"Are we willing to keep coming back to God for help in getting the spiritual character enhancement we need?"

This should be a question that every Christian faces every single day, hard as it is. It appears in today's installment of Our Daily Bread.

Martin Luther said that the life style of a Christian grateful for the free gift of salvation in Christ, is "daily repentance and renewal." Pursuing this life style--a life of pursuing Jesus, really--requires a courage and an honesty that only God can provide to us. But each day, we need to be willing to pray with the psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).

But be warned that if you pray that prayer and mean it, and aren't just mouthing pious words you've been taught, God will show you your sins. God will show you your character deficiencies. God will show you the ways in which you need to align your heart, your will, and your actions with God. The simple fact of the matter is that if God and you disagree about whether you've sinned or even about what constitutes a sin, God is not the One Who needs to have a change of mind. God has made clear what is right and what is wrong, putting it all in black and white on the pages of Scripture, no matter how many fancy theological end runs we might try to pull to elude the truth.

But God will never show us our sins and deficiencies--as I experience God doing with me every day--out of malice or spite. God doesn't want you to feel like a worm.

When we ask God to tell us about the wicked ways that are in us, we really ask God to let us see our actual selves, stripped of the masks that we put on to fool other people, to fool God, and to fool even ourselves. It's only when God helps us get real with Him in this way that we understand how desperately we need Jesus Christ.

Vulnerability before God and confession of the sins of which God makes us aware when we are honest before God, will allow us not just to ask God for forgiveness, but also open the way for God to give us the power to combat our faults, to live in different ways, to be reconciled with those we may be hurting, to walk away from the sins that we, in our own power and under our own self-driven reasoning, find irresistible.

"Are we willing to keep coming back to God for help in getting the spiritual character enhancement we need?" If we can answer, "Yes," to that question, even if the size of our affirmation is that of a small mustard seed and no matter how incapable we are of resisting the sins to which we are oriented, we will be well on the road to wholeness, to life with God, to becoming the people God originally intended for us to be.

Jesus Christ, the only one given under heaven through which we can be saved from sin and death and ourselves, makes this possible for all who are willing to turn from the world's futile ways and trust in Him alone.

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Here's the New Testament verses on which today's Our Daily Bread devotional is based:

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24)^{18192021222324}

"Salt"

Great takes on the crisis in the ELCA and the hope afforded for faithful witness to the Gospel that exists in Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the new North American Lutheran Church (NALC) here.

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

Great words from my one-time seminary adviser, Hans Schwarz, Professor Emeritus of Protestant Theology and Contemporary Theological Issues at University of Regensburg in Germany:

Christ-like conduct requires us to have compassion for both faithful and sinners, but it requires us to discern between faithful living and sin, to espouse the former and to reject the latter. While we welcome everybody into our midst, especially those for whom Jesus cared, namely the poor, the despised, and the outcast of society, we dare not bless or condone that which the Bible in all its witness to God's saving action disapproves.

[From By What Authority?: Confronting Churches Who No Longer Believe Their Own Message]

Beyond the Emptiness

[This was shared during a memorial worship service for the family and friends of a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran in Logan, Ohio. The service occurred in the Saint Matthew sanctuary.]

Romans 8:31-39
John 14:1-6
Several weeks have passed now since Elly’s death. While I know that George, Elly’s extended family, and all her many friends saw Elly’s passing as a release from her suffering, the grief—the sense of an empty place at your table, of an empty place in the studio where bowls were spun, glazed, and fired for Empty Bowls, and of an empty spot at the meetings where hospital auctions were planned—that sense of emptiness is great for all of you today. I too will miss my monthly visits with Elly, where I shared Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion and God’s Word with her and where, as we got to know one another better and better and we laughed over these past thirty-four months.

When the emptiness of grief comes to us, there are several ways we can react. One way is to take death, futility, and grief as the final words over our lives.

