Most days, I try to begin the morning in quiet time with God. You'll see an explanation of how I approach quiet time here. Below is the journal entry for today's quiet time.
Look: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’” (Mark 1:14-15)
Jesus brings the kingdom of God. He embodies it. He is its king. Jesus is saying here, I think: “You’ve been looking for the kingdom of God. Here it is. And if you want to be part of it, you need to do two things. First, turn away from your sins and trust in the forgiveness I bring from God. That’s what it means to repent. Second, trust in or believe in the gospel. The gospel is the good news that all who trust in God’s Son, crucified and risen for us, is part of God’s kingdom.”
And when is someone part of God’s kingdom? NOW. The kingdom will come in its fullness, of course, when Jesus returns to the earth, closing down this old creation, and those who have trusted in Him rise to be with Him eternally in His new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). But the kingdom has already come to us. When we repent and believe in Jesus, we are in the kingdom now.
Jesus says in John 5:25: “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
And He says in Luke 17:21, that “...the kingdom of God is in your midst."
Listen: How do I live in Your kingdom now, Lord?
In the high priestly prayer offered in the garden before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed to the Father: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” (John 17:14-15)
It’s Jesus’ will for His disciples to live in the world while not being of the world. We are to be cordial and loving toward the world, but when its worship, values, actions, thoughts, and approach to justice conflict with those of God’s kingdom, we’re to stand with Christ. To manifest the kingdom of God today, we must be in but not of the world.
This is hard.
But I have several important resources to rely on when it comes to being in but not of the world.
Jesus mentions one of them in this petition of the prayer: God’s Word. Spending time in God’s Word is essential. Otherwise, my brain gets addled and I go to the default position of my sinful, human nature. Spending the first hours of my day Fox and Friends or Morning Joe will help me live in the kingdom. (Help me to remember this, Lord.)
But this will only happen, I think, if my reading of God’s Word is begun, filled with, and supported by the very thing that Jesus did in the garden. He prayed. I must pray. Prayer is a conversation in which I connect with God. When I ask God to show me what I need to see in His Word, I find that I see lots more of God and His will for my life than I would if I approached it as a reading assignment.
These are two private resources God gives to us to buttress kingdom-living, to foster our own growth as disciples.
But God also makes me part of the body of Christ, the indispensable Christian community.
People who profess faith Christ but don’t want to have anything to do with the messy business of being part of His family, the Church, are at risk of becoming lost sheep who wander away from Christ and His kingdom. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20)
We are made for life in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). When the kingdom of God comes fully, we will be part of an eternal kingdom that lives out the great commandment, a fellowship in which we love God and love others.
Other Christians may annoy us, offend us, even harm us. But we need Christ’s body, the Church.
It’s in the body of Christ that we hear God’s Word, not always as we want to hear it, but as read and proclaimed; we receive the sacraments, in which God claims us as His own (Holy Baptism) and which renews us and fills us with Christ’s very life (Holy Communion); we commit ourselves to mutual care and accountability.
Respond: As I think about how I can manifest my citizenship in God’s kingdom right now, I ask, Lord, that You will help me:
1. Express love for my fellow citizens of the kingdom today.
2. Look for opportunities to share Christ with those who seem to live outside of the kingdom.
3. Seek justice for those who are abused or left behind by the world’s system of warped values.
4. Treat others with simple decency.
Help me in these ways, Lord Jesus, to live as one saved by Your gospel and so prove to be an ambassador in this foreign land in which I live on this side of the resurrection (1 Peter 2:11-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20-21)
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Showing posts with label Mark 1:14-15. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark 1:14-15. Show all posts
Friday, January 19, 2018
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Why it's hard (for me and maybe you) to obey God
Doing the prep work for our next discipleship small group gathering, the workbook poses this question: "What are some similarities between the way children obey their parents and the ways Christians obey God?"
As someone who finds obedience to God a challenge, I thought that this was a good question and came up with at least four answers. (If you don't find obeying God difficult, you're either already in eternity with God, in denial, or the most exceptional human being I know.)
Despite the sentimentalization of childhood that sometimes beclouds our judgments, trust doesn't come naturally to us at birth, the result of the inborn condition of sin, the human inclination to trust only oneself. (To put it as the serpent expresses it in Genesis, we want to "be like God.")
Throughout our lives, we must deal with the question of whether we trust ourselves most of all. The gospel about Jesus Christ, God in the flesh Who bears our sins on the cross, accepting our punishment for our failure to trust God and all the selfish, loveless acts and ways of thinking that result, then rises to open up an eternity built on a trusting relationship with God and His grace, is the only thing that can overcome our original sin, our failure to trust.
As Erikson suggests, the remnants of our trust v. mistrust conflict remains with us our whole lives. But the Christian knows that we are changed, in the words of 'Amazing Grace, "the hour [we] first believed..."
When, by the Holy Spirit's power, we're able to confess our sin, our need of a Savior and Lord, and acknowledge that Christ is that Savior and Lord, God goes to work to help us become to trust Him and be set free to love God and love neighbor (Mark 1:14-15; 1 Corinthians 12:3).
But, this side of the grave, the work is never completed. At present, we see through a glass darkly, to use Saint Paul's image, and we know only in part (1 Corinthians 13:12).
The result is that:
In fact, they have things backwards: God is Abba, our Father and Creator. And when He created flesh and blood human beings, He gave them parents, whose functions in their children's lives is to mirror God's approach to the whole human race. God gives life, loves, nurtures, guides, and disciplines. He does this all through the agency of His Church. Parents are to do the same things with their children.
Parents like these, despite their imperfections, will elicit the trust of their children.
God, always perfect, can elicit the same trust from us for Him when we open ourselves to His grace given only in Jesus Christ.
But that doesn't mean that obeying the God Who loves us with infinite passion is easy. It isn't. And apart from His grace and love given in Christ, we wouldn't even think to try.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
As someone who finds obedience to God a challenge, I thought that this was a good question and came up with at least four answers. (If you don't find obeying God difficult, you're either already in eternity with God, in denial, or the most exceptional human being I know.)
1. Both (sometimes) trust that that God or our parents have our best interests in mind.Famed psychologist and psychotherapist Erik Erikson said that human development happens as we successfully negotiate a series of certain internal conflicts over the course of our lives. The first one to be negotiated, he said, is trust v. mistrust. This conflict is played out initially in our homes, with our parents.
2. We sometimes obey in spite of what it is we really want to do.
3. We sometimes obey begrudgingly.
4. When we trust God or parents, we trust that obedience is the best thing.
Despite the sentimentalization of childhood that sometimes beclouds our judgments, trust doesn't come naturally to us at birth, the result of the inborn condition of sin, the human inclination to trust only oneself. (To put it as the serpent expresses it in Genesis, we want to "be like God.")
