“Free will since humanity’s fall into sin exists in name only.” What do you think about that statement? Agree or disagree? Do you like that statement or dislike it? It is one of Martin Luther’s most famous quotes. In fact, of all the things that caused the Roman Catholic church to excommunicate him, this is the point they made most clearly, “If you don’t believe in free will, then you do not belong in the RomanCatholic church!” And, you know what, Martin Luther agreed with them. His stance on this issue really was the nail in his coffin so to speak—both politically speaking and, even more interestingly, theologically speaking. If you were to ask him, Martin Luther would probably say that his stance on free will was what truly set him free! Let me restate what Luther was saying in a different way: Ever since Adam and Eve began rebelling against God, their creator, the human race has been freely choosing to continue the rebellion (even though we continue to insist that we are free not to!).
The doctrine of free will insists on this: we are free to choose God or to reject God. If we choose God, we are saved. If we reject God, we are not. Simple, right? Those who support the doctrine of free will would argue that God gives us commands and expects us to follow them. How could he ask us to do things that we aren’t free to do? For example, in the 10th chapter of the gospel of Mark Jesus commands a man to, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” These are not impossible things to do. The man is free to do them, even though he chooses not to. In fact, Peter explains that while that man didn’t follow Jesus the disciples have left everything to follow Jesus! Isn’t that a home run for how free will works? Well, it’s part of the story. When Peter and his fellow disciples deny their Savior at his crucifixion and abandon him we see a fuller picture of what free will looks like.
I know that everyone in this room believes in free will. It is spoken about ad naseum in the movies, on the radio and written about constantly in books. But the term “free will” is only used once in the Bible, did you know that? And that was only in reference to “free will offerings” meaning that God’s people are expected to tithe ten percent of their income, but if they want to give more, they are free to choose to do so or not. Of course, the term “Trinity” is never used in the Bible either, but we believe in that because of what scripture shows us about how God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one. Is that the case for “free will” as well? What does scripture say? Does scripture support the understanding of our freedom to choose Jesus or not? If you are willing to take the risk to find out, I’d like to put your understanding of free will on trial. Scripture will be the judge.
The doctrine of free will is based on the assumption that God cannot hold us responsible for sin unless he gives us freedom to choose. If he chooses for us, he wouldn’t seem very justified to punish us as if we did something wrong. So what do we do with the story of the Exodus? “The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.” God promised to harden Pharaoh’s heart. And a few chapters later, scripture says that he did it, “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” I’ve heard all the explanations, the revisions, the excuses for getting God off the hook for this one. But the words are simple and clear. “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” The Lutheran Reformers wrote that it only takes one passage of scripture to create terror in the hearts of those who believe in free will, no matter how numerous the army of passages supporting freedom that you can find. Because if, even once, God doesn’t seem to leave us free to act on our own, we can never quite be sure that he ever does.
Just so you understand the gravity of the situation, let me give you a few more verses that cause all of us to squirm. In John 17 Jesus prays, “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them save by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.” This passage refers to Judas. What does it mean that he was “doomed to destruction”? Does that get Judas off the hook? What does it mean in the 24th chapter of Luke that we read this morning when Jesus says, “Did not the Messiah HAVE to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” The word that is used in Greek to create this sentence means “it was necessary”. If Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion was “necessary” what happens to our free will? Can we still be held responsible for what happened? Or what about Philippians chapter 2, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” These verses don’t leave a lot of room for us to be free do they. Are we in charge of our salvation or is God?
Does this mean that we are destined to do whatever we do whether we like it or not? A kind of determinism? Like puppets on a string? An old professor of mine would answer this question by simply saying, “Look ma, no strings!” The fact is, whether we would argue that philosophically everything is determined or not, at some point we just stop thinking about it and still make our choices and feel very free to do so. We are very free to choose to eat oatmeal or donuts for breakfast. We can choose to love this person or that person. We have the freedom to will this or that in our decisions on this earth. But God makes it very clear over and over again in Scripture that when it comes to salvation, we don’t appear to be free at all to choose to be saved. No matter how many times he asks. No matter what he has commanded.
Listen, this is very important. I want all of your attention on this because this point is where everything stands or falls. For you mother’s out there, you might be able to understand this better than anyone else. You know that your children want to love you, that they care for you, that they want to please you but, the fact is, so often they seem to do just the opposite. They scream at you, they refuse to listen and they make choices directly against what you have asked them to do. Are they FREE to love you? Well, yes, I guess theoretically they have the ability to do the right thing. They could listen. They could be quiet. They could, but they don’t. I mean, you know that they want to be loving, but they seem bound and determined to do everything in their power to upset you some days. Are they free to do what they want? Yes, and they freely choose again and again to do the wrong thing. They don’t seem free not to.
This is true for all sinners. Are we free to do whatever we want? Yes, and we freely choose to betray God, to deny Jesus and to disobey God’s commandments. The problem with using the term “free will” is that it gives us the impression that we could, if all things went right, choose to do the right thing, follow God’s laws and believe in Jesus Christ. But scripture tells us that, while we were created free to do it, we are bound and determined to do whatever we want instead. Jesus said, “You did not choose me. I chose you.” “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
We are not free, we are slaves. Jesus said this very clearly in the gospel of John, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” Saint Paul says again in Romans, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Ever since sin entered the world, free will exists in name only. We are not free. We are slaves. All of us.
But saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church starts of like this, “In Jesus we are also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” For you, those words will either be words of comfort or terror. On what does the distinction depend? Do you believe that you are free or a slave? If you believe that you have free will, you will hate this passage when it says God has “chosen” you without your choice or that you are “predestined according to the plan of him” not the plan of you. You will shudder at the possibility that he is working out “everything” yes EVERYTHING in conformity with the purposes of HIS will and not asking you for your permission according to the purposes of YOUR will. Jesus’ love with feel restrictive and controlling, like he’s not giving you responsibility and the chance to prove your good intentions.
On the other hand, if you believe that you are a slave to sin and chained to your bad habits, not free, constantly tempted into your old sins like a dog returning to its own vomit, then these words in Ephesians are like sweet music to your ears. Because no matter how many times you have freely chosen to deny your Savior, you have been freely chosen by him. While there are times you feel destined for destruction according to your hideous desires, God says you are predestined according to his plan and that his choice was made long before your choices were made. That no matter what happens in this life whether good or bad, creating prosperity or suffering for you, everything is in conformity with God’s purpose and will. And God’s purpose and will is to love you no matter what.
People who believe in free will are always arguing for our freedom as creatures. But you will notice that we seldom talk about being free to believe in God, or free to love God or free to choose God. Because if you believe that the human race is free, then you will spend your life trying to keep people in line, in case they use their freedom too freely. When free will is spoken of, you often hear that we are free to reject God, or free to say “no” or some such action. I agree, we are not only free to do these things, these are in fact the only things we do! We don’t seem free NOT to do them!
On the other hand, if you believe that the human race is a slave to their sin, you will spend your life trying to free them. Where do you believe Jesus stood on this issue? “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” If I assume that you are all free to choose God, I will seek to become a better motivational speaker to help you better your chances of getting saved. If I assume you are all slaves to sin, I will seek to free you in the only way I know how—by giving you Jesus so that you might trust in his salvation. Jesus is the key to set you free.
In his explanation to the third article of the apostle’s creed Martin Luther wrote this, “I believe that I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” In other words, while I have the free will to choose to have a beer or have wine, to go to bed or stay up, to run for office or not, I do not have the freedom to trust in Jesus Christ and thus be saved. I am a slave to my sin. I have no hope. But Luther continues, “But, the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts and sanctified and preserved me in the one true faith.” You only find freedom when you confess your lack of free will and trust in God’s mercy alone to save a hopeless sinner like yourself.
We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. It’s not that we have to sin, we WANT to sin and can’t make ourselves stop! We must take full responsibility for this because there is no one else to blame. Apart from Jesus, like Judas, we are destined for destruction. If we seek our own justification apart from God, even his love and mercy will harden our hearts like Pharaoh. Thankfully, once we realize, as Luther did, that our coffins are nailed shut and we have no freedom to escape this mess we are in, Jesus Christ comes to us and says, “Now you will receive me totally and completely. Now you will have me be your all in all. Now you will trust me by faith alone. I have chosen you. I have saved you. I have predestined you according to my plan, according to my will, to live again with me. Yes, you are dead, enslaved, bound in your sins. But your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When you can’t place your trust in your free will any longer, all you can do is surrender: because it is God’s will to love you. Amen.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Sermon for May 1st (The Resurrection of the Body)
I was asked once in a church interview whether or not I believed in the Resurrection. Yes, I replied. I believe in the Resurrection. I mean, as a Christian (and especially as a pastor!) how could I give any other answer? Yet, I was told that in previous call committee interviews there had been hesitation or even waffling by not just one but two pastoral candidates on this very subject.
Which brings me to the question: Do YOU believe in the resurrection? Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Do you believe that through faith in Jesus YOU will rise from the dead? While I’d like to believe that this is a simple answer for all of you to respond to as Christians, I have found that, in fact, many of you would have a difficult time answering it and being sure of your answer.
At the end of this last year in confirmation, I asked the kids what happens after someone dies. Here is a sampling of their responses: we lay in the ground, we go to heaven or hell, our spirit goes up to heaven while our body rots, we become ghosts, we walk up a stairway to heaven and, my favorite, there is a train that comes and picks us up to take us to heaven! I’d like to believe that it’s only the confirmation students that are confused, but what answer would you have given if I asked you what happens after you die? Would you say that your soul goes to a better place, but your body stays down here to disintegrate? That you become an angel? Or maybe you’d honestly say that you just don’t know? Well, as a Christian, it’s time that you start knowing. I want you to be able and ready to give an accounting of the hope that you have in Christ Jesus. Is there really a resurrection from the dead and does it really matter?
Where do we start? With Jesus’ resurrection or the promise of our own resurrection from the dead? Well, the two are intrinsically related. Saint Paul explains in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 15, “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” And again a few verses later, “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.” It’s not either-or. It’s both or none! If Jesus really did rise from the dead, then you have hope that one day you will be resurrected as well. But you are not going anywhere if he stayed dead. The same holds true going the other way. If you don’t believe that there will be life after death for yourself, then you won’t be able to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead either. It’s not either-or. It’s all or nothing.