But there is another way. It’s the way commended by Jesus in the lesson from the Gospel of John in the New Testament that we just read. Jesus has been comforting His disciples in anticipation of His cross. All the disciples know with certainty is that in Jerusalem, with the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman government fearful of Jesus, bad things might happen. What good, they might wonder, will Jesus' death bring?

Jesus tells them—and us—not to be troubled. “I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

For the follower of Jesus, that person who repents for sin and bets their whole lives on Jesus Christ, which is what faith is—betting our all on Jesus, futility and emptiness, grief and death do not have control of us. The follower of Jesus lives each day in the certainty that the Savior Who died to erase sin’s power over us and rose from death to give us new life, has prepared places for us in the house of God the Father. We know that, as the other lesson we read, from the New Testament book of Romans, reminds us, “nothing…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Not death.

Not grief.

Not emptiness.

None of this is to say that trusting in what God has done for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus will make our grief go away. Knowing how the stories of all believers in Jesus end—that places are prepared for them with God--doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve the loss of those we love and care about. Jesus knew that His friend, Lazarus, believed in Him. Jesus knew that as a believer in Him, Lazarus would spend eternity with God. But when Jesus considered Lazarus’ death and how Lazarus was no longer there among his family and friends in the village of Bethany, Jesus still wept.

Grief is real and don’t let anyone ever tell you that Christians shouldn’t grieve.

But for the believer in Jesus, there is more than grief and loss. It’s to underscore this truth that, in the latter part of our lesson from John’s gospel, Jesus says to the disciples, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas though, speaking for people like me—thick of head and slow in the pick-up--asks Jesus honestly, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Thomas is so overwhelmed by grief, loss, and fear, that he can’t see what he has already seen and experienced.

Thomas already knew that Jesus was God in the flesh. He already knew from the many signs Jesus had performed, that Jesus had power over death and life. But Thomas was afraid that, without Jesus right there physically present to him, he would lose his way, that all the sorrows and sins of life would overwhelm Him.

It’s then that Jesus tells Thomas words that I hope all of you can claim for yourselves this morning. When you’ve lost your way. When all of life seems vain and pointless. When grief grips you and sadness threatens to morph into despair, recall Jesus’ words: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus, the crucified Lord, reclaimed life…not just for Himself, but for all who believe in Him.

Jesus is the only way to the Father and those who follow Him, even when they grieve, are never without hope!

In a way, the empty bowls that Elly made and helped others to make each year stand as a fitting symbol for us today. For the person who is hungry, there is nothing more daunting or frightening than an empty bowl they can’t fill on their own. But Hocking County’s Empty Bowls events take that symbol of defeat, emptiness, and death and turns it on its head.

The empty bowls that Elly and so many of you here this morning have made, sold, and bought through the years have helped to fill the bowls and the bellies of many people, giving them the power to go another day and the hope to keep waking up the next day. Those empty bowls thus became a symbol of hope, love, and community for the hungry.

Today, you and I gather in the bright, illuminating shadow of another symbol turned on its head. In the ancient Roman Empire, crosses were reserved for the worst enemies of the state. Execution on the cross was a horrible way to die and there was no possible reprieve from death for the criminals nailed to them. But Jesus’ mission of love and mercy could not be stopped even by death on a cross. After the seeming defeat of the cross, Jesus, as I've said many times before, would not stay dead. His resurrection turned an instrument of death and a sign of hopelessness, the cross, into a symbol of God’s deathless love.

This morning, we grieve. But we also have hope. The Savior sought by Elly every time she reached out her hands to take the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, has prepared a place for you.

All who believe in Jesus will be united with God and with all who have trusted in Christ in eternity. Our tears will be wiped away. Our griefs erased. And our emptiness filled with an eternity of joy and laughter. Even today, we have so much to look forward to.

God bless you!

'THE Person of the Bible'

Jesus is the One to Whom the Bible--Old and New Testaments--points.