Throughout our lives, we must deal with the question of whether we trust ourselves most of all. The gospel about Jesus Christ, God in the flesh Who bears our sins on the cross, accepting our punishment for our failure to trust God and all the selfish, loveless acts and ways of thinking that result, then rises to open up an eternity built on a trusting relationship with God and His grace, is the only thing that can overcome our original sin, our failure to trust.
As Erikson suggests, the remnants of our trust v. mistrust conflict remains with us our whole lives. But the Christian knows that we are changed, in the words of 'Amazing Grace, "the hour [we] first believed..."
When, by the Holy Spirit's power, we're able to confess our sin, our need of a Savior and Lord, and acknowledge that Christ is that Savior and Lord, God goes to work to help us become to trust Him and be set free to love God and love neighbor (Mark 1:14-15; 1 Corinthians 12:3).
But, this side of the grave, the work is never completed. At present, we see through a glass darkly, to use Saint Paul's image, and we know only in part (1 Corinthians 13:12).
The result is that:
(1) there are times when I disobey God's will for my life, even though, because of my gratitude for His grace, I want to obey Him. When this happens and I wake up to see the truth, I need to turn back to Him for forgiveness and the power to live differently.
(2) there are (many) times when I do or refrain from doing what God wants me to do, even though I would rather go in another direction.There are some people who claim that Christians project their experience as children with parents onto an imagined God, that God's Word is a figment of the human imagination.
In fact, they have things backwards: God is Abba, our Father and Creator. And when He created flesh and blood human beings, He gave them parents, whose functions in their children's lives is to mirror God's approach to the whole human race. God gives life, loves, nurtures, guides, and disciplines. He does this all through the agency of His Church. Parents are to do the same things with their children.
Parents like these, despite their imperfections, will elicit the trust of their children.
God, always perfect, can elicit the same trust from us for Him when we open ourselves to His grace given only in Jesus Christ.
But that doesn't mean that obeying the God Who loves us with infinite passion is easy. It isn't. And apart from His grace and love given in Christ, we wouldn't even think to try.
[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Free from, free for
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Most of us probably read Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, for English class. "Two roads diverged in a yellow road…” it opens, starting a meditation about the choices we make in life, the roads we travel.
In fact, there really are only two pathways through life, two pathways through eternity. They’re not the roads that Frost talked about in his poem. But, just like the narrator in the Frost poem, we must choose between two roads each day of our lives nonetheless.
The apostle Paul talks about them in today’s second lesson, Galatians 5:1, 13-25.
Take a look at the lesson, starting at Galatians 5:1, please. Paul writes: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Another translation, The Message, may make these words a little easier to understand: “Christ has set us free to live a free life."
Those who have come to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus have been set free from the condemnation for our sins we all deserve from the moment we’re born and from the demands for moral perfection that exist in God’s Law.
Because Jesus lived a morally perfect life and accepted our earned punishment for sin, those who believe in Christ are set free to live life as God intended human beings to live when He made Adam and Eve. Live in that freedom, Paul says.
Paul goes on: “Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
The specific situation among the Galatian Christians was that they had come under the influence of people we now call Judaizers, people who told the new Gentile believers in Galatia that more than just trust in Jesus Christ, they had to engage in good works and obey Jewish ritual and civil laws in order to be saved from sin and death. They were saying, in essence, that Jesus’ cross wasn’t enough to save them.
Paul begged the Galatian Christians not to fall for this nonsense!
If the law could save human beings from sin and death, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die on the cross. Paul is saying, “After Jesus has set you free from sin and death, don’t turn right around and make yourselves slaves to rules that cannot give you life.”
Doing that would be like an inmate getting out of prison, then showing up the next morning at the prison gates asking for readmission because he couldn’t stand his freedom.
Trust in Jesus, not rules. And don't trust in your own actions, reason, or feelings, Paul was urging.
We may think, “I get all of that, Pastor. That’s Lutheranism 101. We know we’re only saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.”
That’s true, of course. Grace, charitable forgiveness, is the remarkable character trait of God’s by which He decides not to hold our sins against us as we repent and trust in Jesus. And, as we often sing, God’s grace really is "amazing." God’s grace does set us free!
And God's grace in Christ is powerful! A long time ago, a man I knew came to me several years after he had left his wife, divorced her, and married the woman with whom he’d had an affair while he was married to wife number one. He was, after a time, conscience- stricken. He wondered: Could God’s grace in Christ still reach Him? Could he be forgiven? Could grace set him free from condemnation for the sins he confessed?
I listened to this man. Part of me was revolted by what he had done. I knew his first wife. I knew what pain his actions had caused her, their family, their friends, their church.
But I realized that if the grace of God given in Christ couldn’t set this repentant soul free, then Jesus’ death on the cross was for nothing.
Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, John the Baptist said. Nowhere does the New Testament say that Jesus can take away the sins of only some sinners. Nor does it say anywhere in Scripture that Jesus' death on the cross can only bring forgiveness to some sins. All who repent and believe in Jesus are set free by God's grace.
“Yes,” I told the man. “God’s grace can reach you.” Slowly, then joyfully, this man began to walk in the freedom of forgiven sin and new life.
But, let's conduct a little thought experiment about this man.
What would have happened had he viewed God’s forgiveness as license, as a get out of jail free card?
Where would he have stood with God then?
Is the freedom Christ gives to us the freedom to do anything we want to do?
Had that man decided that it was OK for him to have another affair, or commit any other sin that came into his mind because God is gracious, he would have shown that he didn’t live in freedom at all.
He would prove to be as trapped and helpless and far from God as the religious legalists who told the Galatian Christians that they needed to obey God’s law in order for God to love them or forgive them.
Jesus came not just to free us from things, like sin and death, but also to free us for things.
Jesus came to set us free for a new and different way of living.
And what exactly did Jesus set us free for when He died in our places on the cross? That’s what Paul tells us next: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”
When Paul talks about “the flesh,” he’s talking about the way we think about things as sinful human beings.
Walking in the flesh living is born of the desire we inherit from Adam and Eve to “be like God,” to be in control.
The Judaizers told the Galatian Christians that they needn’t depend on Jesus for their salvation. They could take control. If they were good people, they told the Galatians, God would have to take them into His kingdom, as though a human being is capable of bringing God to heel and bending God to accede to our will.
Sinful human thinking also may tell us to do whatever we want to do, to follow our inborn inclinations to sin, that once God's grace comes to us, it doesn't matter what evils we perpetrate.
But to legalists and unrepentant sinners alike, Jesus’ message is the same: “Repent.” “Follow Me.” “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Grace and freedom come through surrender to Jesus alone.
Grace isn’t a get out of jail free card. Grace is a set free for real living card!
Jesus died and rose to set us free, not to let us do whatever we want, but to live for the purposes for which we were made:
Paul draws the stark contrast that exists between life in the flesh--earthbound, death-bound thinking and living--on the one hand, and life lived with dependence on the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to all who believe in Him, on the other hand.
Look at what he says next, starting in verse 19: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The way of the flesh is the road away from God.
