Loving Others

[This was prepared to be shared during this morning's two worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Matthew 22:36-40
During this Lenten season, we’re considering five building blocks for our Christian discipleship and for the faithful mission of Christ’s Church that come to us from three passages of Scripture. In them, Jesus gives to us the Great Commandment, the Great Commission, and the New Commandment. Last week, our focus was on what Jesus calls the first and greatest commandment, reiterating the Old Testament, that we are to love God.

Today, we consider the command which Jesus says is of the same importance as loving God. Please turn again to Matthew 22:36-40 (page 692 in the sanctuary Bible).

It says that a Pharisee approached Jesus with a question:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

“Love your neighbor as yourself” was not a commandment that Jesus just made up. It’s not a new commandment. In Leviticus 19:18, part of that section of the Old Testament referred to as “the holiness code,” God told His ancient people Israel: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”

From the beginning, God intended human beings to live in a community of shalom--a community of peace and wholeness--with God and with other human beings.

This comes through in Genesis, after the first murder had taken place. The blood--the very life--of Abel cried out to God after Abel had been murdered by his brother Cain. When God asked Cain where Abel was, Cain responded with words that must have broken God’s heart: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” For God, the answer to that question was, has always been, and always will remain “Yes.”

We are called to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Human beings may sometimes crave and need solitude. Even Jesus would sometimes pull away from the needy crowds in order to rest and pray in the presence of God the Father. But we are not made to live outside of loving community with others.

In the Old Testament, God commanded His people to, first of all, love and care for their fellow Israelites, especially the weak, the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned.

But they were also to extend precisely that same love to the “resident aliens,” the foreigners who lived among them. God told the Israelites through Moses in Deuteronomy 10:19: “...you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (There's a lesson to be learned there for those of us who are descendants of people who were at one time foreigners in what is now the United States of America.)

And even in Old Testament times, God commanded that His people love their enemies. (This may surprise those who support the stereotype that the God of Old Testament is stern and vengeful, while the God of the New Testament is mooshy. Neither stereotype is true.) Proverbs 25:21, for example, says: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”

The Pharisee who asked Jesus about what the greatest commandment was had hoped to trap Jesus, showing to be some wild-eyed leader of a cult, introducing notions about God different from what God had revealed of Himself and His will through the centuries to Israel, as recorded in what we call the Old Testament.

But far from trapping Jesus, the Pharisee who asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, found Jesus upholding the very law and the prophets--the Old Testament canon--which they claimed Jesus threatened.

Jesus underscored the central importance of love of brother and sister or love of neighbor, repeatedly. In Luke 10 for example, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which a foreigner who happened upon a man who had been beaten by thugs, helps the man, cares for him, and provides for him. Jesus says that whoever we come across in need is our neighbor and that we are to love them.

Under the influence both of his time with Jesus and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle John wrote in his later years in 1 John 4:20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (How's that for directness?)

But one thing we should be clear about is that from the Bible’s perspective, love is not primarily a feeling. Feelings of affection come and go. They fluctuate in intensity. Love, the Bible insists, is something different.

There’s an old preacher story told about a young man in love. (I've updated a little bit so that I don't seem hopelessly ancient!) This guy texts his girlfriend: “I would climb the highest mountain for you. I would swim the deepest ocean. I’d cross the Mojave Desert. I would even go to a Justin Bieber concert. I would do anything for you. By the way, I’ll be over tonight if it doesn’t rain too much.”

His girlfriend may have wondered how much he really loved her, not because his words were so objectionable but because his commitment to the deeds of love seemed questionable.

The Bible does say that our love for others must be rendered from our hearts, meaning that we should be intent on loving others and not render acts of love resentfully or with selfish ulterior motives.

But love isn't primarily an emotion. And it's not just words. Love is a verb.

It’s about the good we do for others, even when we don’t feel like doing it.

Jesus‘ earthly brother James writes in James 2:14-17: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” Where is our faith if we don't love others? Where is our love?

We can claim to love our neighbors--from the people who occupy the same homes in which we live to the victims of poverty, calamity, or despotism in foreign countries--but unless that sentiment is backed by deeds of self-sacrifice and compassion, our claims will be hollow and without meaning.  

The most famous portrait of love in the Bible probably is the so-called “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13. It’s often read at weddings, although the original issues Paul was addressing when he wrote to the Christians in first-century Corinth included the pride that some in the church had because they’d been given the gift of tongues and the arrogance of the wealthier members toward those with less.

Yet it does bear relevance to any discussion about love.

Take a look at part of it now with me, please. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (page 800). It says:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

I have to tell you that when I consider that portrait of love, I feel ashamed.

I do not measure up.

More often than not, I don’t love my neighbor as I love myself. I am self-absorbed and often selfish. I’m not always patient or kind. And I often watch news reports about people who are hurting in other places and don’t even muster enough compassion to pray for them. (A friend of mine always prays when a squad passes by and I find it hard even to remember to do that!)