Reading the Bible leads us, ultimately, to Jesus. I'm finding that to be true for me again these days as I read the Old Testament book of Leviticus for my personal devotions at night.

Leviticus, which established the system of sacrifice which was, as pointed out by the Jewish-Christian preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews, a "shadow" of Jesus, "the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world."

Allow yourself to be enlightened by the blazing, brilliant light of the Bible and soon you will fall in love with the Light of the world, the One Who fulfilled and embodied God's long-ago call to Israel to be the light to the nations: Jesus, God-enfleshed, the Messiah, the Lord of heaven and earth!

Check out today's Our Daily Bread devotion, The Person of the Bible, based on John 5:31-40. [Note: Jesus is the speaker in that passage of Scripture.]

Why I Care So Much About Sharing Christ with Others

Ephesians 2:8 reminds us that we are saved from sin and death by God's grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. That's why I am so passionate about sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with others. I want all people to experience the forgiveness, joy, and everlasting hope that comes to those who end their inborn rebellion to God and surrender to the Savior.

Sharing Christ with others is the only activity to which we can commit themselves that will make any real difference, whether in our own lives or in the lives of others. It also happens to be the mission every Christian is charged with fulfilling.

Please click on the links above and please also read the following passages of Scripture:

 "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)

[Jesus told Nicodemus:] “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. ¹⁷Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3:16-18)

 [Peter and John said:] "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). 

Check out today's devotion from Our Daily Bread.

Words That Have Gained Importance for Me

In the past forty-eight hours, these words have only gained in their importance for me. (They're some of what the apostle Paul wrote back in the first century to a young pastor named Timothy.)

"Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. ³For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, ⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. ⁵As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully" (2 Timothy 4:2-5)

Welcome to God's Upside Down Kingdom

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

Luke 14:1, 7-14
It would be easy to think that the two stories Jesus tells in today’s Gospel lesson are just about good manners, fables complete with  morals. But if we thought that, we would be missing important lessons Jesus wants to teach us.

Once more today, please pull out the Celebrate inserts and go to the Gospel lesson from Luke 14. Look at verse seven with me: “When [Jesus] noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.”

A parable, of course, is a story. But a parable is a special sort of story. In the Greek in which the New Testament was written, the word that we transliterate into English as parable is parabole. It’s a compound word that literally means to throw or roll alongside. A parable is a story woven from people's everyday experiences, with another story of deep significance rolled alongside of it. Jesus’ parables were always meant to tell us something about the kingdom of God that Jesus brought into the world.

Jesus told the two parables in today’s Gospel lesson during a banquet at the home of a Pharisee. Pharisees, you’ll remember, were Jews who, like Jesus, believed in the physical resurrection of the dead. But they also believed that if they adhered to certain rules, most of which were made up by human beings and did not come from God, then their behavior would force God to give them places in the heavenly banquet hall.

In the end, of course, the Pharisees did not believe that rightness with God—what the Bible calls righteousness—is a gift from God conferred on those who repent for sin and trust in God. Instead, they believed that, by their actions, they would earn a place in heaven that not God, the devil, or the world could deny to them. Despite their seeming faithfulness, the Pharisees really tried to whittle God down to human size, to turn God into a tiny deity they could force to make concessions to them simply because they were such good people.

Today, people don’t worry so much about God’s favor. We often seem to have whittled God right out of our lives. Or we’ve twisted the Bible’s teaching that God is love and turned the mighty God of the universe into an indulgent sugar daddy. Many people, even those identifying themselves as Christians, seem to think that all roads lead to heaven. Polling, in fact, repeatedly shows that Christians in the United States accept Jesus’ teaching that there is a heaven. But much smaller numbers of Christians accept the word of Jesus that there is a hell.

Let’s face it: The Bible is filled with inconvenient truths we would rather not hear about. We’re like the rebel people of God the prophet Isaiah addressed some seven hundred years before Jesus. “Do not prophesy what is right,” Isaiah heard them saying, “speak to us smooth things…” 

By contrast, for all their many faults, most of the Pharisees would never have knowingly taught things contrary to the will of God. In fact, they unknowingly and thoughtlessly drifted into their false beliefs.

