Reflection: Being Very Religious (May 25, 2014)

The 6th Sunday in Easter
Acts 17:16-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

The word ‘religion’ isn’t very popular these days. Many people dismiss it by claiming to be spiritual rather than religious. Even Christians malign it by insisting that Christianity is not about being religious but about having a relationship with Jesus. Both views not only show a misunderstanding of the word, but contradict the Bible’s use of it.  For example, in Acts 17:22, Paul commended the Athenians for being “very religious.” He realized the importance of religion, so much so that he wanted them to know and experience the one religion that would be of value to them. Their problem, Paul pointed out, wasn’t that they were religious, but that they had the wrong religion.

The word ‘religion’ comes from Latin words that mean ‘to join something together again.’ It conveys the idea that we once had a harmonious relationship with God, but it was broken and in need of restoration. More than recognizing the problem, true religion actually restores harmony. This proper understanding of the word religion shows us that being religious is essential to being in a right relationship with Christ and being spiritually alive — thus exposing the foolishness of the contemporary rejections of the word religion. However, like the Athenians, we are always at risk of centering our religion in the wrong things and rendering it of no value — or worse.

When we boil it down, there are only two religions in the world. The first, the one that the Athenians had embraced, puts the burden on us to restore our broken relationship with God. It assures us that, in one way or another, we can do what God requires to be in His favor once again. This religion is really about me and depends upon my efforts, my spirituality, my commitment to my relationship with God, and my faithfulness. It is the religion of the Law. The other religion is the religion of the Gospel. In this religion our spirituality, relationship, goodness, etc. is based in the Father’s grace, the merits of Jesus, and the work of the Holy Spirit. In it, everything wholly depends on God’s faithfulness. It is the only religion — the only way — that restores a harmonious relationship with God and brings us eternal life. It is the religion into which you have been Baptized and through which you have come to know “the God who made the world and everything in it” and have been restored in His favor “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Click here to listen to the sermon "Being Very Religious" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: From Now On (May 18, 2014)

The 5th Sunday in Easter
Acts 6:1-9, 7:2, 51-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

There are points at which we become fully aware that from that moment on our lives are going to be different. These life-changing events can be wonderfully joyous or painfully troubling. Either way, something so significant has taken place that life will never be the same. We recognize the significance and the impact of events like graduating from school, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the end of a career, getting married, getting div
orced, and being permanently injured by even saying, “From now on, life is going to be different.” But we often end up struggling with the life that comes after our “from now on” events because we try to hold onto the life that we had before them. Denying that life has forever changed and trying to live our old lives only leads to frustration, disappointment, and failure.

Even if you can’t point to one in your earthly life, you can certainly point to a “from now on” event in your life in Christ. That moment came when you went from being estranged from God to becoming His child and being gathered into His Church through Holy Baptism. 1 Peter 2:10 explains that transformation this way: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” From that moment on, your life has been caught up in Christ and you have lived in His grace. You were delivered out of the darkness of sin and death and were grafted into “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession.”

You’ve had that “from now on” experience, but has it affected your life as it was intended to?  The new life that you have in Christ is meant to be a life of joy and purpose, one in which you delight in proclaiming “the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” But if you set this aside and try to live as you once did before Christ came into your life frustration, disappointment, and failure is certain to follow. Everything about you and your life has been changed. There is no going back to the old life — and thank God for that! From now on you are in His grace. From now on you are growing up into salvation. From now on you are a “living stone” in His spiritual house with the extraordinary privilege of offering the days of your life as “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.” All this, and more, from now on … into eternity.

Click here to listen to the sermon "From Now On" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: Not What We Had Hoped (May 4, 2014)

3rd Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-25; Luke 24:13-35

The two disciples walking on their way to Emmaus said more than they realized when they told their unfamiliar fellow traveler about Jesus. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they said in resignation.  Both the words that they used and the tense of their verbs showed that they didn’t understand Jesus’ mission and purpose. In the first place, they saw Jesus as the hope for Israel rather than the hope for the whole world. Secondly, they used the past perfect tense when they talked about their hope, a tense that indicates that an action was completed at some point in the past before something else happened. In their case, and by their admission, they stopped hoping that Jesus would redeem them when they saw Him die on the Cross. At that point Jesus went from “is” to “was” in their minds and He continued to be “was” even after they had received the reports that He had risen from the dead. The possibility of His resurrection did not restore their hope because it was not what they had hoped for in the first place.

Like those two disciples, we can find ourselves in circumstances in which what we had hoped for has faded from the realms of possibilities. And, like them, we may continue to hold onto our ideas of how things should have been or could have been rather than recognize that what we had hoped for in the first place wasn’t what was best for us, maybe even not what was good for us. When we hope for healing but God allows us to continue suffering through a disease or injury, we may question God’s compassion because we aren’t receiving the healing for which we had hoped. When our personal lives are spinning out of control and we are looking for a way to keep from being overwhelmed by our circumstances, we may doubt that God cares about us as the peace and prosperity we had hoped for fades away. In many other ways we find ourselves disappointed or frustrated or depressed because we have hoped for the wrong things. We hope for comfort, ease, and happiness, but we rarely hope for the Cross. Even when we do, we hope that the crosses in our lives pass quickly and won’t affect us too much. Fortunately, the Lord does not give us what we had hoped for. Instead, He moves us to hope only in Him. When we do, He richly and abundantly fills our lives with joy that exceeds our desired pleasures, peace that defies our circumstance, and hope that will never fade into the past tense.

Click here to listen to the sermon "Not What We Had Hoped" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).