The Cincinnati Reds fan who started the Woo thing at Great American Ball Park (GABP) seems like a great guy and is certainly loyal.
But Cincinnati Enquirer sports columnist Paul Daugherty has a good--if overstated--point about how annoying all the woo-ing has become. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon talked about it on Pardon the Interruption on ESPN.
Daugherty even thinks that GABP ushers should be instructed to give woo-ers a warning, then eject those who continue to annoy other fans with their impressions of Ric Flair. (Or is it Little Richard?)
Meanwhile, woo-ing fans or no, the Reds enter tonight's game against the San Francisco Giants one game out of first in the National League Central Division.
This is a rebuilding year for the Reds. But the way this young team is playing, featuring a surprisingly potent offense and terrific pitching out of the bullpen, the future is looking bright in Cincinnati. Woo!
PS: It can get annoying when overdone, but the woo-ing still isn't as nerve-grating as the vuvuzela.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Following THE Leader to Life (AUDIO)
Here.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
Monday, May 08, 2017
Following THE Leader to Life!
John 10:1-10
An old saying tells us that to find out if someone is a leader, just look to see if anyone’s following them. A real leader is one who has earned people’s trust. A real leader is someone who others voluntarily choose to follow because of their willingness to endure everything endured by those they lead.
Leadership of this kind doesn’t conform to the popular picture of a leader. You know, someone at a desk, far removed from most people:
But leadership, from a biblical perspective, is intensely personal and relational.
It’s stunning when we see this kind of leadership in our everyday lives.
An acquaintance of ours, son of the congregation I formerly served as pastor, is General Curtis (Mike) Scaparrotti. Scap is now the commander of NATO. By training and experience, he’s a paratrooper, who has served in Vietnam and Iraq, among other places. During one tour in Afghanistan, although a general, he still jumped from aircraft, joining the men and women of his command in missions, subjecting himself to the same risks that he commanded them to take.
This exemplifies how the Bible understands leadership. In the Bible, a true leader will never ask those she or he leads to do anything the leader isn’t willing to do as well. In the Bible, a true leader is, above all, is a servant.
Leadership of this kind is built on and deepens relationships between people and leader.
Once, in Old Testament times, David was leading his “mighty men” in battle against the Philistines. David was in a stronghold while the Philistines controlled his hometown of Bethlehem. 2 Samuel 23:15 says: “David longed for water and said, ‘Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!’" David was in the midst of a war that found him daily giving his all. He was feeling wistful, nostalgic for the springwater of his hometown. His words were only a wish, the kind of thing you say in passing.
But with David were men with whom he worked and alongside whom he fought each day. They loved David. “So the three mighty warriors broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David.”
Three men risked their lives to get water for David. David was moved. And his response shows why his men loved him so. “But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD. ‘Far be it from me, LORD, to do this!’ he said. ‘Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?’ And David would not drink it.” (2 Samuel 23:16-17)
The true leader never thinks that she or he is entitled to the allegiance of those being led, will not enjoy privileges that can’t be enjoyed by all, and honors the sacrifice, work, and loyalty offered by those that she or he leads.
David’s mighty men wouldn’t have undertaken their dangerous mission to get water for just anyone. They did it because David had become their leader. If you want to know if someone’s a leader, look to see if anyone is following.
Of course, David had his times of failure as a leader, times when he forgot what it meant to lead. One year, when he should have been leading his armies in battle, he stayed behind. On one particular morning, he caught sight of a woman named Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David's loyal soldiers. Bathsheba she was bathing and David liked what he saw. He brought Bathsheba to his royal home. She became pregnant. Then to cover things up, he had Uriah killed in battle. It was a monumental failure of David's leadership, for which he later repented.
Human leaders, even those who know what leadership is from a Biblical, Christian perspective, even those who seek to lead godly lives, sometimes fail. I know that I have. But, as followers of Jesus Christ, God enfleshed, we have a leader Who will never fail us, Who we can follow with complete confidence!
One of the most characteristic word pictures of a leader in the Bible is shepherd. This is a term applied even to God Himself. Our psalm for today, for example, begins with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1).
And Israel’s ideal king, who would eventually be revealed as Jesus, the Messiah King, was to be a shepherd. Centuries before Jesus’ birth, God said through the prophet Ezekiel: “...I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.” (Ezekiel 34:11-12)
No matter how confusing life in this fallen world can be, the good shepherd never tires of looking for those who will hear His voice and follow.
No matter how far we may wander from God, when we hear Him call and return to Him, we belong to God forever.
Romans 5:8 reminds us of how much God loves us: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
You can tell that Jesus is the good shepherd, a true leader in the Biblical mold, and the King of kings by how His love moves people to follow Him. This is what Jesus says in the opening verses of today’s gospel lesson from John 10: “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” [John 10:1-5]
In the Middle East of today, as in Jesus’ time, sheep of different flocks may sometimes be held in common pens for a time. But when it’s time for one flock to move on for watering or feeding, the sheep in one flock will not follow another shepherd. They know their shepherd’s voice. They trust him. He calls them each by the names he gives to them. He cares for them. When the shepherd calls, his sheep fall in line behind the shepherd. He leads the way, out front, protecting them.
That’s Jesus! When Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him, He isn’t asking us to do anything He hasn’t already done...for us. The Savior Who calls us to submit our sinful selves to daily crucifixion so that we might rise, made eternally new by God’s grace, has already voluntarily taken on Himself the condemnation of our sins by dying on the cross, then rising again to open up the way of life to all who follow Him.
Jesus is our good shepherd. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is: “...the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus is willing to be out front, blazing the trail for us, no matter the pain or the cross, in order to lead us to life with God. And Jesus is the only shepherd, the only leader, who can do this for us!
There are bogus voices in our world that will lead us down the path to death. These voices belong to thieves: humanly-imagined gods and godlets, none of them like the living God we know in Jesus Christ. They tell us that all religions are the same, that all religious systems are roads to the same God.
But Christian faith isn’t a religious system. Christian faith is an intensely personal and eternal relationship that God grants by His grace to all who follow Jesus.
In Jesus’ days, the Jewish sect of Pharisees had boiled faith in the living God of the universe down to a set of rules. They had some 600 rules and basically told folks, "Keep these and you're good to go."
Like the fake religions of our day--from Islam to Mormonism, from Scientology to Hinduism, from Buddhism to Jehovah’s Witnesses--the Pharisees told people that if they behaved in certain ways, good things would happen.
The lying voices of today’s false idols promise people everything from prosperity to satori, from eternal kingdoms on their own planets to the supposed tranquility of nothingness.
They all sell different forms of what we call “works righteousness,” programs for earning your worth or your blessings or your better life.
But the true leader, Jesus, the high priest who can empathize with our weaknesses and has been tempted in every way, but without sin, doesn’t sell a religious program.
Jesus offers Himself, as an act of charitable love from God.
Jesus and His righteousness, not us or our religious works, are what earn us life with God.
Our job is to surrender our sins and our lives and trust in Him as our only God, our only hope.
To all who hear as Jesus calls us to follow, Jesus gives us life. As He says at the end of today’s lesson: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Some may ask, “What does Jesus mean by a full life?”
Well, He doesn’t mean that we’ll be wealthy necessarily. Some Christians are wealthy, most aren’t; but they’re all blessed.
Some Christians are powerful, some are good looking, some are influential, some lead healthy, long lives. But even the powerless, the unhealthy, the also-rans of the world who confess Jesus as Lord have life and have it to the full.
How much fuller a life can one have, after all, than eternal life with God?
It’s a life lived with God not only through the joys and sorrows of this life, but a life lived as it was meant to be lived by people created in the image of God in the first place...then made new by the Savior King Whose voice daily calls us to follow and believe.
We live in the promise Jesus first shared with Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
May we follow our shepherd king, Jesus, always heeding His voice as He calls, and so, live with Him forever. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during Living Water's worship services yesterday morning.]
An old saying tells us that to find out if someone is a leader, just look to see if anyone’s following them. A real leader is one who has earned people’s trust. A real leader is someone who others voluntarily choose to follow because of their willingness to endure everything endured by those they lead.
Leadership of this kind doesn’t conform to the popular picture of a leader. You know, someone at a desk, far removed from most people:
- the CEO who gives orders to a work force he’s never met;
- the college president who makes decisions that affect learning in classroom and lab settings she’ll never see;
- presidents who send soldiers, sailors, and airmen into conflicts they’ll never experience.
But leadership, from a biblical perspective, is intensely personal and relational.
It’s stunning when we see this kind of leadership in our everyday lives.
An acquaintance of ours, son of the congregation I formerly served as pastor, is General Curtis (Mike) Scaparrotti. Scap is now the commander of NATO. By training and experience, he’s a paratrooper, who has served in Vietnam and Iraq, among other places. During one tour in Afghanistan, although a general, he still jumped from aircraft, joining the men and women of his command in missions, subjecting himself to the same risks that he commanded them to take.
This exemplifies how the Bible understands leadership. In the Bible, a true leader will never ask those she or he leads to do anything the leader isn’t willing to do as well. In the Bible, a true leader is, above all, is a servant.
Leadership of this kind is built on and deepens relationships between people and leader.
Once, in Old Testament times, David was leading his “mighty men” in battle against the Philistines. David was in a stronghold while the Philistines controlled his hometown of Bethlehem. 2 Samuel 23:15 says: “David longed for water and said, ‘Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!’" David was in the midst of a war that found him daily giving his all. He was feeling wistful, nostalgic for the springwater of his hometown. His words were only a wish, the kind of thing you say in passing.
But with David were men with whom he worked and alongside whom he fought each day. They loved David. “So the three mighty warriors broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David.”
Three men risked their lives to get water for David. David was moved. And his response shows why his men loved him so. “But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD. ‘Far be it from me, LORD, to do this!’ he said. ‘Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?’ And David would not drink it.” (2 Samuel 23:16-17)
The true leader never thinks that she or he is entitled to the allegiance of those being led, will not enjoy privileges that can’t be enjoyed by all, and honors the sacrifice, work, and loyalty offered by those that she or he leads.
David’s mighty men wouldn’t have undertaken their dangerous mission to get water for just anyone. They did it because David had become their leader. If you want to know if someone’s a leader, look to see if anyone is following.
Of course, David had his times of failure as a leader, times when he forgot what it meant to lead. One year, when he should have been leading his armies in battle, he stayed behind. On one particular morning, he caught sight of a woman named Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David's loyal soldiers. Bathsheba she was bathing and David liked what he saw. He brought Bathsheba to his royal home. She became pregnant. Then to cover things up, he had Uriah killed in battle. It was a monumental failure of David's leadership, for which he later repented.
Human leaders, even those who know what leadership is from a Biblical, Christian perspective, even those who seek to lead godly lives, sometimes fail. I know that I have. But, as followers of Jesus Christ, God enfleshed, we have a leader Who will never fail us, Who we can follow with complete confidence!
One of the most characteristic word pictures of a leader in the Bible is shepherd. This is a term applied even to God Himself. Our psalm for today, for example, begins with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1).
And Israel’s ideal king, who would eventually be revealed as Jesus, the Messiah King, was to be a shepherd. Centuries before Jesus’ birth, God said through the prophet Ezekiel: “...I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.” (Ezekiel 34:11-12)
No matter how confusing life in this fallen world can be, the good shepherd never tires of looking for those who will hear His voice and follow.
No matter how far we may wander from God, when we hear Him call and return to Him, we belong to God forever.
Romans 5:8 reminds us of how much God loves us: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
You can tell that Jesus is the good shepherd, a true leader in the Biblical mold, and the King of kings by how His love moves people to follow Him. This is what Jesus says in the opening verses of today’s gospel lesson from John 10: “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” [John 10:1-5]
In the Middle East of today, as in Jesus’ time, sheep of different flocks may sometimes be held in common pens for a time. But when it’s time for one flock to move on for watering or feeding, the sheep in one flock will not follow another shepherd. They know their shepherd’s voice. They trust him. He calls them each by the names he gives to them. He cares for them. When the shepherd calls, his sheep fall in line behind the shepherd. He leads the way, out front, protecting them.
