Why Pray?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

Luke 18:1-8
The widow in the parable Jesus tells in today’s gospel lesson is desperate and helpless. She needs vindication. The culture in which Jesus lived during His time on earth gave no legal standing to women. Yet, this widow incessantly seeks vindication anyway: Whatever her standing in society, she knows that she cannot survive or live without a judge vindicating her, justifying her.

The judge is a particularly corrupt and nasty human being. Precisely because widows had no standing in the ancient world in which God raised His people Israel into being, God repeatedly commanded the Jews to care for widows, as well as for orphans, foreigners, and those the world often marginalizes, ignores, or leaves behind. But the judge had no concern about the will of God or the niceties of the law.

The meaning of this parable is underscored in part, by what Jesus has to say just before He tells it. At the end of Luke, chapter 17, Jesus talks about what His disciples, including you and me, are to expect from life in this world until, on the last day, the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus returns to this world to judge the living and the dead and to make all things right. This world, the world as it is between Jesus' ascension and His return is the one in which you and I have lived our entire lives. As it progresses, we are called to be about God's business: trusting in Christ for life and forgiveness, living in love for God and the world, and in fellowship with His Church.

This is a dangerous time.  

It’s a time in which believers in Christ are subject to the possibility of rejection, even persecution, of course. 

But more certainly, it’s a time in which we may be lulled into thinking that this world and its rewards are all that we need, that there is nothing better that God can offer us than the baubles this world so values. Or that because we endure hardships and grief, God must be absent and His gospel false. 

Listen: The central truth of human history is that despite our sins, God, the lovesick Father Who sent the Son Jesus to die as the perfect sacrifice for our sins and to lift the burden of sin, death, and darkness off of our shoulders for all eternity, then raised Him from death to kick down the door to eternal life with God for all who believe in Jesus, and even now, sends His Holy Spirit to create faith in Jesus when God’s gospel Word comes to us, has never and will never give up on us! He has never given up on you! 

That’s why Jesus preached, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)  

That’s why Jesus also said, in a passage you’ve often heard me cite, “...the one who endures [in faith in Christ] to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13) 

The disciple of Jesus is called to cling to Christ, Who has endured everything you and I have ever or will ever endure, including death, yet rose. We are to cling to Christ, knowing through Him that God will never leave us and never forsake us. 

He will walk with us through all the valleys of the shadow of death we experience in this world and at the end of the ages, He’s going to call out to us in our graves and say, “Rise!” 

And He will tell us, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34) 

All who turn from sin and trust in Jesus as their God and Savior will experience eternal vindication for their faith in Him.

But how are we to live now, in these dangerous times? Jesus tells us how in the parable that makes up today’s gospel lesson, Luke 18:1-18. Take a look at it with me, please. 

Verse 1: “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” 

The word used here for lose heart in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel is ἐκκακέω. It’s a compound word literally meaning called out from. A good definition might be to be overcome on the outside--in our actions and thoughts--by the weariness that we feel on the inside. 

Jesus says that we need to avoid allowing ourselves to be so wearied by the things we experience in this world that we stop trusting in Him and in the promises He has guaranteed by His death and resurrection. 

God knows that life in this world can be wearying.

It’s why Jesus tells us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) 

It’s why we’re told in Isaiah 40:31: “...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.” 

Jesus tells us that we will not grow weary in following Him in these in-between times when we pray.

Verse 2: “[Jesus] said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”’ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

The judge in Jesus’ parable is as unlike God as it’s possible to be. 

• God the Son Jesus, as we see from His cross, divested Himself of His power to become a servant to the human race, selflessly cleansing us of the filth of sin and the rot of death by His innocent blood. This God wants nothing more than to vindicate us, to justify us, simply for trusting in Christ. 
• By contrast, the judge is vain, self-centered, corrupt, and, it would seem, likelier to give justice to the high and mighty than to lowly people like this widow. Yet even this judge, Jesus says, will get around to bringing justice to the widow simply because she will not stop petitioning for vindication and justice.

How do we stay faithful to Jesus in a world that largely ignores Him? 

How do we stay faithful when we experience stress and challenges, the monotonous demands of everyday life, the drudgery of inglorious tasks, the pain of suffering, grief, rejection, conflict, uncertainty, and death? 