But do people just believe in one resurrection and not the other? Yes, I think so. For instance, there are many religious people who believe that they will “live on” in some transcendental way apart from their bodies. They believe in some kind of personal resurrection, but certainly don’t believe in Jesus Christ. But Jesus says you will NOT “live on” in any spiritual, bodily or transcendental way apart from faith in him. Jesus makes this point very clearly, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And again, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for
God’s wrath remains on him.” (John 3:36)
But there have always been skeptics about Jesus’ resurrection. In fact, it’s written right into the Bible in the gospel of Matthew, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, ‘You are to say His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” And yet, even though we were not there, we trust in the disciples’ witness as Christians that Jesus actually did die and was met again, but this time, alive! The Resurrection cannot be explained. It is meant to be miraculous! And, despite what that call committee experienced, I think that most Christians, and pastors, do believe in Jesus’ resurrection. The hard part, however, is understanding what Jesus’ resurrection means for us.
“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Yes, that’s right. If we didn’t believe that there was more to this life than what we see and experience here on earth, we shouldn’t even bother being Christians. Being a Christian is NOT about teaching your children to have good morals. It’s teaching your children to know that when they die they will be raised from the dead. Now, yes, that will create much more difficult discussions maybe, but it’s still the truth. We can’t be ashamed about this! Our faith relies on the resurrection. Without Jesus being raised from the dead, we are all here for no good reason at all! We should just be out enjoying ourselves until the bell tolls for us and we sleep the eternal sleep.
“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” Now, that’s the question that everybody asks. Did you know that the answer is in the Bible? I mean, so many people come up with all these weird ideas about ghosts, and spirits floating up out of the body and so on and so on as if we have to come up with the answer to this great mystery of life on our own. But It is answered right here! Chapter 15 of 1st Corinthians. Mark it! Underline it in your Bibles and when you wonder again you’ll be able to read it again. How ARE the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Here’s Paul’s answer, “How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.” That’s the beginning of his answer at least.
It’s not that it’s a foolish question, but simply a very weird and foolish idea that we get in our heads when we start thinking of dead bodies getting up and walking around. We ask questions like, “What about Uncle Fred who died from gangrene? How’s he gonna walk around on that leg in the resurrection?” What about people who died in an explosion? What about when someone is cremated? How can there be a body?” We all get so crazy in our minds with questions like this. Paul says that of course those pictures are foolish because just like farmers don’t plant cornstalks in their fields in the spring, our new spiritual bodies are not planted on this earth before death. Something changes.
God decided to make our bodies on this earth glorious but also able change, to decay and to perish. Some of you ladies out there may not like to believe it, but those wrinkles in your smile make you beautiful in a way that an 18 year old beauty queen cannot hope to emulate. Age can also bring bodily decay as well as much sadness and suffering but, the point is, after death, that kind of “au natural” look will not be possible. That’s old, but God says he will make all things new. So, yes, if you go out to the graveyard and dig up ol Great Grandma Helga right now after service, she’ll just be a pile of bones by now; however, in the resurrection of the dead, she will have a new spiritual body. Those old bones will be brought back to life in a way blessed Helga could never imagine. Remember , the tomb was empty when Jesus was raised. Do we really expect our own resurrection to be different than his?
We have hope to rise again because Jesus rose again. And how did Jesus rise? As a spirit? As a wisp of pure sparkling energy? As a ghost? No! Jesus came to see his disciples in the upper room and said this, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” Jesus had hands and feet and a stomach it appears because he ate fish. Every week we confess in the Apostles Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body and yet most Christians believe that they’ll look more like Caspar the friendly ghost than Jesus.
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
This concept of a spiritual resurrection, rather than a bodily one, comes from the misunderstanding that somehow our bodies and our spirits are opposed to one another. By the 4th century, a heresy called Gnosticism had taken over Christianity. The gnostics believed that this world with all its disease, earthquakes and slugs was gross, sinful and evil and that a Christian was supposed to escape this world and these yucky bodies of ours to become glorious, angelic and spiritual beings. Bodies were bad. Spirits were good! So, in the resurrection of the dead, of course, they just conveniently forgot that Jesus came back WITH HIS OWN BODY! With wounds still on his hands and feet! That he didn’t drop off his skin like a bodybag as he ascended into heaven but that he was raised into heaven IN HIS BODY! And, do you know what that means, God created you (spirit AND body) for a purpose. He made you good. Inside and out. And when you are raised, you will have a body. You will still be you. Different? Yes. Imperishable? Yes. Spiritual? Yes. But a spiritual body that is still a recognizable you.
Do you believe in the resurrection of the dead? Do you believe in the resurrection of the body? There are many things that we can’t know until the other side of eternity. But God tells us that we can know some things. As a believer in Jesus Christ, he promises you that because he died and now lives and reigns for all eternity, you shall also live again even though you die. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.” And praise be to God that, one day, you will be raised too. Amen.
Which brings me to the question: Do YOU believe in the resurrection? Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Do you believe that through faith in Jesus YOU will rise from the dead? While I’d like to believe that this is a simple answer for all of you to respond to as Christians, I have found that, in fact, many of you would have a difficult time answering it and being sure of your answer.
At the end of this last year in confirmation, I asked the kids what happens after someone dies. Here is a sampling of their responses: we lay in the ground, we go to heaven or hell, our spirit goes up to heaven while our body rots, we become ghosts, we walk up a stairway to heaven and, my favorite, there is a train that comes and picks us up to take us to heaven! I’d like to believe that it’s only the confirmation students that are confused, but what answer would you have given if I asked you what happens after you die? Would you say that your soul goes to a better place, but your body stays down here to disintegrate? That you become an angel? Or maybe you’d honestly say that you just don’t know? Well, as a Christian, it’s time that you start knowing. I want you to be able and ready to give an accounting of the hope that you have in Christ Jesus. Is there really a resurrection from the dead and does it really matter?
Where do we start? With Jesus’ resurrection or the promise of our own resurrection from the dead? Well, the two are intrinsically related. Saint Paul explains in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 15, “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” And again a few verses later, “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.” It’s not either-or. It’s both or none! If Jesus really did rise from the dead, then you have hope that one day you will be resurrected as well. But you are not going anywhere if he stayed dead. The same holds true going the other way. If you don’t believe that there will be life after death for yourself, then you won’t be able to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead either. It’s not either-or. It’s all or nothing.
But do people just believe in one resurrection and not the other? Yes, I think so. For instance, there are many religious people who believe that they will “live on” in some transcendental way apart from their bodies. They believe in some kind of personal resurrection, but certainly don’t believe in Jesus Christ. But Jesus says you will NOT “live on” in any spiritual, bodily or transcendental way apart from faith in him. Jesus makes this point very clearly, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And again, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for
God’s wrath remains on him.” (John 3:36)
But there have always been skeptics about Jesus’ resurrection. In fact, it’s written right into the Bible in the gospel of Matthew, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, ‘You are to say His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” And yet, even though we were not there, we trust in the disciples’ witness as Christians that Jesus actually did die and was met again, but this time, alive! The Resurrection cannot be explained. It is meant to be miraculous! And, despite what that call committee experienced, I think that most Christians, and pastors, do believe in Jesus’ resurrection. The hard part, however, is understanding what Jesus’ resurrection means for us.
“If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Yes, that’s right. If we didn’t believe that there was more to this life than what we see and experience here on earth, we shouldn’t even bother being Christians. Being a Christian is NOT about teaching your children to have good morals. It’s teaching your children to know that when they die they will be raised from the dead. Now, yes, that will create much more difficult discussions maybe, but it’s still the truth. We can’t be ashamed about this! Our faith relies on the resurrection. Without Jesus being raised from the dead, we are all here for no good reason at all! We should just be out enjoying ourselves until the bell tolls for us and we sleep the eternal sleep.
“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” Now, that’s the question that everybody asks. Did you know that the answer is in the Bible? I mean, so many people come up with all these weird ideas about ghosts, and spirits floating up out of the body and so on and so on as if we have to come up with the answer to this great mystery of life on our own. But It is answered right here! Chapter 15 of 1st Corinthians. Mark it! Underline it in your Bibles and when you wonder again you’ll be able to read it again. How ARE the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Here’s Paul’s answer, “How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.” That’s the beginning of his answer at least.
It’s not that it’s a foolish question, but simply a very weird and foolish idea that we get in our heads when we start thinking of dead bodies getting up and walking around. We ask questions like, “What about Uncle Fred who died from gangrene? How’s he gonna walk around on that leg in the resurrection?” What about people who died in an explosion? What about when someone is cremated? How can there be a body?” We all get so crazy in our minds with questions like this. Paul says that of course those pictures are foolish because just like farmers don’t plant cornstalks in their fields in the spring, our new spiritual bodies are not planted on this earth before death. Something changes.
God decided to make our bodies on this earth glorious but also able change, to decay and to perish. Some of you ladies out there may not like to believe it, but those wrinkles in your smile make you beautiful in a way that an 18 year old beauty queen cannot hope to emulate. Age can also bring bodily decay as well as much sadness and suffering but, the point is, after death, that kind of “au natural” look will not be possible. That’s old, but God says he will make all things new. So, yes, if you go out to the graveyard and dig up ol Great Grandma Helga right now after service, she’ll just be a pile of bones by now; however, in the resurrection of the dead, she will have a new spiritual body. Those old bones will be brought back to life in a way blessed Helga could never imagine. Remember , the tomb was empty when Jesus was raised. Do we really expect our own resurrection to be different than his?
We have hope to rise again because Jesus rose again. And how did Jesus rise? As a spirit? As a wisp of pure sparkling energy? As a ghost? No! Jesus came to see his disciples in the upper room and said this, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” Jesus had hands and feet and a stomach it appears because he ate fish. Every week we confess in the Apostles Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body and yet most Christians believe that they’ll look more like Caspar the friendly ghost than Jesus.
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
This concept of a spiritual resurrection, rather than a bodily one, comes from the misunderstanding that somehow our bodies and our spirits are opposed to one another. By the 4th century, a heresy called Gnosticism had taken over Christianity. The gnostics believed that this world with all its disease, earthquakes and slugs was gross, sinful and evil and that a Christian was supposed to escape this world and these yucky bodies of ours to become glorious, angelic and spiritual beings. Bodies were bad. Spirits were good! So, in the resurrection of the dead, of course, they just conveniently forgot that Jesus came back WITH HIS OWN BODY! With wounds still on his hands and feet! That he didn’t drop off his skin like a bodybag as he ascended into heaven but that he was raised into heaven IN HIS BODY! And, do you know what that means, God created you (spirit AND body) for a purpose. He made you good. Inside and out. And when you are raised, you will have a body. You will still be you. Different? Yes. Imperishable? Yes. Spiritual? Yes. But a spiritual body that is still a recognizable you.