And Christ’s Church always struggles to resist such unintentional drifting from God. That’s why the Reformation begun by Martin Luther and others back in the sixteenth century must be a continuing part of our lives today. We need to constantly return to God, to God’s Word, to God’s will.

But many Christians seem to have settled into a new kind of Pharisaism in which we are expected to passively go along with what I call Christianity Lite, the religion of anything goes so long as it conforms to the shifting standards of society regarding what is politically correct.

Someone has said that if Jesus were to come to a typical Lutheran congregation in North America and teach, as He did to the Pharisees in first-century Judea, “Stop trying to earn righteousness and salvation,” the response would be, “Who’s trying?”

That’s how far we Lutherans have wandered from Martin Luther’s belief that whenever God’s Word is proclaimed—whether from a pulpit or in all Christians’ everyday interactions with others, we must include the Law (the revelation of God’s will for human beings) and the Gospel (the Good News that in Christ, we who don’t measure up to God’s will for us, can be forgiven and made new and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to turn from our sins and sinful impulses and receive eternal life from God).

We’ve wandered, too, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Nazis at the end of World War II, who, in The Cost of Discipleship, warned Lutherans and all Christians against what he called “cheap grace,” which he described as “the grace we bestow on ourselves…the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession.”

Still and all, in this time with so little consciousness of God or concern about the will of God, people are, as in first-century Judea, still in a frenzy to push themselves to the top, to be noticed, to win, to die with the most toys in their possession. These impulses are bred in our sinful bones. And Jesus’ two parables are aimed as much at us as they were His original hearers, the Pharisee host and all his guests.

The first one was told specifically to the guests who were jockeying for places of honor at the banquet. Read along with me, starting at verse 8. “’When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you,”Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

From the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel, we’re told that Jesus came into our world to flip humanity’s standard operating procedures on their head. A few weeks ago, we looked at the words of Jesus’ earthly mother, Mary, who said of God: “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; He has brought down the powerful from their thrones; and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things; and he has sent the rich away empty.” 

Mary knew the truth that Jesus affirms in today’s first parable, that those who humble themselves before God, even if despised by the world, are exalted in God’s kingdom. Jesus calls us to live in confidence not in ourselves or our achievements or our shrewd exploitation of people and circumstances, but in the God Who loves us just as we are and Who is committed to helping those humble enough to confess their sins and their need of Him to enter the process of becoming more Christ-like in this life.

As believers in Jesus, we can live each day knowing that, whatever the world may think or say, we are God’s children forever. When you have Jesus living within you, you most certainly will try to be and do your best every day. But you also will know that the God Who sent His Son to die and rise for you will honor your repentance and shower you with a sense of your infinite value in the eyes of heaven, whatever your job, irrespective of how many degrees you have acquired, however large your income, no matter how good your health, however popular you may be, or even if you get the best spot at the banquet or the football game.

In Christ, I hope and pray that you know that no matter what you’ve done, or how guilty you may be, or how inadequate you may feel, you could not possibly be more loved by God than you are at this very moment.

And if we are willing to let God tear down all the walls that can block out His grace and love, if we are willing to repent for our sins and receive forgiveness, we become God’s personal reclamation projects. Not only can God erase the power of sin and death over you, He can, for those who surrender each day, decrease your taste for the sins that may keep you from knowing peace with God and peace with yourself.

The Lord wants you to take a place of honor at His table even if you think that you’re too lowly or too unworthy to take it. God loves you and all people are welcome to, in the words of Scripture, “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

Jesus tells a second parable to His host. You can read it, starting at verse 12. “He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Jesus isn’t making deals here. He’s saying that we who have been welcomed by God our host into the kingdom of God are called to also welcome others. All others. Jesus puts it this way in the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” 

Filled with God’s Spirit, you and I are to be the instruments God uses to invite others to hear God’s Word, Law and Gospel, to hear God’s call and command to repentance, to hear God’s call and command to believe in Jesus and know life everlasting.