Yet, here today we again confront Jesus’ command that we love others as we love ourselves. It is a core element in God’s will for us all, summarizing the second table of the Ten Commandments.

It’s part of the law written on every human heart.

And, I don’t keep this commandment.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that it’s instructive to notice where in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus gives the Great Commandment.

The Pharisee’s question was more or less a last ditch effort to derail Jesus’ credibility among His fellow Judeans. But Jesus gave an answer to which no one could object.

And then, Jesus asks a question of them: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They reply without hesitation: “The Son of David.” Then, we’re told in Matthew 22:43-46:

“[Jesus] said to them, 'How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him "Lord"? For he says, '"'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." If then David calls him "Lord," how can he be his son?' No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

The Pharisees, who had wanted to stump Jesus, were now stumped themselves. They could marshall no evidence warranting Jesus’ death. So, in order to get rid of Him--in order to get rid of the authority of God over their lives and their religious fiefdoms, they would have to resort to trumping up fake evidence to put Jesus on the executioner’s cross. That’s exactly what they did.

But in doing so, of course, they played into Jesus’ hands.

This One Who perfectly loved God and loved neighbor and Who was the Messiah called Lord by King David multiple centuries earlier had come for the express purpose of living out His love for us by dying on the cross, the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus lived the love He commands. He demonstrated that He is the Messiah, the King above all kings, by doing love’s ultimate deed, taking the punishment for sin you and I deserve so that when we repent for sin and believe in Him, we have everlasting life with God.

And He gives the righteousness that He lived--including the righteous obedience of the command to love others as we love ourselves--to all who believe in Him. Jesus gives His perfect obedience to us and then pours God's Holy Spirit into all with faith in Him.

Through Jesus then, N.T. Wright says, having been made right with God not by our deeds of love, but by Jesus’ deed of love rendered on the cross, we see that the Great Commandment--to love God and love neighbor--isn’t so much an order “to be obeyed in our own strength”--which we can not do anyway--but an invitation and a promise to new way of life.

The God Who claims us as His own by grace through our faith in Christ will, as we daily  call on Him to be in our lives, give us “a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become [a larger and larger] reality [in our lives].”

During our recent study of Ole Hallesby's book, Prayer, we noticed that the content of our prayer in Jesus' Name isn't as important that in praying in Jesus' Name, we invite Jesus into our lives and circumstances.

We may approach God with a perceived need or desire. But in responding to Jesus' call and command to pray, we actually are inviting Him in to do what He deems best in our lives. Give Jesus an inch and He will take a mile! As we pray in Jesus' Name, He takes up residence in our lives, usually with consequences we couldn't imagine, most especially consequences for our faith, our characters, and our priorities.

The simple fact is that we cannot love our neighbor unless we first let Jesus love us into following Him and surrendering to Him.

But as we dare to let Jesus into our lives each day--when we let Him know our dreams and our sins, our fears and our personal challenges and invite Him to be Lord over all our lives, to transform all our lives in accordance with the will of God--He will gradually, often without our even knowing it, usually without our even knowing it, help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Not just in words and not just in feelings, but in deeds and in living.

Jesus comes to live in the lives of all who call on Him and as we call on Him, both we and all the people with whom we come in contact are the better for it.

Our call is to let Jesus in, so that His love can go from us to all the world. Amen

Saturday Song #3: Lean on Me by DCTalk

Here's my favorite cover of Withers' great song, from DCTalk. It appeared on the Free at Last LP.

Saturday Song #2: Lean on Me by Bill Withers

This song has been covered many times. But Withers is wonderful in this live treatment of his own composition, a great song by one of the greats. (I love the bass in this version.)

Saturday Song #1: Terra Nova by James Taylor

Because we all want to go home.

Good People

The really good people I know aren't better than others and wouldn't claim to be. They're simply people who, in the power of God's love given in Christ, do the right thing even when they don't want to. I'm blessed to know a few people like that.

Loving God

[This was prepared to be shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, during worship this morning.]

Matthew 22:36-40
Fads blaze in and out of life in the Church world as surely as they do in the realms of business, education, medicine, movies, and teenage music. All the time, it seems, someone selling a book or a DVD or a whole program with claims of having the silver bullets that will transform the lives of churches and individual believers, helping congregations to find and pursue their missions, and grow in all the ways God intends.

And some parts of those products and programs may actually help churches. After all, even a stopped clock, as they say, is right two times a day.

But, the problem is that often once churches and pastors adopt such programs, however well-intentioned, their lives effectively demonstrate that where they claim to believe in Jesus, they really believe in the mission statement, or the program, or the book, or the church growth guru, or the computer algorithm. Yet Jesus says, “I will build My church.”

