How Worry is Overcome

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

Luke 12:22-34

Everyone knows what it is to worry. 

Some of our worries are entirely understandable. 

For example, there likely isn’t a parent or grandparent here or anywhere else in America who don’t worry as they consider their children or grandchildren heading off for another school year. 

There isn’t a parent, spouse, or child of an addicted loved one who doesn’t worry over whether the loved one will ever go into recovery or if this is the day they’ll get the dreaded telephone call telling them that the loved one has died. 

Some of our worries are understandable then. They are what I would call legitimate worries, worries that can be productive if they lead to prayer or to actions rooted in the wisdom and compassion God will give to people who stop whining, refrain from bellowing about their ideas, and instead listen to God’s “still, small voice” and the counsel of others who strive to walk with Jesus.

We see that God’s New Testament saints worried about some things. 

The apostle Paul spoke of the daily “pressure of my concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28). 

The New Testament book of Philippians tells us that Paul’s protege, Timothy, concerned for the welfare of the Christians in first-century Phillippi. 

These are legitimate worries, both addressed to God in prayer in Jesus’ name and both followed by Holy Spirit-led action.

But most worry isn’t legitimate. It’s just faithless. 

There are some people though, who keep worry as a hobby. I knew a farmer. Despite being in worship every single week, where he confessed his faith in the God we know in Jesus Christ, he kept worrying. His wife told me that he often stayed up all night, not to pray over his concerns, giving them to God, seeking God’s help, but just to sit and worry. Once, at about two in the morning, she heard him rustling around in the living room and went to see what was wrong. “I just can’t stop worrying about the federal budget deficit,” he said. “Henry,” she told him, “come to bed.” But Henry stayed in his living room, fellowshipping not with God, but with his worries.

Now, to most of us, it’s probably obvious how illegitimate a topic for worry something like the federal budget deficit is. It is a problem, a much bigger one today than it was when Henry was padding around his house anxiously thirty-some years ago. 

But worrying won’t change it. 

Nor will worry change much of anything we face in life, individually or collectively. 

Unless we pray and act in the powerful name of Jesus, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, nothing good will ever overcome the things that worry us. 

“You do not have because you do not ask God,” James 4:2 tells us. If we asked God for help with our concerns rather than worrying about them, we'd be a lot better off.

And Jesus tells we who believe in Him: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Worry is all about trying to do or solve things ourselves rather than seeking help from the One without Whom we can do nothing.

In today’s gospel lesson, Luke 12:22-34, Jesus addresses a specific kind of illegitimate worry, worrying that is unjustified, worrying rooted in our sinfulness, worrying that never thinks to pray or act on God’s guidance. Let’s take a look at the lesson now.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!’”

There’s something I want you to notice right away in these words: In them, we encounter both God’s Law and God’s grace or word of promise.

The law from God is this: Don’t worry about whether you’re going to have enough money, food, or clothing. 

There are people who lack these fundamentals, of course, mostly because of the selfishness of others who have them. And that sorry reality is an issue of justice and compassion, something God also addresses when He tells us that we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And in another place, God’s Word tells us, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) 

But worry won’t bring in more money (which we may or may not need), more food (which we may or may not need), or clothing (which...you get the idea). 

God knows just what we need of these things. That’s why He teaches us to pray for “our daily bread.” 

To worry that God won’t come through is faithless, sinful. Worry unrepented and worry not given up to God is a sin. Worry is the opposite of faith. Worry says God isn’t God.

The gospel or the promise in Jesus’ words at the beginning of our lesson is this: God is intent on taking care of us as long as we draw breath in this world. “And how much more valuable you are than birds” of whom God takes care, Jesus says. 

This is why in his explanation of the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer--”give us this day our daily bread”--Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism: “God indeed gives daily bread to all, even unbelievers, without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that he would help us recognize this so that we would receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” 

And if you’re ever tempted, as we all are sometimes, to doubt God’s promise to always be with us and always take care of us, just consider Jesus on the cross, where God bore the weight of our sin and died to bring life to all who believe in Jesus and to open up eternity with God to us. 

As Paul reminds us in Romans, no matter what it is in this world that causes us to worry or tries to rob us of our hope in life with God, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:31-39). Nothing!

Jesus goes on pointedly: “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” 

Worry that doesn’t prompt prayer and/or holy action is worthless. It solves nothing. 

But Jesus says that it’s worthless also in that it won’t add a single hour to our lives. 

Just Google “medical research on worry and mortality” as I did the other day and you’ll see that medical science agrees that worry cannot add a moment to our lives.  

But as we submit our worries to Jesus, He gives us His life and His wisdom. Medical research at a host of institutions confirms that people of faith who pray generally live longer and stay healthier than others. They also have an eternity with Jesus to look forward to as well.