Like the widow, desperate and helpless, we turn to the Judge, not a corrupt judge like the one in Jesus' parable, but to God, the Lord of all creation. 

We pray to the God in Jesus’ name. We find in this God we meet in Jesus a Father who will not delay in vindicating our faith--even in the midst of the in-between world in which we live. 

As we meet Him in prayer in Jesus’ name--as well as in His Word and in the sacraments we share in the fellowship of believers--the righteous Judge of all will assure us once again, as His Word promises, that nothing can separate us from the love of God given to us in Christ Jesus. “I know that Jesus is right here with me” is a message I have heard from more than one dying Christian over the years.

When I was young and strong, I deluded myself with the idea that I was strong enough to take on any challenge...before breakfast. 

I thought that I was, “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” 

I thought that I was virtuous and deserving. 

I believed these things deep down even after I had come to faith in Christ and had been ordained as a pastor and should have known better. 

I didn’t realize I thought those things, but they were there and still remain as part of my sinful nature from which I will only be finally free after I have died and rise with Christ on the last day. 

I am older and weaker now. And, if I live into the future on this earth, I will be older and weaker still. It has become untenable for me to pretend to be Superman or that I’m self-sufficient, or virtuous or deserving. 

I am none of these things. 

I am an undeserving sinner made a saint only by the grace God gives to those who acknowledge their sin, their weakness, and their desperation and fall in faith into the arms of the One Who died and rose for people like me. 

It is only sinners who turn to Christ, like the helpless widow, who are vindicated by the God of all creation Who is anxious to grace us with His forgiveness, His love, His life.

So when you feel defeated, pray that God will lift you up. 

When you feel victorious, pray that God will keep you honest about who and what you are. 

When you feel accosted by temptation, pray to God to confess that you are too weak to resist the sin that would otherwise drag you into hell. 

When you sin, pray to God in the name of the Son Who died for sinners like you and me and you will be forgiven. 

When you face decisions or are called to do things beyond your capacity, pray and God will guide you and do through you what you cannot do in your own power. (I know this to be true because I’ve been doing a job I am incapable of doing for thirty-five years now.) 

Whatever your circumstance, when you go to the Father in prayer in Jesus’ name, He will always vindicate you. Even after you have died, the God Who died and rose for you will vindicate your trust in Jesus and welcome you into His eternal embrace.

At the end of our lesson today, Jesus asks, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” 

We are saved from sin and death not by anything we do. 

We are saved by a faith given to us by God the Holy Spirit that recognizes the helplessness and desperation of our human condition and, by the powerful Word of God, empowers us to believe that as we call out to Jesus, we are saved. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” God’s Word tells us. 

So, keep calling on the Lord. 

Pray in Jesus’ name. 

Whether now or in eternity or both, Your faith in Christ will be vindicated. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

When Your World is Rocked

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Mark 13:24-37
As Lutheran Christians, we follow what’s known as a lectionary, an appointed set of Bible lessons for every Sunday of the Church Year. 

We have the freedom to break away from the lectionary, to be sure. But, over the course of a year, it provides a balanced diet of God’s Word for us to grow on as disciples of Jesus. 

Oddly enough, the gospel lesson for this Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church Year, is the same one we had for the first Sunday of the Church Year when we kicked off Advent last December 3. Do the scholars and church leaders who put the lectionary think that we’re slow learners?

Well, speaking for myself, that’s probably the case. 

But I think that there’s a more important reason for having the same gospel lesson bracket the Church Year. 

A lot can happen in our lives over the course of a year. When I consider the twists and turns that our lives--Ann’s and mine--have taken the past twelve months, I have to say that not everything that has happened was expected. 

Some things have been good. 

Some not so good. 

I know the same is even truer for many of you. You’ve experienced joys and successes, grief, loss, good news, encouraging news, bad news. 

And now, at the end of one Church Year, on the cusp of a new one, which will start next Sunday, we encounter Jesus at the same place we met Him on the First Sunday of Advent, Mark 13:24-37.

Our lesson falls in the same chapter of Mark that absorbed us last week. 

