“For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord,…”

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The world is full of agendas. I have them and so do you. There is a story told about a man who joined a congregation. He was eventually elected to the church council where he beligerently began to push his own ideas about what the church should be about. After a year or so he called on the pastor to announce that he was leaving the congregation. Since he could not get his way, he was moving on.

Over the long centuries many agendas have threatened to overwhelm the essential business of the church. Occasionally they have succeeded, at least temporarily. At times political agendas have dominated. This was especially true during the centuries following the collapse of the Roman empire. The church found itself holding the reigns of political power. The resulting abuses were predictable. At other times, the moral agenda has threatened to replace the Gospel with Law, equating the Christian faith with a list of do’s and don’ts. Today, advocacy of the latest social agenda has become the de facto gospel in many chuches.

Of course, none of this is new. St. Paul found himself, again and again, having to remediate congregations and individuals under his care. His theme was constant; Christ and His cross must be central. Fifteen centuries later, Martin Luther took up the same Gospel cause.

The painter Lucas Cranach was a friend and supporter of Martin Luther and many of his works were in support of Reformation themes. The Cranach painting above is located at St. Mary’s church in Wittenberg, Germany (it is also permanently on the header of my blog).  If you look closely, you will see that Cranach has painted the crucified Christ just above the altar table, directly in front of where the preacher stands. He has depicted Martin Luther preaching, with one hand on the Bible and the other pointed toward Jesus Christ crucifed.  Cranach is clarifying the agenda and making it clear to those called to preach, and to the congregation, that Jesus Christ is the Church’s agenda and the proper subject of the Church’s preaching.

As long as the church exists in time, God’s people will be tempted to replace God’s agenda with our own. But thanks be to God that He keeps hold of His Church in love and brings us back to Christ, whose agenda is to love sinners and bring them, at last, out of death to life.

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“May the peace of Gods that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor and theologian who was imprisoned as a result of his resistance against the Nazis. Bonhoeffer wrote the following poem in April of 1945, one month before he was excecuted at the direct order of Adolph Hitler.

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 “Who am I?”

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me

I bore the days of misfortune
equally, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

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“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it.”

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Two thousand years ago the Christian movement began among the poor and marginalized of Palestine and spread throughout the middle east. Today, there are so few Christians left in that part of the world they hardly make a difference. The photo above was taken near Ephesus. It shows the ruins of what was one of the greatest churches in that part of the world, the Basilica of St. John, site of the great ecumenical council of Ephesus.

Western Europe and the United States are the principle inheritors of Christian civilization – or what is left of it. Christendom is largely a thing of the past. Gone are the days when villages and towns were dominated by the presence of Christian churches, and, more importantly, when the Christian story gave shape to all aspects of life. Today, Western secular societies are a salad bar of religions, cultures and ideologies which pose a direct challenge to the Christian faith. For millions, worth is measured by one’s capacity for acquisition and consumption of things; the pagan eroticism of the pop\entertainment culture has cheapened much of our common life; an aggressive scientism is attempting to strip life of any meaning beyond the rational, the technical and measurable.

Every generation is a time of challenge and decision for the Christian faith, and that means for local congregations and people who confess Jesus as Lord of all.  Our time is no exception. The Christian faith is always one generation away from extinction. Ruined church buildings are a reminder that we have no right to the kingdom. It is God’s gift to us. So, we pray that His kingdom might prosper among us and that the fruit of that Kingdom may issue forth in a joyful, daring witness to the salvation that is in Jesus Christ and in deliberate, sacrificial love for the neighbor.

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 “May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our lord.”

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“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.”

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The partially reconstructed building in the photo is of the Temple of Vesta, located in the Roman Forum. This small, circular structure was among the most important buildings in all the Roman empire. Within it a fire was kept burning, 24 hours and day, day after day, for centuries. The keepers of this flame were a small group of women and girls who had been especially chosen. They were housed in a beautiful complex just behind the temple and for thirty years were devoted to this task. As long as the flame burned, Rome would endure.

Today the flame, to which the Romans devoted so much care and attention, has been extinguished.  The compound of the vestals and the temple over which they kept watch are in ruins. The Roman empire, seemingly destined to endure forever, is gone. 

Christians, too, have a light which requires our attention. That light is the message of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus. From generation to generation the Church is mandated to make the stewardship of  the Word of God its first priority. Other matters may occupy our time and attention, but none are more important.  

Unlike the flame of the Vestals, however, the light of Christ is not dependent upon us in order to endure. We do not keep the light of the Word alive, the Word keeps us alive. I take great comfort in this. For while the obligation to bear witness to the Word challenges me, I know that God provides all the necessary resources to make His Word known. God has chosen to keep His light burning not in beautiful marble temples but in earthen pots like you and me. God keeps the Word, Jesus our Lord, down to earth, in our hearts, on our lips, as near as a breath, as near as the sacraments, close to the hurts and hopes of the world. And in doing so keeps us in the promise: the light of Christ will shine no matter how persistent the darkness may be.

