door in Wittenberg. In those days, a scholar who wished to engage in discussion about important issues posted points on the doors of churches. Church doors were the Power Points, bulletin boards, or blogs of that time.
Luther’s theses were prompted by a common practice in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. The Church then taught that there was a place called “purgatory,” a sort of holding room that the dead supposedly went to between death and eternity. Purgatory was supposed to be a place where people were purified for entry into heaven. To raise money, the Church often authorized the mass sale of pieces of paper known as indulgences. These indulgences allowed people to buy hundreds or thousands of years out of purgatory for loved ones or even themselves.
Luther, certain that eternity was a free gift, was deeply offended by this practice. He would later say that if there were such a place as purgatory and the Pope, as head of the Church, had the capacity to free people from the place, he should do so out of simple Christian compassion and not accept a penny for doing so.
When Luther’s preaching against indulgences began to impact the bottom line on their sale, the Church went after him. At a gathering in the German city of Wurms, before the emperor, Luther was ordered to recant, or repudiate, all of his writings. He refused.
Ultimately, he came under what was known as an “imperial ban.” That meant that both the Church and the powerful Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of principalities and nations, agreed that if any one saw Martin Luther, he was to be killed on sight. Luther was labeled a heretic, a perverter of the Christian faith.
For the balance of his life, Martin Luther remained steadfast in proclaiming the God we see in Jesus Christ, the God of grace and God of glory. Among Luther’s last words were, “We are all beggars,” an acknowledgement that none of us is better or more important than others in God's eyes and that all with faith in Christ are the recipients of God’s charitable gifts: forgiveness and new life. We cannot earn them, but thank God, He loves to give them to those humble enough to surrender to Christ! Luther died in 1546.
We celebrate October 31 each year as Reformation Day because on All Saints Eve, Hallowed Evening or, as we call it, Halloween, in 1517, Luther’s 95 Theses began a major reformation of the Church. That reform movement goes on to this day.
Martin Luther learned and then taught from God’s Word that our relationship with God and our freedom from sin and death don’t come from our works or from doing proscribed acts of ritual, religious or otherwise. These things come to us freely from a God Who, in Christ, shows us that He isn’t our enemy, but our very best friend.
He was born in November, 1483, in the German principality of Saxony. His father was a one-time coal miner who, through hard work, had risen to middle class status, the owner of several mines. His mother, who would exert so much influence over the boy was, in the custom of those times, a full-time housewife and mother.
His name was Martin Luther. From an early age, he exhibited great intelligence and many talents. As time passed, he would become an extraordinary preacher, theologian, and musician. These pursuits were far from his father’s intentions for young Martin. Hans Luther wanted the boy to become a lawyer in order to care for him and his wife in their old age.
That, in fact, was the trajectory on which Martin’s life was moving when a shattering experience intervened.
He was heading back to the university he attended when a ferocious thunderstorm arose. A lightning bolt knocked Luther to the ground. Understandably terrified, Martin cried out to the patron saint of miners. “Saint Ann,” he said, “save me; I will become a monk.”
I once told this story to Father Seavey Joyce, who served Saint Ann's parish in the same small town (Frankfort, Michigan) where I did my seminary internship. Seavey listened and wearing an impish smile, said, "I guess that goes to prove that even saints make mistakes." (He was kidding because Seavy also told me once that he was sure that one day the Roman Catholic Church would name Luther a saint.)
But of course, it wasn't Saint Ann who’d made a mistake. It was Martin Luther. In fact, in his moment of terror in the thunderstorm, he made several mistakes. Mistake one: Calling for supernatural help from anyone other than the God we know in Jesus Christ. Mistake two: Making a deal in the hopes of placating what Luther thought was an angry God. God doesn’t make deals.
But Luther became part of a long tradition of people who have done the right things for the wrong reasons.