The Church doesn’t need fads or new mission statements or DVDs or programs to know what its mission should be. Jesus, true God and true man, Who endured the condemnation for sin we deserved when He submitted to death on the cross, then sprung alive from the grave so that He can give us reconciliation with God, forgiveness of sin, power for living today, and eternity with God to all who repent and believe in Him as their only God and King, has already laid out the mission of the Church and the mission of Christ in plain language.

In three passages in the Gospels, Jesus defines the mission of every Christian congregation and of every Christian.

What He commands in these three passages is so impossible for us to do that unless we live in constant faithful dependence on Him, unless we constantly and regularly receive His grace and power as we pray in Jesus’ Name, worship Him with other believers, and receive His forgiveness and presence in Holy Communion, we simply will not be able to live the fivefold mission Jesus has given to us in these three key passages of Scripture.

As we begin this journey into deeper discipleship this Lenten season, let’s leave behind any notions of silver bullets or special programs that create instant discipleship or an instantly faithful and effective congregation.

If we as a congregation want to be all that Christ has in mind for us to be and if we as individual Christians want to live with the hope and peace that God has in mind for us, we must be attentive to the five building blocks for Christian living and mission that Jesus gives us in these three passages.

Let’s take a look at each of the three passages briefly.

The first is what we call the Great Commandment, found in Matthew 22:36-40. (Page 692 in the sanctuary Bibles.) A man asks Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Here, Jesus quotes two Old Testament passages which, taken together, summarize the two tables of the Ten Commandments, the first three deal with our relationship with God and the latter seven dealing with our relationship with our neighbors.

The second passage in which Jesus gives us our mission as congregation and individuals is referred to as the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20. (Page 698 in the Bibles.) The resurrected Jesus tells the 11 remaining apostles just before ascending to heaven: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Notice how frequently Jesus uses the word all here: God the Father ceded all authority to Him and Jesus in turn gives us authority in His Name to make disciples of all people and to teach them everything (another word for all) about Jesus, His commands, and the new and everlasting life He offers to all people who trust in Him.

The third passage that gives us our mission is the New Commandment, John 13:34-35. (Page 751 in the Bibles.) Speaking to His disciples during the Last Supper, Jesus says to His Church: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Here, Jesus commands us to love our fellow disciples because doing so authenticates the reality of our faith and that we really have been made new by the grace of Christ.

This doesn't mean we will never disagree. Someone has said that if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant. We will have disagreements with one another in the Church; that doesn't mean we don't keep loving each other!

The five building blocks by which Christ builds His Church are seen in these three passages. They were the focal point of our church-wide vision and mission retreat in January.

They will continue to inform everything we do as a congregation and can help us all become the followers of Jesus--the disciples of Christ--we are called to be and that we all want to be.

The building blocks are:

• loving God; 
• loving our neighbors (wherever they may live); 
• loving our fellow believers; 
• making disciples; and 
• personally growing in our faith every day of our lives. 

Our focus during Lent, both on Sunday mornings and, in more informal gatherings, on Wednesday nights, including the testimonies of faith of our young people, will be on these five building blocks and how we can surrender ourselves to the gracious hand of Jesus Christ to become, as the Bible puts it, “living stones” in His body on earth, the Church.

Today, our focus is on loving God. Jesus says, quoting Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy 6:5: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Jesus, Who, after all is also God, says that this “the first and greatest commandment.”

Why does God need our love?

And why should we love Him?

And what does it mean to love God?

Let’s take each of those questions in order. Why does God need our love?

To put it simply, God doesn’t need our love. While speaking to the people in the marketplace in first century Athens, the apostle Paul noted: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”

God doesn’t need for us to love Him. God isn’t some self-absorbed egomaniac needing constant reassurance that He’s the apple of our eyes. God has all the love He could ever need or ever want within Himself, the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The New Testament tells us that, “God is love,” which doesn’t mean that God is some abstraction called love. It means that love informs every aspect of God's character and personality. Love is the motive behind everything God does--including judgment and discipline, including giving us the freedom to walk away from Him, including the cross and the empty tomb.

Out of an extravagance of love, though He didn’t need to do it, God gave us life and made us in His image.

The Old Testament says that we are the apple of God’s eye, the object of His passion and commitment and concern. That’s why, after humanity fell into sin, God set to work to save us from our sin--to save us from ourselves--and to save us from the death we deserve by becoming one of us in Jesus Christ, then dying and rising, so that all who repent and believe in Christ have life with God that begins now in this imperfect world and is “brought to perfection in the world to come.”

The fact is that God commands us to love Him not because He needs to be loved by us, but because we need to love Him.

When we love God, we simply acknowledge the reality that He is God and we aren’t, that He made us and that our lives are completely in His hands. We acknowledge that all of life is a gift from Him. And with gratitude, we acknowledge the depths of His passion for us, a passion that led Him to submit to suffering and death on the cross for us.

But how do we love God?