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“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“Look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, for the days are evil.”

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The clock in the photo above looks out over St. Mark’s square in Venice, Italy. On the one hand it serves, as all clocks do, to measure movement as people go from place to place. At the same time it reminds us that movement within what we call time is temporal.

Scripture and our experience in time reveal to us that life is lived against the backdrop of this critical, temporal situation. St. Paul brings this home in the verse from Ephesians.  Life is not a neutral ‘tabula rasa’ on which we simply write our experience for good or for ill. The Biblical witness makes it clear that we live in a creation in which evil militates against us. “…the days are evil”, Paul says.

There are many ways of describing this evil, to be sure. From the fiery images of the Bible’s apocalyptic writings (Daniel and Revelation) to the modern insights of evil as manifest in complex human behavior and institutions. But however we describe it, evil is a force which works, day by day, to pervert and destroy God’s good creation. Paul wants the church to keep this firmly in mind.

As people of faith, therefore, we enter the realm of the day with our eyes wide open. There is no room in the Christian faith for the naieve optimism of “Pollyanna”. We embrace with gratitude the gift of each day conscious of its untried opportunities, but we do so under the sign of the cross. We remember that like our Master, Jesus, our faithful walk in time takes place in a largely faithless world. Sometimes our lives exhibit in thought, word and deed just how close at hand and powerful evil can be. St. Paul once underscored this fact when he lamented the frequency with which he did the very things, as a Christian, he had resolved not to do (Romans 7).

Will we make the most of the time allotted to us? Of course not. That’s part of what it means to be caught in the reality we call sin. We will and do inevitably squander the gift of time in one way or another. But Jesus has overcome evil through His death on the cross. That’s the decisive thing for us. Because of Christ’s victory, we know that time itself has been gathered up in His grace!  So, Christian, “make the most of the time” – that wonderful gift – but make even more of the greatest gift of all – the boundless grace of God that forgives sinners and bears with us in love – in time and eternity!

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 “May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”

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A couple had been attending worship on and off for several months when they met the pastor at the door following the service and announced that this would be their last Sunday. The pastor asked them why. The woman replied, “You Lutherans talk about sin so much. You’re too negative. We found a church where they never mention it. It’s much more positive.”

I was not that pastor but I have heard similar remarks over the years. And something I like to point out to those who make such comments is the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ are to be found nowhere in the Bible. Those are not the proper categories for biblical preaching nor do they adequately address the human predicament.

If positive and negative are not adequate categories for addressing our situation, what categories do we use? The Bible speaks of death and life.  These are the terms that get to the heart of things. Any church that is not willing to deal with you on these terms is simply not taking you seriously.

The Christian message is not a religious self-help course, offering tips for living to those who need a bit more optimism or a more positive attitude. Christ Jesus has met us at the point of our deepest need, forgiving our sin, our willfulness, and defeating death so that, in Him, we might have authentic life and a real future.

Many years ago, one of my seminary professors, Marc Kolden, attended the funeral of the politician Hubert Humphrey. A famous TV preacher took to the puplit and began to wax eloquently about Hubert’s life. He never let things get him down. He was always on the upswing, always positive. Prof. Kolden looked over at the casket and said to himself, ‘Well, Hubert, is that positive attitude of yours going to get you out of that casket?’   Exactly.

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“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“All flesh is grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord abides forever.”

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For many Easter is past. The bright flower of the festival has faded into the ordinary routines of daily living. For what was observed was a day, and nothing more.

But the real Easter endures. For what is Easter if not the promise of God’s eternal victory in Jesus Christ; a victory that begins now in faith and is brought to perfection in the life to come?  

The wedding service contains these words, “By your promises bind yourselves to one another…”. Marriage begins with a promise and lives on that promise, “…until death parts us.” Other aspects of life together may not stand the test of time; children, career, friendships, health may all fail us, but the promise is meant to endure. Sadly, for many, the promise also fails, withers, fades.

God’s promise does not fail. “…the Word of the Lord abides forever,”  proclaims the Scripture. Easter Sunday – and  every Sunday – bears witness to the God who keeps his promises. This simple truth has been the bedrock of assurance for millions. It can be that for you, too.

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 “May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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Some years ago I was speaking with a young medical student following a funeral. He asked, “Why is death stronger than life? Why isn’t it the other way around?” In response I quoted him the text for today. We die because we sin. No matter how flourishing a life we may have lived, we all have sinned and death is our future. Pretty simple.