In the Old Testament book of Genesis, for example, we find the true story of a young dreamer named Joseph. His father, Jacob, doted on the boy while virtually ignoring his ten other sons. Resentful, Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and then took the coat their father had given to him and spattered it with blood. They showed it to Jacob. He concluded that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.The brothers had done the wrong thing. But it turned out that, unbeknownst to them, they played into God's plans for Joseph. Joseph was set down a difficult road that ultimately led him to become, in effect, the prime minister of Egypt, second in command after the Pharaoh. In that position, Joseph oversaw the storing of crops during seven bumper years in anticipation of seven years of famine, a famine that affected the entire Middle East.
Ultimately, Joseph was able to use the stored crops to save the lives of his very own family members and many others. Later, he was able to tell his brothers that when they sold him into slavery, "You meant it for evil. But God meant it for good so that many might be saved." Joseph's brothers had somehow done the right thing for the wrong reasons.
In the New Testament book of Matthew, we find the story of people who came to see the Christ Child. We call them "wise men." But they were really little more than astologers, people who made horoscopes and superstitiously believed that stars foretold occurrences on this planet. It's the sort of the practice that the Bible condemns completely. We're to depend on God and on nothing and nobody else. Yet, these wise men who followed the stars for the wrong reasons, at the end of their journey, came to the right conclusion: This baby was the Savior of the world.
Martin Luther’s entry into the monastery for the wrong reason turned out to be very right, indeed! I don’t think that his father ever forgave the young Luther for taking the vows of a monk and "abandoning" his family. When, several years later, Luther also was ordained a priest, his father, Hans, expressed the belief that Martin’s call might not have come from God, but from the devil.Martin Luther, in fact, was a deeply disturbed young man, probably neurotic. He felt himself utterly and completely guilty of sin. He couldn’t imagine that a morally perfect God could or would forgive him. At times, Luther hated God. He believed that God was playing a vicious game with the human race: Demanding moral perfection and when none of our race were unable to attain it, gleefully sending us to hell.
Noting how disturbed Luther was, believing that a fully occupied life would crowd out his worries and fears, and recognizing how intelligent Luther was, his superiors decided that he would study to become a doctor of theology. He would teach at a new university being started in the Saxon town of Wittenberg.
At first, a new regimen of work, which included administering fourteen monasteries, pastoring a local church, and teaching at the new university, did nothing to assuage Luther’s loathing of God and of himself.
But then, something happened to change Luther’s life and world history. (And, over time, through the Reformation Luther began, my history.) Like most seminarians and priests of his day, Luther had never studied Scripture. He did so now, as he prepared for the classes he was teaching.
In the Bible, Luther found a God different from the one often preached in the Church of his day. He saw a God of grace and love Who reaches out to His children, Who charitably understands their fallen humanity, Who forgives and empowers right living, and promises eternity to all with faith in Him. He saw a God Who hates sin while loving sinners, Who calls all to repent for their sin and believe in His Son, Jesus.
He began to see this picture of God as he studied the book of Genesis in preparation for lectures to his students at Wittenberg. He met this God again in the Psalms. And, perhaps most clearly of all, Luther saw this God in the majestic New Testament book of Romans.
A key passage for him was Romans 1:16-17:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”With his deepening knowledge of the Scriptures and the original Hebrew and Greek in which the Old and New Testaments, respectively, had been written, Luther’s understanding of God blossomed.
Up until this point in his life, Luther, like most of the people of his time, labored under the mistaken notion that righteousness was a state of moral perfection, a status God commanded of us, although none of us could ever attain it.
