Two Great Promises for the Grieving

[This message was shared this afternoon at the funeral for Dorothy.]

Psalm 23

Romans 8:31-39

I only met Dorothy a few times at Baptisms. She was friendly and open. 

But last week, as I met with Loretta and Karen and some of the family, I learned of a warm and adventurous person who happily took on challenges–like making wedding gowns and bridal party dresses–and who dealt with life with good humor. 

She liked to mark holidays in a big way, putting up decorations and sending out cards with notes. She wrote Christmas letters and letters for special occasions. She did for others, including not just family members, but also neighbors and friends.

I loved hearing about how she and her family dealt with the inevitable conflicts that arise in any family. She spoke her mind and the other family member spoke theirs, then there would be peace between them. It reminds me of what God’s Word says: “If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day.” (Ephesians 4:26, Good News Translation) In other words, dust-ups between people who love each other are inevitable; but by God’s power, our call is to resolve our disagreements, forgive each other, and move on. Dorothy seemed to live this.

She was well-loved. I like what Mason wrote in one of his notes to me during my meeting with the family last week: “She always cared for us…She never been rude to us…She is loved.” That’s a great eulogy by an eight-year-old!

But in the midst of your sorrow today, God’s Word brings you all both comfort and hope. Both of the Bible passages the family has chosen for today bring these two gifts from God.

Psalm 23 is the most famous of the 150 hymns that make up the Old Testament book of Psalms. Its composer, King David, was a shepherd. So, not surprisingly, David saw God as the shepherd of people who put their trust in God. 

Sheep, it should be said, are stupid. They easily get lost, wandering off for the next enticing thatch of grass, heedless of danger. They’re defenseless against predators, just like you and I are subject to the dangers of sin, death, and temptation. Just as sheep need shepherds, we need God, our good shepherd, to lead us away from sin, death, darkness, and despair, to lead us to forgiveness, life, hope, and peace.

Jesus, God the Son, called Himself “the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.” But ten centuries before Jesus’ birth, David could see that God wanted nothing more than to shepherd, to lead, anyone who trusts in Him through the hard moments of this life into an eternity with God beyond all grief, tears, or goodbyes.

David writes in our psalm, which is a kind of love song to God: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing…Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:1-4) The God we know in Jesus doesn’t run away when we grieve or hurt. He stands with us. He walks with us. And because He's been through grief and death, He understands us when we go through the same things!

But He does more than that. Psalm 23 also says: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies [even the enemies of death and grief and the sin that alienate us from God and others]. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows…” (Psalm 23:5) Because, as our other lesson from Romans 8, reminds us, nothing can separate us from the love the good shepherd Jesus has for us, we can know, with King David that God’s “goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23:6)

You and I have an advantage over King David. He knew God through God’s Word and God’s promises, to be sure. He had experienced God’s love and God’s power and God’s forgiveness in the depths of grief and heartache, as well as his own sin. But today, you and I can see and experience the greatness of God’s love for us more certainly. In Jesus Christ, God the Son, God took on our human flesh and He became our servant, dying on a cross bearing our sin and our death in His sinless body. God absorbed all our sin and death and grief into Himself on the cross so that, when God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, He could open up life with God for all who repent and believe in Jesus. Jesus told the grief-stricken Martha, and He tells you today: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26)

In the crucified Jesus Christ, God promises to be with you in every situation that life in this fallen, imperfect, and sometimes hurtful world may bring. 

In the risen Jesus Christ, God promises that He will be our good shepherd even beyond the gates of death, leading us to an eternity where there is no more grief, no more tears, and where all who have died trusting in Christ will be with God. 

Friends, as you trust in Jesus as Dorothy trusted in Jesus, you can be sure that you will live in God’s house along with her forever.

Who knows? She may already be planning what cookies she’ll bake for your arrival. May God bless and comfort you all in the promise of Jesus’ resurrection! Amen

 

Why Pray?

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

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

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

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

This is a dangerous time.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God knows that life in this world can be wearying.

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

It’s why we’re told in Isaiah 40:31: “...those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought that I was virtuous and deserving. 

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

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

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

I am none of these things. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, keep calling on the Lord. 

Pray in Jesus’ name. 

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

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

"Watchful" Prayer?

Here's the journal entry from my quiet time with God yesterday. To see how I approach quiet time, see here. (That will explain the look, listen, respond headings you see below.)

Look: “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” (Colossians 4:2)

This verse comes near the end of Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Colosse. He dictated it in 60 AD when he was imprisoned for his faith in Christ in Rome.

This verse struck me today for two reasons.

1. Even though he was in prison, Paul knew that believers in Jesus--disciples--always have reason to be thankful to God.

We have been saved from sin, death, futility, and darkness by God’s grace (His charity) through our faith in the crucified and risen Jesus.

Nothing can separate believers in Jesus from the new life God makes available to all people who believe in Jesus (Romans 8:31-39).

So, as Christians devote themselves to prayer--that communication with God the Father made possible by the name and power of Jesus, in which we can call down the powers of heaven to earth--we can do so with thankfulness, gratitude.