That’s Jesus! When Jesus calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him, He isn’t asking us to do anything He hasn’t already done...for us. The Savior Who calls us to submit our sinful selves to daily crucifixion so that we might rise, made eternally new by God’s grace, has already voluntarily taken on Himself the condemnation of our sins by dying on the cross, then rising again to open up the way of life to all who follow Him.
Jesus is our good shepherd. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is: “...the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus is willing to be out front, blazing the trail for us, no matter the pain or the cross, in order to lead us to life with God. And Jesus is the only shepherd, the only leader, who can do this for us!
There are bogus voices in our world that will lead us down the path to death. These voices belong to thieves: humanly-imagined gods and godlets, none of them like the living God we know in Jesus Christ. They tell us that all religions are the same, that all religious systems are roads to the same God.
But Christian faith isn’t a religious system. Christian faith is an intensely personal and eternal relationship that God grants by His grace to all who follow Jesus.
In Jesus’ days, the Jewish sect of Pharisees had boiled faith in the living God of the universe down to a set of rules. They had some 600 rules and basically told folks, "Keep these and you're good to go."
Like the fake religions of our day--from Islam to Mormonism, from Scientology to Hinduism, from Buddhism to Jehovah’s Witnesses--the Pharisees told people that if they behaved in certain ways, good things would happen.
The lying voices of today’s false idols promise people everything from prosperity to satori, from eternal kingdoms on their own planets to the supposed tranquility of nothingness.
They all sell different forms of what we call “works righteousness,” programs for earning your worth or your blessings or your better life.
But the true leader, Jesus, the high priest who can empathize with our weaknesses and has been tempted in every way, but without sin, doesn’t sell a religious program.
Jesus offers Himself, as an act of charitable love from God.
Jesus and His righteousness, not us or our religious works, are what earn us life with God.
Our job is to surrender our sins and our lives and trust in Him as our only God, our only hope.
To all who hear as Jesus calls us to follow, Jesus gives us life. As He says at the end of today’s lesson: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Some may ask, “What does Jesus mean by a full life?”
Well, He doesn’t mean that we’ll be wealthy necessarily. Some Christians are wealthy, most aren’t; but they’re all blessed.
Some Christians are powerful, some are good looking, some are influential, some lead healthy, long lives. But even the powerless, the unhealthy, the also-rans of the world who confess Jesus as Lord have life and have it to the full.
How much fuller a life can one have, after all, than eternal life with God?
It’s a life lived with God not only through the joys and sorrows of this life, but a life lived as it was meant to be lived by people created in the image of God in the first place...then made new by the Savior King Whose voice daily calls us to follow and believe.
We live in the promise Jesus first shared with Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
May we follow our shepherd king, Jesus, always heeding His voice as He calls, and so, live with Him forever. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during Living Water's worship services yesterday morning.]
Friday, May 05, 2017
Inviting people to see Jesus (Quiet Time reflections)
Here's my journal entry from my quiet time with God this morning. To see the format I use for these regular encounters with the God we see in Jesus, go here.
Look: “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.” (Matthew 22:46)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Throughout chapter 22 of Matthew’s gospel, opponents of Jesus try to trap Him into saying things that will give them an airtight argument for His excommunication and/or execution. But at each trap, Jesus responds with explanations of what His kingdom is truly like. Caesars (governments) will exist on this earth until Jesus finally and fully establishes His kingdom on His return to the earth on the last day; until then, all citizens, including followers of Jesus, should pay their taxes to Caesar. There is no marriage in heaven; so the woman in the Sadducees’ illustration won’t have to choose among her seven husbands in the resurrection. And King David had, in fact, called the Messiah his Lord.
Jesus’ arguments were airtight and logically unobjectionable. It didn’t matter. Jesus’ opponents still saw to it that He was executed. (Not knowing, of course, that they were playing into the plan of God in doing so. The Messiah had to die and rise, to destroy the power of sin over the human race and to rise in order to open up eternity to all who repent and believe in Christ.)
Listen: Human beings don’t always act rationally. They tend to believe what they want to believe--I tend to believe what I want to believe, to be honest--and we’d rather not be confused by the facts. People can, because of our sinful nature, rationalize our ways to almost any decision or construction of the facts.
The facts, drawn from compelling language; ancient literature, Christian and non-Christian; the consistent witness of more than 500 believers in Christ’s resurrection, even in the face of persecution and death; the transformation wrought in the lives of those first followers of Jesus, not to mention the billions of people who have followed Jesus Christ in the centuries since: and many other facts argue in favor of the Gospel. This Gospel tells us that God created this universe, entered it to save us from sin and death, died, rose, and ascended to heaven, and sent His Holy Spirit to help previously timid, unreliable people to trust in Christ and share Him with others. The factual evidence for the Gospel is overwhelming.
Yet, there are people who choose not to listen to these facts, who refuse to believe. They prefer what some call "alternative facts."
Clearly, an airtight logical argument is insufficient to bring someone to repentance and faith through Jesus.
It must be done with our lives.
It must be done with the simple invitation issued to friends, neighbors, and co-workers to “Come and see Jesus.” Come and see Jesus at work in His people. Come and see how Jesus changes my plans, projects, desires, living. See how He’s working in this imperfect life to help me to love God completely and to love others as much as I love and care about myself.
We need to invite people to experience Christ for themselves.
I’m firmly convinced on factual grounds that Jesus, His life, death, and resurrection are all facts. But Jesus is more than just a fact. And faith in Him is more than a set of facts to be learned. Jesus is the foundational Word on which the universe is built. He shows Himself to those willing to see and believe in Him. (He will not force Himself on those who refuse to see or believe in Him.)
Our faith is in a living God and the mission of every Christian is to invite people to come and get to know Jesus for themselves.
“Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’ They said, ‘Rabbi’ (which means “Teacher”), ‘where are you staying?’ ‘Come,’ he replied, ‘and you will see.’” (John 1:38-39)
Respond: Jesus, You have given me my mind. So, I must use it to the full extent possible to present factual arguments for the gospel. Help me to do that. But, help me to realize that the most important thing I can do to help others to come to faith or to experience a deepening faith is to invite them to spend time with You...in Your Word, in the sacraments, in the fellowship of believers, and even in my own imperfect life. Help me to show YOU to others in all that I say, do, and am. Get me, my desires, my sins, and my imperfections out of the way so that people can see YOU. Because life can only be found in You. In Your name.
1 Pastor's Response to Yesterday's Executive Order
Yesterday, over on Facebook, I posted this reaction to an executive order signed yesterday that promotes and legitimizes the exercise of political influence by churches and other religious entities.
As a Christian and a pastor, not to mention as an American, I am deeply disturbed by the executive order signed today.
The Church is not a political institution, nor can one draw a straight line from Jesus and a set of political convictions.
To push a political agenda in the name of the God revealed in Jesus Christ is to take God's name in vain.
The mission of the Church is to make disciples, bringing transformation and new life to all who believe.
Churches that seek votes rather than pursuing Christ's great commission are faithless.
Church political engagement is also ineffectual because transformed lives can't be legislated or coerced.
People and societies can only be transformed as a result of the work of God in the lives of people who voluntarily believe in and follow Christ.
This is not a political statement. It's a plea for the Church to refrain from dishonoring Christ through political activity.
This executive order is bad for the Church and bad for America.I later added these comments to the post, as it appeared on a page frequented by colleagues:
We [as Christians] know that the world finds the gospel of Christ offensive.[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
But political activism by the Church makes Christianity odious to non-believers for the wrong reasons.
This order will encourage those who undertake political activity in Jesus' name to extend their activities, harming the spread of the gospel.
Any time the Church receives special treatment from the State, the Church's proclamation of Christ is hurt.
Tuesday, May 02, 2017
Opened Eyes, Burning Hearts
Luke 24:13-35
Today’s gospel lesson begins, as all incidents lived out on the salvation journey wrought by the God we know in Jesus Christ, in grief. But like all such incidents, it ends in life and in joy.
It’s late in the afternoon on the first Easter, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Two disciples, filled with grief, not yet convinced by the testimony to Jesus’ resurrection given to them by two different groups of their fellow disciples, are walking from Jerusalem, where they witnessed Jesus die, toward Emmaus.
This is where our lesson, Luke 24:13-35, begins: “That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”
Why were these two disciples kept from recognizing Jesus? Was Jesus engaging in a little heavenly hocus-pocus? No, I think there are two reasons they didn’t know the man walking and talking with them was Jesus.
First, neither one of them was expecting to see Jesus. They had watched Jesus die.
Second, taking all the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection into consideration, one gets the idea that in His risen form, Jesus was the same, but different.
He could express a desire for food. He could be touched. He could show people the wounds He’d incurred during His passion and crucifixion.
But He also could show up in rooms behind locked doors. He seemed capable of being in multiple places at the same time.
Jesus was the same, yet different, just as God’s Word promises that you and I will, beyond our own deaths and resurrections be the same--recognizable as the people we have been in this old creation--yet new, surprising, different, more whole, bathed in eternal life.
Verse 17: “And he said to them, ‘What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?’ [Jesus always meets people where they are. He often starts with a question, a good way to start any conversation.] And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ And he said to them, ‘What things?’ And they said to him, ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.’”
Can’t you hear the hopelessness in the voices of the two disciples here? They had put all of their hope in Jesus. But what had their hope really been in? They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, by which they meant, that Jesus would set the Jews free from the Romans. But it hadn’t happened.
I know a man who was super-active in his church. He was considered a leader in the congregation, a person of prayer. But one day, he just gave up on God, dropped out of church.
What happened? He’d counted on Jesus to make him wealthy and successful. He thought that he had a deal with Jesus: he would be a good guy and Jesus would give him what he wanted. He thought Jesus was a genie subject to his command, rather than the Savior from whom he took commands. When the man’s dream job turned to ashes and when his personal life got hard, he gave up on faith.
Jesus can and does redeem from sin, death, darkness, and futility all who turn from sin and trust in Him. But that doesn’t mean that the lives we live before our own deaths and resurrections will be successful or easy. The Bible reminds us: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)
And Jesus did pity these two disciples who had placed their trust in Jesus for the wrong reasons. We see this as the two tell Jesus about the strange reports they’ve heard of Jesus rising. “‘Moreover, [they continue] some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.’ And [Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’”
Jesus’ words of admonition remind me of Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’"
Jesus was saying that the two disciples were foolish for not believing that God is God. He chastises them for failing to believe that Jesus Himself could do what He'd said He would, die and rise for the sake of sinners like them like me and you.
The disciples were stuck in the same kind of thinking you hear from modern-day atheists and agnostics who say, “People don’t rise from the dead. Therefore, Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead.”
These folks are half right: According the ordinary laws of this world, dead people don’t rise, just as, according to the ordinary working of the law of gravity, an apple that falls from a tree will land on the ground below.
But what if, as I walk by that apple tree and see the apple start to fall and, instead of letting it hit the ground, I catch it?* The law of gravity will not have been rescinded; but I will have intervened to change the usual outcome.
Like every other human being, Jesus died.
But then, God the Father did something: He intervened in the normal outworking of this fallen universe’s laws. He changed the outcome and raised Jesus, His Son, to a new and eternal life.
And by His death and resurrection, Jesus both paid the debt we owe to God and neighbor for our sins and then opened up a perfect eternity with God to all who trust in Him.
The God we meet through Jesus can intervene in our lives to make us new.
It’s foolish to think that the One Who made everything in the first place can’t make it new when it gets messed up.
That’s effectively what Jesus tells these two disciples walking to Emmaus.