On Friday, Bishop John gathered the thirty-two district deans of the NALC for one last meeting with him. Pastor Dan Powell, who has been the convener of the deans, asked us to talk about our joys. 

One colleague, Pastor David McGettigan, who is being treated for cancer, reported that he had good news and bad news about his health. The bad news is that he’s evidencing side effects that are usually associated with cancer patients much further along in their treatment regimen. The good news is that his body has shown far more improvement in overcoming his cancer than would normally be expected at this point in the treatment process. In other words, he told us, “I’m feeling worse and doing better.” His prognosis is much better than his oncologist thought it could be. 

The oncologist said, “I can’t explain it.” David told the doctor, “I can.” Pastor McGettigan knows that prayer and action in Jesus’ name always trump worry. And while we all will die, the promise of eternal life with God given to us by Jesus will add life to our years, while worry takes life away.

Toward the end of our lesson, Jesus says to His Church: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

All of us were moved, I think, by the witness of Tim and Rita Schubach in the video we saw during worship on the Commitment Sunday for our Reach Forward ministry expansion initiative. 

Until the day we saw Tim’s and Rita’s remarks, Ann and I were sure that we would be unable to give anything more to the church than our offerings for the general fund. I had explained to our Reach Forward Team why that was so. 

Then we saw Tim and Rita make the point that whatever we have isn’t ours anyway; it comes from God and it belongs to God. In the middle of the service, Ann and I conferred and God has made it possible for us to participate in Reach Forward on top of our general fund offerings. 

I don’t tell that story to make it seem like Ann and I are wonderful. We’re saints and sinners just like everyone else who is being saved by grace through faith in Jesus the Christ. But Tim and Rita  reminded us of the truth of Jesus’ words to us today: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

When you know that you belong to Jesus, you need not worry about the material things of this world. Many people do worry about them, especially, it seems, those who have lots of material things and stew about keeping them. But you and I are called to trust that the One Who makes every material blessing will supply us with what we need and will empower us, as His people, to pray and act in Jesus’ name. 

You and I are surrounded by people who crave more of this dead world’s stuff without knowing that the only thing they really need is Jesus. 

Let’s be subversives for Jesus. Let’s show them by our praying, acting, living, speaking, and even our dying that, when they have Jesus as their Lord and King, there’s no need to worry about whether they’ll have enough. 

Jesus is enough. 

Jesus is all we need. 

Now may God help all of us, including me, to trust that truth with our whole lives. Amen

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

Who's the Boss?

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

Luke 20:9-20

The questions that today’s gospel lesson puts before us as disciples of Jesus are these: Who has authority over us? And how are we to acknowledge or live under that authority?

There are different kinds of authority, of course. In a verses of Luke's gospel that appear just beyond today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells His hearers to give to Caesar, that is to the government, what we owe the government and to God what we owe God. 

Because I feel privileged to live in the United States, I’ve never minded paying my taxes. Justice Holmes said: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” Scripture teaches and Lutherans have always believed in the necessity of government authority. Since not all people voluntarily accede to the authority of God, Who commands us to love God and neighbor, we need government to keep the sinful impulses of a fallen humanity at bay. While it’s right for Christians, in the name of Jesus, to demand that governments be loving and just--the prophets were sent by God to place this very demand on governments and peoples, we also realize that it’s beneficial to our neighbors and to us that governments exist. All of which is why I usually switch the channel any time a commercial for Optima Tax Relief comes on my TV screen: Jesus is clear that if we owe Caesar, we’re to pay Caesar.

But there is a far greater authority, an authority to which all of us--presidents, prime ministers, dictators, bishops, pastors, business people, accountants, teachers, contractors, doctors, lawyers, and everyone else is answerable. 

It's the authority of the One Who, after creating the first human beings and placing them in the garden, directed, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) God was asserting His authority. God gives the human race the world and commands us to use it and our whole lives in ways that honor God.

This isn’t always a popular message. Adam and Eve were tempted to sin by the serpent’s promise that if they disobeyed God, they would “be like God.” This is the central ambition of every child born to the human race--except Jesus: to be like God. 

And it’s especially the ambition of those to whom the world has given power, authority, comfort, prestige, and money, even in the smallest of doses. 

Jesus talks about the common human desire to usurp God’s authority and be gods unto ourselves in today’s gospel lesson, Luke 20:9-20. Let’s take a look at it.

Verse 9: “He went on to tell the people this parable: ‘A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.’”

Jesus has multiple audiences in mind when He speaks. 

1. He knows that His apostles are listening and will make us, as we read and hear their witness in Scripture, one of the audiences to what He says. He had promised the apostles that after He died and rose again, the Holy Spirit would help them to recall what He taught and did so that they could understand and teach others about Him as the Lord Who saves human beings by grace through faith in Christ alone (John 14:26; Ephesians 2:8-9). 