We have no control over whether those we invite or welcome will let go of their sins to grasp hold of the grace offered in Jesus. But we must never stop telling them, by our words and our lives, either the inconvenient truth about human sin and our need of God or the incredible, life-changing, good news of the God Who, in Christ, can turn our lives upside down and in doing so, turn our souls right-side up, facing God for life, following Christ for hope, being filled with the Holy Spirit to give us a joy that will never end. Amen!

"Listen to God before you speak for God."

Reading this piece from Our Daily Bread, as well as the Biblical passage on which it's based, John 8:1-11, will be time well spent. And it won't take long.

Trusting in Christ Alone is Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

Here. Really good!

Check out Matthew 15:7-20:
[Jesus said:]

⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ⁸‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; ⁹in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”

¹⁰Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: ¹¹it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” ¹²Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” ¹³He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. ¹⁴Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” ¹⁵But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” ¹⁶Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? ¹⁸But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. ¹⁹For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Older or Better?

"Rather than becoming more crotchety, intolerant, and unloving, the maturing follower of Jesus grows better at forgiving, loving, and caring." Please read the whole thing.

Interesting

Learning Contentment

Here.

Want Personal Renewal? Rejoice!

"Happiness depends on what is happening around you. Happiness is dependent on the present circumstances of your life.  Joy is an inward, constant and sure confidence that God is in control and God is good." Read the whole thing.

The God Who Loves to Set Captives Free!

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

Luke 13:10-17

The God we know in Jesus Christ loves to set captives free. God loves to free people from the prisons that the devil, the world, and our sinful selves can impose upon us.

In His hometown synagogue back when He began His public ministry, Jesus read words from the Old Testament prophet’s book of Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me… to proclaim liberty to the captives…” Then, the Bible tells us, Jesus said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

On this Sabbath day today, Jesus wants you to know that whatever sins or temptations bedevil you, whatever regrets you carry on your shoulders, whatever doubts you may harbor about God’s goodness or God’s Word, whatever feuds may mar your personal relationships, whatever failures you may rue, you can be set free.

Don’t let Satan rob you of the joy, and the peace, and the hope that Jesus Christ wants to give to you, even in the midst of life’s difficulties, pains, and challenges. Let Jesus set you free! You simply need to come to Him when He calls, as we’ll see in today’s Gospel lesson.

It tells us about something that happened in another synagogue in an unnamed town during Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross, where He underscores His desire to set captives free, as well as His authority to do just that.

I’d like to ask you to once more this morning pull out the Celebrate insert and turn to today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 13:10-17 and this time, if you have a pencil or pen handy, pull that out as well. (Don’t worry; you’re not going to have to write any essays!)

Read the first verse along with me silently. “Now he [that is, Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.” Elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, we’re told that it was Jesus’ custom to always go to worship on the Sabbath day. The Bible also tells us that all of Jesus’ early followers and the apostle Paul were in the habit of honoring the Sabbath by worshiping God every week.

This habit may seem contradictory to us. We know that the Ten Commandments commanded God’s people, the Jews, to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” But, good Lutherans that we are, we also know that (a) we human beings, having been born in sin, are incapable of keeping God’s commands perfectly and (b) keeping the law cannot save us from sin, death, and pointless lives anyway. Only Christ’s cross and empty tomb and our repentant faith in Christ can accomplish that.

So, why did Jesus and the first Christians make such a big deal of keeping the Sabbath? Because the Sabbath is a gift from God, an oasis on our weekly calendars where we can be met by the living God in His Word and in the strengthening fellowship of those who, just like us, are people of God’s Word. It can play this role as much in our lives today as it did in the lives of the ancient Jews. The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us:

...a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God's rest also cease from their labors as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through...disobedience...[as was true of God's people in their wilderness journey between Egypt and the promised land]

(It's interesting to me that the text says "make every effort to enter that rest." Sometimes, it requires a lot of hard work and effort to set aside time to rest, especially in these busy days.)