1 John 4:19 says: “We love because He first loved us.” Only God can empower us with the capacity for loving Him. We are only capable of truly loving God or other people because God, in Christ, has loved us into relationship with Him. In Christ, our love is no longer hostage to our thoughts or our emotions, which can change from day to day. To love God is to acknowledge the reality of both my need for Him and His grace for me, no matter what the circumstances of my life or my psyche at the moment.

My friends sometimes call me a human Thesaurus. If that’s even partly true then I have to tell you that a near synonym for the phrase love God is one simple word, worship.

To love God is to worship God, not just on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights, but with our whole lives. The Old English word from which we get worship was worth-ship. When we worship God, we acknowledge His worthiness of all our praise, honor, allegiance, and sacrifice. When you know that you have been saved for eternity from sin and death by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, you know that putting your life at His disposal is the only course in this life that makes sense. God’s people, the Israelites, who looked to the coming of the Messiah so that God could make His fallen creation right again, often extolled God’s worthiness. “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom,” Psalm 145:3 declares, for example.

But this raises a final point: To worship God involves more than our words: more than recited creeds, more that hymns or praise songs, more than offerings.

Through the prophet Amos in Old Testament times, God confronted a people who were evidently good at planning and executing impressive worship services. But He wasn’t pleased. “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies," God told His people. "Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” In other words, to truly love God means that we do more than give God or Jesus or our faith lip service. It entails seeking to do God's will and enlisting His power to do so.

David talks about this in Psalm 51: “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it...My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise...”

To love God means to seek each day to align ourselves with God.

To praise and honor Him, not just with our lips, but with our lives.

To repent for sin.

To pray for the needs of others.

To help those in need.

To put God first because we know that in Christ, God has always put us first.

To put God first is the hardest and most impossible of all the commands God gives. It runs counter to our inborn nature as sinners.

But as we heed the call of the Holy Spirit to faith in Christ and to call out to God in Christ’s Name, God will do battle each day in the little places where we live our lives so that, whether with our families, at work, or in some ministry of the congregation in which we’re involved, God will help us render Him worship, honor, glory, and praise through who we are and what we do. By the power of the Holy Spirit given to Christians by Jesus, Who Himself was given to us by the Father, we will love God. Amen 

"The 5 to 1 Ratio for Relationship Health"

From a colleague of my Cincinnati days, Gary Sweeten.

The Transfiguration and the Cross

[This was prepared to be shared during the worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio this morning. Attendance was sparse. But both services were wonderful.]

Matthew 17:1-9
Sometimes you need to get away. Away from the phone, the fax, and the demands of people. It allows for a different perspective. You can pay attention to things that you otherwise ignore or take for granted or didn’t even know existed. Sometimes you get away for your own mental health and physical renewal. Sometimes you take a few people with you--family, friends--for their sakes, not your own. Because they’re the ones who need to get a different perspective. Who need to pay attention to things they were ignoring, to things they’ve been taking for granted, to things they didn’t know existed.

Six days before the events recorded in today’s Gospel lesson took place, Jesus had a stunning interaction with the twelve men we know as apostles. It’s recorded in Matthew 16:13 to 28. Let’s scan it because I don’t think we can understand what happens in today’s lesson without considering this incident first. It begins with Jesus asking the Twelve who people are saying “the Son of Man”--Jesus Himself--is. They report hearing people say that Jesus was Elijah and Jeremiah, prophets who, by that time, had been gone for centuries. “But what about you?" [Jesus asks in verse 15]. "Who do you say I am?" Peter makes a breathtaking confession. Verse 16: “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’"

Trace the background and the use of that title, Son of God, in Scripture and you realize that it doesn’t refer to someone who descends from another or to someone who is subordinate to another. It means Jesus was and is God Himself. Jesus confirmed that Peter was right.

Yet, even Peter didn’t yet fully appreciate the meaning of his breathtaking confession that God had become flesh and was living among us on earth. Beginning at Matthew 16:21, Jesus explains that He would go to Jerusalem, undergo suffering, be killed, and be raised from death on the third day. In verse 22, Matthew says that Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke the One he had just called God. Peter evidently thought it was OK for him to tell God He was wrong. Peter could imagine “glory days” for Jesus, days when the world would recognize in His miracles the signs of God’s grace and power, days when hail Jesus as God and king. But Peter couldn’t imagine that God in the flesh--and by extension, those who repent for sin and believe in Him--could possibly suffer, or experience futility in their living and dying, or die. Jesus’ response to Peter is swift and condemnatory. Verse 23: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Read any of the gospels in the New Testament and you know that Jesus is a master teacher. So, He let the implications of this heated exchange with Peter simmer in the disciples’ minds for a while. Then, six days later, we come to today’s Gospel lesson. Take a look at it, please. Verses 1 and 2 tell us: “After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” 

The word translated as transfigured is, in the Greek in which Matthew wrote his gospel, metamorphoo. We get the word metamorphosis from it. Jesus looked different. On another mountain centuries before, the appearance of Moses was transformed by His exposure to the blazing, pure presence of God. It so terrified Moses’ fellow Hebrews that they begged him to ask God to keep them from ever being exposed to God’s radiance. I’ve heard modern day Christians try to reduce God to a compliant puppy, anxious to do our bidding. But the New Testament tells us that God is a consuming fire. Peter, James, and John were seeing that truth before their eyes!