2. When Jesus first told this parable, He spoke it to a crowd of common people thronged around Him in the temple in Jerusalem. 

3. But He also knows that there are others listening in, the religious leaders anxious to hold onto their power to exploit others’ guilty consciences and have authority over them. 

Through the parable, Jesus is warning the religious leaders (and all of us who get little doses of authority in this life and may not handle it very well) that the authority that is a a trust from God will be one day be taken from those to whom it's granted unless they repent for their sins and trust in Him as the only One Who can make a human being right with God. 

This is a warning to all leaders, whatever their field. 

If they’re arrogant or unjust, if they show preference for those who can grease their palms, if they’re bullies, they will have to answer to God. 

When you’re the victim of evil leaders--whether at work, at school, at home, or in governments, you may wonder where God is. 

But in this parable, Jesus underscores the promise of Proverbs 11:21: “Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free.” 

There will come a day, Isaiah 2:17 tells us, when, “The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted…”

In the centuries after God made His covenant with ancient Israel, He had sent one prophet and preacher after another, like the vineyard owner of Jesus’ parable sends servants to the renters in Jesus' parable, to tell His people (and the world) to give to God what they owed God for giving them life. 

In the Ten Commandments, God tells ancient Israel and the world: “You shall have no other gods before me…” (Exodus 20:2). Yet human beings have a marked penchant for worshiping idols they think will give them the ability to control their lives and get what they want.

Through the prophet Micah, God reminded the people of the world, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Yet, it's an enduring characteristic of the human race that we act unjustly, treat others unmercifully, and walk in arrogance away from God.

In Leviticus 19:33-34, God told His people, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God…” Yet the people of Israel (and the people of the world) have a decided penchant for turning life into a contest between "us" and "them," siloing us ourselves off from those we deem "different" or "other." 

In Jesus’ parable, the prophets and preachers of God’s truth, who reminded people of God’s authority over our lives, are portrayed as servants who are brutalized and murdered. It was precisely this human penchant for rejecting God’s servants that caused Jesus to lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.." (Luke 13:34)

In the parable, the vineyard owner is beside Himself with anguish over His tenants, as God is for us. When our kids first learned to drive and took off for work or school for the first hundred times, I remember the anxiety I felt as time seemed to drag as we awaited their return. Parents want their children to grow up, be independent, and do things for themselves. But you can't help but feel anxious as they take their first steps into adult responsibilities. Magnify the feelings of parents by an infinite amount and you can begin to imagine that anguish God feels for us as He places us in the vineyard, that is the world. God risks losing us by letting us go. He risks seeing us turn from, be contemptuous of, or to forget about His authority over us and losing us forever!

To reject God’s authority over our lives is also to reject His authority over our sins, our death, our vulnerabilities, His authority to give us new and everlasting life. 

It’s only when we entrust our whole lives to the gracious authority of God that He can give us all that He has in mind to give us through faith in Jesus, all that we can be as grown-up, maturing, confident, adult children of God. 

Verse 13: “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” (Luke 20:13-15a) Here, Jesus prophesies His own crucifixion. Not interested in yielding to God the authority that they want to keep for themselves, the people of the world, led by the arrogant leaders of the Jews and the governor from Rome, would take Jesus outside the walls of Jerusalem and murder Him. They didn’t realize that in voluntarily going to the cross, the sinless Jesus was dying for all human sin and that those who dare to lay down any claim to have authority over their own lives will have life with God that never ends.

Verse 15: “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Here, Jesus says that there will be a great reversal, the very kind that His earthly mother Mary had spoken of in The Magnificat. In Jesus, Mary said, “...[God] has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:51-53)

Strangely enough, even the common people who heard Jesus tell this parable, were appalled by it. Our translation tells us that they responded to the idea that human arrogance would be punished by God by saying, “God forbid!” Actually, they say, in the Greek in which Luke and the other writers composed the New Testament, “Μὴ γένοιτο,” a more literal translation of which would be, “Never may it be!” Or, “No way!”

Why would they react like this? Jesus was offering them freedom from the arbitrary authority of self-glorifying human leaders. More than that, He was offering, as He still offers today, freedom from sin and death, freedom from the cruel demands of human authority, replacing them all with His loving lordship over our lives, the freedom to be all that a loving, omnipotent God can make of us for all eternity! 

The answer, I think is simple: As children of a fallen race who have only ever known the dog-eat-dog world in which we live, life in the kingdom of God is scary. 

We’ve never lived in a world in which we were accepted just as we are and helped to be all that we can be. 

We’ve never lived in a world that says if we will die to self, we will live with God. 

Accepting life in this upside down world that Jesus brings means that we must give up all pretense of having the authority of God over the world--or even our own lives. 