Further on in Hebrews, we're reminded of the part that Sabbath rest plays in the lives of believers, beyond just giving them time to recharge their batteries:

...let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day [of Christ's return to the world] approaching.

On the Sabbath, God cleans the clutter from our lives so that we can hear the clear, unambiguous message of the Bible together. This is what Martin Luther talked about in his explanation of the Third Commandment, to remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy:

We are to fear and love God so that we do not neglect His Word and the preaching of it, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it.

Remember that Jesus came not to abolish God's law--including the commandment to keep the Sabbath, but to fulfill it. Though we will never keep the Sabbath with the same perfection and holy intentions that Jesus did, weekly worship was part of Jesus’ way of life and because the Sabbath is God’s gift to us, He wants it to be part of our lives, too.

The Gospel lesson continues: “And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.”

You might want to circle the word “eighteen,” then draw an arrow over to the margin and jot this down there: Luke 13:4. In Luke 13:4, Jesus mentions “eighteen who were killed.” You might want to look that verse up in your Bible when you go home today. You see, there are no accidents in Scripture and so, when you see “eighteen” appearing in two passages just a few lines apart, you know that they share an important theme.

Luke 13:4 is part of the section of Luke’s gospel that comes right before our lesson for today. In it, Jesus encounters a group of people who are jabbering about the latest news headlines in the very same way you and I do that sort of thing today. Among the headlines that group was discussing was the then-recent tragic death of eighteen people killed when a tower crashed at a place called Siloam.

Jesus picks up on the tenor of the crowds' comments and asks them if any of them think that those who died were worse offenders of God’s will than they were.

This is a pointed question that relates to what happens in today’s Gospel lesson. People can be quick to attribute the hardships of others to their sins. You’ve heard people say things like that. But Jesus dismisses such notions. We do bring some bad things onto ourselves, of course. We also all can probably name times when we have eluded bad consequences for our bad choices. But usually, when we have bad things happen in our lives, it isn’t because we’ve violated God’s will; it’s because we live in a fallen and imperfect world where bad things happen. It’s the risk that all the living endure. That's because this is isn’t heaven.

Now, back in our Gospel lesson, notice that “a spirit” crippled the woman. “Medically,” one prominent New Testament scholar writes, “the illness has been diagnosed as spondylitis ankylopoietica (a fusion of spinal bones) or as skoliasis hysterica…, a hysterical rather than an organic paralysis.” Whatever the diagnosis, Jesus will soon make clear that this woman who came for Sabbath worship in spite of the bitterness toward God she could have felt because of her crippling condition, is being afflicted through no fault of her own. Her condition is caused by Satan, the prince of all the spirits--demons--in rebellion against God.

Keep that in mind as you read along silently with the next part of our Gospel lesson. “When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.“

If you will, please underline the words “set free.” Behind those two words in our translation is a single verb in the original Greek of the New Testament: luo. It can mean not only set free, but also unloosed, untied, or unshackled. As a sign of His power to set all people free from the more lasting scourges of sin, death, and futility, Jesus set this woman free from her crippling condition.

Read on with me, please. “But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’”

The synagogue leader seems more concerned that his tidy little worship service has been disrupted, than He is amazed that God’s mercy and love has come to the place or that a woman once doubled over in agony was standing straight and praising God!

One of the biggest problems in the contemporary Church is caused by theologians,  bishops, pastors, and laypeople who think that no matter what God’s Word tells us about God’s will, grace, and power, they know better. Instead of “standing under” the Bible, which is what the word “understand” means, they presume to stand over the Scripture, claiming to understand things that God, Who inspired the words of the Bible, didn’t know. The synagogue leader had this same kind of presumptuousness. Fortunately, Jesus corrected this misled leader right away.

