Reflection: Chosen to Glorify God (June 1, 2014)

The 7th Sunday in Easter
Acts 1:12-26; 1 Peter 4:12-19, 6:6-11; John 17:1-11

The biblical teaching that God has chosen the people who will be saved rather than people choose to believe in God and be saved by that choice is not very popular in American Christianity. Part of the reason for this is that our culture has made choice into an idol. From abortion to homosexual marriage, we insist on our right to make choices on matters that God’s Word has firmly and clearly decided for us. Given our perspective that we should be able to choose in these matters, why would we embrace the idea that we have no choice in the most important matter of our lives?  Even more than that, why would we subject ourselves to the choice of a God who insists that along with choosing us for salvation He has chosen for us the ways in which we will suffer in order to glorify His name? Clearly, this line of thinking makes everything about God and His choices rather than about us and our choices. How un-American!

The problem we have with God’s choices isn’t unique to Americans. All people naturally resist God and His will. In our sinfulness, we desire to glorify ourselves rather than glorify God. We recognize (and even expect) this in those people who don’t know Christ. But it’s just as great a problem for Christians as it is for unbelievers. Even though we belong to Christ and confess our trust in Him, in our weakness we hesitate to follow Him into the glory that He has chosen for us. Instead, we seek out the glory that suites us — glory that looks strikingly like the glory that the world desires and exalts. We prefer and pursue a glory that comes without suffering rather than the glory that is found in suffering. But the glory we seek is neither what God has chosen for us nor is it His glory. It’s simply our glory dressed up as His.

Jesus knew that He would have to suffer in order to glorify the Father. He also knew that all of His followers — from the first disciples to us and those who will come after us — would have to suffer in this world to glorify Him. His desire as He resolutely embraced the Cross suffering through which He would glorify the Father and that we would glorify Him. He knew that such glory necessarily involves the Cross — for Him and for us. This is why He prayed for us and not for the world (John 17:9). We’ve been chosen to glorify God which invariably leads us into suffering for the sake of His name — and just as invariably leads us, after we have suffered for a little while, to His eternal glory.

Click here to listen to the sermon "Chosen to Glorify God" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

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).

Reflection: The Outcome of Our Faith (April 27, 2014)

The 2nd Sunday in Easter
Acts 5:29-42; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

More and more, people in our culture are less concerned about outcomes as they are the processes to achieve them. This is especially true of people who fail to accomplish their desired outcomes. Rather than acknowledge that failure is the outcome, people play it down and focus on the benefits of having done something that stretched or challenged them. While it’s good that people find something positive in having tried and failed, refusing to recognize failure as the outcome when it actually is the result of one’s efforts is a destructive form of denial. Focusing on the process and minimizing outcomes creates a great sense of uncertainty — one that leads to everything we do being pointless. Seeing the process as more meaningful than the outcome is like seeing a journey as more important than the destination. While process and journey can be enriching, they only serve us well if they are moving us toward something of worth and importance. Otherwise, we’re wandering aimlessly.

It’s not surprising that our culture sees outcomes in this way. People embrace and promote a worldview that is based on the premise that we came from nothing, evolved through random forces, and will one day return to nothing. If nothingness is our origin and our outcome, all we have left is the journey. Of course, that means that the journey is mostly pointless, which really leaves us with nothing. From nothing, for nothing, to nothing. How desperately depressing!

Faith stands in contrast to this worldview. The God who has called us into the Faith “has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Like the people of the world around us, we value the journey that we are experiencing. However, unlike them, we know that the journey pales in comparison to the outcome. We are also distinctly different from them because we are certain of the outcome of faith. Whatever our journeys may consist of and wherever they may lead us in this world, “the outcome of [our] faith, the salvation of [our] souls” is certain because in Holy Baptism we have been buried with Christ in His death and raised to life in His Resurrection. Our outcome is, by His grace, taking hold of “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” which is being kept in Heaven for us while we journey through this world in faith and hope and love.