Jesus now teaches them how the Old Testament had pointed to His death and resurrection. Jesus no doubt mentioned chapters and verses of prophecy.
But more importantly, He must have pointed to the character of the Creator God,
I love this part of the Emmaus narrative! Notice two things.
First, this: Luke tells us that when Jesus broke the bread, “their eyes were opened.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. Think back to Genesis 3:7. Adam and Eve have just violated God’s command that they not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until this point, the two had been blind to sin, knowing only good. But, as soon as they eat of the fruit, Genesis says, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked…”
Suddenly, the two now saw how their bodies and their lives could be misused. And they were ashamed.
Now, come back to Emmaus. The two disciples--who many scholars today believe are husband and wife--see Jesus break the bread and they see, not their own capacity for evil, but God’s infinite capacity to forgive, restore, renew, and remake those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus.
Jesus reverses the curse of Eden.
In Him, this couple sees not their own sin, but Christ’s righteousness. That’s what Christ wants all of us to see.
Our sin left uncovered by Christ’s righteousness will damn us. But Christ’s righteousness can cover even the darkest of sins and most awful of hurts in God’s grace, love, and life!
Secondly, notice how Jesus reveals Himself to this couple and makes it possible for them to believe. He does this in two ways:
These are still the ways Jesus reveals Himself to us today. We call them Word and Sacrament: The Word of the Bible which testifies about the loving God we meet in Jesus. And the sacraments, in which Jesus uses common elements like bread, wine, and water to meet us, claim us, shower us with grace, make us new, forgive us, and assure us that He is with us always, now and in eternity.
Jesus is saying to those two disciples and to you and me, that every time we hear His Word and receive the Sacraments, as we are doing together again this morning, He is with us, making us new, replacing our doubts with faith, replacing our sin with His forgiveness.
We can come to Him whatever the current state of our lives--grieving, sad, joyous, contented, depressed, excited, whatever--and He will show Himself to us again. He will open our eyes and remind us once again that He saves by grace and eternally lives with all who surrender to Him and His love.
After their encounter with Jesus in Word and bread, the two disciples run back to Jerusalem. Suddenly, they don’t care if the sun has gone down and they can’t see the ground beneath them as they run to tell the others that they’ve seen Jesus. Their hearts are burning within them and they simply have to add their testimony to that of the others who have encountered Jesus. Their day began in grief and has ended in joy! They have to tell the world about their risen Lord.
Let me ask you: After our encounters with the risen Jesus in the Bible, in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, can we do any less?
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
*This illustration comes from The Case for Faith.
Today’s gospel lesson begins, as all incidents lived out on the salvation journey wrought by the God we know in Jesus Christ, in grief. But like all such incidents, it ends in life and in joy.
It’s late in the afternoon on the first Easter, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Two disciples, filled with grief, not yet convinced by the testimony to Jesus’ resurrection given to them by two different groups of their fellow disciples, are walking from Jerusalem, where they witnessed Jesus die, toward Emmaus.
This is where our lesson, Luke 24:13-35, begins: “That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”
Why were these two disciples kept from recognizing Jesus? Was Jesus engaging in a little heavenly hocus-pocus? No, I think there are two reasons they didn’t know the man walking and talking with them was Jesus.
First, neither one of them was expecting to see Jesus. They had watched Jesus die.
Second, taking all the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection into consideration, one gets the idea that in His risen form, Jesus was the same, but different.
He could express a desire for food. He could be touched. He could show people the wounds He’d incurred during His passion and crucifixion.
But He also could show up in rooms behind locked doors. He seemed capable of being in multiple places at the same time.
Jesus was the same, yet different, just as God’s Word promises that you and I will, beyond our own deaths and resurrections be the same--recognizable as the people we have been in this old creation--yet new, surprising, different, more whole, bathed in eternal life.
Verse 17: “And he said to them, ‘What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?’ [Jesus always meets people where they are. He often starts with a question, a good way to start any conversation.] And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ And he said to them, ‘What things?’ And they said to him, ‘Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.’”
Can’t you hear the hopelessness in the voices of the two disciples here? They had put all of their hope in Jesus. But what had their hope really been in? They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, by which they meant, that Jesus would set the Jews free from the Romans. But it hadn’t happened.
I know a man who was super-active in his church. He was considered a leader in the congregation, a person of prayer. But one day, he just gave up on God, dropped out of church.
What happened? He’d counted on Jesus to make him wealthy and successful. He thought that he had a deal with Jesus: he would be a good guy and Jesus would give him what he wanted. He thought Jesus was a genie subject to his command, rather than the Savior from whom he took commands. When the man’s dream job turned to ashes and when his personal life got hard, he gave up on faith.
Jesus can and does redeem from sin, death, darkness, and futility all who turn from sin and trust in Him. But that doesn’t mean that the lives we live before our own deaths and resurrections will be successful or easy. The Bible reminds us: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19)
And Jesus did pity these two disciples who had placed their trust in Jesus for the wrong reasons. We see this as the two tell Jesus about the strange reports they’ve heard of Jesus rising. “‘Moreover, [they continue] some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.’ And [Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’”
Jesus’ words of admonition remind me of Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’"
Jesus was saying that the two disciples were foolish for not believing that God is God. He chastises them for failing to believe that Jesus Himself could do what He'd said He would, die and rise for the sake of sinners like them like me and you.
The disciples were stuck in the same kind of thinking you hear from modern-day atheists and agnostics who say, “People don’t rise from the dead. Therefore, Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead.”
These folks are half right: According the ordinary laws of this world, dead people don’t rise, just as, according to the ordinary working of the law of gravity, an apple that falls from a tree will land on the ground below.
But what if, as I walk by that apple tree and see the apple start to fall and, instead of letting it hit the ground, I catch it?* The law of gravity will not have been rescinded; but I will have intervened to change the usual outcome.
Like every other human being, Jesus died.
But then, God the Father did something: He intervened in the normal outworking of this fallen universe’s laws. He changed the outcome and raised Jesus, His Son, to a new and eternal life.
And by His death and resurrection, Jesus both paid the debt we owe to God and neighbor for our sins and then opened up a perfect eternity with God to all who trust in Him.
The God we meet through Jesus can intervene in our lives to make us new.
It’s foolish to think that the One Who made everything in the first place can’t make it new when it gets messed up.
That’s effectively what Jesus tells these two disciples walking to Emmaus.
Jesus now teaches them how the Old Testament had pointed to His death and resurrection. Jesus no doubt mentioned chapters and verses of prophecy.
But more importantly, He must have pointed to the character of the Creator God,
- Who created out of love,
- Who was loathe to give up on the human race,
- Whose passion for us all would inevitably lead Him to stop at nothing--not even death on a cross--to destroy the power of sin and death over our lives.
- The God with this character and these traits would, of course, enter our stories to write new, everlasting endings for all who believe in Jesus.
I love this part of the Emmaus narrative! Notice two things.
First, this: Luke tells us that when Jesus broke the bread, “their eyes were opened.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. Think back to Genesis 3:7. Adam and Eve have just violated God’s command that they not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until this point, the two had been blind to sin, knowing only good. But, as soon as they eat of the fruit, Genesis says, “...the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked…”
Suddenly, the two now saw how their bodies and their lives could be misused. And they were ashamed.
Now, come back to Emmaus. The two disciples--who many scholars today believe are husband and wife--see Jesus break the bread and they see, not their own capacity for evil, but God’s infinite capacity to forgive, restore, renew, and remake those who turn from sin and trust in Jesus.
Jesus reverses the curse of Eden.
In Him, this couple sees not their own sin, but Christ’s righteousness. That’s what Christ wants all of us to see.
Our sin left uncovered by Christ’s righteousness will damn us. But Christ’s righteousness can cover even the darkest of sins and most awful of hurts in God’s grace, love, and life!
Secondly, notice how Jesus reveals Himself to this couple and makes it possible for them to believe. He does this in two ways:
- First, He shares God’s Word about Himself.
- Second, He shares bread at the table with them.
These are still the ways Jesus reveals Himself to us today. We call them Word and Sacrament: The Word of the Bible which testifies about the loving God we meet in Jesus. And the sacraments, in which Jesus uses common elements like bread, wine, and water to meet us, claim us, shower us with grace, make us new, forgive us, and assure us that He is with us always, now and in eternity.
Jesus is saying to those two disciples and to you and me, that every time we hear His Word and receive the Sacraments, as we are doing together again this morning, He is with us, making us new, replacing our doubts with faith, replacing our sin with His forgiveness.
We can come to Him whatever the current state of our lives--grieving, sad, joyous, contented, depressed, excited, whatever--and He will show Himself to us again. He will open our eyes and remind us once again that He saves by grace and eternally lives with all who surrender to Him and His love.
After their encounter with Jesus in Word and bread, the two disciples run back to Jerusalem. Suddenly, they don’t care if the sun has gone down and they can’t see the ground beneath them as they run to tell the others that they’ve seen Jesus. Their hearts are burning within them and they simply have to add their testimony to that of the others who have encountered Jesus. Their day began in grief and has ended in joy! They have to tell the world about their risen Lord.
Let me ask you: After our encounters with the risen Jesus in the Bible, in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, can we do any less?
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during worship this past Sunday.]
*This illustration comes from The Case for Faith.
"You're not the Placater-in-Chief" (Quiet Time reflections)
These are reflections from my morning quiet time with God. (For more on how I spend my quiet time with God, see here.) I had never previously noticed the thematic cohesion in Matthew 20, until today's quiet time. It's amazing how God can keep speaking to us in fresh ways when we take the time to pay attention to His Word.
Look: Matthew 20 begins with Jesus telling a parable about God’s right to give the same level of generous grace to all, no matter when they come to believe in and follow Him. Jesus says that in the kingdom of God, the last will be first and the first will be last and their standing will have nothing to do with how the world sees things.
Later, James, John, and their mother approach Jesus, asking Him to assure them that, when Jesus comes into His kingdom, James and John will be his right- and left-hand men. The mother who voices this request isn’t particular about which one is higher than the other, but she does want the boys to be one and two in Jesus’ kingdom. But Jesus says: “...to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.” (v.23)
Later still, two other men, blind and unaccompanied by their mommies, call out for mercy to Jesus. Jesus had asked James, John, and their mother, “What do you want?” (v.21). Jesus now asks the blind men, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v.32) The blind men ask to be sighted and Matthew writes: “Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.” (v.34)
Listen: While James and John were apostles and would have a special part to play in the kingdom of God, Jesus’ answer to their request (their prayer) was different from the one given to the two blind men.
To James and John, Jesus gave a nuanced no. Jesus tells them that they will, as they so confidently and ignorantly say they can do (v.22), drink the cup that Jesus is about to drink: They would drink of death because, after Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension, and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, James and John would faithfully exercise their particular callings as apostles, telling others about the way of new life with God through Jesus. They would lose their lives for their faithfulness.
But Jesus told them that only the Father could or would decide where they would be seated in the kingdom of God.
On the other hand, we have no further record of the blind men given sight by Jesus here. They asked for their sight and they followed Jesus. That’s all we know of them.
Maybe they already were followers (disciples) of Jesus when they cried out for mercy. Now, with sightedness, they could physically follow Jesus along with the other disciples. We don’t know.
But several things are clear:
1. The blind men asked for sight, not for power. It’s not just unseemly to ask for power; it's a sin. To crave it. To need it. Jesus asks: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36)
2. Matthew avoids indicating what status in the kingdom of God might belong to the now-sighted men or what their status might later have become. He only tells us that they followed Jesus.
This is important. It’s a dangerous business trying to guess other disciples’ status with God. We can’t know the depths of their prayer life or the breadth of their faithfulness. We can’t know the secret sacrifices they may make to follow the Lord. We can’t know all of the temptations and sins with which other believers may wrestle in order to keep following Jesus. Only God knows and only God sees the true nature of a person’s discipleship or the disciple’s place in His kingdom.