Take a look at what happens next: “But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?’”

The use of the term, “the Lord” is no accident. The word in the original Greek of the New Testament is kurios. It’s the usual Greek rendering of the Name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush: Yahweh, I AM. In Jesus, Yahweh, God, was speaking to this presumptuous synagogue leader, setting him straight, along with any in the synagogue who might agree with him.

Underline the word "untie" in verse 15. In the Greek, it's luo again. “How dare you, you hypocrites!” Jesus is saying. “You would do a little work by setting an ox or donkey free to get water on a Sabbath day, treating animals better than human beings! But, you want to keep me from freeing this woman, who has been bound by Satan all these years!"

A denominational leader once told the true story of a brilliant pastor who, by use of a formula he had created, was able to project at what times of year his suburban congregation would grow numerically.* This went on for years. The young pastor later confessed that he felt no real need to pray. He had church growth all figured out. One Sunday, two elderly members of the congregation asked if he would mind if they used the church basement one afternoon a week to pray for the congregation. The pastor couldn’t see the harm, told them it would be OK, and thought no more about it.

Some months later, the congregation had a phenomenal growth spurt--including incredible spiritual growth--that the pastor’s calculations couldn’t explain. It actually bothered him! A thought crossed his mind. “No, it couldn’t be!” he told himself. But he decided to check the church basement on the day of the week that those two women had set aside for regular prayer for the congregation. To his absolute shock, he saw that there were now sixty people praying with those two women. (I would love for something like that to happen at Saint Matthew, by the way!)

It’s hypocrisy for us to say that we believe in the God of the Bible and then expect Him to stay within the orderly parameters we try to impose on Him. As our second lesson for today reminds us, our God is a consuming fire. God's power is beyond our control, no matter how wise, upstanding, or clever we may think we are!

Just as an aside, there’s a phrase I’d like you to put in brackets in verse 16. It’s “daughter of Abraham.” This is the only place in all of Scripture where that phrase is used, though there are many places that speak of the “son of Abraham.” Jesus and the early Christians may have been surrounded by a male-dominated culture. But they were no part of it. Men and women, both created in the image of God, are equal in the sight of God. No wonder that Paul writes in Galatians that in Christ, “there is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male and female…If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

Our lesson ends with Jesus’ opponents put to shame and the crowd rejoicing at the wonderful things Jesus was doing.

Whatever it is that may be afflicting you or people you care about today, turn to Christ, expect Him to do the unexpected, expect Him to set you free to live for Him, in this life, whatever it may bring, and in the life to come.

This morning, may God set you free in all the ways you need God’s freeing action…and may you praise God for it. Amen!

*I heard Paul Cedar, then president of the Evangelical Free Church, tell this story at a Billy Graham School of Evangelism at Wheaton College back in 1993.

'House of Cards'

My wife and I just finished watching the fourth installment of the 1990 BBC miniseries, House of Cards, with Ian Richardson as the manipulative Francis Urquhart. Richardson managed to be both hilarious and chilling as he played the Conservative Party whip--"I put the stick about. Make 'em jump"--who murders, lies, conducts whisper campaigns, blackmails, and seduces his way toward becoming prime minister.

Even as amoral as Urquhart seems to be, throughout the series he often is nonetheless at pains to rationalize his sins and crimes to his silent co-conspirators, we viewers, to whom he confides everything. You almost sense that Urquhart is dealing with a Biblical truth, that God's law is actually written on our hearts, no matter how hard we may try to erase it or ignore it.

Two sequel series, each based on the novels of Michael Dobbs, were made, which I also remember enjoying back when they first aired.

House of Cards is as interesting and as deft a portrayal of the darkest precincts of human ambition as you're apt to find anywhere.

We watched it on Netflix streaming through our Wii console. I recommend both Netflix via Wii and House of Cards.