But the path of the Spirit is different. When the Spirit comes to live in us and we let Him set us free--as we confess our sins and receive Christ’s forgiveness, as we come to the waters of Holy Baptism, as we receive Jesus’ body and blood in Holy Communion--God’s ways take root in us.
When we keep in step with God’s Holy Spirit, day by day, each of us can be “like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season” (Psalm 1:3).
Paul talks about the fruit--the behavior patterns--that can be seen in those who draw life from God’s Spirit and not from the world: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. [And then, Paul says, I think, with a smile,] Against such things there is no law.”
Notice that all the works of the flesh are things we do, the things that we do when we take control and follow our own thoughts, impulses, judgments, and inclinations; but the fruits of the Spirit are the things that God does through those who believe in Him.
We don’t have to be good to get God’s love; we get to do good because the God Who is good lives in those who are sold out, body and soul, to Jesus Christ.
Paul tells us then: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Jesus Christ frees us from sin and death so that we can live.
As we let Him daily crucify the portions of our lives that seek to replace God’s will with our faulty judgment, He raises us up as new people, filled with the blessings of heaven even as we walk through this fallen world.
At the end of his poem, Frost writes: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
As I mentioned earlier, the two roads Frost talked about weren’t the two roads Paul speaks of in our lesson. But it is true that when, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we choose to walk in the Spirit instead of the way of the world--the way of the flesh--it makes all the difference.
Pray to God today and every day that God will help all of us to walk in the Spirit. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Most of us probably read Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, for English class. "Two roads diverged in a yellow road…” it opens, starting a meditation about the choices we make in life, the roads we travel.
In fact, there really are only two pathways through life, two pathways through eternity. They’re not the roads that Frost talked about in his poem. But, just like the narrator in the Frost poem, we must choose between two roads each day of our lives nonetheless.
The apostle Paul talks about them in today’s second lesson, Galatians 5:1, 13-25.
Take a look at the lesson, starting at Galatians 5:1, please. Paul writes: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Another translation, The Message, may make these words a little easier to understand: “Christ has set us free to live a free life."
Those who have come to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus have been set free from the condemnation for our sins we all deserve from the moment we’re born and from the demands for moral perfection that exist in God’s Law.
Because Jesus lived a morally perfect life and accepted our earned punishment for sin, those who believe in Christ are set free to live life as God intended human beings to live when He made Adam and Eve. Live in that freedom, Paul says.
Paul goes on: “Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
The specific situation among the Galatian Christians was that they had come under the influence of people we now call Judaizers, people who told the new Gentile believers in Galatia that more than just trust in Jesus Christ, they had to engage in good works and obey Jewish ritual and civil laws in order to be saved from sin and death. They were saying, in essence, that Jesus’ cross wasn’t enough to save them.
Paul begged the Galatian Christians not to fall for this nonsense!
If the law could save human beings from sin and death, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die on the cross. Paul is saying, “After Jesus has set you free from sin and death, don’t turn right around and make yourselves slaves to rules that cannot give you life.”
Doing that would be like an inmate getting out of prison, then showing up the next morning at the prison gates asking for readmission because he couldn’t stand his freedom.
Trust in Jesus, not rules. And don't trust in your own actions, reason, or feelings, Paul was urging.
We may think, “I get all of that, Pastor. That’s Lutheranism 101. We know we’re only saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.”
That’s true, of course. Grace, charitable forgiveness, is the remarkable character trait of God’s by which He decides not to hold our sins against us as we repent and trust in Jesus. And, as we often sing, God’s grace really is "amazing." God’s grace does set us free!
And God's grace in Christ is powerful! A long time ago, a man I knew came to me several years after he had left his wife, divorced her, and married the woman with whom he’d had an affair while he was married to wife number one. He was, after a time, conscience- stricken. He wondered: Could God’s grace in Christ still reach Him? Could he be forgiven? Could grace set him free from condemnation for the sins he confessed?
I listened to this man. Part of me was revolted by what he had done. I knew his first wife. I knew what pain his actions had caused her, their family, their friends, their church.
But I realized that if the grace of God given in Christ couldn’t set this repentant soul free, then Jesus’ death on the cross was for nothing.
Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, John the Baptist said. Nowhere does the New Testament say that Jesus can take away the sins of only some sinners. Nor does it say anywhere in Scripture that Jesus' death on the cross can only bring forgiveness to some sins. All who repent and believe in Jesus are set free by God's grace.
“Yes,” I told the man. “God’s grace can reach you.” Slowly, then joyfully, this man began to walk in the freedom of forgiven sin and new life.
But, let's conduct a little thought experiment about this man.
What would have happened had he viewed God’s forgiveness as license, as a get out of jail free card?
Where would he have stood with God then?
Is the freedom Christ gives to us the freedom to do anything we want to do?
Had that man decided that it was OK for him to have another affair, or commit any other sin that came into his mind because God is gracious, he would have shown that he didn’t live in freedom at all.
He would prove to be as trapped and helpless and far from God as the religious legalists who told the Galatian Christians that they needed to obey God’s law in order for God to love them or forgive them.
Jesus came not just to free us from things, like sin and death, but also to free us for things.
Jesus came to set us free for a new and different way of living.
And what exactly did Jesus set us free for when He died in our places on the cross? That’s what Paul tells us next: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”
When Paul talks about “the flesh,” he’s talking about the way we think about things as sinful human beings.
Walking in the flesh living is born of the desire we inherit from Adam and Eve to “be like God,” to be in control.
The Judaizers told the Galatian Christians that they needn’t depend on Jesus for their salvation. They could take control. If they were good people, they told the Galatians, God would have to take them into His kingdom, as though a human being is capable of bringing God to heel and bending God to accede to our will.
Sinful human thinking also may tell us to do whatever we want to do, to follow our inborn inclinations to sin, that once God's grace comes to us, it doesn't matter what evils we perpetrate.
But to legalists and unrepentant sinners alike, Jesus’ message is the same: “Repent.” “Follow Me.” “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Grace and freedom come through surrender to Jesus alone.
Grace isn’t a get out of jail free card. Grace is a set free for real living card!
Jesus died and rose to set us free, not to let us do whatever we want, but to live for the purposes for which we were made:
- to love God,
- to love neighbor,
- to tell the world about the greatness and goodness of God,
- to employ our talents, gifts, passions, and experiences alongside our sisters and brothers in Christ to be all we can be,
- to help others be all they can be through Christ.
Paul draws the stark contrast that exists between life in the flesh--earthbound, death-bound thinking and living--on the one hand, and life lived with dependence on the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to all who believe in Him, on the other hand.
Look at what he says next, starting in verse 19: “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The way of the flesh is the road away from God.
But the path of the Spirit is different. When the Spirit comes to live in us and we let Him set us free--as we confess our sins and receive Christ’s forgiveness, as we come to the waters of Holy Baptism, as we receive Jesus’ body and blood in Holy Communion--God’s ways take root in us.