Because of all of this, there's a good chance that any judgment we might make about a believer's status in the kingdom would be wrong. God told Samuel not to anoint young David’s handsome older brother: “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
3. Even if James and John occupied a special, revered office in Christ’s Church on earth, which they did, it doesn’t mean that the blind men don’t enjoy higher status in the kingdom of God. The only One Whose judgment counts when it comes to evaluating our lives is God. He loves all equally. Christ died and rose for all. All who repent and believe in Christ have a share in His kingdom. Status, place, is entirely God’s decision. Period. For each Christian, it should be sufficient knowing that we belong to the God we meet and trust in Jesus. Everything else is self-absorption.
Rather than trying to outguess the sovereignty of God, our call is simply to follow and go where Jesus sends us. I’m a sinner saved only by the grace of God given to those who trust in Jesus.
By grace through faith in Christ I’m granted a place in God’s kingdom. Who am I to argue over the seating arrangements?
Or to concern myself with whether others regard me as a great disciple, faithful, upstanding, wise, smart, important, worthy, exalted, or anything else?
Whatever place I am given in the kingdom of God is more than I deserve and infinitely better than having no place in His kingdom. “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” (Psalm 84:10)
Respond: You take the lead today, Lord. I will follow. Wherever You want to put me, I will accept. I’m not the leader; You are. You’re not the follower; I am. You’re not the caterer to my desires, the Placater-in-Chief; You are my Lord and my God. Today, help me to treat You that way. In Jesus’ name. Amen
Friday, April 28, 2017
Majoring in God's Majors
These are reflections from my quiet time with God today. I explain quiet time here.
Look: “After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, ‘Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?’ ‘Yes, he does,’ he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. ‘What do you think, Simon?’ he asked. ‘From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?’ ‘From others,’ Peter answered. ‘Then the children are exempt,’ Jesus said to him. ‘But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.’” (Matthew 17:24-27)
This is another one of those passages that I’ve allowed to slide past my consciousness. In my mind, I think, I connected it to the question about paying the Roman tax which resulted in Jesus telling us to, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”
But this is an entirely different issue, though probably raised, as the other one was, by opponents trying to “get the goods on Jesus.”
The temple tax of two drachmas per year was owed by every Jewish male. The proceeds went to support the operation of the temple. Two drachmas represented two days’ wages for the typical laborer.
Peter is asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the the temple tax?” Apparently without caring or knowing about the real answer, Peter says that Jesus does.
I suppose that Peter thought that was the end of it. But when Jesus and the disciples come “into the house” (House often is a codeword in Matthew for the assembled people of God, the Church), Jesus, in the know, asks Peter a seemingly hypothetical question: “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” When Peter rightly answers, “From others,” Jesus says that means that the children are exempt. Then He tells Peter to throw his fishing line into the lake, then open the mouth of the first fish he catches to find four drachma, two for Jesus’ temple tax and two for Peter’s. Jesus does this, He says “so that we may not cause offense.”
I’m not entirely clear here: Is Jesus calling Himself the Child of the great King, God the Father? Or is He calling disciples like Peter children of God through Christ the King? I suppose that either or both of the interpretations is possible and it may not ultimately matter.
But several points are clear.
One, Jesus as the King is exempt from the taxes and all other temporal obligations imposed by earthly kings, even the “earthly authorities” who run the temple. So, Jesus may not, in fact, have paid the tax that Peter so breezily assured the two-drachma tax collectors that Jesus paid. The disciples may have been exempt by Jesus’ reason as well, since they were “children of the King.” As Christians, we also exempt from any coerced “tax” to support Christ’s Church. (This makes the preferred status of “state Churches” in Europe dubious, to say the least.) I take it that Jesus has not paid this tax.
Two, Jesus has, to use a bad pun, “bigger fish to fry” than to dispute over whether He needs to pay the temple tax. So, to avoid giving offense to those for whom this is a big deal, Jesus pays the tax.
In other words, if Jesus not paying the temple tax was going to be an impediment to people following Him, He would pay the temple tax.
The gospel is offensive enough to human sensibilities--the gospel that God took on flesh in Jesus and offers new and everlasting life to all who repent and believe in Jesus. There’s no point in creating artificial, tangential reasons for offending people when what we really want is for them to know Jesus Christ as their God, Savior, and Lord. So, Jesus tells Peter after making the point that He doesn’t “owe” the tax (and maybe His followers don’t either), to pay the tax.[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Three, Jesus covers Peter’s temple tax obligation. The point here has nothing to do with financial obligations. Jesus isn’t commending a “prosperity gospel” here, because money isn’t what this entire incident is about. He IS NOT saying, "Believe in Me and I'll make you prosperous."
What Jesus is doing here is paying the price for Peter’s obligations. In this sense, it becomes a foretaste of what Jesus will do on the cross. He pays the penalty that we owe God for our sins. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). But “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us...He redeemed us [or bought us out slavery to sin and death] in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” (Galatians 3:13-15)
All Peter had to do was receive the gift of two drachma that covered his temple tax obligation.
Peter could have said, “That’s ridiculous! Whoever heard of a four drachma coin landing in the mouth of a fish?” (Although I can think of a man who landed in the mouth of a fish!) Peter could have thought, "I don’t trust such nonsense. I’ll just scrounge together the four drachma and pay it myself." He could have gone to Judas, the treasurer of the group, for the money needed and the whole bone of contention would be erased.
But we have no record of Peter, who often messed up and failed to trust Jesus, doing anything but what Jesus directed.
When we trust Jesus, He pays our debts for sin.
Listen: Lord, what do You want to teach me on all of this, because it’s rich?
One thing, I think, is for me to refrain from doing anything or saying anything that gives undue offense. This doesn’t mean that I should be a mealy-mouth. It means that I should stick to the gospel and stick to loving You and loving others. Even that will cause offense; but if people are offended by Your gospel, so be it. I just need to get out of the way and not offend them because of me, my words, my faults. As Your ambassador, I need to speak Your words and not my own, lest people think I’m speaking in Your name when I’m not.
I need to refrain from any behavior that might destroy my credibility for fulfilling my one mission, making disciples.
I need to refrain from any behavior that might keep me from being the one thing You call me to be, a disciple.
I suspect that this is part of why Jesus says, “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)
Secondly, as a pastor, I need to refrain from laying obligations that You don’t command onto people or even to seem to do so. I’m not conscious of ever having done this with people; but this is an important cautionary lesson.
The temple tax was a kind of work. Yes, giving is part of the Christian life. But whatever giving we do to the cause of Christ in the world should be rendered joyfully, as an outgrowth of a maturing relationship with Jesus, not because someone from the Church reminds us to pay our “temple tax.”
Thirdly, I need to be more trusting. When Jesus told Peter to sink his line into the lake, catch a fish, and pull a four-drachma coin from the fish’s mouth, the record indicates that Peter did just that. There’s no indication that, even when Jesus was tried on trumped-up charges before Pilate, that Jesus’ payment of the temple tax was in dispute.
I need to trust what Jesus tells me to do and who He tells me to be. I need to trust His answers to my prayers, whether the answers are yes, no, or wait. I need to trust that I am forgiven not because of my works but because of what Jesus has done for me on the cross and from the empty tomb.
Respond: Lord, today, help me to major in the majors. Help me to not pursue my own agenda or seek affirmation for myself or the things I want, but help me to only pursue Your agenda, give You glory through my interactions with others, and only say those things needed to help people experience Your concern and love. In Jesus’ name.
Monday, April 24, 2017
Living in the New Creation (AUDIO)
Here. (During the course of the message, several examples of ancient and modern eight-sided baptismal fonts were shared.)
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during yesterday's worship services.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This message was shared during yesterday's worship services.]
Living in the New Creation
John 20:19-31
Our gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Easter recounts two incidents that happen within the space of a week. The first happens on the evening of the very first Easter, the Sunday on which Jesus rose from the dead. The second happens one week later. Because this lesson comes up every year, it may be worn from familiarity. But let’s ask God to help us to experience it in a fresh, new way this morning.
Freshness and newness, in fact, fill our lesson. Newness is what it’s all about!
John tells us that the first incident happens “On the evening of the first day of the week.”
The phrasing is a deliberate reference to the first creation account in Genesis, which tells us that God created in seven days.
The ancient rabbis taught that the human fall into sin happened on the seventh day. And for centuries, they had looked ahead to a “new day” or an “eighth day,” when God would create anew and that perfect peace--the perfect shalom--that existed between God and His creation on the first through sixth days would be restored.
It’s for this reason that many ancient and contemporary baptismal fonts are eight-sided. Here's a sampling of what I mean...
When a person is baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God makes them part of the new creation secured through Jesus’ death and resurrection. The baptized are ushered into the perfect shalom of God’s eighth day, the first, only, and eternal day of the new creation, the eighth day that never ends.
It’s from this understanding of things that Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
As Jesus’ disciples huddled behind locked doors on the evening of the first Easter Sunday, they had no idea that the new creation had begun. They were still quaking in fear before the old creation.
Take a look at our lesson, starting at verse 19: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”
In the new creation, the Word made flesh, Jesus, is no longer constrained by the limitations of humanity that He once voluntarily accepted to meet us where we live. This goes beyond being able to walk through walls (although that’s pretty cool). Now, Jesus moves freely between time and eternity, flesh and spirit, so that all who believe in Him have the peace of knowing that not even death can hold us down.
Like our Savior, beyond the gates of death, we will live untethered from death, untethered from fear.
And we can experience that eternal reality even now as Jesus comes to us in His Word, in the sacraments, and in the fellowship of Christian believers.
How confident, hopeful, at peace, and without fear are we to be? Back to our lesson, starting at verse 21: “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! [‘Here’s My shalom,’ Jesus is saying.] As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’”
We should be confident, hopeful, at peace, and without fear, first of all, because Jesus breathed on them. He breathes on us.
Jesus infuses us with the very life of God, when we are baptized children of God and when we trust Christ and His promises of new life, forgiven sin, constant presence, and eternity.
Jesus breathing on us echoes what God did at the creation of the first man, as recounted in Genesis 2:7, part of that book's second creation account: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
In the Old Testament Hebrew, the word translated as breath, ruach, can also mean wind or Spirit. The same is true of the Greek word, pneuma.
Jesus breathes the pure breath of heaven, the Holy Spirit, into all who believe. He makes all who believe in Him brand new. Why shouldn’t we be at peace, confident, hopeful?
We should also be confident, hopeful, at peace, and without fear because God, the almighty God of the universe, has entrusted us, His new creatures, with an important mission.
It’s the most important mission in the world. He’s given it to us even though, alone, we are completely unqualified to discharge it.
But Jesus fills us with His holy breath and then tells us that, in His name, we’re to proclaim His forgiveness to those who repent and believe and to proclaim God’s condemnation--in hopes that they will repent and believe--to those who balk at repentance and faith.
We’re to wield what Jesus calls elsewhere, “the keys of the kingdom.”
We’re to do so with humility and love. We’re to do this without confidence in ourselves, without a sense of superiority. Christians should never act "holier than thou"!
As followers of Jesus, you and I know that we are nothing without Jesus. We know that we have been saved not by our own goodness, but by what Jesus accomplished for us in His death and resurrection.
But Jesus gives us His Holy Spirit and says, effectively, “Act on My behalf, just as I have acted on behalf of My Father.”
Listen: When Jesus saves you from sin and death and then gives you the same mission He fulfilled on this earth, it doesn’t mean that your life on this earth will be easy. But it does mean that as long as you walk seeking to follow and share Christ each day, your life will be imbued with the same sense of possibility, peace, and hope that must have filled Adam when God breathed life into him.
Christian, Jesus says that you are a new creation.
So that leads to some questions: What are you going to do about it? How many people are you going to invite to come along with you in experiencing the new life you have through Jesus?