Do you believe in the resurrection of the dead? Do you believe in the resurrection of the body? There are many things that we can’t know until the other side of eternity. But God tells us that we can know some things. As a believer in Jesus Christ, he promises you that because he died and now lives and reigns for all eternity, you shall also live again even though you die. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.” And praise be to God that, one day, you will be raised too. Amen.
Sermon for April 24th (Easter Sunday)
You already know. You already know about Jesus. You’ve heard about Jesus before today whether it was in Sunday school a long time ago or on the radio when you were flipping past and heard some funny preacher talk about him. You’ve heard about Jesus on some news show or read about the latest religious fads in Time magazine. You’ve heard. You know about him. But in book of Acts this morning, Saint Peter speaks to people who even though know a lot about Jesus are still missing something important in their lives. Is that you?
He starts of by saying, “We are witnesses”. Not you or me today, but the disciples, back 2000 years ago, they were actual witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. I know that you know it all, but do you believe that it is true? You know that Jesus was supposed to have died on the cross, you know he was supposed to be raised from the dead, but do you believe that it’s true? There is no reason to believe it except that we believe the eyewitness accounts. There were witnesses to it. They told about their experience. They wrote it down. Our faith rests on their witness. If they were lying, then we are all to be pitied for our faith would then be in some made up story. But what if they are true witnesses? What if they saw what they saw and heard what they heard? What if they really experienced what they experienced. What if Jesus really did rise from the dead?
Why should you believe them? In the book, “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel he explains why. He writes, “People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they’re true, but people won’t die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false. While most people can only believe that their beliefs are true, the disciples were in a position to know without a doubt, whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead. They claimed that they saw him, talked with him and ate with him. If they weren’t absolutely certain, they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that the Ressurection had happened. Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie.”
You and I could presumably die for a lie, but the disciples could not have. We were not eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. They were. If even one of them would have given in and said, “No! Don’t kill me! I was just making it up! You know, trying to start a new religious movement he-he!” don’t you think that someone would have picked up on that! They didn’t have anything to gain as this world sees it and everything to lose. And yet, we know that they all died still maintaining that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Jesus commanded these witnesses, his disciples, to tell people who already knew all about him two things that would make all the difference in their lives. Tell them about judgment he said and tell them about forgiveness.
There will be a judgment day. A day when Jesus judges the living and the dead. We will all stand before God and hear our verdict. We will have to answer for every word, thought or deed in this life. There is no escaping this judgment. Christians and non-Christians will be judged.
Do you think you’ll pass the test based on your actions in this life? I’m sure that you act pretty nice in public, pretty spiritual most of the time, but if people knew how your mind works, how badly you act at home with your family, or maybe on the internet, the kind of thoughts and desires you have swirling around in that head of yours all the time, well, you’d never let anyone find out! You don’t even like to think about it if you don’t have to. And yet God knows. The Bible tells us the truth we all knew: we all fall short of the kind of person God wants us to be. We are not even the people WE want to be.
But Jesus commands his witnesses to tell even more. Saint Peters says, “All the prophets testified about Jesus and everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Do you understand what this means? The prophets were saying, “The kingdom is coming, the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is coming!” And then when Jesus Christ was born God says, “It’s here! The kingdom of God is here!” That “thing” you ‘ve been waiting for? That meaning in your life your been looking for: it’s here! It’s Jesus! Your reason for living! Your reason for dying! His name is Jesus and, get this, he adores you. He cherishes a relationship with you so much that he died on a cross for you. There will be a judgment, but Jesus is basing your verdict NOT on your good deeds or bad choices, but on your faith in his power to forgive. You may already know about Jesus, but you don’t know anything if you don’t know that your sins are forgiven. That’s what Jesus is all about.
What does it mean to have your sins forgiven? It means that you can stop pretending . To have your sins forgiven means that you are a sinner with no hope of recovery. You need to hear that truth every chance that you get. You are stuck making the same hurtful decisions against those you love day after day and not only CAN’T you stop, but you WON’T stop. You don’t even WANT to! That’s what being a sinner is. To be forgiven is to be told that even sin won’t stop Jesus from loving you.
What if you don’t believe it? Well, then, you’ll be forced to trust in something else. When you hurt your wife, you’ll feel like all you can do is send flowers and hope for her pity. When you feel your life spinning out of control, you’ll self-medicate with ice cream, or alcohol or drugs. You’ll hide your bad behaviors behind a mountain of good deeds hoping to convince others, and maybe even yourself, that you’re lovable. Maybe people will like you for how hard you work even if they wouldn’t like the kind of person you are on the inside. But will God be so easily duped?
I’m sure that the vast majority, the vast majority of you, know about Jesus. What I’m saying is, “Who cares if you know about Jesus if his death and life doesn’t affect your life?” Why call yourself a Christian if that name doesn’t actually say anything about what’s happened to the way you live? Why bother with the whole rigamarole of coming to church once or twice a year, or even every week, if you don’t believe the simple message that “your sins are forgiven”? It’d be like having to show up to your own birthday party and not eating any cake. Or being gifted a brand new sports car without ever feeling the engine rev up beneath your body. If you think you know Jesus, but don’t trust his forgiveness, you’ve missed out on the biggest gift of all.
You see, if your sins are forgiven you are free. Free from having to look good in the eyes of the world. Free from having to do enough “good works” to please God. “Everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. It’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know. The question today is: do you know Jesus? Because he knows you, he loves you and he has forgiven your sins once and for all.
You’ve probably heard it before a dozen times. But what if it’s true? Believing in Jesus doesn’t mean you have to “do” more or “understand” more, but that you’ll stop “doing” anything and become a pure receiver of his grace. You can stop trying so hard and believe that when he said, “It is finished” on the cross that his death really did finish everything for you. You don’t have to “do” anything to please God, Jesus has already done it all for you. Everything? Yes, everything. Is there just a little bit left for you to do? No, not even a little bit?
Today you have the opportunity for freedom. Not because you know enough, but because forgiveness is a free gift for you. There’s nothing left to do. Only believe. Just fall back on God’s mercy and trust Him. You might already know a lot ABOUT Jesus—but it’s time that you come to know Jesus. There is a reason that you came here today. You’ve been missing something. God has brought you here to find it. God has brought you here to find him. Amen.
He starts of by saying, “We are witnesses”. Not you or me today, but the disciples, back 2000 years ago, they were actual witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. I know that you know it all, but do you believe that it is true? You know that Jesus was supposed to have died on the cross, you know he was supposed to be raised from the dead, but do you believe that it’s true? There is no reason to believe it except that we believe the eyewitness accounts. There were witnesses to it. They told about their experience. They wrote it down. Our faith rests on their witness. If they were lying, then we are all to be pitied for our faith would then be in some made up story. But what if they are true witnesses? What if they saw what they saw and heard what they heard? What if they really experienced what they experienced. What if Jesus really did rise from the dead?
Why should you believe them? In the book, “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel he explains why. He writes, “People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they’re true, but people won’t die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false. While most people can only believe that their beliefs are true, the disciples were in a position to know without a doubt, whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead. They claimed that they saw him, talked with him and ate with him. If they weren’t absolutely certain, they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that the Ressurection had happened. Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie.”
You and I could presumably die for a lie, but the disciples could not have. We were not eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. They were. If even one of them would have given in and said, “No! Don’t kill me! I was just making it up! You know, trying to start a new religious movement he-he!” don’t you think that someone would have picked up on that! They didn’t have anything to gain as this world sees it and everything to lose. And yet, we know that they all died still maintaining that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Jesus commanded these witnesses, his disciples, to tell people who already knew all about him two things that would make all the difference in their lives. Tell them about judgment he said and tell them about forgiveness.
There will be a judgment day. A day when Jesus judges the living and the dead. We will all stand before God and hear our verdict. We will have to answer for every word, thought or deed in this life. There is no escaping this judgment. Christians and non-Christians will be judged.
Do you think you’ll pass the test based on your actions in this life? I’m sure that you act pretty nice in public, pretty spiritual most of the time, but if people knew how your mind works, how badly you act at home with your family, or maybe on the internet, the kind of thoughts and desires you have swirling around in that head of yours all the time, well, you’d never let anyone find out! You don’t even like to think about it if you don’t have to. And yet God knows. The Bible tells us the truth we all knew: we all fall short of the kind of person God wants us to be. We are not even the people WE want to be.
But Jesus commands his witnesses to tell even more. Saint Peters says, “All the prophets testified about Jesus and everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Do you understand what this means? The prophets were saying, “The kingdom is coming, the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is coming!” And then when Jesus Christ was born God says, “It’s here! The kingdom of God is here!” That “thing” you ‘ve been waiting for? That meaning in your life your been looking for: it’s here! It’s Jesus! Your reason for living! Your reason for dying! His name is Jesus and, get this, he adores you. He cherishes a relationship with you so much that he died on a cross for you. There will be a judgment, but Jesus is basing your verdict NOT on your good deeds or bad choices, but on your faith in his power to forgive. You may already know about Jesus, but you don’t know anything if you don’t know that your sins are forgiven. That’s what Jesus is all about.
What does it mean to have your sins forgiven? It means that you can stop pretending . To have your sins forgiven means that you are a sinner with no hope of recovery. You need to hear that truth every chance that you get. You are stuck making the same hurtful decisions against those you love day after day and not only CAN’T you stop, but you WON’T stop. You don’t even WANT to! That’s what being a sinner is. To be forgiven is to be told that even sin won’t stop Jesus from loving you.
What if you don’t believe it? Well, then, you’ll be forced to trust in something else. When you hurt your wife, you’ll feel like all you can do is send flowers and hope for her pity. When you feel your life spinning out of control, you’ll self-medicate with ice cream, or alcohol or drugs. You’ll hide your bad behaviors behind a mountain of good deeds hoping to convince others, and maybe even yourself, that you’re lovable. Maybe people will like you for how hard you work even if they wouldn’t like the kind of person you are on the inside. But will God be so easily duped?
I’m sure that the vast majority, the vast majority of you, know about Jesus. What I’m saying is, “Who cares if you know about Jesus if his death and life doesn’t affect your life?” Why call yourself a Christian if that name doesn’t actually say anything about what’s happened to the way you live? Why bother with the whole rigamarole of coming to church once or twice a year, or even every week, if you don’t believe the simple message that “your sins are forgiven”? It’d be like having to show up to your own birthday party and not eating any cake. Or being gifted a brand new sports car without ever feeling the engine rev up beneath your body. If you think you know Jesus, but don’t trust his forgiveness, you’ve missed out on the biggest gift of all.
You see, if your sins are forgiven you are free. Free from having to look good in the eyes of the world. Free from having to do enough “good works” to please God. “Everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. It’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know. The question today is: do you know Jesus? Because he knows you, he loves you and he has forgiven your sins once and for all.
You’ve probably heard it before a dozen times. But what if it’s true? Believing in Jesus doesn’t mean you have to “do” more or “understand” more, but that you’ll stop “doing” anything and become a pure receiver of his grace. You can stop trying so hard and believe that when he said, “It is finished” on the cross that his death really did finish everything for you. You don’t have to “do” anything to please God, Jesus has already done it all for you. Everything? Yes, everything. Is there just a little bit left for you to do? No, not even a little bit?
Today you have the opportunity for freedom. Not because you know enough, but because forgiveness is a free gift for you. There’s nothing left to do. Only believe. Just fall back on God’s mercy and trust Him. You might already know a lot ABOUT Jesus—but it’s time that you come to know Jesus. There is a reason that you came here today. You’ve been missing something. God has brought you here to find it. God has brought you here to find him. Amen.
Sermon for April 22nd (Good Friday)
Why did Jesus have to die? For our sins. That’s the answer you learned in confirmation at least. He died because, as part of our fallen humanity, we make bad choices. We do evil things. We lie, we cheat, we steal. We commit adultery in our minds if not with our very bodies. We treat others like dirt and speak of them in trashy ways. We become angry quickly and sometimes find it very hard, if not impossible, to forgive. That’s why Jesus had to die, right? Of course.
But that’s not the whole story, not according to what we just read in John. It wasn’t just our bad temperments that put Jesus on the cross. Our godliest virtues put him up there as well. Think about this for a moment. Who wanted Jesus dead? Was it the unbelievers, you know, the one’s who didn’t know about God? Nope. The text says that Pilate, the Roman Gentile, became afraid when he heard that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” proverbs says and yet the chief priests and the religious officials were yelling, “Crucify! Crucify Him!” The text says that Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting at him to kill Jesus. Set anyone else free, but not THAT man. Not Jesus. Crucify Him!
That doesn’t seem like a very virtuous attitude, but wasn’t it? If you saw some guy walking around Fontanelle calling himself both one with God and the President of the United States, wouldn’t you feel like an upstanding citizen for calling the police? You want some guy that like hanging around the park with YOUR kids! You’d probably sleep better at night if you knew he was somewhere locked up. Well, Jesus was calling himself God! AND the King of the Jews! I mean, he was right, but that’s not my point. The people yelling “Crucify Him!” thought they were acting very religiously. They thought they were following the law! They believed that Jesus should be punished for blasphemy and that punishment was death. They were just trying to be faithful, stubbornly committed and lawful Jews.
There are two ways that we fight God. The first is obvious to us; it’s lawlessness. We break God’s laws and the laws of the land. We are not forced to make bad choices, we do it willfully. But the other way we fight God is easy to miss because it’s sounds so right; it’s lawfulness. By following the God’s laws and the laws of the land, we can very easily use our sense of righteousness to protect ourselves from having to trust in God’s mercy. We’d rather try to follow God’s laws than trust in God’s love. We become so good in our own minds that we feel we have no need of a Savior. Sure, we know, we aren’t perfect, but we’re trying! We’re doing the best we can! That’s all God could ask for, right? This pious attitude, moreso than lawlessness, is what threatens to destroy your relationship to God. If Jesus were walking around today, he would be hanging out in the bars and the jails while the good Christians like us and pastors, like me, would be screaming at the top of their lungs, “Crucify! Crucify Him!”
But doesn’t that bother you? We all like to hear that Jesus came not for the righteous, but for sinners. But when push comes to shove, we don’t want to be called a sinner ourselves. We don’t want people to think badly of us. We don’t want to think badly of ourselves. But Jesus doesn’t seem to be leaving us any room for good works! He always attacking us with his words—the religious people—and calling us hypocrites . . . and he’s right, of course, but shouldn’t he at least TRY to keep us motivated? Affirm our attempts at righteousness? No.
Martin Luther once said, “The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it.” Think about it. Have you ever wanted a potato chip and thought, I’ll just have a couple. Then, half an hour later, the whole bag is gone. You think, I’ll just watch a little of this movie and then you stay up the whole two hours and get to bed late. We are addicted to things worse than movies and potato chips and we can’t expect our desire for sin to be quenched by doing them just every once in awhile—doing the best we can. We need to admit that we are powerless to stop. Jesus’ death on the cross kills all our hopes to make it all better. We either have to trust in his death and admit that we are sinners without any hope of recovery or we’ll have to keep trying to make ourselves right with God on our own and continue to yell, “Crucify Him!”
Just like the Pharisees, the chief priests and the scribes, we don’t WANT a Savior, we want to do it on our own. We don’t want cheap grace! We wouldn’t want to take advantage of God after all. We want a little more time to fix things up ourselves. People don’t call a therapist when they feel depressed for a few months, they called suicide hotlines when they are just about to pull the trigger a year later. Why? Because they thought they could handle it on their own. People don’t come for marriage counseling until their marriages are only holding on by a thread 10 years after the problems have started. Why? Because they don’t want to be embarrassed and have people think that their marriage is struggling. We don’t want to admit our failures to God, we’d rather read a self-help book and feel better about ourselves. At least we’re trying to get better. The cross is God’s judgment on this way of thinking. He’s not giving you any more time to fix this relationship.
Jesus’ death on the cross tells us that God knew we’d never make it up to heaven on our own. He destroyed our last hopes that we could somehow make our failures right. No matter how many times you’ve read or heard that you are saved by grace alone and not by works, everybody still believes that as long as you live a good life and try your best you’re going to heaven! That’s why Jesus had to die! You couldn’t believe in God’s forgiveness, by grace alone, any other way! He had to give up his life to show you that there WAS no other way, no other truth, and no other way you could live your life to satisfy God’s demands. It was by grace or not at all. I don’t care how much of a saint you are, you are still a sinner and sinners cannot stand in the congregation of the righteous. If you hope to stand before God based on your life as a Christian, you will find no need for having a Savior. You’ll bury Jesus’ gruesome death under your aspirations for a “good looking life”.
When you have nothing to fall back on—that’s where the hope begins. When you feel threatened by a God who doesn’t want your sins or your virtues to separate him from you then you’ve come close to understanding what His mercy means. Jesus’ death more your entire salvation project is in danger. What will you fall back on if God doesn’t want your good works, your good deeds or your positive Christian attitude? Where will you look for hope if even being a good person has no eternal possibilities? He’s not looking for the righteous, but for sinners. When your good life, good looks and good works only lead to condemnation where will you put your trust? Look to the cross, where Jesus hangs suffering and ashamed—where the one who knew no sin became sin for you. Look to the cross, wide-eyed and shocked at your Savior dead on a tree—where he became a curse for you. What will God do with his dead, cursed and broken son? Only the broken, the cursed and the sinners, dead in their sins, will care about that answer. Only a sinner, with no other hope for salvation, will find hope in Jesus’ death on a cross.
Why did Jesus have to die? To answer that question, you’ll have to answer this for yourself: why did Jesus have to die for you?
But that’s not the whole story, not according to what we just read in John. It wasn’t just our bad temperments that put Jesus on the cross. Our godliest virtues put him up there as well. Think about this for a moment. Who wanted Jesus dead? Was it the unbelievers, you know, the one’s who didn’t know about God? Nope. The text says that Pilate, the Roman Gentile, became afraid when he heard that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” proverbs says and yet the chief priests and the religious officials were yelling, “Crucify! Crucify Him!” The text says that Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting at him to kill Jesus. Set anyone else free, but not THAT man. Not Jesus. Crucify Him!
That doesn’t seem like a very virtuous attitude, but wasn’t it? If you saw some guy walking around Fontanelle calling himself both one with God and the President of the United States, wouldn’t you feel like an upstanding citizen for calling the police? You want some guy that like hanging around the park with YOUR kids! You’d probably sleep better at night if you knew he was somewhere locked up. Well, Jesus was calling himself God! AND the King of the Jews! I mean, he was right, but that’s not my point. The people yelling “Crucify Him!” thought they were acting very religiously. They thought they were following the law! They believed that Jesus should be punished for blasphemy and that punishment was death. They were just trying to be faithful, stubbornly committed and lawful Jews.
There are two ways that we fight God. The first is obvious to us; it’s lawlessness. We break God’s laws and the laws of the land. We are not forced to make bad choices, we do it willfully. But the other way we fight God is easy to miss because it’s sounds so right; it’s lawfulness. By following the God’s laws and the laws of the land, we can very easily use our sense of righteousness to protect ourselves from having to trust in God’s mercy. We’d rather try to follow God’s laws than trust in God’s love. We become so good in our own minds that we feel we have no need of a Savior. Sure, we know, we aren’t perfect, but we’re trying! We’re doing the best we can! That’s all God could ask for, right? This pious attitude, moreso than lawlessness, is what threatens to destroy your relationship to God. If Jesus were walking around today, he would be hanging out in the bars and the jails while the good Christians like us and pastors, like me, would be screaming at the top of their lungs, “Crucify! Crucify Him!”
But doesn’t that bother you? We all like to hear that Jesus came not for the righteous, but for sinners. But when push comes to shove, we don’t want to be called a sinner ourselves. We don’t want people to think badly of us. We don’t want to think badly of ourselves. But Jesus doesn’t seem to be leaving us any room for good works! He always attacking us with his words—the religious people—and calling us hypocrites . . . and he’s right, of course, but shouldn’t he at least TRY to keep us motivated? Affirm our attempts at righteousness? No.
Martin Luther once said, “The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it.” Think about it. Have you ever wanted a potato chip and thought, I’ll just have a couple. Then, half an hour later, the whole bag is gone. You think, I’ll just watch a little of this movie and then you stay up the whole two hours and get to bed late. We are addicted to things worse than movies and potato chips and we can’t expect our desire for sin to be quenched by doing them just every once in awhile—doing the best we can. We need to admit that we are powerless to stop. Jesus’ death on the cross kills all our hopes to make it all better. We either have to trust in his death and admit that we are sinners without any hope of recovery or we’ll have to keep trying to make ourselves right with God on our own and continue to yell, “Crucify Him!”
Just like the Pharisees, the chief priests and the scribes, we don’t WANT a Savior, we want to do it on our own. We don’t want cheap grace! We wouldn’t want to take advantage of God after all. We want a little more time to fix things up ourselves. People don’t call a therapist when they feel depressed for a few months, they called suicide hotlines when they are just about to pull the trigger a year later. Why? Because they thought they could handle it on their own. People don’t come for marriage counseling until their marriages are only holding on by a thread 10 years after the problems have started. Why? Because they don’t want to be embarrassed and have people think that their marriage is struggling. We don’t want to admit our failures to God, we’d rather read a self-help book and feel better about ourselves. At least we’re trying to get better. The cross is God’s judgment on this way of thinking. He’s not giving you any more time to fix this relationship.
Jesus’ death on the cross tells us that God knew we’d never make it up to heaven on our own. He destroyed our last hopes that we could somehow make our failures right. No matter how many times you’ve read or heard that you are saved by grace alone and not by works, everybody still believes that as long as you live a good life and try your best you’re going to heaven! That’s why Jesus had to die! You couldn’t believe in God’s forgiveness, by grace alone, any other way! He had to give up his life to show you that there WAS no other way, no other truth, and no other way you could live your life to satisfy God’s demands. It was by grace or not at all. I don’t care how much of a saint you are, you are still a sinner and sinners cannot stand in the congregation of the righteous. If you hope to stand before God based on your life as a Christian, you will find no need for having a Savior. You’ll bury Jesus’ gruesome death under your aspirations for a “good looking life”.
When you have nothing to fall back on—that’s where the hope begins. When you feel threatened by a God who doesn’t want your sins or your virtues to separate him from you then you’ve come close to understanding what His mercy means. Jesus’ death more your entire salvation project is in danger. What will you fall back on if God doesn’t want your good works, your good deeds or your positive Christian attitude? Where will you look for hope if even being a good person has no eternal possibilities? He’s not looking for the righteous, but for sinners. When your good life, good looks and good works only lead to condemnation where will you put your trust? Look to the cross, where Jesus hangs suffering and ashamed—where the one who knew no sin became sin for you. Look to the cross, wide-eyed and shocked at your Savior dead on a tree—where he became a curse for you. What will God do with his dead, cursed and broken son? Only the broken, the cursed and the sinners, dead in their sins, will care about that answer. Only a sinner, with no other hope for salvation, will find hope in Jesus’ death on a cross.
Why did Jesus have to die? To answer that question, you’ll have to answer this for yourself: why did Jesus have to die for you?
Sermon for April 21st (Maundy Thursday)
“The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
What happened that night so long ago when Jesus had his last supper with his disciples? Many scholarly ink has been spilled about that very question. Jesus and his disciples were celebrating the Passover, the Jewish traditional meal eaten on the Sabbath. Some scholars believe that Jesus was instituting a new type of Passover saying, in effect, when you were Jews you ate this meal and remembered when you were slaves in Egypt and how you were saved by the blood of a sacrificed lamb on your doorpost—but now you will remember something different— the Lamb of God himself, Jesus Christ, and how his blood frees you, not from slavery to Pharaoh, but delivers you from sin. The Lord’s Supper then is about something we do: remembering.
I’d like to challenge you tonight to consider if that’s really what the Lord’s Supper is all about. Is that what the words say? Is it really about US doing something or about what God is doing? By the end of the service, I pray that you will believe that the Lord’s Supper is not simply a memorial meal, but that, rather than doing anything of consequence, you are actually receiving something very wonderful.
Where does this idea of a “new Passover” come from? Well, it’s simple really. People argue that there is a history to religious thought, an “evolution of ideas” one might say, moving from uncivilized or incomplete to civilized and more perfect. For instance, you’ve probably heard of the pantheon of gods in Greek and Roman history with Zeus, Athena and Hades. That’s called polytheism, the belief in many gods. Very uncivilized, right? But then, the first historical belief in one God rather than many gods (monotheism), seems to have found expression in Egypt around the 13th century BC with the worship of the so-called sun god “Aten”. One God seems more civilized than many gods so the thinking goes.
From there, there seems to have been a progression to such things as Judaism and then Christianity. You see, we are getting more and more civilized now with no more sacrificial system. Even within Christianity, it appears that there is some type of progression. First, there was the Roman Catholic church, then the Lutherans, and from there we have the Reformed church, Methodists, Baptists and, more recently, the charismatics such as the Assembly of God church and Pentecostals. The idea is always: the newer the better. Or as Strawberry Shortcake always puts it in her movies, “Growing Better Every Day!” The assumption, of course, is that the longer the human race survives, the more likely Christianity will eventually seem like a very uncivilized religion as well.
That’s the same type of argument many Christians use when talking about the Lord’s Supper as a better, more perfect or more complete Passover. The Jews had that, but now we’ve got this and it’s better! The Jews had the Levites, but we have pastors. They had synagogues, but we have churches. The Jews had dead lambs, but we’ve only got one dead Jesus! Thankfully, however, the Lord’s Supper is much more than simply a bigger, better religious meal. It is the place where God breaks into this old world, with its old patterns of history and evolution of ideas, and makes a completely new declaration: your sins are forgiven. Jesus says, “That was old. I have come to make all things new!” Not just the Passover meal, but you. Jesus comes to make YOU a new person. The Lord’s Supper is not a “new” Passover but the fulfillment and ending of the old Passover meal ritual altogether!
If you come here to Emmanuel with any regularity, you might have noticed me saying something that seems, at first hearing, well, a little weird! You’ll notice that when I read the text from the NIV Bible translation this evening, it said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” However, whenever I say the words of institution at a service, I don’t say the word “covenant” do I . . I say “ this is the new testament in my blood”. What gives me the right, you might ask? And that’s a very good question.
The Greek word, “deeathakay” can be translated either as “testament” or “covenant” so every person and translation has to make a decision. I believe that unless the word “testament” is used and understood, we will miss the entire meaning of the Lord’s Supper. We will start to believe that it has something to do with what we are doing, when it is all about what we are getting. In the Lord’s Supper, we don’t “give” or “do” anything. We are the beneficiaries of a very great gift from God.
When you hear the word, covenant, what do you think of? Well, if you know the word, you will know that it means an agreement or contract between two parties, two people. We talk about things such as the marriage covenant between an husband or a wife, for example. Unfortunately, while this is what the word means today, in biblical times there were more than one type of covenant. Most notably, when an agreement was made by someone of higher class or power than someone else (such as between a king and a serf, for example) the conditions were set by the person of higher class and they were the only one held responsible.
Let me explain this a little further, when you take out a loan from the bank to buy a house, you write up a contact or covenant with them. They agree to pay you $200,000 dollars and you agree to pay them back for the rest of your life. That’s where the word “mortgage” comes from: mori is the Latin word for death and gage is the latin word for pledge. Mortgage means death pledge. If you signed this covenant and never received the money and yet were paying it every month, the bank would get in a lot of trouble with you, correct? However, if you received the money and never paid, YOU would be foreclosed on.
However, not all contracts work this way especially when love is involved. Parents can make as many agreements with their children as they want, but, in the end, the parent is still responsible for holding up their part even if the child fails. I remember when I was driving as a high schooler and I would agree with my father that I would drive safely as long as I could have the car keys. However, my dad would often say that if I got in any trouble, HE would really be the one responsible. That’s the way it is with parents and children. It may still be a covenant, but only one party is responsible.
This is the type of covenant that the Bible refers to when God makes a covenant with his people. He made a covenant with Noah and his family after the flood where he promised to never flood the world and kill everyone again. And he set his bow in the clouds as a sign. But when you look at the bow, which way is it pointing? Up to heaven, right? No matter how unfaithful we are. No matter how bad we act. If God floods the earth again, he’s the one getting shot by that bow—he’s the one with the reputation on the line. In the covenant with Abraham, God has Abraham cut up some animals to make a covenant, the premise being that the agreeing parties would walk through the cut up animals and agree that if they broke their promise, they would suffer the same fate –being cut in two! However, do you remember that in the story, God put Abraham into a deep sleep while God walked through alone? God is the only one at risk to fail in that covenant as well, no matter how many times Abraham and his people would mess up.
Using the word “covenant” today, especially with regards to the Lord’s Supper, doesn’t make it clear what is really happening. It makes us think that we have to “do” or “think” or “act” a particular way in order to get the goodies! It tempts us to believe that, if we don’t hold up our part of the bargin, we’ll miss out on something. However, once again, Jesus is the only one with a part to play. Martin Luther made this claim about the Lord’s Supper being a testament, “A testament is nothing but the last will of one who is dying, telling how his heirs are to live with and dispose of his properties after his death.” In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus tells us what his estate is: the forgiveness of sins. He also explains who his heirs are for he speaks to his disciples, “in the night in which he was betrayed” by his disciples. If you want to be a heir to the benefits of Jesus’ death, you must be his betrayer. Thankfully, you are all welcome tonight!
For those of you who have experienced the death of a loved you, you may have had to go through the process of hearing the last will and testament. At the reading, the lawyer does not ask you if you were nice to grandma, or if you helped your dad often enough in the yard; they don’t ask if you always talked nicely about your friend or if you really, truly loved your mother with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. If you are willed the farm, you get the farm. Period. If you are given the piano, you get the piano. Because it’s not about what you did, it’s about the wishes of the one who died. It is their testament, not a covenant as we think of the word. All that is left to do is say, “Thank you!” I didn’t deserve it, but thanks!
Tonight, we are not just going through the motions of another Passover meal in order to “remember” some event long ago. This is much more than that! At the Lord’s Supper, you are not “doing something” you are “receiving something”. You get something to believe in. Namely, you, God’s enemy, receive all that he has: forgiveness of sin, salvation and everlasting life. Take the bread, it is my body which is for you” Jesus says. And when you eat it remember that you are getting the very same thing those disciples received so long ago: the forgiveness of sins. Drink the cup, it is the new testament in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.
We proclaim the Lord’s death every time we receive the Lord’s Supper because that’s the only way we can remember that his last will and testament is fulfilled. He had to die to put it into effect. And so we celebrate his death on the cross because, since Jesus die, we get the benefits! The Lord’s Supper is not about history, it is about what is happening right here tonight for you! Not because you held up your part of the bargain, or covenant, but because you never have kept your end, but Jesus’ last will and testament says your sins are forgiven. Eat it. Drink it. And remember: Jesus died for you. Amen.
What happened that night so long ago when Jesus had his last supper with his disciples? Many scholarly ink has been spilled about that very question. Jesus and his disciples were celebrating the Passover, the Jewish traditional meal eaten on the Sabbath. Some scholars believe that Jesus was instituting a new type of Passover saying, in effect, when you were Jews you ate this meal and remembered when you were slaves in Egypt and how you were saved by the blood of a sacrificed lamb on your doorpost—but now you will remember something different— the Lamb of God himself, Jesus Christ, and how his blood frees you, not from slavery to Pharaoh, but delivers you from sin. The Lord’s Supper then is about something we do: remembering.
I’d like to challenge you tonight to consider if that’s really what the Lord’s Supper is all about. Is that what the words say? Is it really about US doing something or about what God is doing? By the end of the service, I pray that you will believe that the Lord’s Supper is not simply a memorial meal, but that, rather than doing anything of consequence, you are actually receiving something very wonderful.
Where does this idea of a “new Passover” come from? Well, it’s simple really. People argue that there is a history to religious thought, an “evolution of ideas” one might say, moving from uncivilized or incomplete to civilized and more perfect. For instance, you’ve probably heard of the pantheon of gods in Greek and Roman history with Zeus, Athena and Hades. That’s called polytheism, the belief in many gods. Very uncivilized, right? But then, the first historical belief in one God rather than many gods (monotheism), seems to have found expression in Egypt around the 13th century BC with the worship of the so-called sun god “Aten”. One God seems more civilized than many gods so the thinking goes.
From there, there seems to have been a progression to such things as Judaism and then Christianity. You see, we are getting more and more civilized now with no more sacrificial system. Even within Christianity, it appears that there is some type of progression. First, there was the Roman Catholic church, then the Lutherans, and from there we have the Reformed church, Methodists, Baptists and, more recently, the charismatics such as the Assembly of God church and Pentecostals. The idea is always: the newer the better. Or as Strawberry Shortcake always puts it in her movies, “Growing Better Every Day!” The assumption, of course, is that the longer the human race survives, the more likely Christianity will eventually seem like a very uncivilized religion as well.
That’s the same type of argument many Christians use when talking about the Lord’s Supper as a better, more perfect or more complete Passover. The Jews had that, but now we’ve got this and it’s better! The Jews had the Levites, but we have pastors. They had synagogues, but we have churches. The Jews had dead lambs, but we’ve only got one dead Jesus! Thankfully, however, the Lord’s Supper is much more than simply a bigger, better religious meal. It is the place where God breaks into this old world, with its old patterns of history and evolution of ideas, and makes a completely new declaration: your sins are forgiven. Jesus says, “That was old. I have come to make all things new!” Not just the Passover meal, but you. Jesus comes to make YOU a new person. The Lord’s Supper is not a “new” Passover but the fulfillment and ending of the old Passover meal ritual altogether!
If you come here to Emmanuel with any regularity, you might have noticed me saying something that seems, at first hearing, well, a little weird! You’ll notice that when I read the text from the NIV Bible translation this evening, it said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” However, whenever I say the words of institution at a service, I don’t say the word “covenant” do I . . I say “ this is the new testament in my blood”. What gives me the right, you might ask? And that’s a very good question.
The Greek word, “deeathakay” can be translated either as “testament” or “covenant” so every person and translation has to make a decision. I believe that unless the word “testament” is used and understood, we will miss the entire meaning of the Lord’s Supper. We will start to believe that it has something to do with what we are doing, when it is all about what we are getting. In the Lord’s Supper, we don’t “give” or “do” anything. We are the beneficiaries of a very great gift from God.
When you hear the word, covenant, what do you think of? Well, if you know the word, you will know that it means an agreement or contract between two parties, two people. We talk about things such as the marriage covenant between an husband or a wife, for example. Unfortunately, while this is what the word means today, in biblical times there were more than one type of covenant. Most notably, when an agreement was made by someone of higher class or power than someone else (such as between a king and a serf, for example) the conditions were set by the person of higher class and they were the only one held responsible.
Let me explain this a little further, when you take out a loan from the bank to buy a house, you write up a contact or covenant with them. They agree to pay you $200,000 dollars and you agree to pay them back for the rest of your life. That’s where the word “mortgage” comes from: mori is the Latin word for death and gage is the latin word for pledge. Mortgage means death pledge. If you signed this covenant and never received the money and yet were paying it every month, the bank would get in a lot of trouble with you, correct? However, if you received the money and never paid, YOU would be foreclosed on.
However, not all contracts work this way especially when love is involved. Parents can make as many agreements with their children as they want, but, in the end, the parent is still responsible for holding up their part even if the child fails. I remember when I was driving as a high schooler and I would agree with my father that I would drive safely as long as I could have the car keys. However, my dad would often say that if I got in any trouble, HE would really be the one responsible. That’s the way it is with parents and children. It may still be a covenant, but only one party is responsible.
This is the type of covenant that the Bible refers to when God makes a covenant with his people. He made a covenant with Noah and his family after the flood where he promised to never flood the world and kill everyone again. And he set his bow in the clouds as a sign. But when you look at the bow, which way is it pointing? Up to heaven, right? No matter how unfaithful we are. No matter how bad we act. If God floods the earth again, he’s the one getting shot by that bow—he’s the one with the reputation on the line. In the covenant with Abraham, God has Abraham cut up some animals to make a covenant, the premise being that the agreeing parties would walk through the cut up animals and agree that if they broke their promise, they would suffer the same fate –being cut in two! However, do you remember that in the story, God put Abraham into a deep sleep while God walked through alone? God is the only one at risk to fail in that covenant as well, no matter how many times Abraham and his people would mess up.
Using the word “covenant” today, especially with regards to the Lord’s Supper, doesn’t make it clear what is really happening. It makes us think that we have to “do” or “think” or “act” a particular way in order to get the goodies! It tempts us to believe that, if we don’t hold up our part of the bargin, we’ll miss out on something. However, once again, Jesus is the only one with a part to play. Martin Luther made this claim about the Lord’s Supper being a testament, “A testament is nothing but the last will of one who is dying, telling how his heirs are to live with and dispose of his properties after his death.” In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus tells us what his estate is: the forgiveness of sins. He also explains who his heirs are for he speaks to his disciples, “in the night in which he was betrayed” by his disciples. If you want to be a heir to the benefits of Jesus’ death, you must be his betrayer. Thankfully, you are all welcome tonight!
For those of you who have experienced the death of a loved you, you may have had to go through the process of hearing the last will and testament. At the reading, the lawyer does not ask you if you were nice to grandma, or if you helped your dad often enough in the yard; they don’t ask if you always talked nicely about your friend or if you really, truly loved your mother with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. If you are willed the farm, you get the farm. Period. If you are given the piano, you get the piano. Because it’s not about what you did, it’s about the wishes of the one who died. It is their testament, not a covenant as we think of the word. All that is left to do is say, “Thank you!” I didn’t deserve it, but thanks!
Tonight, we are not just going through the motions of another Passover meal in order to “remember” some event long ago. This is much more than that! At the Lord’s Supper, you are not “doing something” you are “receiving something”. You get something to believe in. Namely, you, God’s enemy, receive all that he has: forgiveness of sin, salvation and everlasting life. Take the bread, it is my body which is for you” Jesus says. And when you eat it remember that you are getting the very same thing those disciples received so long ago: the forgiveness of sins. Drink the cup, it is the new testament in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.
We proclaim the Lord’s death every time we receive the Lord’s Supper because that’s the only way we can remember that his last will and testament is fulfilled. He had to die to put it into effect. And so we celebrate his death on the cross because, since Jesus die, we get the benefits! The Lord’s Supper is not about history, it is about what is happening right here tonight for you! Not because you held up your part of the bargain, or covenant, but because you never have kept your end, but Jesus’ last will and testament says your sins are forgiven. Eat it. Drink it. And remember: Jesus died for you. Amen.
Sermon for April 10th (Stewardship of Gifts)
Ephesians 4:14, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Perhaps the title of this sermon on stewardship should be simply: Grow up!
Is your faith still in kindergarten? Now, for some you, your faith is still in kindergarten because, well, you are a kindergartner. Very understandable. For some of you, you’re not even that ar. Your faith is still in infancy. You’ve just recently come to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and maybe you are crawling through life just learning to walk upright like my youngest son. Just like with him, we, as a faith community, are going to clap and sing your praises every single time you take another step of faith on your own. It’s as joyful of an experience for us as it is for you. Having a young faith is a blessing from God.
However, having an immature faith is a very different story. For some of you, your faith is in kindergarten not because of your age and not because you just became a Christian but because you are scared to grow up. You are like Peter Pan who wants to stay a little boy forever! Or, maybe, you just have never cared to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. God has given you gifts and talents and you’ve buried them underneath fear, doubt and ambivalence. And, in doing this, you have not only affected your own relationship with God, but you’ve affected this church and you’ve affected your family. Until you start using your gifts as God intends, you, this community and your family will suffer the consequences.
“The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” What could this community become if we used our talents and gifts according to God’s will and not our own? But, unfortunately, we are still stuck with our minds in this old world. Conformed to what we believe the world wants us to be.
Romans chapter 12, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” When it comes to our talents and gifts, what is the pattern of this world for sharing them? Well, think about it. What are the things that you are really good at? What do you use them to do?
To get paid, right? To enhance your career. To get ahead. Or maybe you write them down on your college resume so that you can get into the best schools. Perhaps you use your skills to become popular in school or calm yourself down at the end of the day. We are driven and encouraged in our society to use our skills to better our lives and gain respect from others, whether that means we are known as the best knitter in Southwestern Iowa or the most organized secretary in the company. It would appear to most people that God has given us gifts and talents so that we might live a happy and fulfilling life. They are called “gifts” after all. Gifts from God for us!
But, believe it or not, that’s not what God gave you gifts for. Even in the church, we have misused the concept of spiritual gifts to enhance our own reputations and make ourselves feel more “spiritual”. It’s so easy to be deceived into following this world’s way of thinking. But the gifts that God has given you aren’t for you, they are for the sake of someone else. Perhaps that’s why God created us to be in relationship to other people, in communities with others, so that he’d always be able to use us as his hands and feet for someone else and get us fed and supported through the hands and feet of others. Saint Paul says, “For no one lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.”
How are your gifts used at home? How might you be a good steward of your gifts at home? Remember the reading from Romans, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Like it or not (and, by the way, I DON’T like it) do you want to know what the most “spiritual” gifts are that I can use at home? Cleaning the toilets, taking out the trash, changing diapers, fixing supper, brushing teeth and doing our monthly budget. For some reason, God has blessed me with these jobs because I can do them pretty well. And, no, they are NOT gifts for me—they are gifts for my wife and family. God gives us gifts so that we have something to GIVE to someone else. Or, as it is put in 1st Peter chapter 4, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others.” I am a “gift” to my family as far as I am willing to use my skills for their sake.