Now, Luther saw that righteousness is having a right relationship with God and that it can’t be secured by anything we do. He saw that while God does demand moral purity from us and that our sin earns us everlasting condemnation, God Himself took on flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ so that He could die in our place on the cross and all with faith in Jesus won't be condemned. Instead, God gives all with faith in Jesus forgiveness and everlasting life. That's what Romans means when it talks about salvation and salvation as God's gift to believers in Christ. Period.Realizing all of this now, Luther, who studied in the tower of the monastery at Wittenberg had what was later called his “tower experience.” While studying God’s Word, Luther had an overpowering sense of the depths of God’s love for all of us--including himself. Coming to know that rigteousness is God’s gift which we can access when we turn from sin and entrust our lives to Christ, Luther said, was like having the gates of heaven thrown open to him! The faithful person would try to respond to the love of God given through Jesus Christ, of course. But, Luther knew, we can’t earn God’s love. It’s a gift called grace.
The once-neurotically ashamed Martin Luther became a joyful champion of the new life that God gives to all with faith in Christ. As he grew in the confidence he had in Christ and in God’s love for him, Luther grew bolder in sharing what he had learned about God from the Bible.
On October 31, 1517, he posted 95 theses--or propositions--for debate on the church door in Wittenberg. In those days, a scholar who wished to engage in discussion about important issues posted points on the doors of churches. Church doors were the Power Points, bulletin boards, or blogs of that time.Luther’s theses were prompted by a common practice in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. The Church then taught that there was a place called “purgatory,” a sort of holding room that the dead supposedly went to between death and eternity. Purgatory was supposed to be a place where people were purified for entry into heaven. To raise money, the Church often authorized the mass sale of pieces of paper known as indulgences. These indulgences allowed people to buy hundreds or thousands of years out of purgatory for loved ones or even themselves.
Luther, certain that eternity was a free gift, was deeply offended by this practice. He would later say that if there were such a place as purgatory and the Pope, as head of the Church, had the capacity to free people from the place, he should do so out of simple Christian compassion and not accept a penny for doing so.
When Luther’s preaching against indulgences began to impact the bottom line on their sale, the Church went after him. At a gathering in the German city of Wurms, before the emperor, Luther was ordered to recant, or repudiate, all of his writings. He refused.Ultimately, he came under what was known as an “imperial ban.” That meant that both the Church and the powerful Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of principalities and nations, agreed that if any one saw Martin Luther, he was to be killed on sight. Luther was labeled a heretic, a perverter of the Christian faith.
For the balance of his life, Martin Luther remained steadfast in proclaiming the God we see in Jesus Christ, the God of grace and God of glory. Among Luther’s last words were, “We are all beggars,” an acknowledgement that none of us is better or more important than others in God's eyes and that all with faith in Christ are the recipients of God’s charitable gifts: forgiveness and new life. We cannot earn them, but thank God, He loves to give them to those humble enough to surrender to Christ! Luther died in 1546.
We celebrate October 31 each year as Reformation Day because on All Saints Eve, Hallowed Evening or, as we call it, Halloween, in 1517, Luther’s 95 Theses began a major reformation of the Church. That reform movement goes on to this day.
Martin Luther learned and then taught from God’s Word that our relationship with God and our freedom from sin and death don’t come from our works or from doing proscribed acts of ritual, religious or otherwise. These things come to us freely from a God Who, in Christ, shows us that He isn’t our enemy, but our very best friend.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Stuck?
We all get stuck in our lives, uncertain about the directions in which we should move. This is especially frustrating for Christians who want to express gratitude through lives honoring God for the free gifts of forgiveness and new life which come from Jesus.
That grace should lighten our anxiety over discerning the right directions for our lives, the directions for which God designed us. We should know that even when we get things wrong, if our motivation is to live loving and useful lives, God will still be pleased with us.
Nonetheless, our unease can be understandable. The Bible witnesses to a personal God Who cares about us personally. He gives all human beings certain abilities and more deeply blesses Christians with spiritual gifts meant for us to use in making the church and the world better. God wants to imbue our lives with purpose and direction.
But sometimes, overwhelmed by the condition of alienation from God that all humans are born with, we get stuck.
My friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, recently presented a wonderful piece by Crosswalk.com contributing writer Whitney Hopler on how believers in Christ can hear God's voice and find direction for their lives. Hopler's article distills a book called Speak Lord, I'm Listening: How to Hear God's Voice Above the Noise by Larry Kreider.