Verse 3 says: “Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.” Here on the mountain next to Jesus was Moses, the great lawgiver, born in the sixteenth century BC, who had died and then been buried by God Himself before God’s people entered the promised land. And here was Israel’s greatest prophet, Elijah, who God had been taken from the earth via a chariot of fire centuries before. They were the two symbols of everything God had been doing since the fall of Adam and Eve to bring a sinful, dying world back to Him and back to life, standing with Jesus.

Verse 4: “Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’" Peter was always the man with a plan. And, during those days when Jesus walked the earth, Peter was almost always wrong. Overwhelmed by the scene he was witnessing, Peter did what many of us do when confronted by an imposing, even frightening circumstance we don’t control: He said something stupid. The gospel of Mark says of this remark by Peter that he didn’t know what he was saying. And it’s true. Peter proposes to give equal recognition to the three, even though less than a week before he was confessing Jesus to be God.

Folks, I have to confess I do the same thing. I confess my belief in Jesus as God in the flesh, King of my life, on Sunday mornings. But all too often, later that day, my life betrays that sinful inborn belief that He’s only a man, after all, that I have the right to do whatever I want, that I’m such a good guy I don’t need His shed blood or His resurrection. I think I can rely on myself. My own reasoning skills. My own emotions. My own common sense. My own virtues. It’s a lie. Every bit of it, a big fat, death-dealing lie. And, if I allow it to take hold--if I allow myself to be my own god and make Jesus out to be nothing more than a spineless, compliant buddy--and if I refuse to repent for it and refuse to ask Him to build up my faith in Him as my only hope, I will separate myself from Him forever. Thank God that the Holy Spirit, Who speaks through God’s Word and through the witness of other Christians, grabs me and reminds me to listen not to myself or my ego or my impulses, but to Jesus. When I’m listening, I hit my knees again, acknowledge that Jesus is my God and I’m not, and I seek forgiveness and reconciliation with God for the sake of what Jesus did for sinners like me when He died on the cross and then rose from the empty tomb!

This is similar to what happened to Peter. Verse 5: “While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’" Notice that? Peter put his building proposal into Jesus’ suggestion box and God cut Peter off. It’s as though God said, “Shush, Peter! Moses and Elijah played their parts in my plans, but listen to Jesus. Focus on Him. He may seem to be only a man, especially when, in a short while, you see Him die on a cross, but He really is also God the Son, just as you confessed. He is God the Son. He pleases Me. Try to remember this moment when you see Him give up His life for you and all sinners. Listen to Him!” Later, after Jesus had been crucified and raised, after He had ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to give His followers faith and the power to pass it on to others, Peter said of Jesus in Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." When we listen to Jesus, when we give him priority in our lives, we can trust that the Lord Who calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him--to acknowledge our sin and vulnerability and let Him rule over our lives--will also lead us through this life, safely past the gates of death into eternity with God!  Romans 10:17 tells us: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” If we want to live lives of integrity, if we want the power to resist temptation, the power to be faithful to the God Who made us, the power to live with Him now and in eternity, we cannot manufacture faith. But we can listen to Jesus. And as we let His voice cut through our sin and resistance, through our self-sufficiency and self-loathing, we will hear the voice of God telling us, “I died for you. I rose for you. Take my hand. Take my yoke upon you. Let me be the shepherd who guides you through all the shadows of this world, including the shadows of your sin and selfishness, and into the splendor of my light.”

Verses 6 to 8: “When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don't be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.” What frightens you today? What sins are you struggling with. Or worse yet, what sins are you not struggling with? Putting yourself or some other person or some pleasure ahead of God? Neglecting your duty to your family? Looking down on someone else? Adulterous thoughts? Whatever it may be, look up. You need not be afraid. Neither your fears nor your sins need have the last word in your life! They need not condemn you to separation from God. When the world abandons you or seems unable to help, Jesus is there. He gives forgiveness and the power to live with a new heart and a new will in His kingdom to all who renounce their sin and surrender their lives to Him. Jesus, your God and King wants to help!

Now verse 9: “As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don't tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’" I would have been busting a gut to tell everyone once I got back from seeing such an amazing thing, especially if I’d been Peter. Confirmation that Jesus is both Messiah and God, just like Peter had confessed. Yet Jesus tells them to tell no one. Lutherans would issue a sigh of relief and they would be rid of their sense of guilt if their pastors told them, “Don’t witness.” 