• We can be thankful that because of Christ, we belong to God forever and that He stands with us always.
• We can be thankful that, because of Christ, He hears our prayers and will, according to His wisdom, answer them.
• We can be thankful that, as people assured of being raised with Jesus on the last day, God will ultimately and eternally, make all things work together for our good. So, Paul says that as Christians diligently pray, they can be thankful.

2. Paul also says that as we pray, we should be “watchful.”

Listen: I had some idea of what he might mean by this, but I asked, “Watchful of or for what?”

Watchful, an adjective, translates the Greek word, γρηγοροῦντες (transliteration: gregorountes), more literally, being watchful.

Forms of the word are used in several other places, helping to give an idea of what Paul means when he tells Christians to be watchful when they pray.

In Matthew 24:42, Jesus uses the word when speaking of the Day when He will return to the world: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”

He reiterates this warning in Matthew 25:13: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

In Matthew 26:38, He tells Peter, James, and John, the inner circle, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

In that last verse, Jesus clearly doesn’t have in mind a watch that would allow them to fend off or attack the temple police and Roman soldiers who would soon come to arrest Him. Jesus came into the world with the specific intention of allowing the world to put Him on a cross to take the burden of human sin and death on His shoulders. When one of the disciples later did offer armed resistance to Jesus’ arrest, He chastised the disciple.

In Matthew 26:41, Jesus gives a clearer understanding of what He means when He tells the three apostles to watch. It seems to be the same meaning Paul has in mind when he tells the Colossian Christians (and us) to be watchful when we pray. After some time in agonized prayer, Jesus discovers that Peter, James, and John, far from watchful, have fallen asleep. He tells them: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

To be watchful in prayer then means in part to pray that, whenever we’re weak or vulnerable (always), we will not be tempted to cave into the human default behavior of sin.

“And lead us not into temptation,” Jesus teaches us to pray, which might be more accurately rendered as, “Don’t allow us to pay attention to temptation rather than to You.” This is an important point because, as Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism, “God indeed tempts no one to sin, but we pray in this petition that God would guard and protect us from this, that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or lead us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins, but pray that when we are tempted in these ways, we may finally prevail and gain the victory.”

Respond: It doesn’t take much time scouring my memory to see that when, at least in my own eyes, I have most noticeably sinned, it’s been when I’ve let my guard down, when I’ve turned a deaf ear to Jesus, God’s Word, and the importuning of the Holy Spirit. It comes when I let temptation get the upper hand.

I ask myself, “How did that happen?” But the reason is always pretty much the same: It’s so easy to come up with a million rationalizations for why a temptation isn’t really a temptation, or why I can handle whatever temptations come to me, or why the sin to which temptation points me isn’t such a big deal.

But Paul (along with Jesus) says that, if I’m to avoid the sins that mar my character, negatively influence others who know I believe and show God ingratitude for His undeserved grace, I need to pray with watchfulness.

I’m sure that this means more than saying, “Lead me not into temptation” in a perfunctory way.

I’m sure that it means that I must pray for the wisdom to perceive temptation when it comes my way.

And I’m sure that it means I must pray this protection with a proper sense of my own helplessness before temptation and sin without the help and power of the God I know in Jesus.

This is no game. These aren’t mere words. When we who bear Jesus’ name become confident in our own goodness, rather than in the goodness of the God Who freely saves us through Jesus, we are at risk of allowing our lives to become swamped by sin, rebellion, and death.

So, I must be persistent in relying on God to protect me from the temptations to which, in the dark center of my soul, I want to cave.

Of course, the most alluring temptations are those that don’t seem dark at all. They’re also the most dangerous of temptations and include temptation to sins which, under different circumstances, might not be sins at all.

For example, there may be times when voluntarily working a couple of hours extra is a laudable and appropriate thing. But not when you’ve promised your spouse and family that you’ll be home in time for a family celebration.

There’s nothing wrong with a man having a romantic attachment to a woman who loves him in return, with whom he shares faith, values, interests, and an easy, wholesome rapport if both he and the woman are single or are married to each other. But under other circumstances, the temptation to connect romantically is a temptation to sin.

The serpent, a guise of Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve to sin against God, is described by Genesis, in some translations, as the most subtle of creatures. (In others, the description is rendered as “crafty.”) Temptation is subtle, which is why watchful prayers--along with partaking of the means of grace, Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, the Word of God, mutual conversation and consolation with others in Christ’s Church--are so important.

How can I be watchful in prayer?

Lord, today, I ask You to help me review every remembered interaction with people and all my pursued, prevailing thoughts to discern where I might be undergoing temptation from the devil, the world, and my sinful self. I know that Your grace covers the sins I don't remember or perceive and that as I lay my life before You, You will work like a potter on this clay made pliant by Your grace that leads to a repentant life, a life turned to Christ.

Then, help me to pray for Your protection from all temptations that might be thrown my way today. Help me to walk with You with faith, a sense of my helpless need of You, and a desire to lead a life pleasing to One Who has saved me by grace through faith in Christ. I know how much You love me. I love You, Lord! In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen

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