I’m thankful for faithful Christian Bible scholars who agree in upholding the main tenets of our faith. But even they can disagree when it comes to Mark, chapter 13. 

It begins, you’ll remember, with Jesus talking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Some scholars say that that’s all that Jesus talks about in Mark 13. Others say that Jesus only talks about the end of this world. 

Others say basically, and I agree with them, that Jesus, God incarnate, was capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. 

As I read His words in Mark 13, I see Jesus talking about both the destruction of the temple--an event that would happen about four decades after He was crucified and rose from the dead--and the end of the world. 

Jesus talks about the end of the temple as a way of telling the early Church, that when those still living four decades later saw the destruction of the temple and all the things He told them that would lead up to it, they would know, if the resurrection wasn't proof enough, to trust what He told them about the coming of His kingdom in its fullness when He returned, bringing an end to this world.

Jesus was also saying that now eternal life and a relationship with God don’t come to human beings through temples made of stone, but solely through faith in Him. In a way, Jesus is here reiterating what He said at the end of last Sunday’s gospel lesson: “...the one who stands firm [in Him] to the end will be saved.” (Mark 13:13)

How firm are you standing today? 

Confession: I’m feeling a bit rocky. There are new challenges in our lives. And my dad was hospitalized this past week, coming home with a new friend, an oxygen tank. And there are other things going on in my life, just as there is in yours. 

Here’s something God has been working overtime to teach me in the past year: If I try to stand firm in my own power, I will surely fail. I'm learning the truth of Jesus' words, "Without Me, you can do nothing" (John 15:5). And I'm also learning what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote, "I can do all [things] through Him Who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).

As surely as I am saved from sin and death, not by my attempts at being a good person, but solely on the basis of what God has done for me in the crucified and risen Jesus and the faith in Jesus the Holy Spirit has given to me, I am also filled with God’s strength for living by this same gracious God revealed in Jesus.

I’m able to face life’s uncertainties, and grow as a person of faith ONLY because of the faith in Jesus that He keeps pumping into my life by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

I can stand firm in this life and be ready for the end of this life or the end of this world because Jesus Christ has taken up residence in my life, just as He did in Your life the day you were baptized. 

Through Isaiah 40:31, God promises: “...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.”

This is the essential message Jesus gives to us this morning in the gospel lesson. We’ll focus on the first few verses, then survey the rest of the passage in which Jesus undergirds His message. Take a look at the lesson, Mark 13:24-37. “But in those days [the days Jesus spoke of last week, the days of the world being the world, full of earthquakes, famines, and wars], following that distress, ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’”

Jesus speaks of a world in “distress.” That word in the Greek in which Mark wrote, which is translated as distress is thlipsin. This word originally referred to the pressure people feel when trying to slide their bodies through narrow slits between two rock formations say in a cave. That describes, I think, the pressure we all can feel in the daily uncertainties and challenges of life. 

When one of my sisters called to say that my dad had been taken to a hospital ER, I didn’t know what to say. I'd just had dinner with him a few days before and he'd eaten like a horse. I wasn't prepared for him to be so sick. I was taken by surprise and felt the pressure of uncertainty. So much so that my sister asked me at one point, “Are you OK?” Here's the deal: I am OK not because I’m OK, but because of Jesus living in me.

Jesus borrows Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah to talk about the judgment God is going to bring on the unrepentant after the pressure of this uncertain world has been felt by those who trust in Him. The stars will fall from the skies. And, as one commentary puts it, “those great unseen forces of nature by which the universe is now held in equipoise” will be shaken. Jesus says that life in this world can sometimes be confusing and scary. Have you noticed that to be true?

But we have Jesus’ promise that God will never cease to act in and on the lives of those who turn to Him. He won’t let chaos, confusion, or uncertainty have the final say over our lives. 

Verse 26: “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” 

Jesus, the Son of Man, will return and bring an end to sin, death, futility, and uncertainty and to finally establish His eternal kingdom to all who have trusted in Him.

“Great,” we may think. “Someday, Jesus will make everything right. What are we supposed to do in the meantime? And what’s He going to do for me until then?”