There are some very brief spots in House of Cards that were unnecessary, I thought: crude language, sexual depictions. This isn't family fare. But overall, it's not only entertaining; it's also insightful.

Beware of your inner Francis Urquhart!

How do we grow up in Christian faith?

"How do we grow beyond being just spiritual babes?" is a question asked in this wonderful piece from Our Daily Bread.

The answer given by Bill Crowder, the piece's author, is to regularly meditate on God's Word and to devote ourselves to prayer.

I would add one more element to that answer, something which is indispensable to the growth of our relationship with Christ and which is pure gift. It's regularly receiving the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion.

In Holy Communion, Christ both bodily and spiritually imparts Himself to us and in God's mysterious way, works within us, making us over into His image.

One must be careful, though. None of these three things--meditating on God's Word, prayer, or Holy Communion--are works that we human beings undertake.

A good way to picture them might be as roaring fires blazing on cold nights that we, racked by exposure to wind, snow, and ice, happen upon. We can walk away from the fires. Or, we can move toward them and allow them to warm us. We warm ourselves--literally come alive and grow in life--when we move to God's Word, prayer in Jesus' Name, and taking the body and blood of Christ when offered to us.

But we don't start those fires and we are incapable of stoking them. Growth in faith is not the equivalent of a weekend spent in retreat with a motivational guru, irrespective of the impression one might get from some preachers these days. You could do motivational self-talk until you were blue in the face, telling yourself, "I will be a better Christian," and you won't have faith, let alone a growing faith.

Christian growth is dependent on the same thing that faith in Christ is dependent on in the first place: The action of God in Christ and our surrender to Christ. Nothing less. 

Last week, in an ecumenical service at a local senior activities center here in Logan, I spoke of the importance of growing up in Christ. I haven't yet posted it, but hope to do so soon.

This is a really important topic. Most contemporary Christians are as some first-century Christians in addressed by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:1-17.

Growing up in faith is one of the greatest challenges for Christians and the Church today. The Church is bedeviled by an alarming degree of spiritual immaturity--causing many churchgoers to accept teaching and practice that run directly contrary to Scripture. And that, in turn, means that the Church ceases to play the role that it, and it alone, was called, commissioned, and commanded by Jesus Christ to play. If we don't play that role, millions of people risk losing out on the eternal salvation that comes through faith in Christ alone. But, if the love of Christ even flickers within us, that is just too horrible a prospect to consider!

Martin Luther and the 16th-century reformers led a movement that insisted that every Christian, lay and clergy, is part of the priesthood of all believers, each of us in direct relationship with Christ, each of us participants in Christ's Church, each of us commissioned to make disciples, and each of us given the privilege and the responsibility of being God's spokespeople in the world and humanity's advocates before God.

When we meditate on God's Word, when we devote ourselves to prayer in Jesus' Name (including the confession of sin, praying for others, and asking that God's kingdom will come to us and all the world), and when we regularly receive the body and blood of Jesus, we dance by the life-giving fire of the Holy Spirit, we let God call the tune and animate our every moment, the Holy Spirit brings growth and maturity to us, and God empowers us to play the role Christ has given to us.

By these means, God puts our wills in sync with God's will. By these means, we bear witness to the new life that can come to all through Christ. By these means, we grow as Christians, come what may. Come what may.

Vacations?

Taking a vacation from God is like taking a vacation from oxygen or food. Check this out.

'Pray the Devil Back to Hell'

That's the title of a wonderful documentary about how, in the late-90s and early-2000s, Christian and Muslim women prayed and non-violently lobbied for peace in their land of Liberia. Liberia, as you may remember, was in those years, racked by a civil war, mass killings, and a tyrannical government under Charles Taylor. In that terrible period, the congregation I served as pastor prayed for peace in Liberia. Those prayers, I'm so thankful, were answered.

Watch this movie and be inspired!

By the way, we got a copy from NetFlix to watch at home.

Only the pursuit of Jesus...

...will bring you blessings that last.