The first method for hearing God's voice commended by Kreider and Hopler is one with which Lutheran Christians like me are sure to resonate, given our emphasis on the central role of God's Word in the lives of Christians:
I like the rest of the list of ways to hear God's voice as enumerated by Hopler, too.
For some, the idea that God can speak to us will be foreign. We're like the people of eleventh-century BC Israel. Of that time, the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel observes, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" (1 Samuel 3:1). The observation seems to be made with a kind of incredulity. "Can you believe it?" the passage seems to ask. "People were so far away from God that they didn't hear His voice."
I'm convinced that the God Who made the universe and Who became one of us in Jesus Christ is still speaking to us, if we will only listen. I say that as someone who, I admit, crowds God's voice out of my life way too often, doing that through my activities, some of them which, on their face, appear commendable or holy. But whenever we prevent God from speaking to us, we can bet that we're not about anything commendable or holy!
To be clear, in talking about "hearing God's voice," I don't mean an audible-"If you build it, he will come"-in-the-cornfield hearing, although I discount no possibility. God is sovereign. Therefore, God can choose to speak to us in any way God wants to speak to us. God even used an ass to speak once. (Some people say that God does that in the pulpits of many churches every week.)
[Above, Balaam, his ass, and the angel blocking their way. Balaam was so consumed with doing what he wanted to do that he couldn't see the angel God sent to turn him back. The ass could. When the ass refused to go on, God spoke to Balaam through the ass. I'll leave it to you to apply this to your own life. Click on the image to see all of it.]
Go to Hopler's article. If you're feeling stuck, maybe her words of wisdom will help you hear God's voice and get you unstuck.
That grace should lighten our anxiety over discerning the right directions for our lives, the directions for which God designed us. We should know that even when we get things wrong, if our motivation is to live loving and useful lives, God will still be pleased with us.
Nonetheless, our unease can be understandable. The Bible witnesses to a personal God Who cares about us personally. He gives all human beings certain abilities and more deeply blesses Christians with spiritual gifts meant for us to use in making the church and the world better. God wants to imbue our lives with purpose and direction.
But sometimes, overwhelmed by the condition of alienation from God that all humans are born with, we get stuck.
My friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, recently presented a wonderful piece by Crosswalk.com contributing writer Whitney Hopler on how believers in Christ can hear God's voice and find direction for their lives. Hopler's article distills a book called Speak Lord, I'm Listening: How to Hear God's Voice Above the Noise by Larry Kreider.
The first method for hearing God's voice commended by Kreider and Hopler is one with which Lutheran Christians like me are sure to resonate, given our emphasis on the central role of God's Word in the lives of Christians:
The Bible: God may cause a portion of Scripture to jump off the page for you while you’re reading it. He may make you aware of how it applies to your life right then and use it to lead you in a particular way. The Bible is your final authority – the standard by which you should check everything else you think God may be saying to you. Remember that nothing God says in any other way will ever contradict what He says in the Bible. Get to know the Bible well by reading and studying it often. Be sure to keep the context and original intent of Scripture passages in mind. [italics added by me]The Bible, which we Lutherans confess to be the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice, should be the filter through which we view all things, including our lives, motives, and places in the world.
I like the rest of the list of ways to hear God's voice as enumerated by Hopler, too.
For some, the idea that God can speak to us will be foreign. We're like the people of eleventh-century BC Israel. Of that time, the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel observes, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" (1 Samuel 3:1). The observation seems to be made with a kind of incredulity. "Can you believe it?" the passage seems to ask. "People were so far away from God that they didn't hear His voice."
I'm convinced that the God Who made the universe and Who became one of us in Jesus Christ is still speaking to us, if we will only listen. I say that as someone who, I admit, crowds God's voice out of my life way too often, doing that through my activities, some of them which, on their face, appear commendable or holy. But whenever we prevent God from speaking to us, we can bet that we're not about anything commendable or holy!