At this point, the preachers of religion would tell us that now it’s up to us, that we need to get busy, do good, be good. That, in some form, is what every religion of the world will tell you, from Scientology to Islam, from Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witness to Hinduism and Shintoism. “Work hard,” they all say, “to please God, to please your ancestors, to please the forces of the world.” And, I have it on the authority of God's Word that all of these preachers of religion are dead wrong!

The preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (and the disciples of Jesus Christ) will tell you, “Stop trying to be good. Let Jesus live in you. Let Him enter your life, trust in Him, and He will work good in and through you.” 

“The work of God is this,” says Jesus, “to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29) 

Even more radically, the preachers of the Gospel say that even our faith isn’t something we do, even our faith is a gift from God. It’s a simple matter of daily letting Jesus into our lives. “Here I am!” Jesus says in Revelation 3:20, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

Disciples know that when the goodness and grace of God given in Christ go to work in us, God will accomplish things in and through us that we can’t accomplish on our own. 

As my colleague Pastor Steve King writes in the latest issue of Connections magazine, “The hammer does not pay back the carpenter by doing its own work, apart from the carpenter's hand; the hammer is used by the carpenter to do his work. In the same way, we are simply a tool in the Carpenter's hand…” 

God isn’t looking for us to do good works to pay Him back for the gift of His Son Jesus. And He isn't looking for you to undertake good works to be ready for Jesus' return. 

He’s looking for access to our hearts, minds, wills, and lives. He wants to take up residence in our lives to daily re-form us in Christ’s image, to ready us for eternity, and to bring His gospel to the world through us. He wants us to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). He wants to daily love us into a life of being made ever new by His grace.

This really is the crux of Jesus’ message for us today, a message I need as much at the end of this Church Year as I did at its beginning. 

When Jesus tells us to, “Be on guard! Be alert!” and “...keep watch” and “...do not let him find you sleeping” and “Watch,” what He’s really telling us is this: Don’t let the pressures or the pleasures of this world, don’t let anything, prevent you from turning to Him for the strength, the peace, and the life only He can deliver and that we need to live each day. 

Don’t let the guilt you may feel for past sins keep you from turning to Him. 

Don’t let the pride that may lull you into self-sufficiency keep you from turning to Him. 

Don’t let life’s uncertainties frighten you so much that you forget that you can always turn to Him. 

Don’t let the disapproval of others keep you from turning to Him. 

Whatever the coming twelve months may bring, turn to Jesus, God the Son, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. 

Moses confessed, “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Psalm 90:2). 

This is the God Who, in Christ, claimed you as His child in your baptism and Who wants to be with you now and forever. Let His love and strength fill you each day. Let Him in and keep watching for Him. He will always show up and He will never let you go. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Being With You Is All That Matters

This is the journal entry from my quiet time with God today.

Look: “David asked him, ‘Why weren’t you afraid to lift your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?’” (2 Samuel 1:14)

The question is asked by David of the Amalekite who had brought news of Saul’s death to him. Saul, resentful of David, had marshaled armies to kill David for a long time. You might expect David to feel relief, even happiness, at the death of his tormentor. But he’s not.

In the course of conversation, David asks the Amalekite how he knows that Saul is dead. It turns out that the man had seen Saul on the battlefield, near death. Saul begged the man to take his life. While Saul’s feelings are understandable, this request is typical of him: Saul had a lifelong pattern of finding “easy ways” to avert responsibility without reference to the will of God. In fact, his entire sorry kingship was the result of just this impulse. Now, Saul, rather than facing death at the hands of enemies or his already severe wounds, begged this Amalekite to give him a way out. Saul feared humiliation more than he feared dying. The Amalekite complied with Saul’s request.

David was horrified that the man who stood before him had the temerity “to destroy the Lord’s anointed.” Saul had long fallen prey to the idea that he was bigger than the office to which he had been called, that this office belonged to him to be wielded in ways that pleased or made things easy for him. Whenever people denigrate their callings by viewing them as their entitlements, they make their egos larger and their souls smaller. And they make their egos larger precisely because they are filled with feelings of inferiority. This is why Israel’s last great judge told Saul after God had become vexed with Saul’s flights of egotism born of inferiority: “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel…” (1 Samuel 15:17)  

Saul had been called and anointed by God to be Israel’s first king. Had he relied on God, respected his calling and been humble about his person, all would likely have gone well for Saul and for Israel.