But that’s not what Jesus is saying here. He took three apostles away so that they could get a different perspective, pay attention to things they were ignoring, things they’d been taking for granted, things they hadn’t even known existed. Jesus was and is God. He promises the glory of heaven to all who follow Him. But that glorious destination can only be reached by way of the cross, only when we’re willing to submit for crucifixion everything in our character that’s marred by sin, everything that’s selfish. Taking up our crosses to follow Jesus means more than coming up with the right answer about Jesus as Peter did the first time he confessed Jesus to be the Son of living God. It means submitting our lives and sins for crucifixion. It means seeking the Holy Spirit’s power to love and forgive others as the crucified and risen Jesus has loved and forgiven us. It means seeking to align ourselves with God’s will and judgment and not our own. It means, to paraphrase The Small Catechism, letting our old selves, together with all our sins and evil desires, be drowned by daily repentance and sorrow for sin so that our new selves can come forward each day and, then one day, rise to live with God, reconciled and made clean by God’s grace through our faith in Jesus Christ alone.

When we follow not just the risen, miracle-working Jesus, but also the Jesus Who died and calls us to die so that we too may rise with Him, then we understand Him. Then we understand what it is to call Him “the Son of God.” Our confession becomes true, authenticated by exposure to the real Jesus in His fullness. And it’s then that we not only can tell others about the Jesus of the Transfiguration, it’s then that we will want to tell others about Him. Knowing that Jesus died to make sinners like us clean, we will be like the early Christians who said when told not to tell others about Jesus: “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Amen

Snowy Sunday Song #4: 'Above All' by Michael W. Smith

Snowy Sunday Song #3: 'Breathe' by Michael W. Smith

We sang this in worship last Sunday. A great confession of our need of the God revealed in Christ. Love it!

Snowy Sunday Song #2: 'Ordinary Love' by U2

Snowy Sunday Song #1: 'Invisible' by U2

"A Dangerous Assumption About God's Will"

"Remember, God’s will was for John to be exiled, Paul to be jailed, Jesus to be executed. Why do we assume God’s will for us is to have a great job, a happy wife, and a large bank account?

"We have a responsibility to do everything we can to make wise choices and obey God’s commands. However, our obedience will not guarantee immediate success. We are guaranteed that when we obey, a day will come in which we will never regret it.

"Obey. And if suffering or failure follows your obedience, don’t be too quick to assume you have chosen wrongly. You obey and leave the outcomes to God."

Read the whole thing.

[Thanks to colleague Dave Mann for linking to this post over on Facebook.]

But How Do I Love My Neighbors?

The mission of the Church and of individual Christians can be summed up in three simple phrases:

• Reach Up (Love God, in response for His grace given in Christ)
• Reach Out (Love our neighbors through service and sharing the Good News of new life in Christ)
• Reach In (Love those in our church family and submit to God to grow in our faith in Christ)*

This article by Ed Stetzer gives ten solid, practical ways that individual Christians can reach out to their neighbors in love.

*Members of Living Water Lutheran Church will recognize the similarities of this distilled list to what we're describing as the building blocks of the mission and ministry of the Church and of individual disciples of Jesus:

• Love God
• Love neighbors
• Love fellow disciples
• Share the Gospel
• Grow in Discipleship

These five building blocks are based on three passages of Scripture in which Jesus gives the Church its marching orders: Matthew 22:34-40 (the Great Commandment); Matthew 28:19-20 (the Great Commission); and John 13:34-35 (the New Commandment).

True Leadership

“The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus? . . . In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal.” (Henri Nouwen, HT: Our Daily Bread)

"God’s love in our heart gives us a heart for others."

Here.

How to Be Strange

[This was prepared to be shared with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 5:38-48
I was meeting with a few pastors when one of them brought up the subject of committed Christians they had known. “Being around people like that,” this pastor said, “always inspires me.” We all agreed.

Then, one of our number made a different observation. “You know,” he said, “every committed Christian I’ve ever known has been…sort of strange.”

He didn’t mean it as an insult.

He meant that the committed Christians he’d known weren’t afraid of being different, weren’t afraid to march to the beat of a different drum, weren’t afraid, as Jesus Himself put it, to let their “light so shine before [the world]…that [others]…see [their] good works and give glory to [God] in heaven.” Nor were they afraid to face the prospect of some people shaking their heads in disbelief at their behavior.

I think that pastor was right: People committed to following Jesus Christ are, at least from the standpoint of the world, strange.

And that can be hard.

Australian Graham Stains and his wife, Gladys, became missionaries in India in 1984. There, among other things, they oversaw a leprosy hospital. In January, 1999, Graham and his sons, Philip and Timothy, 10 and 8, traveled to a village called Manoharpur. As Graham had done for 14 straight years, the three went to provide Bible teaching along with training in health and hygiene. Graham knew that some of the tribal Hindus in the area opposed any Christian teaching. There had been at least sixty attacks on churches in the territory between 1986 and 1998. But Graham felt called to share with them the Gospel of new, everlasting life with God for all who repent for sin and believe in Jesus. He also wanted to serve the people there in Christ's Name.