Let me explain this another way. I remember one time visiting my mom who was sick in the hospital when my parents were still married. Before we went up to the room, we stopped by the gift shop and my dad had me pick out something to give to her. I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember giving it to my mom. She smiled and said she loved it. In other words my father gave me a gift that I used for someone else. But who REALLY received the gift? My mom probably got a stuffed animal or a plant. I received the joy of giving, but my dad received the greatest gift. Seeing my mother loved and me able to show her my love.
I heard a story about what one pastor in North Dakota did to explain the story of the talents that we read today. He asked several people in his congregation to donate large sums of money for a “project” he would do at the next week’s service. He handed out five envelopes. Each envelope had $500 dollars in it. The envelopes were handed out to random people and the only rules, as far as I remember them, were this: you can use this money for any purpose you want, but you’ll have to promise to come back here next week and share with the congregation what you did with it. It was FREE money. A gift.
By the next week, the stories were astounding. People used the money for tons of different benevolences sometimes multiplying the amount ten times through matching funds and from their own pocketbooks. And while none of them used these generous gifts for themselves, they all felt like they had received quite a substantial gift in being able to give it away. Here’s the point: As long as you think that your spiritual gifts are for you, you will always feel like someone else is using you, or you HAVE to do things, or life is unfair. This is called immaturity. When couples come into my office and talk about wanting “my stuff” “my way” and that type of thing, they are normally not the 80 year olds, but the newly married. The “immature” you might say. But if you see your gifts as gifts for others, then you will start to understand what Paul is saying in Romans about your spiritual act of worship being to “offer your body as a living sacrifice.”
That’s NOT the way the world thinks is it. According to the world, you should use your gifts to make your life better. But according to God, your gifts are yours for making the lives of others better. As Jesus put it, the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. God has given you talents and gifts and skills because he loves you and he trusts you to use them for the sake of this world. The best gifts I’ve ever received are the ones I’ve given.
If you do not use your gifts for your calling at home, your whole family suffers. If I do not clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, change diapers and cook food, my family suffers in many diverse ways. And I will not be living out the very spiritual calling God has given me to be a good husband and father. In addition, God has called each and every one of you into this household here at Emmanuel and, beyond that, into the household of Christians on this Earth. If you, as a member of this congregation, do not start using your gifts to serve others the whole body suffers and you suffer as well. Not only that, but the world suffers and so does the name of Christ. So often, when we talk about spiritual gifts, it all about you. But God calls us to realize that he gave us these gifts, as presents to give to others.
According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” One of the best gifts I have ever been given by God is the opportunity to serve this congregation as its pastor. I love it. It’s strenuous at times, overwhelming even, but serving you and your families blesses me with love, meaning and joy. But, as many pastors in many different churches have found out, if I start becoming focused on my own abilities, on my own ego and pride thinking that God has somehow blessed me with spiritual gifts for fortune and fame, I have no doubt that God will take away this great congregation from me in an instant. It’s happened to many much more skilled pastors in much larger congregations before me. Pride comes just before the fall, they say. When your gifts become all about you, you lose their blessings.
My prayer for you and for me, is that we stop looking at our gifts, our talents and our skills like the world would have us see them: as ways to get ahead and serve ourselves. Instead, maybe we might see them as opportunities to be of some earthly good others. Because, when that becomes the truth for you, when your mind is transformed in this way, you will have received the greatest gift that God could ever give you. Amen.
Is your faith still in kindergarten? Now, for some you, your faith is still in kindergarten because, well, you are a kindergartner. Very understandable. For some of you, you’re not even that ar. Your faith is still in infancy. You’ve just recently come to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and maybe you are crawling through life just learning to walk upright like my youngest son. Just like with him, we, as a faith community, are going to clap and sing your praises every single time you take another step of faith on your own. It’s as joyful of an experience for us as it is for you. Having a young faith is a blessing from God.
However, having an immature faith is a very different story. For some of you, your faith is in kindergarten not because of your age and not because you just became a Christian but because you are scared to grow up. You are like Peter Pan who wants to stay a little boy forever! Or, maybe, you just have never cared to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. God has given you gifts and talents and you’ve buried them underneath fear, doubt and ambivalence. And, in doing this, you have not only affected your own relationship with God, but you’ve affected this church and you’ve affected your family. Until you start using your gifts as God intends, you, this community and your family will suffer the consequences.
“The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” What could this community become if we used our talents and gifts according to God’s will and not our own? But, unfortunately, we are still stuck with our minds in this old world. Conformed to what we believe the world wants us to be.
Romans chapter 12, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” When it comes to our talents and gifts, what is the pattern of this world for sharing them? Well, think about it. What are the things that you are really good at? What do you use them to do?
To get paid, right? To enhance your career. To get ahead. Or maybe you write them down on your college resume so that you can get into the best schools. Perhaps you use your skills to become popular in school or calm yourself down at the end of the day. We are driven and encouraged in our society to use our skills to better our lives and gain respect from others, whether that means we are known as the best knitter in Southwestern Iowa or the most organized secretary in the company. It would appear to most people that God has given us gifts and talents so that we might live a happy and fulfilling life. They are called “gifts” after all. Gifts from God for us!
But, believe it or not, that’s not what God gave you gifts for. Even in the church, we have misused the concept of spiritual gifts to enhance our own reputations and make ourselves feel more “spiritual”. It’s so easy to be deceived into following this world’s way of thinking. But the gifts that God has given you aren’t for you, they are for the sake of someone else. Perhaps that’s why God created us to be in relationship to other people, in communities with others, so that he’d always be able to use us as his hands and feet for someone else and get us fed and supported through the hands and feet of others. Saint Paul says, “For no one lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.”
How are your gifts used at home? How might you be a good steward of your gifts at home? Remember the reading from Romans, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Like it or not (and, by the way, I DON’T like it) do you want to know what the most “spiritual” gifts are that I can use at home? Cleaning the toilets, taking out the trash, changing diapers, fixing supper, brushing teeth and doing our monthly budget. For some reason, God has blessed me with these jobs because I can do them pretty well. And, no, they are NOT gifts for me—they are gifts for my wife and family. God gives us gifts so that we have something to GIVE to someone else. Or, as it is put in 1st Peter chapter 4, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others.” I am a “gift” to my family as far as I am willing to use my skills for their sake.
Let me explain this another way. I remember one time visiting my mom who was sick in the hospital when my parents were still married. Before we went up to the room, we stopped by the gift shop and my dad had me pick out something to give to her. I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember giving it to my mom. She smiled and said she loved it. In other words my father gave me a gift that I used for someone else. But who REALLY received the gift? My mom probably got a stuffed animal or a plant. I received the joy of giving, but my dad received the greatest gift. Seeing my mother loved and me able to show her my love.
I heard a story about what one pastor in North Dakota did to explain the story of the talents that we read today. He asked several people in his congregation to donate large sums of money for a “project” he would do at the next week’s service. He handed out five envelopes. Each envelope had $500 dollars in it. The envelopes were handed out to random people and the only rules, as far as I remember them, were this: you can use this money for any purpose you want, but you’ll have to promise to come back here next week and share with the congregation what you did with it. It was FREE money. A gift.
By the next week, the stories were astounding. People used the money for tons of different benevolences sometimes multiplying the amount ten times through matching funds and from their own pocketbooks. And while none of them used these generous gifts for themselves, they all felt like they had received quite a substantial gift in being able to give it away. Here’s the point: As long as you think that your spiritual gifts are for you, you will always feel like someone else is using you, or you HAVE to do things, or life is unfair. This is called immaturity. When couples come into my office and talk about wanting “my stuff” “my way” and that type of thing, they are normally not the 80 year olds, but the newly married. The “immature” you might say. But if you see your gifts as gifts for others, then you will start to understand what Paul is saying in Romans about your spiritual act of worship being to “offer your body as a living sacrifice.”
That’s NOT the way the world thinks is it. According to the world, you should use your gifts to make your life better. But according to God, your gifts are yours for making the lives of others better. As Jesus put it, the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. God has given you talents and gifts and skills because he loves you and he trusts you to use them for the sake of this world. The best gifts I’ve ever received are the ones I’ve given.
If you do not use your gifts for your calling at home, your whole family suffers. If I do not clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, change diapers and cook food, my family suffers in many diverse ways. And I will not be living out the very spiritual calling God has given me to be a good husband and father. In addition, God has called each and every one of you into this household here at Emmanuel and, beyond that, into the household of Christians on this Earth. If you, as a member of this congregation, do not start using your gifts to serve others the whole body suffers and you suffer as well. Not only that, but the world suffers and so does the name of Christ. So often, when we talk about spiritual gifts, it all about you. But God calls us to realize that he gave us these gifts, as presents to give to others.
According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” One of the best gifts I have ever been given by God is the opportunity to serve this congregation as its pastor. I love it. It’s strenuous at times, overwhelming even, but serving you and your families blesses me with love, meaning and joy. But, as many pastors in many different churches have found out, if I start becoming focused on my own abilities, on my own ego and pride thinking that God has somehow blessed me with spiritual gifts for fortune and fame, I have no doubt that God will take away this great congregation from me in an instant. It’s happened to many much more skilled pastors in much larger congregations before me. Pride comes just before the fall, they say. When your gifts become all about you, you lose their blessings.
My prayer for you and for me, is that we stop looking at our gifts, our talents and our skills like the world would have us see them: as ways to get ahead and serve ourselves. Instead, maybe we might see them as opportunities to be of some earthly good others. Because, when that becomes the truth for you, when your mind is transformed in this way, you will have received the greatest gift that God could ever give you. Amen.
Sermon for April 3rd (Stewardship of Time)
(Pause 15 ten seconds) That’s the power of time. That was fifteen seconds of silence (at least from my end). Fifteen seconds. What did you imagine was going on? That I had forgotten my sermon? That I was in some kind of religious trance? That I was having some type of a mild seizure? What a powerful thing time can be.
Do you ever feel that your life is out of control? Much of the pressure, stress and fear we experience in our lives is affected by how we manage our time. We don’t know how much time we are each given in this life, but God wants us to make the most of it. However, sometimes, I think we are confused by what “making the most of time” actually means.