The inevitability of death can result in all kinds of effort to rationalize, to attempt to put a positive construction on death, to put the proper ‘spin’ on death and thereby diffuse it of its sting and power. We like to say things like, ‘Well, at least he didn’t suffer’ – if, in fact, that is the case. Or, ‘She had a long life and did everything she wanted to do’, and so on. Or, keeping fashion with the latest in the rhetoric of death denial, nowadays you don’t even die…you simply ‘pass’. Whatever that means.

But can we really believe that these assessments are an adequate response to something that robs us of everything – including life itself? They sound much more like the remarks of those who are powerless and don’t know WHAT to say in the face of the sobering and irrefutable truth that the world is a graveyard.

The Christian faith does know what to say. The Scriptures do not gloss over death and treat it like a minor bump in the road on our inevitable way to some spiritual never-never land. The culture may deny it, sanitize it, rationalize it, try to make the best of it and so on, but St. Paul called it what it is: “…the wages of sin…”. So I quoted St. Paul to the young medical student, who didn’t care much for what St. Paul had to say about sin and death.

I also reminded him of the free gift. I told him that God in Jesus Christ has forgiven sin and defeated death on the cross and that it is because Jesus lives that we may look forward in trust and hope to everlasting life.  My young friend wasn’t so sure about that either but he did concede that it was quite a promise. I said, “Indeed it is. And it’s for you.”

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“I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.”

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Before the formation of the ELCA in the late 1980’s, I was a pastor in the American Lutheran Church. In those days we had district presidents, a rather straightforward institutional title that always rankled those with episcopal pretensions. My ‘DP’ was Cecil Johnson. With a name like Cecil you just know he was a down-to-earth fellow who reeked of common sense and good judgment. And he did. Cecil had recommended me to the folks at Concordia Lutheran Church in Fertile, Minnesota.

Prior to Concordia Lutheran I had been an associate pastor in two very large congregations. Now I was the only pastor in a congregation of 650 members, in a town of just under 900. You do the math. I had a captive audience for better or for worse. Cecil was voting for better. He leaned over to me at the installation pot-luck following the service, while several cubes of red Jello wobbled on his spoon, and said in his adroit, fatherly manner, “Go slowly here, Mark. Take your time.” Then he gave me an excellent piece of advice which has served me well for many years. He suggested that I spend a lot of time the first year with shut-ins and the older members of the congregation. Get to know them. Get to know what they care about. Ask them about the congregation, the community, their faith. I took his advice and got to know some of the finest people I have had the privilege to have known in all my years of ministry. And in getting to know them they taught me something about the church and it’s business.

What I learned on those many afternoons while sipping coffee with those old Norwegians – and a few misplaced Swedes – was that faith in Jesus Christ and His promises was the marrow in their lives. And they had not come to this faith because some clergy person stuck his\her finger in the air and blathered on from the pulpit about politics, being relevant or the indelible wonderfulness of now. The message that gripped them was the old, old story of Jesus and His love and forgiveness delivered in Word and sacrament. The faith they held gave voice to their favorite hymns; Beautiful Savior, The Old Rugged Cross, Abide with Me, I Know that My Redeemer Lives, A Mighty Fortress.

During the years I was their pastor I had to bury some of these folks. Often, in those last days before the end, sitting by their bedsides, we would sing those old hymns accompanied by a guitar, read passages from the Bible, share the sacrament. It was during those hours of ministry that they taught me something essential about the hymns of the church; if they can’t be sung at our deathbeds they probably shouldn’t be sung at all.

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  “May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

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Linda and I stepped out of the elevator and this is the scene that greeted us. The rooftop restaurant looks out on the Roman Forum and Capitoline Hill.  The beautifully set tables announced that a gathering was imminent.  And sure enough, just a few minutes after this picture was taken, every seat was filled. A large family and some friends were gathering after a First Communion. Wine began flowing, food was served. The setting was spectatcular, the atmosphere joyful, full of life, a celebration. It was great to be there, even if we were on the outside looking in.

Thank God for these moments. Respites when we may gather with others for celebrations; brief truces in the wider conflicts, struggles and pressures of living, little glimpses of God’s promised future.

When our Lord Jesus Christ gathered with His disciples for what we know as the Last Supper, He was giving them, and us, a foretaste of the future. “I will not drink of the cup again”, He said, “until I drink it with you in my Father’s kingdom.” In other places, Christ Jesus described the coming kingdom as a marriage feast that knows no end. In every service of Holy Communion the future comes to meet us, full of joy and promise.

Some day, we will all be gathered at the banquet of the Lamb. Fellowship with the Living God will be the occasion for us. The endless drone of the world’s melancholy will finally give way to the joyous harmonies of eternal Easter, the glorious celebration that Christ has prepared for His people.  We will enter the banquet hall of the kingdom. Every place will be set and the feast that knows no end will begin! 

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“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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