When we keep in step with God’s Holy Spirit, day by day, each of us can be “like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season” (Psalm 1:3).
Paul talks about the fruit--the behavior patterns--that can be seen in those who draw life from God’s Spirit and not from the world: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. [And then, Paul says, I think, with a smile,] Against such things there is no law.”
Notice that all the works of the flesh are things we do, the things that we do when we take control and follow our own thoughts, impulses, judgments, and inclinations; but the fruits of the Spirit are the things that God does through those who believe in Him.
We don’t have to be good to get God’s love; we get to do good because the God Who is good lives in those who are sold out, body and soul, to Jesus Christ.
Paul tells us then: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Jesus Christ frees us from sin and death so that we can live.
As we let Him daily crucify the portions of our lives that seek to replace God’s will with our faulty judgment, He raises us up as new people, filled with the blessings of heaven even as we walk through this fallen world.
At the end of his poem, Frost writes: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
As I mentioned earlier, the two roads Frost talked about weren’t the two roads Paul speaks of in our lesson. But it is true that when, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we choose to walk in the Spirit instead of the way of the world--the way of the flesh--it makes all the difference.
Pray to God today and every day that God will help all of us to walk in the Spirit. Amen
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Let go of sins...no matter how accustomed you've grown to them
Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.” (Mark 1:14-15, The Message)
If you [God] kept a record of our sins,
who could escape being condemned?
But you forgive us,
so that we should stand in awe of you. (Psalm 130:3-4) (Good News Translation)
God's promise is clear: Whoever calls on the Lord, now revealed definitively not just to Jews but to all people everywhere through Jesus Christ, will be saved (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13).
Let Christ conquer your sins, your errors in judgment, the hurt you've caused others and yourself, the ways you've failed to love God and others. Let Christ conquer you!
Apologize to those you've hurt. Make right what you can. (See here.) But do it all in the freedom of one who has given unconditional surrender to Christ and lives in the freedom of being God's child now and in eternity.
Today, turn from sin and turn to Christ, entrusting your life to Him.
Then do it again tomorrow.
And the next day.
For the rest of your earthly life.
You'll make mistakes. But, as you keep turning from sin and turn to Christ, your mistakes...your sins, won't master you.
Christ will master them for you.
You'll be learning to live in Christ and you'll know the truth of God's Word: "Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Yay, God!
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Jesus or a Comfortable Life?
[This was shared during both of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]
Job 38:1-11
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
In today’s Gospel lesson (and really in all our Bible lessons for today as well), Jesus confronts us with a simple question: Do we want Him or do we want to be comfortable?
Do we want the God we meet in Jesus Christ or do we want easy, trouble-free lives?
Some of the hucksters on TV sell a brand of Christianity that tells us if we believe in Jesus and stay positive, we’ll be flush with cash, healthy, and successful.
The problem, of course, is that Jesus never promises any of this to those who follow Him.
Jesus does promise wonderful things.
He promises that when we repent and believe, we will be part of the Kingdom of God.
He promises that when we trust in Him as the only Son of God and the only way to reconciliation to God, we will have everlasting life with God.
Believers in Jesus know that we have the presence and guidance of God with us in this life.
He will give weary souls rest.
He will be with His people always, even to the close of the age.
Christ’s people have the hope of the life for which we are made--a life which at present we can only see as through a mirror dimly, a resurrected life in which tears are dried, bodies restored, work is meaningful,* and joy is complete.
But not once does the God we know in Jesus Christ promise that following Him will make us comfortable in this world.
Not once does He say that decisions will be easy.
Not once does He say problems will go away.
Not once does He say that the life of discipleship--of following Him, of sacrificing ourselves and our own comfort out of love and worship for God and out of love for neighbors--those we can see and those we can’t see--will be easy.
In fact, Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Our first lesson for today comes to us from the Old Testament book of Job. It’s thought to be the oldest book in the Bible, recounting events that took place long before Abraham. In it, a man who strives to follow God, who repents not only for his own sins, but also those of his children, is struck down by many of the horrors that the world and the devil can bring to human beings.
All his property and livestock are destroyed.
All his children are killed.
He is stricken with a horrible disease, his body covered with open sores.
Job had worshiped God and played by the rules. But in one fell swoop, his whole world was decimated.
Following God had not brought Job a comfortable life.
Through much of the book that bears his name, Job's friends try to tell their suffering friend that had he been more faithful, these bad things wouldn’t have come to him. He insists he doesn’t deserve his suffering and angrily challenges God to explain Himself.
At the end of the book, God chastises Job’s so-called friends. Faith in God isn’t a pass to easy street and Job’s distress wasn’t caused by Job being sinful.
But, as we can see from our first lesson, neither does God explain Job’s suffering.
Job suffered in spite of being a follower of God because we live in a fallen world in which bad things happen even to faithful people.
In our second lesson, written in about 55 AD, the apostle Paul recounts some of the suffering he underwent not in spite of following and proclaiming the God revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus, but because he followed and proclaimed the crucified and risen Jesus. Paul said that he and his ministry team commended themselves to people in the church at Corinth precisely because they had endured calamities for the sake of their faith in the God we know through Jesus.
He writes: “...as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
Believers in Jesus are called to keep following Jesus even when it’s inconvenient, painful, challenging, uncomfortable.
When it commands sacrifice.
When it threatens our reputations, our financial security, our lives.
Jesus calls us to choose between life with Him and being comfortable.
He does this emphatically in our Gospel lesson, Matthew 4:35-41.
The incident narrated here comes right after Jesus gives a series of parables describing what the Kingdom of God, the kingdom He is going to die and rise to bring into being. It all begins with a command, which Jesus disciples obey. “That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.”
Of course, when Jesus issued His command to the disciples, they probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Most of them were experiences fishermen accustomed to plying the Galilean waters at night, as He was now commanding them to do at sundown.
Following Jesus may often seem a simple thing, comfortable. We don’t know what storms may lay ahead.
You know what happens next. Verse 37: “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’”
We Christians ask a version of that question every time adversity strikes, every time Jesus calls us to do hard things we’d rather not do, uncomfortable things: forgive someone who has hurt us; confront a fellow believer with a hard truth; give sacrificially. “Lord,” we wonder, “don’t you care if we drown? Don’t you care if we lose our comfort? Don't you care if what you're calling me to do could result in killing my reputation, killing my investment portfolio, kill my health, kill me?”
Jesus' answer, quite frankly, is, “No.” The God Who tells us that "whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it," the God Who went to a cross to bear our sins cares more about our character than our comfort.
He cares more about our learning to follow Him faithfully than He does about our ease. Our ease can come in eternity.
For now, our call is to follow even in the darkest, most difficult times.
Verse 39: “He [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’”
When storms come, we wonder how we can survive. We forget that nothing can separate those who trust in Him from the love God gives through Jesus Christ. Nothing.