And keep in mind that Jesus refuses to give up on anybody. He cares about everyone--from the most indifferent churchgoer to the most rabid atheist. He loves and died and rose for all people. He wants all people to believe that He “is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing...may have life in His name” (John 20:30-31).
All of which leads us to Thomas.
How many Thomases are there in your life?
How many times are we Thomases?
Keep in mind that, according to the original Greek in which John wrote his gospel, Jesus doesn’t describe Thomas the Apostle as a doubter; He says that Thomas is unbelieving.
How often do we regard the good news of Jesus or the promises of God with unbelief?
God’s Word tells us that it’s impossible for us to believe without the Holy Spirit’s breath giving life to our faith (2 Corinthians 12:3). Yet people can put up roadblocks to the Spirit and refuse to believe.
They either deem the message too good to be true or they’re so tied to the way things are in this old creation that they can’t imagine a new and better creation.
There are times when I preach or when I talk with people about Jesus that I can almost physically feel and see their resistance to the good news that we have in Christ’s death and resurrection. They prefer the things they know in this dying world to yielding their lives to a Savior they’ve never seen.
This happened again this past week during my mother's funeral. As I preached the good news of conquering death for us through Jesus' death and resurrection, I could see people resisting that message; their arms weren't folded, but their minds were closed. This was the posture of Thomas when the other disciples told him that they had seen the risen Jesus.
Verse 24: “Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ A week later [The Greek in which John wrote this account actually says, “after eight days."] his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting [John says, in the Greek, that Jesus told Thomas, ‘Don’t be unbelieving.’] and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”
Thomas, the unbelieving one, ends up making the most resounding confession of Jesus we find in all of John’s gospel: “My Lord and my God” he says to Jesus!
His confession is made all the more amazing when one considers Thomas’ track record.
If there are people in your life who are like Thomas or if they’re tepid in their faith, distant from God, do not give up on them.
Pray for them.
Ask God to bring people into their lives who will invite them to come and see and know Jesus.
Ask God to for the opportunities to share your own life with Jesus with them.
In the meantime, live with the confidence and peace that is yours because, through your faith in Jesus, you have life in Jesus’ name; you’re part of the new creation!
I witnessed for Christ at the Kroger deli counter again this past week...and I wasn’t wearing my collar, so no "home team" advantage. The conversation started when I noticed a fellow customer was wearing a Buckeyes ball cap. We started with college football and ended with Jesus! God can use any entry point as a chance to help people to know the new life Jesus died and rose to give all people! Our task is to simply keep planting the seeds of the gospel in people's lives.
Make your mission the one that Jesus has given to every one of us, the mission that John tells us, in the last two verses of our lesson, animated his writing of the gospel. “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book,” John says. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
We who belong to Jesus are ambassadors to this old creation from Christ’s new creation.
Live in peace and share Christ boldly! Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for yesterday morning's worship services.]
Our gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Easter recounts two incidents that happen within the space of a week. The first happens on the evening of the very first Easter, the Sunday on which Jesus rose from the dead. The second happens one week later. Because this lesson comes up every year, it may be worn from familiarity. But let’s ask God to help us to experience it in a fresh, new way this morning.
Freshness and newness, in fact, fill our lesson. Newness is what it’s all about!
John tells us that the first incident happens “On the evening of the first day of the week.”
The phrasing is a deliberate reference to the first creation account in Genesis, which tells us that God created in seven days.
The ancient rabbis taught that the human fall into sin happened on the seventh day. And for centuries, they had looked ahead to a “new day” or an “eighth day,” when God would create anew and that perfect peace--the perfect shalom--that existed between God and His creation on the first through sixth days would be restored.
It’s for this reason that many ancient and contemporary baptismal fonts are eight-sided. Here's a sampling of what I mean...
When a person is baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God makes them part of the new creation secured through Jesus’ death and resurrection. The baptized are ushered into the perfect shalom of God’s eighth day, the first, only, and eternal day of the new creation, the eighth day that never ends.
It’s from this understanding of things that Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
As Jesus’ disciples huddled behind locked doors on the evening of the first Easter Sunday, they had no idea that the new creation had begun. They were still quaking in fear before the old creation.
Take a look at our lesson, starting at verse 19: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”
In the new creation, the Word made flesh, Jesus, is no longer constrained by the limitations of humanity that He once voluntarily accepted to meet us where we live. This goes beyond being able to walk through walls (although that’s pretty cool). Now, Jesus moves freely between time and eternity, flesh and spirit, so that all who believe in Him have the peace of knowing that not even death can hold us down.
Like our Savior, beyond the gates of death, we will live untethered from death, untethered from fear.
And we can experience that eternal reality even now as Jesus comes to us in His Word, in the sacraments, and in the fellowship of Christian believers.
How confident, hopeful, at peace, and without fear are we to be? Back to our lesson, starting at verse 21: “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! [‘Here’s My shalom,’ Jesus is saying.] As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’”
We should be confident, hopeful, at peace, and without fear, first of all, because Jesus breathed on them. He breathes on us.
Jesus infuses us with the very life of God, when we are baptized children of God and when we trust Christ and His promises of new life, forgiven sin, constant presence, and eternity.
Jesus breathing on us echoes what God did at the creation of the first man, as recounted in Genesis 2:7, part of that book's second creation account: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
In the Old Testament Hebrew, the word translated as breath, ruach, can also mean wind or Spirit. The same is true of the Greek word, pneuma.
Jesus breathes the pure breath of heaven, the Holy Spirit, into all who believe. He makes all who believe in Him brand new. Why shouldn’t we be at peace, confident, hopeful?
We should also be confident, hopeful, at peace, and without fear because God, the almighty God of the universe, has entrusted us, His new creatures, with an important mission.
It’s the most important mission in the world. He’s given it to us even though, alone, we are completely unqualified to discharge it.
But Jesus fills us with His holy breath and then tells us that, in His name, we’re to proclaim His forgiveness to those who repent and believe and to proclaim God’s condemnation--in hopes that they will repent and believe--to those who balk at repentance and faith.
We’re to wield what Jesus calls elsewhere, “the keys of the kingdom.”
We’re to do so with humility and love. We’re to do this without confidence in ourselves, without a sense of superiority. Christians should never act "holier than thou"!
As followers of Jesus, you and I know that we are nothing without Jesus. We know that we have been saved not by our own goodness, but by what Jesus accomplished for us in His death and resurrection.
But Jesus gives us His Holy Spirit and says, effectively, “Act on My behalf, just as I have acted on behalf of My Father.”
Listen: When Jesus saves you from sin and death and then gives you the same mission He fulfilled on this earth, it doesn’t mean that your life on this earth will be easy. But it does mean that as long as you walk seeking to follow and share Christ each day, your life will be imbued with the same sense of possibility, peace, and hope that must have filled Adam when God breathed life into him.
Christian, Jesus says that you are a new creation.
So that leads to some questions: What are you going to do about it? How many people are you going to invite to come along with you in experiencing the new life you have through Jesus?
And keep in mind that Jesus refuses to give up on anybody. He cares about everyone--from the most indifferent churchgoer to the most rabid atheist. He loves and died and rose for all people. He wants all people to believe that He “is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing...may have life in His name” (John 20:30-31).
All of which leads us to Thomas.
How many Thomases are there in your life?
How many times are we Thomases?
Keep in mind that, according to the original Greek in which John wrote his gospel, Jesus doesn’t describe Thomas the Apostle as a doubter; He says that Thomas is unbelieving.
How often do we regard the good news of Jesus or the promises of God with unbelief?
God’s Word tells us that it’s impossible for us to believe without the Holy Spirit’s breath giving life to our faith (2 Corinthians 12:3). Yet people can put up roadblocks to the Spirit and refuse to believe.
They either deem the message too good to be true or they’re so tied to the way things are in this old creation that they can’t imagine a new and better creation.
There are times when I preach or when I talk with people about Jesus that I can almost physically feel and see their resistance to the good news that we have in Christ’s death and resurrection. They prefer the things they know in this dying world to yielding their lives to a Savior they’ve never seen.
This happened again this past week during my mother's funeral. As I preached the good news of conquering death for us through Jesus' death and resurrection, I could see people resisting that message; their arms weren't folded, but their minds were closed. This was the posture of Thomas when the other disciples told him that they had seen the risen Jesus.
Verse 24: “Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ A week later [The Greek in which John wrote this account actually says, “after eight days."] his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting [John says, in the Greek, that Jesus told Thomas, ‘Don’t be unbelieving.’] and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”
Thomas, the unbelieving one, ends up making the most resounding confession of Jesus we find in all of John’s gospel: “My Lord and my God” he says to Jesus!
His confession is made all the more amazing when one considers Thomas’ track record.
- It was Thomas who complained that Jesus was talking in riddles: ““Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5)
- And it was Thomas who sarcastically told the other disciples after Jesus had decided to go to Bethany, within the grasp of people who wanted to wipe out Jesus’ movement: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16)
If there are people in your life who are like Thomas or if they’re tepid in their faith, distant from God, do not give up on them.
Pray for them.
Ask God to bring people into their lives who will invite them to come and see and know Jesus.
Ask God to for the opportunities to share your own life with Jesus with them.
In the meantime, live with the confidence and peace that is yours because, through your faith in Jesus, you have life in Jesus’ name; you’re part of the new creation!
I witnessed for Christ at the Kroger deli counter again this past week...and I wasn’t wearing my collar, so no "home team" advantage. The conversation started when I noticed a fellow customer was wearing a Buckeyes ball cap. We started with college football and ended with Jesus! God can use any entry point as a chance to help people to know the new life Jesus died and rose to give all people! Our task is to simply keep planting the seeds of the gospel in people's lives.
Make your mission the one that Jesus has given to every one of us, the mission that John tells us, in the last two verses of our lesson, animated his writing of the gospel. “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book,” John says. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
We who belong to Jesus are ambassadors to this old creation from Christ’s new creation.
Live in peace and share Christ boldly! Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for yesterday morning's worship services.]
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Praying for Others
Yesterday, I drove by a mosque, from which worshipers were leaving. I prayed that God would protect all who had just been there from danger and hate.
I prayed too, that they would have the opportunity to come to know and follow Jesus, who shows us the face of God and saves us by grace through faith, not by our good works or piety.
How many opportunities to pray for people in all of their needs do I pass by each day?
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
I prayed too, that they would have the opportunity to come to know and follow Jesus, who shows us the face of God and saves us by grace through faith, not by our good works or piety.
How many opportunities to pray for people in all of their needs do I pass by each day?
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
No Conflict Between Faith and Science
I value the sciences.
Science is useful and helps answer questions like what, when, and how? These are what I call mechanical questions, the answers to which allow us to understand the mechanics of our universe and what we might do to appreciate it, harness it usefully, and advance the condition of the world. Where would we be without science?
Science, of course, cannot answer questions like why and who as we look at our universe. These answers have to be revealed to us, which I believe they have been through the God Who first showed Himself to Israel and then to the whole world in Jesus Christ.
There is no conflict between Christian faith and the sciences. Science is incapable of telling us whether God exists or what He's like, although it may present us with tantalizing suggestions.
And God's Word, the Bible, cannot tell us the particulars of genetic engineering or the effects of solar flairs. It was never intended for that purpose.
But, in the Bible, we can learn about the One Who created the universe employing the very mechanics that science seeks to understand. And, it can give to us, when we trust in its message, what science cannot: life and peace with God that never ends.
I say, "God bless the sciences and all scientists, including the millions who are also Christians." May we be open to the facts science uncovers so that we may live more responsibly on the planet God gave to us.
And may all people be open to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, as Jesus Himself tells it: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6).