To be clear, in talking about "hearing God's voice," I don't mean an audible-"If you build it, he will come"-in-the-cornfield hearing, although I discount no possibility. God is sovereign. Therefore, God can choose to speak to us in any way God wants to speak to us. God even used an ass to speak once. (Some people say that God does that in the pulpits of many churches every week.)
[Above, Balaam, his ass, and the angel blocking their way. Balaam was so consumed with doing what he wanted to do that he couldn't see the angel God sent to turn him back. The ass could. When the ass refused to go on, God spoke to Balaam through the ass. I'll leave it to you to apply this to your own life. Click on the image to see all of it.]
Go to Hopler's article. If you're feeling stuck, maybe her words of wisdom will help you hear God's voice and get you unstuck.
He may still haven't found what he's looking for...
But soon, you'll be able to find Bono on the pages of the New York Times. Reportedly, he will write from six to ten columns for the paper every year. That's good. Bono is a smart guy with important things to say.
Buckeyes Face Huge Test!
My beloved Ohio State Buckeyes play host to Penn State's Nittany Lions tomorrow night and I don't mind telling you, I'm nervous. While the Buckeyes are a great team which has made steady progress with freshman QB (and PA native) Terrelle Prior at the helm for the five games since a crushing loss at USC, Penn State is a formidable team.
The bottom line: If the Buckeyes win tomorrow night, they'll deserve the Big Ten title that will almost surely come their way for the third consecutive year, assuming they win out the rest of the season.
By the way, the Buckeyes who get so little love nationally after going to two consecutive national title games (and losing) have received little affirmation in the polls for their steady improvement in the past five weeks. Depending on who you believe, they're ranked ninth or tenth in the country. But the more objective computer rankings put them at fifth nationally. Penn State is ranked third, both by the computers and in the polls. If the Buckeyes pull off the upset, will the coaches and sportswriters who vote in the polls start to show Ohio State some respect? We'll see.
For more information on the game, go here and here.
The bottom line: If the Buckeyes win tomorrow night, they'll deserve the Big Ten title that will almost surely come their way for the third consecutive year, assuming they win out the rest of the season.
By the way, the Buckeyes who get so little love nationally after going to two consecutive national title games (and losing) have received little affirmation in the polls for their steady improvement in the past five weeks. Depending on who you believe, they're ranked ninth or tenth in the country. But the more objective computer rankings put them at fifth nationally. Penn State is ranked third, both by the computers and in the polls. If the Buckeyes pull off the upset, will the coaches and sportswriters who vote in the polls start to show Ohio State some respect? We'll see.
For more information on the game, go here and here.
Go, Buckeyes!
Forbes Names Columbus a Great 'Bang for Your Buck' City
I've often said that my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, is a Sunbelt City nestled in the most beautiful part of the country, the Midwest. Columbus' diverse economy insulate it from many of the gyrations experienced elsewhere and the cost of living there is surprisingly low for a place with so much culture and conveniences and so many interesting places to live and shop.
These facts were recently underscored by Forbes magazine's selection of Columbus as one of the US cities providing the biggest bang for a buck. Columbus placed sixth in the top ten.
All five of the towns ahead of the state's capital and largest city are in the Sunbelt. But none of them enjoy changing seasons or Ohio State football!
Check out the Forbes article here. (Thanks to this site for drawing my attention to Forbes' ranking of Columbus.)
These facts were recently underscored by Forbes magazine's selection of Columbus as one of the US cities providing the biggest bang for a buck. Columbus placed sixth in the top ten.
All five of the towns ahead of the state's capital and largest city are in the Sunbelt. But none of them enjoy changing seasons or Ohio State football!
Check out the Forbes article here. (Thanks to this site for drawing my attention to Forbes' ranking of Columbus.)
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