A young woman, a member of our church in Cincinnati, was dying. She and her husband had two young children. She gave her testimony of faith during worship one Sunday. This was in 1999. She talked about all the things she hoped to be able to see in this world: her children grown, the new millennium. She knew that she might not see any of these earthly hopes come into being. And it saddened her. She tried to understand. Yet she also told us that she was confident that the Lord Who was leading her through her darkest valley would not only lead her to Himself, but also lead her children. She said that she knew that Christ's Church in which her children were baptized would faithfully share Christ with them, forge their characters by the power of the Holy Spirit, and help them to know the eternity of hope we have in Jesus Christ.
After Jesus had sternly spoken to the disciples, they contemplated in awe-filled fear, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him?” The answer can be found all through Scripture. But I mention just two places.
In Psalm 104:7, the psalmist confesses of God, “...at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight…”
Genesis 1:1 tells us that God the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of primordial chaos and brought into being peace, order, and life.
The One Who calmed the storm that so frightened the experienced fishermen sailing with Jesus that night was and is God Himself.
Storms, challenges come and go in this life.
Jesus will sometimes ask us to do things, to endure things, to sacrifice things, which in our own power, we are incapable of doing.
But, listen: Whenever we can’t, God can.
And after the storm, the God we know in Jesus Christ still stands.
And so do all who put their faith in Him.
They’re the ones who were more concerned with following Jesus than with being comfortable. I pray each day that God will forge me to be one of their number.
What storms are you going through today?
What is Jesus asking you to do that you don’t believe can be done?
Is there a comfortable sin for which you need to repent?
Follow Jesus and let the One Who can still our storms see you through. Amen
*Work is not a punishment for human sin, as some suppose. Human beings, created in the image of God, are meant to share in His work. But after the fall into sin and the world's subjection to futility, work was marred, along with all human enterprises, by futility. In eternity then, God's resurrected people will be restored to our full function in the new creation and once again fulfill our calling to manifest God's image in work marked by purpose, joy, and fulfillment.
Job 38:1-11
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
In today’s Gospel lesson (and really in all our Bible lessons for today as well), Jesus confronts us with a simple question: Do we want Him or do we want to be comfortable?
Do we want the God we meet in Jesus Christ or do we want easy, trouble-free lives?
The problem, of course, is that Jesus never promises any of this to those who follow Him.
He promises that when we repent and believe, we will be part of the Kingdom of God.
He promises that when we trust in Him as the only Son of God and the only way to reconciliation to God, we will have everlasting life with God.
Believers in Jesus know that we have the presence and guidance of God with us in this life.
He will give weary souls rest.
He will be with His people always, even to the close of the age.
Christ’s people have the hope of the life for which we are made--a life which at present we can only see as through a mirror dimly, a resurrected life in which tears are dried, bodies restored, work is meaningful,* and joy is complete.
Not once does He say that decisions will be easy.
Not once does He say problems will go away.
Not once does He say that the life of discipleship--of following Him, of sacrificing ourselves and our own comfort out of love and worship for God and out of love for neighbors--those we can see and those we can’t see--will be easy.
In fact, Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
All his property and livestock are destroyed.
All his children are killed.
He is stricken with a horrible disease, his body covered with open sores.
Job had worshiped God and played by the rules. But in one fell swoop, his whole world was decimated.
Following God had not brought Job a comfortable life.
Through much of the book that bears his name, Job's friends try to tell their suffering friend that had he been more faithful, these bad things wouldn’t have come to him. He insists he doesn’t deserve his suffering and angrily challenges God to explain Himself.
At the end of the book, God chastises Job’s so-called friends. Faith in God isn’t a pass to easy street and Job’s distress wasn’t caused by Job being sinful.
But, as we can see from our first lesson, neither does God explain Job’s suffering.
Job suffered in spite of being a follower of God because we live in a fallen world in which bad things happen even to faithful people.
He writes: “...as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
Believers in Jesus are called to keep following Jesus even when it’s inconvenient, painful, challenging, uncomfortable.
When it commands sacrifice.
When it threatens our reputations, our financial security, our lives.
Jesus calls us to choose between life with Him and being comfortable.
The incident narrated here comes right after Jesus gives a series of parables describing what the Kingdom of God, the kingdom He is going to die and rise to bring into being. It all begins with a command, which Jesus disciples obey. “That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.”
Following Jesus may often seem a simple thing, comfortable. We don’t know what storms may lay ahead.
We Christians ask a version of that question every time adversity strikes, every time Jesus calls us to do hard things we’d rather not do, uncomfortable things: forgive someone who has hurt us; confront a fellow believer with a hard truth; give sacrificially. “Lord,” we wonder, “don’t you care if we drown? Don’t you care if we lose our comfort? Don't you care if what you're calling me to do could result in killing my reputation, killing my investment portfolio, kill my health, kill me?”
He cares more about our learning to follow Him faithfully than He does about our ease. Our ease can come in eternity.
For now, our call is to follow even in the darkest, most difficult times.
When storms come, we wonder how we can survive. We forget that nothing can separate those who trust in Him from the love God gives through Jesus Christ. Nothing.
A young woman, a member of our church in Cincinnati, was dying. She and her husband had two young children. She gave her testimony of faith during worship one Sunday. This was in 1999. She talked about all the things she hoped to be able to see in this world: her children grown, the new millennium. She knew that she might not see any of these earthly hopes come into being. And it saddened her. She tried to understand. Yet she also told us that she was confident that the Lord Who was leading her through her darkest valley would not only lead her to Himself, but also lead her children. She said that she knew that Christ's Church in which her children were baptized would faithfully share Christ with them, forge their characters by the power of the Holy Spirit, and help them to know the eternity of hope we have in Jesus Christ.
In Psalm 104:7, the psalmist confesses of God, “...at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight…”
Genesis 1:1 tells us that God the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of primordial chaos and brought into being peace, order, and life.
The One Who calmed the storm that so frightened the experienced fishermen sailing with Jesus that night was and is God Himself.
Storms, challenges come and go in this life.
Jesus will sometimes ask us to do things, to endure things, to sacrifice things, which in our own power, we are incapable of doing.
But, listen: Whenever we can’t, God can.
And after the storm, the God we know in Jesus Christ still stands.
And so do all who put their faith in Him.
They’re the ones who were more concerned with following Jesus than with being comfortable. I pray each day that God will forge me to be one of their number.
What storms are you going through today?
What is Jesus asking you to do that you don’t believe can be done?
Is there a comfortable sin for which you need to repent?
Follow Jesus and let the One Who can still our storms see you through. Amen
*Work is not a punishment for human sin, as some suppose. Human beings, created in the image of God, are meant to share in His work. But after the fall into sin and the world's subjection to futility, work was marred, along with all human enterprises, by futility. In eternity then, God's resurrected people will be restored to our full function in the new creation and once again fulfill our calling to manifest God's image in work marked by purpose, joy, and fulfillment.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
The God Who Changes People
In Genesis 49, Jacob, one of the patriarchs of Biblical faith, is dying and pronounces blessings on each of his twelve sons. But his blessings on two of them, Joseph and Judah, are the most intriguing.