We need Jesus because even after you've answered the mechanical questions, only Jesus can guide us in using them responsibly, lovingly, and with an eye to justice.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Science is useful and helps answer questions like what, when, and how? These are what I call mechanical questions, the answers to which allow us to understand the mechanics of our universe and what we might do to appreciate it, harness it usefully, and advance the condition of the world. Where would we be without science?
Science, of course, cannot answer questions like why and who as we look at our universe. These answers have to be revealed to us, which I believe they have been through the God Who first showed Himself to Israel and then to the whole world in Jesus Christ.
There is no conflict between Christian faith and the sciences. Science is incapable of telling us whether God exists or what He's like, although it may present us with tantalizing suggestions.
And God's Word, the Bible, cannot tell us the particulars of genetic engineering or the effects of solar flairs. It was never intended for that purpose.
But, in the Bible, we can learn about the One Who created the universe employing the very mechanics that science seeks to understand. And, it can give to us, when we trust in its message, what science cannot: life and peace with God that never ends.
I say, "God bless the sciences and all scientists, including the millions who are also Christians." May we be open to the facts science uncovers so that we may live more responsibly on the planet God gave to us.
And may all people be open to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, as Jesus Himself tells it: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6).
We need Jesus because even after you've answered the mechanical questions, only Jesus can guide us in using them responsibly, lovingly, and with an eye to justice.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Thursday, April 20, 2017
The reality of the demonic and not giving up on Christ!
These are my reflections on my quiet time with God this morning. (For more on what quiet time is and how you can have an intimate relationship with the God seen in Jesus Christ, see here.)
Look: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. He's also a sinner saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.]
I used to think that the whole idea of demon possession was ancient superstition.
At the age of 63, I say that I’ve seen too much of life to hold to such naive denials.
The concept of demon possession has been abused through the centuries. People have ascribed physical and mental illnesses to the demons. But simply because people have misdiagnosed issues as demonic possession doesn’t mean that demonic possession doesn’t exist.
I’ve come to believe that Satan, the most subtle of enemies, employs the most sophisticated marketing techniques to accomplish His doomed ambition of taking control of God’s creation. So, in parts of India and Haiti, for example, their culture and mindsets virtually unfazed by post-modernity, the devils still overtly possess people. In the post-modern West, the demons still possess people, but in more subtle ways designed not to call attention to themselves, to leave people’s naive notions of having “moved beyond all that” intact. What a putrid pile of stinking manure Satan and his demons are! They can even make themselves seem clean and aromatic, even as they drag their victims to hell with them.
In this passage, Jesus warns us against leaving vacancies in our lives, minds, and wills that can Satan and his demons can enter and exploit.
To me, it’s a warning against falling into what I call “cruise control Christianity.” This is a Christian faith of taking God for granted, not reading God’s Word, not praying, not giving ourselves to regular worship, not submitting to the mutual discipline and mutual accountability of regular engagement in a church, not regularly receiving Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament of Holy Communion. In other words, if I don’t fill up on God, the demons will enter our lives. And that’s true whether they choose to do so overtly or stealthily, the latter being their preferred approach in the secularized West. (After all, the devils can get away with a lot more when people think that their existence has been disproved by science. It hasn’t.)
It’s important to be vigilant. Peter echoes Jesus’ warning in 1 Peter 5:8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” And Ephesians 6:12 warns believers: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Listen: I sense the Lord telling me: I am bringing you great blessings these days, Mark. I am using you as a matter of grace. You are watching how my Holy Spirit can transform and deepen people in their faith in Christ through a steady and intentional attentiveness to My Word and to the Church, My Body, the only thing that will survive the end of this universe. I have graciously forgiven your sins and graciously acknowledged your struggles with your own personal temptations and favorite sins. As you have surrendered to me daily, as you have reached out to me in countless particular situations which you knew that you could not face, let alone conquer, in your own power, I have renewed you with My Holy Spirit and I have set My angels over you.
But, as you know, I am not a coercive God. I force no one to believe in Me, to trust in Me, to walk with Me. I’m not a frustrated suitor or five year old child screaming at you to look at me, to pay attention to me.
I call you. And the closer you remain to Me, the more clearly you will hear me calling in all the everyday moments of your life. The greater the distance between us, the more faint My call will be to your spirit. I will never abandon you. I am with you always (Matthew 28:20). I will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:50). But you are a grown-up and I will respect your decision to leave me behind or consign me to the position of afterthought.
Few people make that decision consciously. Our relationship is more like that of a married couple. Marriages and friendships rarely rupture over single events. When the ruptures happen, they’re the result of a steady, prolonged inattentiveness on the part of one person or the other or both. Couples and friends allow time and space to have their way. The same can be true in the lives of those who have fallen away for me. There is no room left in their lives for Me. I will never be the One to give up on our relationship or on You. And I will always fight for those who have wandered away like lost sheep. My love for all people never ceases. But, as I say, I will not force those who have turned from Me to be with Me, either now or in eternity.
Remember that I have said: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33).
Keep following Me, Mark. Keep growing in your faith in Me. Keep living in daily repentance and renewal. You’re either growing or you’re dying. Keep growing. Live in me because, it’s true: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Respond: Help me to remain connected to You, Lord, in all the ways You so graciously provide connection: Your Word, the sacrament, the fellowship of believers, prayer. Help me to be intentional each day in following You. After all: "Lord, to whom shall we [I] go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). In Jesus’ name.
The reality of the demonic and not giving up on Christ
These are my reflections on my quiet time with God this morning. (For more on what quiet time is and how you can have an intimate relationship with the God seen in Jesus Christ, see here.)
Look: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. He's also a sinner saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.]
I used to think that the whole idea of demon possession was ancient superstition.
At the age of 63, I say that I’ve seen too much of life to hold to such naive denials of demon possession.
The concept has been abused through the centuries. People have ascribed physical and mental illnesses to the demons. But simply because people have misdiagnosed issues as demonic possession doesn’t mean that demonic possession doesn’t exist.
I’ve come to believe that Satan, the most subtle of enemies, employs the most sophisticated marketing techniques to accomplish His doomed ambition of taking control of God’s creation. So, in parts of India and Haiti, their culture and mindsets virtually unfazed by post-modernity, the devils still overtly possess people. In the post-modern West, the demons still possess people, but in more subtle ways designed not to call attention to themselves, to leave people’s naive notions of having “moved beyond all that” intact. What a putrid pile of stinking manure Satan and his demons are! They can even make themselves seem clean and aromatic. Even as they drag their victims to hell with them.
In this passage, Jesus warns us against leaving vacancies in our lives, minds, and wills that can Satan and his demons can enter and exploit.
To me, it’s a warning against falling into what I call “cruise control Christianity.” This is a Christian faith of taking God for granted, not reading God’s Word, not praying, not giving ourselves to regular worship, not submitting to the mutual discipline and mutual accountability of regular engagement in a church, not regularly receiving Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament of Holy Communion. In other words, if I don’t fill up on God, the demons will enter our lives. And that’s true whether they choose to do so overtly or stealthily, the latter being their preferred approach in the secularized West. (After all, the devils can get away with a lot more when people think that their existence has been disproved by science. It hasn’t.)
It’s important to be vigilant. Peter echoes Jesus’ warning in 1 Peter 5:8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” And Ephesians 6:12 warns believers: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Listen: I sense the Lord telling me: I am bringing you great blessings these days, Mark. I am using you as a matter of grace. You are watching how my Holy Spirit can transform and deepen people in their faith in Christ through a steady and intentional attentiveness to My Word and to the Church, My Body, the only thing that will survive the end of this universe. I have graciously forgiven your sins and graciously acknowledged your struggles with your own personal temptations and favorite sins. As you have surrendered to me daily, as you have reached out to me in countless particular situations which you knew that you could not face, let alone conquer, in your own power, I have renewed you with My Holy Spirit and I have set My angels over you.
But, as you know, I am not a coercive God. I force no one to believe in Me, to trust in Me, to walk with Me. I’m not a frustrated suitor or five year old child screaming at you to look at me, to pay attention to me.
I call you. And the closer you remain to Me, the more clearly you will hear me calling in all the everyday moments of your life. The greater the distance between us, the more faint My call will be to your spirit. I will never abandon you. I am with you always (Matthew 28:20). I will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:50). But you are a grown-up and I will respect your decision to leave me behind or consign me to the position of afterthought.
Few people make that decision consciously. Our relationship is more like that of a married couple. Marriages and friendships rarely rupture over single events. When the ruptures happen, they’re the result of a steady, prolonged inattentiveness on the part of one person or the other or both. Couples and friends allow time and space to have their way. The same can be true in the lives of those who have fallen away for me. There is no room left in their lives for Me. I will never be the One to give up on our relationship or on You. And I will always fight for those who have wandered away like lost sheep. My love for all people never ceases. But, as I say, I will not force those who have turned from Me to be with Me, either now or in eternity.
Remember that I have said: “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33).
Keep following Me, Mark. Keep growing in your faith in Me. Keep living in daily repentance and renewal. You’re either growing or you’re dying. Keep growing. Live in me because, it’s true: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Respond: Help me to remain connected to You, Lord, in all the ways You so graciously provide connection: Your Word, the sacrament, the fellowship of believers, prayer. Help me to be intentional each day in following You. After all: "Lord, to whom shall we [I] go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). In Jesus’ name.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Hope in the Midst of Grief (Message at My Mother's Funeral)
Romans 8:31-39
John 11:21-27
[This was shared during my mother's funeral earlier today.]
I was seven-and-a-half years old and it was the Summer of 1961. It was a sunny but breezy morning, a beautiful day, the air clear of humidity, and I was laying in my bed, in that place between sleep and wakefulness.
The night before, we’d gone to my grandparents’ house to see my great-grandmother, who was dying. Mom ushered me to my great-grandmother’s bedside. “Grandma,” mom said, “here’s Mark. Do you remember Mark?” Grandma, her eyes hardly open, put the fingers of her right hand to her forehead and, with obvious frustration at her failure of memory, shook her head, “No.” I knew then that Grandma was not long for this world.
On the glorious summer morning that followed, mom sat on the edge of my bed and woke me. “Mark,” she said, “this morning, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with your great-grandfather.”
My great-grandmother was, it should be said, just like the rest of us, a sinner whose behavior and thinking often, in Saint Paul’s phrase, fell short of the glory of God. But my great-grandmother was also a saint, like all sinners who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God and Savior. She had been saved from sin and death by the grace (or charity) of God that comes to all with faith in Christ. That’s what a saint is!
The image my mom chose to break the news to me that my great-grandmother had died, comes from Revelation 21:21, in the New Testament. It’s part of the vision John, the apostle and evangelist, saw of the heavenly city--part of the new heaven and the new earth that God intends to establish after He draws the curtain on this universe, which is plagued by human sin and death. God will replace it with a city in which all who have been made clean and new by Jesus’ blood, will live with God for eternity. John writes: “The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”
I found comfort in thinking of my great-grandmother walking those streets in the perfect light of Jesus Christ’s love and rule. It's all the more comforting to me today because it happens to tell the truth about what will happen for all who trust in Christ.
The truth of Jesus’ resurrection and His promise of everlasting life for all who entrust their lives to Him--which is what it means to have faith--can also fill our days with peace, power, and freedom.
Even in the midst of grief.
Once, as you probably know, a friend of Jesus, a man named Lazarus died. Jesus deliberately waited to go to Lazarus’ hometown of Bethany until He knew that Lazarus was dead. Jesus, God in the flesh, intended to demonstrate the power of God over life and death. He would go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from death.
But Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, also friends and followers of Jesus, had no idea what Jesus’ plan was. They only knew that they had asked for Jesus to come to Bethany as Lazarus lay on his deathbed, that Jesus hadn’t shown up, and that now Lazarus was dead.
There’s a note of condemnation in Martha’s words when Jesus does come to Bethany. “Lord,” she says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But then, demonstrating that she understands that Jesus is much more than a nice man or a great teacher, Martha also says: “...I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus told Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
And then Jesus asked the most important question any of us will ever have to answer: “Do you believe this?”