But Saul reversed things: He denigrated his calling and been arrogant and self-seeking for himself and his own glory, constantly replacing his own faulty, impatient judgments for the will of God, sought in God’s Word and in prayer.

To the last, Saul sought to have his own way, which is why he begged an Amalekite to kill him. He wanted the man to violate the sixth commandment: “You shall not murder.”

David, by contrast, had respect for the office to which Saul had been anointed. (Although as David’s life unfolded, he wasn’t always respectful of his calling.) Samuel, in fact, had already, before Saul’s death, anointed David to be his successor.

For this and other reasons, Saul had tried many times to kill David. And David, had many chances to kill Saul, an easy way out that would have enjoyed the support of many in Israel. But each time he had the chance to kill Saul, David refused. He would not destroy or harm God’s anointed one; he wouldn’t usurp the office of king from Saul. He wouldn’t take what God intended to give to him.

And David was horrified that this Amalekite would show such contempt for the will of God, which had made Saul king, by murdering the Lord’s anointed one.

Listen: There are lots of lessons here. But one of them is to patiently seek to do God’s will, to not force our will on circumstances in the search for closure or convenience or to avoid the difficult. God says through the prophet Isaiah: “...they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

That’s true. But in the waiting, we’ll also experience the temptation to despair, the temptation to give up, the temptation to seek human closure rather than divine solution. The adversity and pain that sometimes happens in the waiting can be the road by which God refines us, makes us new, teaches us dependence, integrity, and most of all, faith.

The apostle Peter talks about how God works in the lives of Christians through adversity near the beginning of his first-century letter to the churches in Asia Minor:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1:3-7)

David was renewed in his faith and in his life by God through the strength God provides to those willing to admit that they don’t know it all, control it all, understand it all.

When things are unendurable, believers in the God we know in Jesus own the reality of their vulnerability and give up on trying to draw strength from within themselves, drawing it instead from God. God gives us His endurance.

Paul wrote “...for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:13). When I can own my weakness and my need of Christ, He fills me with His strength.

For Saul, there was nothing worse than being judged as weak or unsuccessful by the world. He loathed to see his poll numbers go down, his generalship deemed weak or inadequate.

In this, he wrecked his life and showed himself to be a fool because wisdom and strength only come from God. Proverbs 3:5-6, one of my favorite memory verses from the Bible, says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Saul didn’t trust God and he did lean on his own understanding. He didn’t submit to God and he took a crooked path away from God and the life that only God can give.

David was always at his best when he was dependent on God. Like all of us, he could be a fool (that adultery and murder thing was a disaster). But he also knew what to do when, like Saul, his life got off track. His confessions of sin and professions of faith, spoken by a man broken by his willfulness still move me:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” (Psalm 51:10-12)

Respond: Forgive me, God, for the sake of Jesus, for wanting to take easy ways. I don’t seek to suffer, of course; that would be masochism. But I do seek not to avoid adversity, challenge, difficulty, or opposition. I do seek to trust in You when things aren’t perfect, when the going gets tough. I do seek to thank You and honor You even in the midst of tough times.

Forgive me too, for wanting to deny my vulnerability, for pretending invincibility. I know that these pretenses act as walls that keep Your grace, power, guidance, and wisdom from penetrating my life. When I’m busy building up my own walls of invincibility, I can’t be the clay that’s molded by its Maker.

Help me to remember how essential it is to sacrifice my broken spirit to You, as David wrote: “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17) Help me to lose my pride and so gain Your power in my life, even in the face of death.

And if my spirit isn’t broken by the realization of my sin, imperfection, and mortality, break me, smash me in pieces; it’s only in being broken by You that I can be made new. It’s only by volunteering for last place that I’m qualified to take the place You assign to me.

Forgive me for being inclined in my thinking and in my speech, to lift myself up. James says: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 1:7). Help me to rely on You to lift me or place me wherever You want me to be, because wherever You put me is where I should be. Help me to embrace the ambition of Psalm 84:10: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”

Being with You, Lord, and having You with me is all that matters. That’s where the grace is. That’s where the strength is. That’s where the life is.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen