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“So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

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As a Christian what excites you about the Church? It’s a good question to ponder. As you do so, let me tell you what excites me.

First, I am gripped by the message of the Church. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.” The Christian message is the grand story of God’s love, seeking to rescue His lost and fallen family from the power of the enemy. At the center of it all is Jesus, in whose life, death and resurrection God has worked this miracle of our salvation by His sheer grace and mercy. For some, this story is a fanciful tale, easily discarded. For people of faith, it is life and salvation and is non-negotiable.

Second, I am awed by the scope of the church. Jesus said, “I have sheep that are not of this fold.” Across the world and across the generations the Church has taken root among virtually every people. The multiplicity of denominations and traditions can be challenging, even troubling. Some Christians are so preoccupied with this challenge, and have doctrinally defined the church so narrowly, they are the only ones in their Church. Others, rather disingenuously, call themselves ‘non-denominational’ in an effort to minimize differences, as if doctrine is not important. But God has made us this human family so that we are all unique, right down to our fingertips. And while family life can be challenging and troubling, that does not make you any less a member of the family.  In some mysterious way, by the power of the Holy Spirit given in baptism, Christians share in the fellowship of the “one, Holy, Catholic and apostolic Church”. 

Finally, I am humbled by the unity in the midst of the diversity of the Church. This is not to say unity of doctrine, though doctrine matters greatly. Nor by this do I mean unity in worship. The stately liturgy of the Orthodoxy, the exuberance of the Pentecostals and the ordered worship of many Lutherans, along with many other forms, are all part of the Church’s worship. What is truly humbling for me is the knowledge that Christ is the mysterious center of the Church’s life. He has chosen us, we have not chosen Him. When Christian people gather around the Word and sacraments it is not our traditions, shared interests or the color of our skin that unite us, it is Jesus Christ Himself. 

As I reflect on the life of the Church, I find it helpful to keep these three things in mind. I trust you will find them helpful also.

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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 was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died;”

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Once there was a young man named John who enjoyed the piano. And while he had never received formal training, he considered himself to be on the level of a concert pianist. In fact, he could not read music and what he did play by ear was at the most elementary level, and not very good at that. For a time his friends indulged him. John had no family and the piano was his principal avocation, so they tolerated his fantasy. But as time went on his illusions began to dominate his life. John spent hour upon hour playing, never advancing in his ability. He was losing himself in his illusions. He began to speak of his plans to give concerts, to go on tour. In preparation John went deeply into debt and purchased an expensive concert grand piano for his home and invited his friends over for a ‘concert’ on the new instrument.

The appointed evening came, the friends gathered and the man stumbled through several songs. The quality of the instrument could not compensate for the embarrassment of his poor playing. Then, his best friend introduced a young woman who had accompanied him. Would John mind if his guest played something? Reluctantly, the host slipped off the piano bench. The woman took her place and for the next half hour the piano came alive with the extraordinary sound of Mozart. Her playing was at the highest level. In fact, she was a concert pianist. John was shattered. All his illusions collapsed.  When John heard the woman play, it was not beautiful, it was the sound of death to him. This was precisely what John’s friend had hoped for. Getting John out of his illusions was a necessary step toward sanity.

In his letter to the Romans St. Paul describes the life of natural man and woman prior to knowledge of God’s law. “I was once alive apart from the law”, he writes. The life he refers to here is the life of one who is a law unto himself, who lives by following one’s natural appetites, desires and inclinations. But when God’s law was revealed to Paul, his illusions about himself and life before God were shattered, died. With the perfect law of God placed alongside his life, he was now aware of the vast chasm between what he was and what he had been created to be.

Left to ourselves, life becomes an exercise in self-definition. We steal our existence from God and live within the framework of our own self-serving illusions. But like John’s friend, God loves us too much to leave us to ourselves. He uses His law to bring us to spiritual sobriety. But his goal is not to leave us there.  In the months that followed, as she had opportunity, the concert pianist voluntarily became his tutor. John slowly and with difficulty emerged from his illusions.  He came under the structure of her discipline. More importantly, he came to see how much she cared for him. He came under the influence of her love. In time, they married.

The path to seeing the greatness of Christ begins at the place of your great need. God’s law exposes that need. To shatter you? Yes. But more importantly, to bring you to see the extraordinary greatness of God’s love for you in Christ Jesus.

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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 freedom Christ has set us free.”

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If you have read the novel or seen the movie’ Ben Hur’, you will remember the insight it gave you into the life of a galley slave, chained to his oar, year after year. If the ship should sink, he would drown like a rat with no way of escape. Freedom is what the slave longed for. Death in bondage is what usually came.

In the case of Ben Hur, the events that freed him from a pitiless life did not result in true freedom, not right away. He went on to be adopted by the Roman admiral whose life he saved. Power and wealth now accompanied his freedom from the galleys. But he was not free. His life was consumed by hatred of the man who had unjustly condemned him to the galleys, and his thirst for vengeance. He remained bound to sin.

Freedom is not being able to do what you want, having independent wealth, or simply following your appetites and desires. To be truly free is to be set free from our bondage to sin. Ben Hur did not know what freedom was until the grace of God in Christ took hold of him. Author Lew Wallace was making this seminal point in his great novel. 

In the novel, which the movie does not portray, Ben Hur goes on to become a member of the Christian community and eventually assists in bringing support to the persecuted Christians in Rome. He and some fellow-Christians form an underground church in the catacombs outside the city where they gather to celebrate, in the midst of death, the life and freedom that is theirs in Christ.  

This is how the Christian, born a slave to sin, regards the Gospel of Christ. In Jesus Christ we find and celebrate our true freedom from sin’s captivity unto death and our new life as children of God even unto eternal life. 

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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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“It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us?” 

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Two young people were walking along in front of me in a local retail store. They were speaking quietly when suddenly, one of them turned to the other and in a loud voice exclaimed, “Don’t you judge me!”

No one likes to be judged, of course. In fact, we can construct vast systems of rationalization to justify our own thoughts, words and actions which tend to deflect, in our minds, the need to be judged. You might need judging, but not me! Most criminals, even when buried under an avalanche of condemnig evidence, will insist on their innocence. But if our lives are not worth judging, they can’t be worth much. 

Animals don’t build courtrooms and hold trials. Creatures who live according to unerring instincts, and to which they are bound, cannot be held acountable for anything, really. The same cannot be said for you. You were created in the image of God. Simply, this means you have attributes which enable you to share in the management, the stewardship of creation. Although limited, God has given you power and knowledge which are of such importance that you are held accountable for how you use them. Among the parables of Jesus in the New Testament, parables addressing stewardship are the most common. And the motif of judgment is in them all.

Last summer Linda and I spent part of a day at the Orange County Fair. We strolled among the exhibits and enjoyed the people watching. At one point we stopped for a break at one of the many refreshment stands. We chatted with the woman who waited on us as she prepared our food. She asked me what I did for a living. I indicated that I was a pastor. She immediately commented about what the last judgment might be like. Obviously, it was on her mind. I looked her in the eye and said, “Remember this. The One who will judge you is the One who died for you.” Her mouth fell open. “I’ve never heard that before,” she said with a smile.

Left to ourselves there is little upon which to base a gentle judgement at the end of life. There is simply too much evidence against us. But your friend and brother will be on the bench and He has already spoken; “Father, forgive them…”

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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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“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed…”

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If I want to take the measure of the temperature in our house I look at the thermometer. If the temperature is not to my liking I am not obligated to live with it. I have the option of adjusting the thermostat. If the temperature becomes unbearable, making the adjustment becomes a necessity.

Jesus had some specific words for those in whom faith is a living reality. He called them ‘salt’ and ‘light’. When these things are present, the temperature of life is adjusted to the atmospherics of the kingdom. Or, to use Paul’s words, the Christian is not a conformer but a transformer. 

At the same time it is important to point out that the New Testament authors do not put out a call for deliberate social transformation. The New Testament is no Communist Manifesto. St. Paul and the others were not offering a program designed to turn Christians into a legion of social workers. As often as not the Christian life transforms precisely because it’s intent is not to transform. Why? Because Christians are called to continually adjust life to the atmospherics of the kingdom.  If I am a police officer and join a corrupt police department, my duty as a Christian is not to conform to the corruption. If I am in business and am tempted or even ordered to perform in a dishonest fashion, my Christian duty is not to conform to the dishonesty. I am under no obligation to get along with anyone who invites me to conform in this way. 

Simply reflecting the status quo in life is not the way of the Christian. Our lives are tempered not by the latest expedient but by the Word of God as we hear the Law and the Gospel and receive the sacraments, as Christ Jesus conforms us to Himself. The culture offers this formula: ‘Go along in order to get along’. Our faith reminds us, ‘You are not a thermometer. You are a thermostat’.

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“…that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,  far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come;…”

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While on vacation a man went canoeing on a river that was unknown to him. He paddled along for a long time, enjoying the landscape, when he began to feel the current accelerating.  As the canoe picked up speed it suddenly hit a submerged rock, jarring the paddle loose from the man’s hands. He watched helplessly as it floated away. Then, his ear caught the sound of roaring water up ahead. The canoe was being pulled  toward a waterfall. 

One of the signal contradictions of our time is, on the one hand, the triumphant progress of technology and science and, on the other, the sense that humanity has reached a point where the problems, the chaotic difficulties we face may be too much for us. The world has gotten out of control and we may not be able to pull it back. There have been voices in recent decades suggesting that, like the dinosaurs, humanity’s time on this planet may be coming to an end. The urge to leave the planet, to consider the daunting challenge of actually colonizing other planets can be a reflection of this way of thinking. The mood is here. And while it may not always surface it is here. It may be in you. How do we deal with it?

Some would suggest that when the canoe reaches the edge of the waterfall the thing to do is get up and jump. We should defy the ominous future and take things into our own hands, be the masters of our own fate. Others, would drift along keeping their eyes on the shoreline, pulling into themselves, trying to deny the reality of what is actually happening. Still others would lie down in the canoe, cover their heads and ride their fears into the future.

We do face an uncertain future. But when has it not been so? No generation has been given a road map for tomorrow. Each day must be received in trust, in faith. The Christian faith affirms that however ominous the future may appear to be, it will always resolve into the purposes of God.

The gospels tell the story of the ascension of Jesus into heaven where He is seated at the right hand of the Father. From this place of power and authority, the Bible tells us, Christ holds the reigns of history, and your life, in His hands. You may not have the assurance of knowing where you are going, but you can be assured that the currents beneath you flow out of His good and gracious purposes.

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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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“…as we await our blessed hope, the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ…”

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This may sound funny to some of you but whatever happened to whistling? That’s right, whistling.  Oh sure, once in a while you might catch someone whistling a bit, but for the most part you just don’t hear it anymore. I can’t account for it completely but I have some idea as to what has happened, and why it matters.

When my great-grandfather was serving his congregation in southwestern Minnesota at the opening of the twentieth century, events in Moscow, Bangkok or pretty much anywhere else in the far-flung world did not preoccupy him if he knew of them at all. The aches and pains of the world which did occupy him were mostly local, very close to home. There was an a kind of immediacy to life. The scale of life was manageable. 

Now, over a century later, the aches and pains of the entire world are broadcast into our lives almost instantaneously. Media cultures around the world are rubbing our noses in every imaginable dysfunction, tragedy and outrage.  Predictably, the humor of such an age is accompanied by the handmaidens of hopelessness – vulgarity and cynicism.  Whistling requires a light touch, an easy-going sense of humor. Why should anyone be whistling in the face of such a chaotic and crazy world? So, my argument is that whistling has become a casualty of the self-polluting of the contemporary human environment. It is a small symptom of a larger illness. 

A sense of humor ought to have a place in the Christian life. That’s the real issue. Can we have an authentic sense of humor, devoid of cynicism, in such a world? I think so. It is in the gap between what we are and what we ought to be where both tragedy and comedy dwell. Christians are very much aware of this gap. We know that gap to be the result of sin, our separation from God, one another and the creation. Apart from the framework of that “blessed  hope” that is in Christ Jesus, it is hard to face this gap without trending toward cynicism, even despair.

In Christ Jesus God has closed the gap between Himself and our sin. What this means for you as a Christian is that you can face the disparities in your life and the world in the light of God’s grace. Like everything else in the life of faith, both tragedy and comedy are informed and tempered by this grace. This grace enables you to employ both compassion and humor in your dealings with the aches and pains of your own life and this crazy world. And as you reflect on that grace, and all the promise and blessed hope it holds because of Christ Jesus.  It may even get you to whistling once in a while!

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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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“God is love.”

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Many years ago a family moved in across the street from some friends of mine. On the very first day the husband invited my friends over for coffee. The next week they were invited again, this time for dinner. The new neighbor waved smilingly across the street each time he saw my friends. That is until one day when this new fellow approached my friend and aksed him if he needed any help with life insurance. My friend said no, he was well taken care of in that area. The new neighbor smiled and went home. That was the last time he heard from him.

It is important for me to know that even if God gets very little done with me He loves me nonetheless. In fact, it is truly a travesty when we use love.

Our language does not have a word for God’s love. The ancient Greek language of the New Testament does. That word is ‘agape’, which may be translated ‘undeserved’ or ‘unmerited love’. 

The love of God is an end in itself. He does not use it for other purposes. He doesn’t love us in order to save us or change us or do something to us.  If God accomplishes nothing with us He loves us still. God loves His children that are forever lost to Him as much as He loves those who have come home. God does not use His love to get something done.  This is part of of what it means to say ‘God is love’. God’s love is not an emotion or a feeling. It is not a responsive love that is attracted to the beautiful and repelled by the ugly. It does not calculate or count the cost.

A Coast Guard captain called for his crew to launch their ship into a great and terrible storm. A ship was foundering and the distress signal had gone out. One of the crewmen objected. “Captain”, he said,”If we sail out into that gale we may never come back.”  The captain replied, “Getting back is not our chief concern. Getting to that ship is.”

The love of God in the church, reflected in His people, is not an instrument. It is an end in itself. We are not to seek the welfare of others so that they will join our church or give money to the church or think well of the church. God loves and that’s it. And His people are to love whether it achieves anything or not.

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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 by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,”

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Our time has been called the information age. We have more of it at our fingertips than previous generations could have imagined. And each day we gain more knowledge.  For many the key to the human future is knowledge. Knowledge will power us to a utopian human future, they say.

For others, power itself is what matters. Power in the form of money, political leverage, military might, the capacity to wheel and deal and aquire wealth. Life coaching types make millions off the promise of helping people discover and apply ‘personal power’, which is supposed to unleash one’s power to achieve success, however defined. The world is obsessed with knowledge and power as the levers, once properly controlled, that will bring us the life we want. We see it all around us and in ourselves.

You were created in the image of God. The Bible tells us so and this is a high calling. Therefore, the fact that knowledge and power preoccupy us is no accident. They are supreme gifts that distinguish us among all creatures. God is all-powerful and He has given you some power. God is all knowing and has given you some knowledge.

But there is a third characteristic of God for which you were also made and it is more important by far than the other two: holiness and righteousness. God is all-holy, we are not holy. This, not the lack of knowledge or power, is the great human tragedy. When the awesome gifts of knowledge and power are in the hands of a creature that lacks the most important quality God has given us, His very holiness, those gifts become tainted and our lives and the world look the way they do. And we have no solution.

In Christ Jesus, God has addressed our betrayal of Him and our descent into unholiness. He took up a cross and allowed our unholiness to crucify Him. Three days later he was raised from the dead. Now in a miracle of love and mercy, God has determined that His holiness and righteous are His gift to us through faith in Christ. It is this faith, not what we know or are able to do, that restores us to our Creator, the world and ourselves. Why has God done this? Is some remnant of righteousness left in us that makes us worth loving. Hardly. God loves us not because of who we are but in spite of us. His love is sheer, undeserved gift. The Bible’s word for it is grace. Our knowledge and power will not save us. The grace of God in Christ Jesus will.

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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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“By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before Him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts.”

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The letter of 1 John reminds us that love shows itself by action. But what if it doesn’t? What about those times when we look inside ourselves and have to face the truth that we have not lived up to the great commandment?  

I knew a Christian man years ago who was obsessed with how unloving he was. He complained about it, lamented it, wore it like a thorny crown . His own sinful heart became his prosecutor. I said to him, “The way you carry on, you would think that your sinful heart is greater than Jesus your Savior.”

God is greater than our hearts. Our hearts may prosecute us but God is our judge, He sees through us and knows us. God knows our spiritual condition and He knows that the measure of love we do have in our hearts, born of faith, means that we have passed from death to life.  Although we are imperfect in love – and our hearts will tell us this – we are, nevertheless, born of God’s great love in Jesus and we are His beloved children. Now, there is something to be obsessed about!

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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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