It’s the question I want to lay before you today: Do you believe this?
Here’s why this question is so important: When you know that, through Christ and your faith in Him, you belong to God for all eternity, you know that whatever this world can do for you or do to you, doesn’t matter much.
There is no one freer to live life with abandon, joy, peace, and love than the person who belongs to Jesus Christ.
You know how the game ends.
Believing in Jesus isn’t just about having an insurance policy for the sweet-by-and-by.
Believing in Jesus means that because you know Jesus has given you eternity as a gift of grace, you can live this life without fear!
You can live with God’s help in being everything God made you to be! You can love God and others with abandon. You can fight for justice. All because you know that there's nothing that this world can take away from you that means a thing.
That’s freedom!
When Jesus later called his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the earthly powers-that-be; they feared that a guy Who could call people back from the dead might swipe their power. Jesus had to be done away with. (Although they didn’t seem to consider how they were going to really to do away with a Man Who had power over life and death.) But you can be sure that for as long as he continued to live on this earth, Lazarus, who like all of us, would someday die, lived with a fierce and joyous abandon.
When you know that one day, you will walk the streets of gold with all who have believed that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, you don’t have a lot to fear or worry about. That’s the life of joyful abandon and peace that God wants for everyone gathered here today.
None of this means that we won’t or shouldn’t grieve. We will grieve. The Bible doesn't say that believers in Christ don't grieve. It says that while we may grieve, we don't grieve as people without hope. So, we will grieve, although I have to say that I did a lot of my grieving for my mom over the past forty-plus years as she seemed, sadly, to turn in on herself more and more.
The abandonment she felt as a child. The depression that dogged her in her adult years. These things made living hard for mom.
And it made things hard for our father, a man I love, appreciate, and respect more than I can say. Dad, like me and like the rest of us, you aren’t perfect. (I mean, for crying out loud, you don’t like garlic!) But you are a great man and a loving man whose care for mom all these years has been an example to us all.
We carry with us the hope that because of Jesus and our faith in Him, neither death, depression, nor anything else this world may bring us will have the last words over my mother’s life.
We can be confident that the person of essential sweetness and vitality we knew in younger years and even sometimes in her later years in the midst of her sad withdrawal, will re-emerge and be brought to perfection in the eternal city:
The woman who used to load up her kids when dad was working nights at the filling station and take us to Marina’s for spaghetti dinner because she was craving spaghetti. (Probably because she was pregnant, because she seemed to be pregnant all the time in those days.)
The woman who would laugh so hard at the jokes of my brother Marty or my cousin Susie that you thought she might burst with joy.
The woman of great creativity who used to enter her creations and take blue ribbons at the State Fair.
The woman who adored just being with her three girls: Betsy, Kathy, and Dianne.
The woman whose face brightened even as she lay dying as she caught sight of her dear son, Martin.
And, if we will trust in Jesus Christ, He will go to work on us in this life (we will become what Martin Luther called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop") and bring to perfection in the life to come, the people we were made to be, unintimidated by disease, death, doubts, hurts, fears, or anything else. It will be, as God said of the perfect world He created before the human race plunged it into sin and death, “Very good.”
If today I could presume to speak a word for my mom, now living in the perfect clarity of eternity, to you today it would be this: If you want to live this life to the full, follow Jesus. And if those streets of gold, laid open to us by the grace and power of God, sound good to you, follow Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
John 11:21-27
[This was shared during my mother's funeral earlier today.]
I was seven-and-a-half years old and it was the Summer of 1961. It was a sunny but breezy morning, a beautiful day, the air clear of humidity, and I was laying in my bed, in that place between sleep and wakefulness.
The night before, we’d gone to my grandparents’ house to see my great-grandmother, who was dying. Mom ushered me to my great-grandmother’s bedside. “Grandma,” mom said, “here’s Mark. Do you remember Mark?” Grandma, her eyes hardly open, put the fingers of her right hand to her forehead and, with obvious frustration at her failure of memory, shook her head, “No.” I knew then that Grandma was not long for this world.
On the glorious summer morning that followed, mom sat on the edge of my bed and woke me. “Mark,” she said, “this morning, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with your great-grandfather.”
My great-grandmother was, it should be said, just like the rest of us, a sinner whose behavior and thinking often, in Saint Paul’s phrase, fell short of the glory of God. But my great-grandmother was also a saint, like all sinners who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God and Savior. She had been saved from sin and death by the grace (or charity) of God that comes to all with faith in Christ. That’s what a saint is!
The image my mom chose to break the news to me that my great-grandmother had died, comes from Revelation 21:21, in the New Testament. It’s part of the vision John, the apostle and evangelist, saw of the heavenly city--part of the new heaven and the new earth that God intends to establish after He draws the curtain on this universe, which is plagued by human sin and death. God will replace it with a city in which all who have been made clean and new by Jesus’ blood, will live with God for eternity. John writes: “The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”
I found comfort in thinking of my great-grandmother walking those streets in the perfect light of Jesus Christ’s love and rule. It's all the more comforting to me today because it happens to tell the truth about what will happen for all who trust in Christ.
The truth of Jesus’ resurrection and His promise of everlasting life for all who entrust their lives to Him--which is what it means to have faith--can also fill our days with peace, power, and freedom.
Even in the midst of grief.
Once, as you probably know, a friend of Jesus, a man named Lazarus died. Jesus deliberately waited to go to Lazarus’ hometown of Bethany until He knew that Lazarus was dead. Jesus, God in the flesh, intended to demonstrate the power of God over life and death. He would go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from death.
But Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, also friends and followers of Jesus, had no idea what Jesus’ plan was. They only knew that they had asked for Jesus to come to Bethany as Lazarus lay on his deathbed, that Jesus hadn’t shown up, and that now Lazarus was dead.
There’s a note of condemnation in Martha’s words when Jesus does come to Bethany. “Lord,” she says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But then, demonstrating that she understands that Jesus is much more than a nice man or a great teacher, Martha also says: “...I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus told Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
And then Jesus asked the most important question any of us will ever have to answer: “Do you believe this?”
It’s the question I want to lay before you today: Do you believe this?
Here’s why this question is so important: When you know that, through Christ and your faith in Him, you belong to God for all eternity, you know that whatever this world can do for you or do to you, doesn’t matter much.
There is no one freer to live life with abandon, joy, peace, and love than the person who belongs to Jesus Christ.
You know how the game ends.
Believing in Jesus isn’t just about having an insurance policy for the sweet-by-and-by.
Believing in Jesus means that because you know Jesus has given you eternity as a gift of grace, you can live this life without fear!
You can live with God’s help in being everything God made you to be! You can love God and others with abandon. You can fight for justice. All because you know that there's nothing that this world can take away from you that means a thing.
That’s freedom!
When Jesus later called his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the earthly powers-that-be; they feared that a guy Who could call people back from the dead might swipe their power. Jesus had to be done away with. (Although they didn’t seem to consider how they were going to really to do away with a Man Who had power over life and death.) But you can be sure that for as long as he continued to live on this earth, Lazarus, who like all of us, would someday die, lived with a fierce and joyous abandon.
When you know that one day, you will walk the streets of gold with all who have believed that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, you don’t have a lot to fear or worry about. That’s the life of joyful abandon and peace that God wants for everyone gathered here today.
None of this means that we won’t or shouldn’t grieve. We will grieve. The Bible doesn't say that believers in Christ don't grieve. It says that while we may grieve, we don't grieve as people without hope. So, we will grieve, although I have to say that I did a lot of my grieving for my mom over the past forty-plus years as she seemed, sadly, to turn in on herself more and more.
The abandonment she felt as a child. The depression that dogged her in her adult years. These things made living hard for mom.
And it made things hard for our father, a man I love, appreciate, and respect more than I can say. Dad, like me and like the rest of us, you aren’t perfect. (I mean, for crying out loud, you don’t like garlic!) But you are a great man and a loving man whose care for mom all these years has been an example to us all.
We carry with us the hope that because of Jesus and our faith in Him, neither death, depression, nor anything else this world may bring us will have the last words over my mother’s life.
We can be confident that the person of essential sweetness and vitality we knew in younger years and even sometimes in her later years in the midst of her sad withdrawal, will re-emerge and be brought to perfection in the eternal city:
The woman who used to load up her kids when dad was working nights at the filling station and take us to Marina’s for spaghetti dinner because she was craving spaghetti. (Probably because she was pregnant, because she seemed to be pregnant all the time in those days.)
The woman who would laugh so hard at the jokes of my brother Marty or my cousin Susie that you thought she might burst with joy.
The woman of great creativity who used to enter her creations and take blue ribbons at the State Fair.
The woman who adored just being with her three girls: Betsy, Kathy, and Dianne.
The woman whose face brightened even as she lay dying as she caught sight of her dear son, Martin.
And, if we will trust in Jesus Christ, He will go to work on us in this life (we will become what Martin Luther called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop") and bring to perfection in the life to come, the people we were made to be, unintimidated by disease, death, doubts, hurts, fears, or anything else. It will be, as God said of the perfect world He created before the human race plunged it into sin and death, “Very good.”
If today I could presume to speak a word for my mom, now living in the perfect clarity of eternity, to you today it would be this: If you want to live this life to the full, follow Jesus. And if those streets of gold, laid open to us by the grace and power of God, sound good to you, follow Jesus. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Monday, April 17, 2017
Are you willing to believe in the Resurrection? (AUDIO)
Here.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for yesterday's Easter worship services.]
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for yesterday's Easter worship services.]
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Are you willing to believe in the Resurrection?
Matthew 28:1-10
When I was an atheist, as some of you know, one of the hardest things for me to understand about Christian faith was the resurrection.
I had known people who died. None came back from the grave.
I thought that the Easter proclamation that Jesus had risen and the Christian message that all who repent and believe in Jesus have eternal life seemed fanciful. I was a resurrection skeptic.
So, it turns out, were the first disciples of Jesus.
They’d heard Jesus say more than once that He was going to be crucified, then rise again. But when they heard Jesus speak this way, they seemed to ignore His resurrection talk, because they were horrified at the thought of His crucifixion.
So, on the Sunday after His death, Jesus’ disciples weren’t even thinking about resurrection. Jesus was dead and they were grieving.
This is what lay in the background of our gospel lesson for this Easter Sunday morning, Matthew 28:1-10. If you’re skeptical about Jesus’ resurrection or if you’re skeptical that a risen Jesus can give you forgiveness for your sin or life beyond the grave, nothing I say will make you believe.
But if you’re willing to listen to the experiences of those first skeptical disciples and note the way in which Matthew tells us about the first Easter, the Holy Spirit may pry open your heart, mind, and will to believing that the resurrection of Jesus and the new life that only He can give you are true.
Our lesson begins: “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.”
Unlike the other gospel writers, Matthew doesn’t mention the women going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. That doesn’t mean that Matthew and the others disagree; Matthew just doesn’t think it’s important to how he wants to tell us about the first Easter.
In fact, the way Matthew opens his account of the first Easter, almost makes you think that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary didn’t know what they were going to do. This jibes with Mark’s account of the resurrection. On the way to tomb, Mark says, the women asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” (Mark 16:3)
Under normal circumstances, you’d want to say, “Well, they should have thought of that in the first place.”
But, as I’ve learned first-hand again this past week, when you grieve, you aren’t in normal circumstances. It’s hard to concentrate. You can’t decide what you should do next. So, you just do stuff, including, sometimes going to the loved one's burial place.
That’s what Mary Magdalene, the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons, and another of Jesus’ disciples, identified only as “the other Mary,” seem to be doing on the Sunday after Jesus’ death. The last thing they imagine is that they’ll see the risen Jesus.
Verses 2-4: “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.”