Click here to listen to the sermon "The Outcome of Our Faith" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: Rejoice! (April 20, 2014)

The Resurrection of Our Lord
Jeremiah 31:1-6; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10

Rejoicing isn’t something that we can do on command. We may force a smile or fake happiness, but we can’t “feel or show great joy” unless something brings us great joy. When we have such a thing, rejoicing is a spontaneous reaction not a calculated response. So, when God’s Word tells us to rejoice, it isn’t commanding us to muster up joy from within ourselves, but calling us to realize that we already have the source of great joy and to respond accordingly. If we do not understand what we have in Christ, rejoicing is beyond us. Even when we do grasp it, we need to be reminded to look beyond our circumstances to the source and cause of the great joy that we have in all things in order to experience the joy, peace, and hope we have in Christ. In our troubled moments we are blessed to hear the reminding call to take stock of what we have and who we are as God’s chosen people and rejoice.

While we may see the need to be reminded to rejoice in our hardships, it seems unnecessary to be reminded to rejoice on Easter. Today is a day that overflows with the joys of the empty tomb, the angels’ announcement that Christ has risen, Jesus appearing to the women at the tomb, and His assurance that there is no reason to fear because He lives. But, as wonderful as all of these things were for those who experienced the first Easter, none of their joys belong to us if we are disconnected from His resurrection. Very sadly, many people have no connection to the risen Christ — and even we can find ourselves feeling very disconnected at times. That’s when we need the reminder to rejoice. That’s why we need that reminder today.

Of all of the ways that God has demonstrated His love for you and reminds you of His favor toward you, the Cross of Jesus looms largest. The empty tomb that we celebrate today assures you that Christ’s work for you on the Cross is complete and is fully sufficient for your salvation. Joined to His Cross in Holy Baptism, you have inherited everything that Jesus accomplished through His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His resurrection. You are loved without condition, forgiven of every single sin of thought, word, and action, and now live and will live eternally in Christ. No weakness in you, no sinful failure on your part, no troubling circumstance in your life, and no power in heaven or on earth can rob you of the treasures of His love and grace. The Cross and the empty tomb assure you and remind you that you belong to Him forever. Rejoice!

Click here to listen to the sermon "Rejoice!" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).

Reflection: Reflect! (April 18, 2014)

Good Friday
1 Peter 4:1-2

We are not a people given to deep reflection. We more attuned to short sound bites, instant messaging, and fleeting images and, through them, to making instant assessments of and passing immediate judgment on the value of things and of people. We may acknowledge the wisdom of “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but we don't practice it. Life moves too quickly for us to delve into everything that comes our way for a thorough, fair, and balanced assessment. We feel that thinking deeply about things, situations, events, and people is a luxury we can’t afford. Perhaps, but we are impoverished because of it. We routinely overlook precious jewels that enter into our hectic lives. Chief among the treasures that we neglect to engage on a level deep enough for it to enrich our minds and hearts as fully as it can stands the Cross of Jesus Christ.

It’s unlikely that we’d choose to put our busy lives on hold in order to reflect deeply upon the Cross. If forced into contemplation, we’d rather focus on upbeat and heartwarming thoughts such as the birth of Jesus, His astounding miracles, or His insightful teachings. We rightly sense that approaching the Cross in serious meditation is going to challenge us and that it may even affect our lives in ways that trouble us. We can deal with the penetrating teachings of Jesus by sidestepping their thrusts to let them pierce the souls of those we consider more worthy targets. We can marvel at the recorded miracles without thought to how they undergird His greater miracle of birthing us through death to life. We can even soften an incarnate God’s forceful intrusion into our broken world by focusing on the tender feelings we have for baby Jesus sleeping gently in the straw. However, when we stand before the Cross and behold the One pierced by our wretchedness and we begin to take in the immensity of the love that moved Him to bear our sins and endure the punishment that we yet deserve, there is no place for us to hide from the injustice of Him suffering for our sins, no diversion to deflect the ugly truth that Christ hangs in place of us, and no pleasant thought to cushion the cruelty and violence perpetrated against the God of love and mercy who joined us in the human flesh now hanging tattered in crucifixion. Here we must face what is before us and seek to comprehend the breath and length and height and depth of the love that fashioned this unfathomable moment of terror and peace, sorrow and joy, death and life. Here, at the Cross, we must reflect.

Click here to listen to the homily "Reflect!" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).