Joseph is one of the most interesting people in the Bible. Despite being sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, he, unlike any human being I can name from Genesis--except the mysterious Melchizedek--maintains his faith and his integrity throughout his life. Because of this, God uses Joseph, in the midst of adversity, to save His chosen people.
But then, there's Judah. Judah is the guy who, in Genesis 37, first suggested to the other brothers that they sell Joseph into slavery and be done with him. Joseph was his father's favorite and the siblings didn't like him at all. Judah, then, could be seen as a bad guy. And he was sinner. Judah was Joseph's Judas, in a way.
On the other hand, it was Judah who, years later, offered to become a hostage in order to save the youngest brother, Benjamin. Judah seems to have submitted to the melting of his heart so that the one who once set in motion a scheme that would have, effectively, been a death sentence for one brother, offered to take a similar sentence for himself in order to save another brother. Judah was a sinner in whom something seems to have happened.
Judah had, by the grace of God, grown. He had changed.
The grace of God, God's undeserved forgiveness, help, and favor, which He today offers to all people through Jesus Christ, can do things like this to people. Second Corinthians 5:17, in the New Testament, says: "...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old is gone, the new is here!"
So, did Judah "deserve" the blessing Jacob pronounced, which included that he would become the ancestor of Israel's kings, including the One conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Judah's line, Jesus, the King of kings? No. Judah didn't "deserve" that blessing, no matter how his life had been changed.
He deserved it no more than Joseph deserved greater blessings. Joseph hadn't deserved the pain in his life. He hadn't deserved its success either. Joseph had been "set apart" from his brothers by God, but could, at any time, have chosen to turn from God, making his life easier. But God graced him with the power to turn to God instead. That wasn't Joseph's doing any more than the blessings granted to Judah were his. It was all God.
We don't know what plans God has for our lives. And often--maybe usually--they are different from the ones we make for ourselves. Sometimes, the plans of God can be painful to us--just ask Joseph. Still, to follow God's plan, to turn to Him daily in repentance and belief in God the Son, Jesus, is the better path. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we needn't fear. God will be with us.
A prayer: Change my heart, O God. Make it ever true. Change my heart, O God. May I be like you. In Jesus' Name. Amen [See here.]
Joseph is one of the most interesting people in the Bible. Despite being sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, he, unlike any human being I can name from Genesis--except the mysterious Melchizedek--maintains his faith and his integrity throughout his life. Because of this, God uses Joseph, in the midst of adversity, to save His chosen people.
But then, there's Judah. Judah is the guy who, in Genesis 37, first suggested to the other brothers that they sell Joseph into slavery and be done with him. Joseph was his father's favorite and the siblings didn't like him at all. Judah, then, could be seen as a bad guy. And he was sinner. Judah was Joseph's Judas, in a way.
On the other hand, it was Judah who, years later, offered to become a hostage in order to save the youngest brother, Benjamin. Judah seems to have submitted to the melting of his heart so that the one who once set in motion a scheme that would have, effectively, been a death sentence for one brother, offered to take a similar sentence for himself in order to save another brother. Judah was a sinner in whom something seems to have happened.
Judah had, by the grace of God, grown. He had changed.
The grace of God, God's undeserved forgiveness, help, and favor, which He today offers to all people through Jesus Christ, can do things like this to people. Second Corinthians 5:17, in the New Testament, says: "...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old is gone, the new is here!"
So, did Judah "deserve" the blessing Jacob pronounced, which included that he would become the ancestor of Israel's kings, including the One conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Judah's line, Jesus, the King of kings? No. Judah didn't "deserve" that blessing, no matter how his life had been changed.
He deserved it no more than Joseph deserved greater blessings. Joseph hadn't deserved the pain in his life. He hadn't deserved its success either. Joseph had been "set apart" from his brothers by God, but could, at any time, have chosen to turn from God, making his life easier. But God graced him with the power to turn to God instead. That wasn't Joseph's doing any more than the blessings granted to Judah were his. It was all God.
We don't know what plans God has for our lives. And often--maybe usually--they are different from the ones we make for ourselves. Sometimes, the plans of God can be painful to us--just ask Joseph. Still, to follow God's plan, to turn to Him daily in repentance and belief in God the Son, Jesus, is the better path. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we needn't fear. God will be with us.
A prayer: Change my heart, O God. Make it ever true. Change my heart, O God. May I be like you. In Jesus' Name. Amen [See here.]
Monday, May 06, 2013
Do Lutherans Celebrate the Mass? Yes! (Part 16, The Augsburg Confession)
We’ve been looking at what it means to be Lutheran Christians by considering the Biblical underpinnings for one of the Lutheran movement’s basic confessional documents, The Augsburg Confession. Since all Lutheran bodies claim to accept the Confession’s understanding of Christian faith, it’s a good place to go to for guidance. Today, we come to Article 24 of the Confession, titled The Mass.
For some of you, hearing a Lutheran worship service called the Mass may seem strange. But that’s what we celebrate together when we receive Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion. The word mass comes from a Latin word for dismissal which appeared at the end of an ancient Roman Catholic liturgy for Holy Communion. “Ite missa est,” the presiding minister would say: “Go, it is the dismissal.”
We often have something similar in our own Lutheran Communion liturgy when we sing a musical setting of the words of Simeon after he had seen the eight-day-old Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem. We call it the Nunc Dimittis, another Latin phrase that means, “Now dismiss,” as in: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace...”
In the Mass, God gathers us together to literally taste and see the goodness of the Lord in Holy Communion, as well as to hear His Word receptively, allowing the gift of faith to take root and grow within us, then God sends us into the world to make disciples. Fortified by Christ’s body and blood and the forgiveness He brings to us through Holy Communion, God dismisses us to tell our neighbors that they too can have eternal life through repentance and belief in Jesus Christ.
So, yes, we Lutherans celebrate the Mass. But someone else might ask, “Didn’t we already talk about Holy Communion in this series?”
Yes, we did, back on March 3, when we looked Article 10, The Lord’s Supper. But The Augsburg Confession is divided into two sections. The first twenty-one articles deal with subjects that Philipp Melanchthon, the colleague and friend of Martin Luther who wrote the Confession, felt for certain that none of the Roman Catholic theologians he was to dialog and debate with at Augsburg, Germany in 1530, could possibly disagree with. (That turned out not to be true.)
The last seven articles dealt with subjects over which Melanchthon expected to receive more pushback. So, in Article 24, which you can find starting on page 25 in the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon deals with Lutheran understandings of the Mass he knew would be controversial.
They still are. But like Martin Luther, we insist that unless we can be shown by Scripture and plain reason based on Scripture where we have erred, we must stand with Christ and with His Word as we understand them.