“That seems pretty far-fetched,” we might say. You can bet that the people in the first century who first heard Matthew’s gospel would have had the same reaction. It would have seemed just as crazy as it does to us. An angel descended from heaven, rolled away a burial stone, and struck dumb armed soldiers who were overwhelmed by the appearance of the angel.
If Matthew had been most concerned with convincing skeptics, he may have been well-advised to leave out all the details--earthquakes, angels, heavenly luminescence.
But Matthew isn’t interested in making an impressive argument. He’s only interested in telling you the truth.
It’s up to you to decide whether you’re willing to believe it or not.
And, if you are willing to believe, God’s Holy Spirit can help you to believe despite your skepticism.
This is exactly what happened to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. They come to the tomb convinced that Jesus is dead. Soon though, open to the angel’s message about Jesus rising melts their skepticism into faith. This happens even though they have yet to set eyes on the resurrected Jesus! Watch out: That can happen to us when we attend to God’s Word with an open mind!
When I started going to worship just to get my wife off my back for sleeping in on Sundays, Jesus grabbed me by the lapels and said, “Listen, you! You have no idea what you’re talking about when you say I don’t exist, when you say that the resurrection is hooey. Listen to the witnesses to My resurrection. Listen to the people who risked their earthly lives, honor, and income to proclaim the truth they knew and experienced!”
As Romans 10:17 teaches us: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”
That’s what happened to me: I let the truth in God's Word do its life-giving, faith-creating work in me, the truth about a God Who loved me so much that He sent His only Son that whoever believes in Him will not be killed off by death, but will rise just as Jesus rose to live with God for eternity.
Folks, good news like that will change not only your eternity, it will have a direct impact on how you live right now. Verse 5: “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’”
In the Bible, the first thing an angel almost always says to the people they encounter is, “Don’t be afraid.” That’s because angels reflect the perfect righteousness and glory of God Himself. The angel says that the women shouldn’t be afraid and then says that, just as He’d foretold, Jesus was risen.
And then, the angel commissions the two women to teach the Church that Jesus was risen from the dead. “Go,” the angel says, “tell the others that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Then, they need to race to Galilee to catch up with Him!”
I’ve wondered why Jesus chose to meet the apostles sixty miles from His burial spot. Maybe this is the reason: After Jesus’ resurrection, some people said that Jesus hadn’t really died on the cross, only fainted or “swooned.” Muslims still say this. But try imagining a man who has fainted after being severely beaten and wounded, waking in a cave. He would still be weak, near death. Can you imagine such a sick, wounded person then tearing up to Galilee on His own?
Wounded men don’t run.
Dead men don’t run.
But Jesus, once dead, apparently now can do more the run. Jesus was living out the promise of the prophet Isaiah: “...those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
“I’m running to Galilee,” Jesus is saying through the angel messenger, “tell the eleven to follow Me there and catch me if they can!"
I love verse 8: “So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”
The women didn’t have all of their questions answered. They hadn’t seen Jesus face to face.
But they had heard the Word about Jesus and they were running to tell the skeptics what they now knew by faith in Jesus.
Listen: Faith isn’t knowing every answer. Faith is knowing the One Who is the answer.
And here’s what I have learned: When I act with faith in the risen Jesus Who I cannot see, He shows Himself to me in ways I could not have imagined.
The women have no thought of actually seeing the risen Jesus; they simply believe in Him and are intent on proclaiming Him.
But look at what happens next! Verse 9: “Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said.They [the women] came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’”
When Jesus says, “Do not be afraid” here, they are the same words spoken by the angel to them a few moments before. But I agree with Dr. Jim Nestingen that when Jesus says these words to the women at this moment, He means something different than the angel meant.
From what Matthew tells us, the appearance of the angel would have been terrifying. But from what Matthew says here, the appearance of Jesus seems to have been as understated and matter of fact as His greeting, just as it had always been throughout His earthly life.
That makes sense: When God the Son took on human flesh, He laid aside His glory. He entered the world as a baby. Jesus came into this world not to overwhelm us but to save us, true God AND true man.
I think Jesus is telling the women this: "Do not be afraid...of death; I have conquered. I have killed off its power over you. I’m alive and when you turn from sin and trust in Me by faith, you are alive! I give you a full share in My victory. Death can’t separate you from the resurrection life I have for you. Neither can sadness, adversity, family feuds, career setbacks, poverty, disease, instability, politics, economics. None of these things can separate us from God. This world may do its worst to you. But when you believe in Jesus as the risen King of your life, God will always have His best in store for you!"
So, are you willing to believe in the resurrection?
Then, militate against your doubt and your skepticism.
Don’t be afraid! Run with Jesus...you will never run alone. Happy Easter! Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Easter services.]
When I was an atheist, as some of you know, one of the hardest things for me to understand about Christian faith was the resurrection.
I had known people who died. None came back from the grave.
I thought that the Easter proclamation that Jesus had risen and the Christian message that all who repent and believe in Jesus have eternal life seemed fanciful. I was a resurrection skeptic.
So, it turns out, were the first disciples of Jesus.
They’d heard Jesus say more than once that He was going to be crucified, then rise again. But when they heard Jesus speak this way, they seemed to ignore His resurrection talk, because they were horrified at the thought of His crucifixion.
So, on the Sunday after His death, Jesus’ disciples weren’t even thinking about resurrection. Jesus was dead and they were grieving.
This is what lay in the background of our gospel lesson for this Easter Sunday morning, Matthew 28:1-10. If you’re skeptical about Jesus’ resurrection or if you’re skeptical that a risen Jesus can give you forgiveness for your sin or life beyond the grave, nothing I say will make you believe.
But if you’re willing to listen to the experiences of those first skeptical disciples and note the way in which Matthew tells us about the first Easter, the Holy Spirit may pry open your heart, mind, and will to believing that the resurrection of Jesus and the new life that only He can give you are true.
Our lesson begins: “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.”
Unlike the other gospel writers, Matthew doesn’t mention the women going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. That doesn’t mean that Matthew and the others disagree; Matthew just doesn’t think it’s important to how he wants to tell us about the first Easter.
In fact, the way Matthew opens his account of the first Easter, almost makes you think that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary didn’t know what they were going to do. This jibes with Mark’s account of the resurrection. On the way to tomb, Mark says, the women asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” (Mark 16:3)
Under normal circumstances, you’d want to say, “Well, they should have thought of that in the first place.”
But, as I’ve learned first-hand again this past week, when you grieve, you aren’t in normal circumstances. It’s hard to concentrate. You can’t decide what you should do next. So, you just do stuff, including, sometimes going to the loved one's burial place.
That’s what Mary Magdalene, the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons, and another of Jesus’ disciples, identified only as “the other Mary,” seem to be doing on the Sunday after Jesus’ death. The last thing they imagine is that they’ll see the risen Jesus.
Verses 2-4: “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.”
“That seems pretty far-fetched,” we might say. You can bet that the people in the first century who first heard Matthew’s gospel would have had the same reaction. It would have seemed just as crazy as it does to us. An angel descended from heaven, rolled away a burial stone, and struck dumb armed soldiers who were overwhelmed by the appearance of the angel.
If Matthew had been most concerned with convincing skeptics, he may have been well-advised to leave out all the details--earthquakes, angels, heavenly luminescence.
But Matthew isn’t interested in making an impressive argument. He’s only interested in telling you the truth.
It’s up to you to decide whether you’re willing to believe it or not.
And, if you are willing to believe, God’s Holy Spirit can help you to believe despite your skepticism.
This is exactly what happened to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. They come to the tomb convinced that Jesus is dead. Soon though, open to the angel’s message about Jesus rising melts their skepticism into faith. This happens even though they have yet to set eyes on the resurrected Jesus! Watch out: That can happen to us when we attend to God’s Word with an open mind!
When I started going to worship just to get my wife off my back for sleeping in on Sundays, Jesus grabbed me by the lapels and said, “Listen, you! You have no idea what you’re talking about when you say I don’t exist, when you say that the resurrection is hooey. Listen to the witnesses to My resurrection. Listen to the people who risked their earthly lives, honor, and income to proclaim the truth they knew and experienced!”
As Romans 10:17 teaches us: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”
That’s what happened to me: I let the truth in God's Word do its life-giving, faith-creating work in me, the truth about a God Who loved me so much that He sent His only Son that whoever believes in Him will not be killed off by death, but will rise just as Jesus rose to live with God for eternity.
Folks, good news like that will change not only your eternity, it will have a direct impact on how you live right now. Verse 5: “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’”
In the Bible, the first thing an angel almost always says to the people they encounter is, “Don’t be afraid.” That’s because angels reflect the perfect righteousness and glory of God Himself. The angel says that the women shouldn’t be afraid and then says that, just as He’d foretold, Jesus was risen.
And then, the angel commissions the two women to teach the Church that Jesus was risen from the dead. “Go,” the angel says, “tell the others that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Then, they need to race to Galilee to catch up with Him!”
I’ve wondered why Jesus chose to meet the apostles sixty miles from His burial spot. Maybe this is the reason: After Jesus’ resurrection, some people said that Jesus hadn’t really died on the cross, only fainted or “swooned.” Muslims still say this. But try imagining a man who has fainted after being severely beaten and wounded, waking in a cave. He would still be weak, near death. Can you imagine such a sick, wounded person then tearing up to Galilee on His own?
Wounded men don’t run.
Dead men don’t run.
But Jesus, once dead, apparently now can do more the run. Jesus was living out the promise of the prophet Isaiah: “...those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
“I’m running to Galilee,” Jesus is saying through the angel messenger, “tell the eleven to follow Me there and catch me if they can!"
I love verse 8: “So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”
The women didn’t have all of their questions answered. They hadn’t seen Jesus face to face.
But they had heard the Word about Jesus and they were running to tell the skeptics what they now knew by faith in Jesus.
Listen: Faith isn’t knowing every answer. Faith is knowing the One Who is the answer.
And here’s what I have learned: When I act with faith in the risen Jesus Who I cannot see, He shows Himself to me in ways I could not have imagined.
The women have no thought of actually seeing the risen Jesus; they simply believe in Him and are intent on proclaiming Him.
But look at what happens next! Verse 9: “Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said.They [the women] came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’”
When Jesus says, “Do not be afraid” here, they are the same words spoken by the angel to them a few moments before. But I agree with Dr. Jim Nestingen that when Jesus says these words to the women at this moment, He means something different than the angel meant.
From what Matthew tells us, the appearance of the angel would have been terrifying. But from what Matthew says here, the appearance of Jesus seems to have been as understated and matter of fact as His greeting, just as it had always been throughout His earthly life.
That makes sense: When God the Son took on human flesh, He laid aside His glory. He entered the world as a baby. Jesus came into this world not to overwhelm us but to save us, true God AND true man.
I think Jesus is telling the women this: "Do not be afraid...of death; I have conquered. I have killed off its power over you. I’m alive and when you turn from sin and trust in Me by faith, you are alive! I give you a full share in My victory. Death can’t separate you from the resurrection life I have for you. Neither can sadness, adversity, family feuds, career setbacks, poverty, disease, instability, politics, economics. None of these things can separate us from God. This world may do its worst to you. But when you believe in Jesus as the risen King of your life, God will always have His best in store for you!"
So, are you willing to believe in the resurrection?
Then, militate against your doubt and your skepticism.
- Act on your belief, however faint it may be.
- Run (or walk, or hobble, or crawl, or drive) from this place and, today, this week, find someone to tell or some way to act that shows the truth that Jesus is risen.
- Read one of the gospels and let their witness help you to know the risen Jesus intimately and well. If you will do this, I feel certain that you will do exactly what I did when I first started taking the gospels seriously and what I keep doing as I dig into them each day, you will fall in love with Jesus. To know Jesus is to love Him...because you know that He has loved you first.
Don’t be afraid! Run with Jesus...you will never run alone. Happy Easter! Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Easter services.]
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