It was cold when Graham and the boys arrived. They slept in their station wagon. One night, about 50 people approached the vehicle, “screaming and swinging axes and other weapons.” They beat the missionary and his sons, put straw under their station wagon, and torched it.

If I had been in the position of Gladys Stains, Graham’s widow, I fear that I would have dissolved into a fierce hatred for the people in that region of India.

I would, I fear, have become angry with God.

Were I in her position, I think I might have looked for revenge.

Or likeliest of all, I would have gotten the next plane out of India.

But Gladys responded strangely, like a committed follower of Jesus. She and a daughter, Esther, remained in India, continuing to share the Good News of Jesus and to minister to lepers in the same region in which her husband and sons were killed, until 2004, when Esther went to medical school and Gladys left to be near her.

In 2005, Gladys’ strange way of life was recognized when she was given “the Padma Shri award for distinguished service,” India’s equivalent to an English knighthood.

Gladys said that though she loved and missed her husband and sons, she saw it as an honor to them that God had counted them worthy to give their lives in the cause of sharing the Gospel with those who, as evidenced by their cold-blooded murder of three innocent believers, so clearly needed that Gospel, that can transform the hate-filled heart of any human being from God's enemy to God's friend.

For a world that values self-preservation and self-promotion, Gladys’ faith is strange. But in our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells us that it’s strange people like these who populate his kingdom and, even as He liberates us to be unique people who march to our own drums, He wants us all to be strange in our stubborn love for those who hate us.

Please look at this morning’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 5:38-48. Here, Jesus continues the Sermon on the Mount:

[Jesus says:] "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."

Jesus begins here by citing Leviticus, chapter 24. It says, “Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return; fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered.”

Let’s be clear about two things at this point. First, God in the Old Testament is not commanding the rough justice of revenge. That’s not what “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” means. Second, God in the New Testament—Jesus—is not overturning Old Testament law.

In Old Testament times, someone might steal a loaf of bread, for example, and be sentenced to having their hand removed. Or they might perjure themselves and be executed for it. In other words, punishments exceeded the crimes.

God gave the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" command to prevent such vengeful excesses from happening. He wanted to ensure that the punishments meted out to people for crimes in ancient Israel's system of criminal justice never exceeded the gravity of their wrongs.

And even today, it's important to remember that revenge is never something human beings are to administer. “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” the Lord insists in His Word. We may, in daily living, have to be part of administering justice, but God has always said we should never be part of seeking revenge...especially for ourselves or the hurts we thing we’ve endured. It's instructive to note that whenever Jesus was angry--as happened in the temple in Jerusalem, it was never about seeking revenge for some offense against Himself, but about seeking justice for others who had been harmed or oppressed or of whom advantage has been taken.

Jesus amplifies God’s Old Testament intentions with the commandment He gives to anyone who would follow Him in today's Gospel lesson. Never resist people who do evil to you, Jesus says. Keep doing good even when the world does its worst to you.

In first century Judea, where Jesus lived, being backhanded across the cheek was the act of an arrogant person who thought himself superior to another. The natural reaction for the victim is to slap back. But Jesus says, “Don’t stoop to seeking revenge. Maintain your dignity, rely on Me, and offer your other cheek as well.”

In first century Judea, people were even more likely to take others to court than people are today. And in those times, most people owned only two articles of clothing: a cloak and a coat. One served as an outer garment, the other was like underwear. If someone sues the shirt off your back, Jesus says, don’t fight back. Let them take both your garments. Even then, you’ll remain clothed in the grace, love, and dignity of God.

Also in first century Judea, Roman soldiers who had something to be carried could, at will, pick an ordinary person from off of the streets and force them to act as a pack mule for one mile. (You remember that is exactly what happened when Jesus carried the cross beam of His cross to His crucifixion and a Roman soldier made a man from the crowd take the cross in Jesus' stead.) Jesus says that if you’re forced to carry something for a mile, confound those who treat you as a slave and volunteer to serve them for an extra mile.

In our lesson, Jesus goes on to command us to give to those who beg and to loan to those who wish to borrow.

Folks, this is a strange way to live. And Jesus makes this way of life sound even stranger in the latter part of our lesson. Look at what He commands in verses 43 and 44: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...”

One question that Jesus' words may bring to our minds is this: Why exactly would anyone want to live the strange lifestyle that Jesus describes here?

Well, it isn’t because, if you hang in there, the world will recognize what a wonderful person you are. For every Gladys Stains, who received a major award from the country where she rendered her service to Jesus Christ, there are millions of believers who are put down, despised, shunned, and forever ignored for being faithful.

One good reason though for pursuing the strange life style of loving God with our whole beings and of loving our neighbors as ourselves is that, in fact, those who live any other way aren’t really living.