Article 24 is long. So, I want to hone in on four main points it makes.
The first is this: Anyone who receives the Sacrament should do so with the deepest reverence, love, awe, respect, and fear of God.
Starting in the second sentence of the article, we read that: “The Mass is held among us and celebrated with the highest reverence.”
I don’t need to belabor this point. Lutherans take Jesus literally when He says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.”
We may not be feeling it on the days His body and blood are offered to us.
We may not be able to understand His promise to be present “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine in the Sacrament.
It doesn’t matter!
Jesus, the One Who died for us and then rose for us, can be counted on to keep His promises.
If Jesus says that His body and blood are in the bread and the wine, you can bank on it.
This means that every time you receive the Sacrament, even on the days my sermons are off, even when the kids are restless, even when the choir or Cyndy hit a rare sour note, even if you’re tired, whatever your circumstance, you’re coming to the altar to meet the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God of the universe. He deserves our reverence.
A second and related point the Confession makes is this: Holy Communion should only be shared after we have made confession of our sins.
Slide down to the last half-sentence at the bottom of page 25. It says: “No one is admitted to the Sacrament without first being examined...”
This is stated well in Paul’s words about Holy Communion, 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:
Confessing our sins lets us, like King David in Psalm 139, pray to God:
A third point the article makes is this: Everyone who is able to receive Holy Communion in public worship should do so.
Except in the cases of shut-ins, the ill, their families, or others in emergency circumstances, the term private communion should be an oxymoron. Holy Communion is meant to be a community meal partaken by all who have repented for sin, who believe that Christ is truly coming to them in the Sacrament, and trust Jesus’ promise that this Sacrament is “for you.”
There was a practice in the Church back in the days when the Confession was written of paying priests, often handsomely, to celebrate private masses. Melanchthon cites 1 Timothy 3:3 as condemning any practice designed to make money from the ministry of Word and Sacrament. There we’re told that anyone who wants to be an overseer of this ministry should not be “greedy for money.”
But greed for money on the part of clergy isn't the only wrong motive for the celebration of private Communions. I once heard of a man who wanted a pastor he liked to bring Holy Communion to him because he didn’t like the pastor of his congregation. But the pastor he contacted explained to him that as flattered as he was by the man’s admiration, the effectiveness of the Sacrament didn’t depend on which called pastor handed him the bread or the wine, but on the Word and promise of God meeting the bread and the wine. He explained: “In a way, for me to bring private Communion to you would be showing contempt for Christ and the Sacrament.” That pastor was right. But after that, the man disliked two pastors.
The fourth and most important point the Confession makes here is this: Jesus is not sacrificed again every time we celebrate Holy Communion.
The theology of the majority Church of the sixteenth century held that Jesus’ death on the cross only covered up humanity’s original sin and that in order to cover the sins people commit each day, Jesus had to be sacrificed over and over again.
That, it was held--and is still held by Roman Catholic theology today--was what Holy Communion--the Mass--was: in essence, putting Jesus back on the cross and crucifying Him again every time the Sacrament is offered.
For Lutherans, this teaching doesn’t ring true for two reasons.
First: It drains Jesus’ crucifixion of its power, making it seem like a half-measure. Please turn to Hebrews 10:11-12. Contrasting the sacrifices the Jewish priests made constantly for people’s sins to Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross, Hebrews says:
A sacrifice, one scholar has written, “is a ceremony or act which we render to God to honor him.” But “a sacrament is a ceremony or act in which God offers us...the promise joined to the ceremony.” In sacrifices, human beings are the actors. In sacraments, God acts and we are called to receive in faith what God promises.
For example, Jesus says this about Holy Baptism in Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe is condemned.” We can’t understand how Holy Communion (or Holy Baptism, for that matter) may work. We know only that we can receive it in faith, trusting Jesus at His Word to be present in the Sacrament and to give us life and forgiveness through it. He’s already done all the work to set us free from sin, death, and the devil. He’s already done all the work to set us free from the sins we confess, known and unknown to us, that we bring to Him. He’s already died on a cross as the atoning sacrifice for all our sins. He’s already risen from death to give new lives to us. We simply receive His body and blood with a desire to be clean and a desire to trust in Him. Jesus will do the rest!
The Mass in which God calls His people in Christ together to receive His body and blood is a great gift.
It’s a gift to be received with reverence.
It assures the repentant that Christ Who died and rose for them gives them forgiveness of sin.
It’s a gift Christians should be eager to receive as often as it’s offered.
And, it’s something God does for us, not something we do for God.
There’s nothing we have to do to be worthy of this gift but to turn from sin, to turn to Christ, and trust Him when He says, “This is My body; This is My blood.” Amen
For some of you, hearing a Lutheran worship service called the Mass may seem strange. But that’s what we celebrate together when we receive Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion. The word mass comes from a Latin word for dismissal which appeared at the end of an ancient Roman Catholic liturgy for Holy Communion. “Ite missa est,” the presiding minister would say: “Go, it is the dismissal.”
We often have something similar in our own Lutheran Communion liturgy when we sing a musical setting of the words of Simeon after he had seen the eight-day-old Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem. We call it the Nunc Dimittis, another Latin phrase that means, “Now dismiss,” as in: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace...”
In the Mass, God gathers us together to literally taste and see the goodness of the Lord in Holy Communion, as well as to hear His Word receptively, allowing the gift of faith to take root and grow within us, then God sends us into the world to make disciples. Fortified by Christ’s body and blood and the forgiveness He brings to us through Holy Communion, God dismisses us to tell our neighbors that they too can have eternal life through repentance and belief in Jesus Christ.
So, yes, we Lutherans celebrate the Mass. But someone else might ask, “Didn’t we already talk about Holy Communion in this series?”
Yes, we did, back on March 3, when we looked Article 10, The Lord’s Supper. But The Augsburg Confession is divided into two sections. The first twenty-one articles deal with subjects that Philipp Melanchthon, the colleague and friend of Martin Luther who wrote the Confession, felt for certain that none of the Roman Catholic theologians he was to dialog and debate with at Augsburg, Germany in 1530, could possibly disagree with. (That turned out not to be true.)
The last seven articles dealt with subjects over which Melanchthon expected to receive more pushback. So, in Article 24, which you can find starting on page 25 in the buff and brown editions of The Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon deals with Lutheran understandings of the Mass he knew would be controversial.
They still are. But like Martin Luther, we insist that unless we can be shown by Scripture and plain reason based on Scripture where we have erred, we must stand with Christ and with His Word as we understand them.
Article 24 is long. So, I want to hone in on four main points it makes.
The first is this: Anyone who receives the Sacrament should do so with the deepest reverence, love, awe, respect, and fear of God.
Starting in the second sentence of the article, we read that: “The Mass is held among us and celebrated with the highest reverence.”
I don’t need to belabor this point. Lutherans take Jesus literally when He says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.”