When death comes, as it does to us all, we must finally admit what we sometimes spend our lives trying to deny: Only the God we know in Christ can give us life. 

At the beginning of this message, I said that Jesus’ parable forces us to wrestle with two questions: Who has authority over us? And how are we to acknowledge that authority? 

It’s the God we meet in Jesus Who, alone, has authority over our lives, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise. 

And there’s only one way to acknowledge Christ’s authority: It’s to lay aside all our arrogance and sin and trust in Jesus alone to give us the greatest gift of all, eternal life from the hand of God. Amen

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

True Repentance

Today's journal entry from my morning quiet time with God. 

Look: “What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears...For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,  and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:4, 6)

Hosea was called to speak God’s Word to Israel (the northern kingdom formed after King Solomon’s death, later to be known by the name Samaria). The people had prostituted themselves by worshiping false gods, ushering in an era of injustice, thievery, and general immorality. This idolatry drew them away from God, though they were part of God’s people. When they got into trouble, they sought the help of foreign kings, displacing God as their King.

This scenario, in turn, led to poor crops and poverty and vulnerability and eventually, cataclysmic results.

In chapter 5, priests and others call the people to what amounts to an inauthentic repentance. They’re in trouble; so they call on the God of their ancestors. But God knows that this is pro forma, like the false repentance of King Saul, who only sought forgiveness because he had been caught and humiliated by his sin. It’s the false repentance of Judas, who only felt foolish for being taken in by the priests with whom he’d made his deal to betray Jesus.

In these verses from Hosea, chapter 6, God calls Israel’s bluff. He says that like the dew that covers the ground in the early morning but soon disappears with the heat of the sun, Israel’s “repentance” is fleeting, gone before the pressures of everyday living.

Israel has a utilitarian “relationship” with God. They view Him as being like all the false deities with whom they prostitute themselves. They’re all like good luck charms, pieces of metal and wood to whom they ascribe supernatural powers that they can take advantage of if they go through the right motions, say the right words, invoke the proper formulae. These are deities they can control through their own behaviors, deities bound to dance to their tune if they jump the right religious hoops or climb the right religious ladders. So, they keep offering their sacrifices to God (and the false gods) while ignoring the will of God, God’s call and command to worship only Him--with their whole lives--and to show mercy to others.

The Living God of the universe isn’t like the dumb idols we manipulate for our purposes. He’s living, just and gracious, and He can smell a rat. He knows when we’re trying to game Him.

True repentance involves grief over breaking God’s heart, which is what we do when we unrepentantly sin.

True repentance entails a genuine desire for the help of God in turning away from our sins, even our favorite ones.

True repentance involves surrender to the only One Who can overcome our sin and the death it brings.

True repentance involves embracing God’s grace in the confident assurance that God loves nothing more than having a relationship with His people.

True repentance is a gift from God and it’s the means by which He covers us in His love and forgiveness.

When we are truly repentant, we don’t expect that God must or will shield us from the earthly consequences of our sins. Shielding will sometimes come and when it does, we need to thank God and ask God to help us use the earthly freedom the shielding brings to honor God. But a murderer who repents for sin and comes to authentic faith in Christ will not expect that earthly authorities will forgo prosecuting them. Similarly, a gossip who repents can’t expect that the time bombs of their hurtful words might not sometimes be detonated in their earthly lives and relationships. Yet repentant sinners will be empowered to face whatever comes knowing that they are now one with God.

Listen: When we see Jesus on the cross, we see, in ways that the people of Hosea’s day couldn’t, just how merciful and loving God is. God came into the world in human flesh, bore our sins on the cross, then rose from the dead to open up forgiveness, eternity, and a relationship with God to all who trust in Jesus. To believe in Jesus is to turn to Him and the Good News of new life that His death and resurrection offer us and to turn from sin. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

Repentance should never be pro forma. You can’t game God. But you can have new life and the power of the Holy Spirit to live differently today than you did yesterday, to be enabled to live as a grateful forgiven sinner who, in the Holy Spirit’s power, acts justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

Even then, while living in this present world, we stumble. We sin. But the God Who is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (Psalm 103:8) is quick to forgive those who refuse to game God or themselves about their sins and their need of God to live like human beings rather than as self-serving monsters.

Respond: Lord, I recognize that sometimes my confession of sin to You are pro forma, perfunctory. So too can my worship of You, simply words I say or sing. I don’t want to game You, Lord. I am willing, though not anxious, to accept whatever earthly consequences for my sin that you deem appropriate. But I want to be daily cleaned by Your grace, daily made new by You. Help me to be utterly honest with You, Lord, so that I can experience Your mercy and Your “saving help” again. So that I can be the faithful disciple of Jesus Christ that You call me to be, that I want to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen

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