Author Lois Cheney tells a parable about a man who saw that love was hard and so kept to himself; saw that the striving for high ideals was strenuous and so put his head down and focused on surviving from day to day; saw that serving and giving to others got one embroiled in challenges they wouldn’t otherwise have and so just took care of himself.

When the man died, he approached God and said, “Here I am, Lord: undiminished, unmarred, and unsoiled, no worse for the wear. Here’s my life” “Life?” God asked. “What life?”

The strange life of love in which we keep on loving even when others—even others in Christ’s own church—may hate us, is, truly the only real way to live. Every other way of living is a living death: no risks, no challenges, no fulfillment, no faith, no Holy Spirit, no Jesus, no God.

But how do we live such a life?

As some of you have heard me tell, Martin Luther sometimes spoke of what happened when the devil tempted him to sin. “When [the devil] comes knocking upon the door of my heart and asks, ‘Who lives here?’ the dear Lord Jesus goes to the door and says, ‘Martin Luther used to live here but he has moved out. Now I live here.’ The devil, seeing the nail prints in His hands, and the pierced side, takes flight immediately.”

The strange and beautiful way of life Jesus commands in today’s lesson—the way of love that refuses to take revenge and stands strong in the power of God—is possible when we let Jesus Christ, the One Who died and rose to give us life—into the center of our lives.

Jesus lived the perfect life of love He describes throughout the Sermon on the Mount and if we will let Him into our every decision, our every moment of temptation, our every relationship, He will come to live inside of us and change our lives today and for all eternity.

There’s a prayer I offer up to God whenever someone vexes me, or is unkind to me, or just annoys me. First of all, I tell God how I’m feeling. Then I make a request.

“Lord," I pray, "I can’t love this person right now. But I know that You love him or her, just as You love me in spite of how annoying or wrong I can be. You sent Your Son to die and rise for them, just like You sent Him for me. So, please God, love this person through me. Grant that they’ll only experience Your love for them when they’re with me.”

You know the strange thing? God has answered that prayer every time I’ve offered it. He seems to love others through me, in spite of my feelings.

And, here’s something else: As I’ve let Jesus into those relationships in this way, God sometimes has transformed those relationships and helped me to love as I love myself the people I once found so impossible to love.

If you’re serious about living the life style of the Sermon on the Mount, there’s only one way for that to happen and that’s to let the Preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, be the God and Lord and Master of your whole life.

Jesus will take up residence in your life.

He will give you a way of life marked as strange by the world.

But, as Jesus invades your thoughts and priorities, truly, you will come to believe this life of service and love is, in the end, the only way to live...now and most certainly, in eternity! Amen

On Conversion...and the Ordinary

On conversion

Before I became a Christian I do not think I fully realized that one’s life, after conversion, would inevitably consist in doing most of the same things one had been doing before, one hopes, in a new spirit, but still the same things.

From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in Words to Live By
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

It is the ordinariness of their lives after coming to faith in Christ or being renewed in that faith that causes many Christians to lose touch with Christ.

It's as though they think that becoming a new creation means they still don't have to take out the trash, scrub the toilets, endure annoying people, peel the potatoes, or clean out the stalls.

Or, they think, if they must do them, they will always do so with smiles on their faces.

But this isn't the resurrection world. The trash still needs to be taken out. On the other hand, when you're in the new creation, yet still not resurrected, you also realize that maybe sometimes, you are the annoying person.

And after all, not all the ordinary things of life are so awful. I hope that we get to do some of them in eternity. In fact, some of the greatest joy and happiness in this life resides in simple pleasures: the smell of a newborn, the touch of a lover's hand while walking through woods, the laughter of a friend. These too are ordinary things that can be cherished all the more when one knows and has intimacy with Christ.

And even in those tasks we call "work," there's a certain sense of accomplishment--a sense that we are co-conspiring with God in the care of His creation--when we take out the trash, peel the potatoes, or clean out the stalls.

Sometimes, through a mirror dimly, our conversion to Christ can help us see that the ordinary is really extraordinary.

Saints and Sinners

Martin Luther spoke of the status of believers in Christ as "Simul iustus et peccator," meaning simultaneously saints and sinners.

Those who have been saved by grace through God-given faith in Jesus Christ are simultaneously acquitted of our sin by the forgiveness God gives in Christ, yet still worthy of total condemnation and death.

That simple phrase--"simul iustus et peccator"--conveys something of the depths of a righteous and holy God for His fallen children. Over our guilty lives God is willing to spread the innocence of Jesus. We remain fallen, imperfect children while we draw breath here. Yet God makes us His own in Christ.

Amazing grace, indeed!

Huffington Post Profile of Lecrae

Here is an extensive and well researched article on rapper/hip-hop artist, my current favorite in the genre, Lecrae. He also happens to be a Christian.