We may not be feeling it on the days His body and blood are offered to us.
We may not be able to understand His promise to be present “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine in the Sacrament.
It doesn’t matter!
Jesus, the One Who died for us and then rose for us, can be counted on to keep His promises.
If Jesus says that His body and blood are in the bread and the wine, you can bank on it.
This means that every time you receive the Sacrament, even on the days my sermons are off, even when the kids are restless, even when the choir or Cyndy hit a rare sour note, even if you’re tired, whatever your circumstance, you’re coming to the altar to meet the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God of the universe. He deserves our reverence.
A second and related point the Confession makes is this: Holy Communion should only be shared after we have made confession of our sins.
Slide down to the last half-sentence at the bottom of page 25. It says: “No one is admitted to the Sacrament without first being examined...”
This is stated well in Paul’s words about Holy Communion, 1 Corinthians 11:27-29:
Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this wine in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the LORD. But let a man examine himself [or a woman examine herself], and so let [them] eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.This is why our liturgy offers us the opportunity to confess our sins every time we receive the Sacrament.
Confessing our sins lets us, like King David in Psalm 139, pray to God:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.When God shows us our sins, we can confess them and lay them at the foot of Jesus’ cross, confident that they are lost forever in what some call God’s “sea of forgetfulness” and we can welcome the body and blood of Jesus as a sign and seal of God’s gracious forgiveness of our sin!
A third point the article makes is this: Everyone who is able to receive Holy Communion in public worship should do so.
Except in the cases of shut-ins, the ill, their families, or others in emergency circumstances, the term private communion should be an oxymoron. Holy Communion is meant to be a community meal partaken by all who have repented for sin, who believe that Christ is truly coming to them in the Sacrament, and trust Jesus’ promise that this Sacrament is “for you.”
There was a practice in the Church back in the days when the Confession was written of paying priests, often handsomely, to celebrate private masses. Melanchthon cites 1 Timothy 3:3 as condemning any practice designed to make money from the ministry of Word and Sacrament. There we’re told that anyone who wants to be an overseer of this ministry should not be “greedy for money.”
But greed for money on the part of clergy isn't the only wrong motive for the celebration of private Communions. I once heard of a man who wanted a pastor he liked to bring Holy Communion to him because he didn’t like the pastor of his congregation. But the pastor he contacted explained to him that as flattered as he was by the man’s admiration, the effectiveness of the Sacrament didn’t depend on which called pastor handed him the bread or the wine, but on the Word and promise of God meeting the bread and the wine. He explained: “In a way, for me to bring private Communion to you would be showing contempt for Christ and the Sacrament.” That pastor was right. But after that, the man disliked two pastors.
The fourth and most important point the Confession makes here is this: Jesus is not sacrificed again every time we celebrate Holy Communion.
The theology of the majority Church of the sixteenth century held that Jesus’ death on the cross only covered up humanity’s original sin and that in order to cover the sins people commit each day, Jesus had to be sacrificed over and over again.
That, it was held--and is still held by Roman Catholic theology today--was what Holy Communion--the Mass--was: in essence, putting Jesus back on the cross and crucifying Him again every time the Sacrament is offered.
For Lutherans, this teaching doesn’t ring true for two reasons.
First: It drains Jesus’ crucifixion of its power, making it seem like a half-measure. Please turn to Hebrews 10:11-12. Contrasting the sacrifices the Jewish priests made constantly for people’s sins to Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross, Hebrews says:
...every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man [Jesus, God and human, Priest and sacrifice] after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God...Slip down to verse 14:
For by one offering [Jesus] has perfected forever those who are being sanctified [that is, being made holy, set apart for God].1 Peter 3:18 affirms this same truth:
For Christ also suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God...Second: To see Holy Communion as a sacrifice makes something less than a sacrament of it. Splitting hairs? I don’t think so.
A sacrifice, one scholar has written, “is a ceremony or act which we render to God to honor him.” But “a sacrament is a ceremony or act in which God offers us...the promise joined to the ceremony.” In sacrifices, human beings are the actors. In sacraments, God acts and we are called to receive in faith what God promises.
For example, Jesus says this about Holy Baptism in Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe is condemned.” We can’t understand how Holy Communion (or Holy Baptism, for that matter) may work. We know only that we can receive it in faith, trusting Jesus at His Word to be present in the Sacrament and to give us life and forgiveness through it. He’s already done all the work to set us free from sin, death, and the devil. He’s already done all the work to set us free from the sins we confess, known and unknown to us, that we bring to Him. He’s already died on a cross as the atoning sacrifice for all our sins. He’s already risen from death to give new lives to us. We simply receive His body and blood with a desire to be clean and a desire to trust in Him. Jesus will do the rest!
The Mass in which God calls His people in Christ together to receive His body and blood is a great gift.
It’s a gift to be received with reverence.
It assures the repentant that Christ Who died and rose for them gives them forgiveness of sin.
It’s a gift Christians should be eager to receive as often as it’s offered.
And, it’s something God does for us, not something we do for God.
There’s nothing we have to do to be worthy of this gift but to turn from sin, to turn to Christ, and trust Him when He says, “This is My body; This is My blood.” Amen
Friday, July 20, 2012
After Aurora: What the World Needs Most
As Alan Knox rightly points out, every Christian is called to "preach" the gospel. This fact is part of what it means to be a member of what Martin Luther called, "the priesthood of all believers."
And, given the frail and fleeting nature of life on this earth we have seen underscored in the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, every person on earth needs to hear the gospel.
And what is the gospel? It's "the good news" that Jesus receives sinful human beings who repent and believe in the power of His death and resurrection to transform them from enemies of God to God's friends for eternity. Jesus summed up how the gospel is activated in our lives in a short sermon found in the gospel of Mark:
That's the power of the gospel we Christians ought to proclaim (preach) with love and consideration, without coercion or apology. Every Christian should be able to affirm with the apostle Paul:
And, given the frail and fleeting nature of life on this earth we have seen underscored in the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, every person on earth needs to hear the gospel.
And what is the gospel? It's "the good news" that Jesus receives sinful human beings who repent and believe in the power of His death and resurrection to transform them from enemies of God to God's friends for eternity. Jesus summed up how the gospel is activated in our lives in a short sermon found in the gospel of Mark:
"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."By a sheer act of charity (what the Bible calls grace), God creates faith in Christ in those who are willing to believe and by that same grace, God counts our faith in Christ as rightness with God.
That's the power of the gospel we Christians ought to proclaim (preach) with love and consideration, without coercion or apology. Every Christian should be able to affirm with the apostle Paul:
"...I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith [in Christ], to the Jew first and also to the Greek [non-Jews or Gentiles]. For in it the righteousness [rightness] of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written [in the Old Testament book of Habakkuk], 'The one who is righteous will live by faith.'" (Romans 1:16-17)More than ever, the world needs the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's the call of every Christian to pass it on!
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