There are two words that are translated as “time” from Greek into English. The first is the Greek word kronos meaning chronological time. This refers to time moving ever and ever onward. It’s quantitative in nature. No matter how much I want to say today, I realize that if I don’t pay attention to the kronos, how much time is passing, someone will eventually notice and try to stop me. On the other hand, there is the Greek word kairos referring to what you might call the “right” time or the “perfect” time. When is corn ready to be harvested? Is it after a particular number of days? Well, we might count on that to an extent. But, depending on how much sun and moisture there has been, corn is ready when IT’S ready, not when we are necessarily ready. When is a baby due? We know that humans have a forty week gestational period—that’s kronos time. But when does a baby actually come? Well, at the right time for the baby—that’s kairos time.
One of the struggles we have as human beings with managing our time is differentiating between kairos time and kronos time. Most Americans understand kronos time. We work by the clock. We meet our expectations. We show up on time and stay until the final bell rings. We compartmentalize our lives so that we have exactly one hour for lunch and six and a half hours of sleep. We are efficient. If we can’t work more hours, we can at least multi-task! But we don’t always know when the “right” time is to do things or why, despite our long hours of work, we are never able to do the things we want to do.
Why is this? For a lot of reasons. We value people who “do” things in society. Just ask one of the stay-at-home moms in the room how much fun it is to answer the question, “What do you do?” We also value doing things ourselves. I can imagine that the only thing harder than having to answer that question as a mother is to answer it for themselves. After a day of fighting with kids, doing dishes, doing laundry, changing diapers, answering the phone and cooking, you look at your messy house, dirty laundry, and pile of dishes next to the huge to-do list and ask, “Did I accomplish ANYTHING today?” Sometimes, the hardest work is the work that is never finished.
Furthermore, we understand that in order to HAVE things, we need to BUY things and, in today’s society, you can’t buy as much with one income as you can with two. And you can’t buy as much with two incomes as you can with two overtime incomes. Finally, we start to believe that, as Christians, our church and even God most likely wants us to work harder, work longer and do it all with a smile. In fact, this attitude is defined as the “Protestant Work Ethic”.
But what does God say? In the book of Ecclesiastes we read, “There is a time for everything.” Do you believe that? Is there time for everything in YOUR life? Why not? The book of Ecclesiastes says “there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal.” This isn’t a to-do list. This is saying there is a “right” time, a kairos time, to do everything in life. By definition then, there is also a “not quite right” time to do these things as well. When managing your time, it’s important to notice what you are doing and whether it’s the right time to do it.
How about an example. When is suppertime in your house? What do you do during suppertime? Eat, right. Is that all? Probably not. What else are you doing while you are eating? Families used to sit around the dinner table and take that time to talk, to laugh, to communicate and even, believe it or not, would sometimes begin or end with a prayer or devotions. But now? Well, IF we eat together, we are watching TV at the same time, or searching for something on the internet, or working on the finishing touches of a project or driving. God says, “There is a time—a perfect time—for everything. “ Perhaps part of the problem is that there is never enough time to eat, because you are working, and there is never enough time to work, because you are eating.
One of the first steps in managing your time as God intends is to distinguish between spending time doing things and taking time to do things when the time is right to do them. You’ve heard stay-at-home parents say this very thing, “I want to be home while my children are still little.” What they are saying, in essense, is that this is the kairos time, the perfect time, to stay at home instead of working outside of the house. Other parents discover that, for them, when their children are little it is the perfect time to be able to go to work.
If you feel like your life is overwhelmed and that there is no time for anything, I challenge you for a week, a day or even a morning, to give each activity you do not just a certain amount of time, but the “right” amount of time to do it. If you are talking with your child, listen to them until they are done talking. Finish the conversation. That way you won’t have to take other time later to try and remember what it was they talked about. Pray for peace in the morning before your day becomes so hectic and unpeaceful that you don’t have time to pray. When you come home at night, give your spouse a hug until they are ready to let go. Then, maybe, you won’t be staying up later arguing about never paying attention to one another.
A second step to good stewardship of time deals with prioritizing. Are you spending your time doing the things that you want to spend time doing? In the book of Acts, the twelve disciples noticed that the widows in their church “were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food” it says. In other words, widows were not being fed because they disciples had too much to do and not enough time to do it all! So, what did they do? Work a few more hours, work a little bit more efficiently, and try harder? No. “The Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” They didn’t work more. They shared the work with someone else. What was the effect of doing this? “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” How we use our time can affect God’s kingdom either positively or negatively, but doing more isn’t always the most Godly thing to do.
In the book, Time For All That’s Important by Tamyra Horst, she encourages people to try this exercise: 1. Write down what the most important things are in your life—your top priorities. 2. Write out your schedule for the week listing everything you do and plan to do even things like cleaning the house, fixing meals, playing and quiet time. 3. Write your priorities on a piece of paper in columns and list your activities in their respective category. 4. Reflect on how you are spending your time now and how you would like that to change.
Finally, Jesus has taught us a lot about how to manage our time. Remember, his ministry only lasted three years. He didn’t start until the “right” time, the kairos time, when he was around 30 years old. But his short ministry changed the whole course of history. We might assume that he spent every waking moment serving, healing, preaching and doing something knowing that time was so short, but our gospel lesson today gives us a different view of what was important to Jesus, “The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, Jesus said to them . . . “Great job fellas! That’s the spirit! We’ve got a lot of work to do again today, lots of needs to address, I’m sure you can eat later but, for now, the church NEEDS you.” No! That’s not what Jesus said. The apostles were impressed by how much they got done. And yes, there were a ton of people whose needs were still important, but Jesus actually said this, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.”
In Jesus’ mind, there was a time to work, a time to minister, and a time to rest and be quiet. Your life may be so impossible and out of control NOT because you don’t prioritize or give activities their needed attention, but because all you do is work-work-work. Even in your rest time, you work silently in your head. You are talking while you drive and texting while you eat. God does not want you to do this! Of all the things to write down about what Jesus did on this earth, isn’t it interesting that this episode is one of them? Why? Because it is important to rest, to recuperate, to be quiet and to sleep. Saying “Yes” to everything doesn’t make you more holy and Christian. Sometimes saying, “No” is the most Christian thing you can do. Sometimes saying “NO” and taking time to rest is what God intends for you to do even if it looks selfish to those on the outside.
God intends on you to have time to rest in your life. Have you ever wondered why the Bible tells us there were seven days of creation even though God only worked for six? I mean, it would have been more impressive to make the world is six days than seven, right? And yet, God knew that we needed to see how important rest was in our lives. The third commandment calls us to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. We are to take time out of our week to rest, to be quiet and to worship God. To stop speaking and to listen instead. To stop doing and just be still and know that God is God and we are not.
At the end of the story in the gospel of Mark, Jesus showed us what happens when we rest. The text says that even though Jesus and his disciples left to be alone, the crowd ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. Sometimes saying, “No” to people doesn’t mean they won’t still try and make you help them and use up your time!. The needs are still there. But it is only by trusting in the miraculous power of God that the disciples actually do what God is calling them to do. They have to just sit there, wait, be quiet and listen while God feeds these five thousand people miraculously. What can we learn from this? We don’t accomplish everything through our work. In fact, we don’t need to accomplish everything. Part of the Christian life is to wait for God to do HIS work on HIS schedule in his perfect kairos time and then worship Him for what He has done.
Time is powerful. How you use your time not only affects you, it affects others, it affects your relationship with God and it even affects God’s kingdom. So, perhaps today is the right time, the perfect time, the kairos time to start managing your time as God intended. Don’t just spend time doing things, do things at the right time, do things according to the priorities and values you hold dear and then, finally, take time to rest and trust God to work powerfully in your life in His time. Amen.
Do you ever feel that your life is out of control? Much of the pressure, stress and fear we experience in our lives is affected by how we manage our time. We don’t know how much time we are each given in this life, but God wants us to make the most of it. However, sometimes, I think we are confused by what “making the most of time” actually means.
There are two words that are translated as “time” from Greek into English. The first is the Greek word kronos meaning chronological time. This refers to time moving ever and ever onward. It’s quantitative in nature. No matter how much I want to say today, I realize that if I don’t pay attention to the kronos, how much time is passing, someone will eventually notice and try to stop me. On the other hand, there is the Greek word kairos referring to what you might call the “right” time or the “perfect” time. When is corn ready to be harvested? Is it after a particular number of days? Well, we might count on that to an extent. But, depending on how much sun and moisture there has been, corn is ready when IT’S ready, not when we are necessarily ready. When is a baby due? We know that humans have a forty week gestational period—that’s kronos time. But when does a baby actually come? Well, at the right time for the baby—that’s kairos time.
One of the struggles we have as human beings with managing our time is differentiating between kairos time and kronos time. Most Americans understand kronos time. We work by the clock. We meet our expectations. We show up on time and stay until the final bell rings. We compartmentalize our lives so that we have exactly one hour for lunch and six and a half hours of sleep. We are efficient. If we can’t work more hours, we can at least multi-task! But we don’t always know when the “right” time is to do things or why, despite our long hours of work, we are never able to do the things we want to do.
Why is this? For a lot of reasons. We value people who “do” things in society. Just ask one of the stay-at-home moms in the room how much fun it is to answer the question, “What do you do?” We also value doing things ourselves. I can imagine that the only thing harder than having to answer that question as a mother is to answer it for themselves. After a day of fighting with kids, doing dishes, doing laundry, changing diapers, answering the phone and cooking, you look at your messy house, dirty laundry, and pile of dishes next to the huge to-do list and ask, “Did I accomplish ANYTHING today?” Sometimes, the hardest work is the work that is never finished.
Furthermore, we understand that in order to HAVE things, we need to BUY things and, in today’s society, you can’t buy as much with one income as you can with two. And you can’t buy as much with two incomes as you can with two overtime incomes. Finally, we start to believe that, as Christians, our church and even God most likely wants us to work harder, work longer and do it all with a smile. In fact, this attitude is defined as the “Protestant Work Ethic”.
But what does God say? In the book of Ecclesiastes we read, “There is a time for everything.” Do you believe that? Is there time for everything in YOUR life? Why not? The book of Ecclesiastes says “there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal.” This isn’t a to-do list. This is saying there is a “right” time, a kairos time, to do everything in life. By definition then, there is also a “not quite right” time to do these things as well. When managing your time, it’s important to notice what you are doing and whether it’s the right time to do it.
How about an example. When is suppertime in your house? What do you do during suppertime? Eat, right. Is that all? Probably not. What else are you doing while you are eating? Families used to sit around the dinner table and take that time to talk, to laugh, to communicate and even, believe it or not, would sometimes begin or end with a prayer or devotions. But now? Well, IF we eat together, we are watching TV at the same time, or searching for something on the internet, or working on the finishing touches of a project or driving. God says, “There is a time—a perfect time—for everything. “ Perhaps part of the problem is that there is never enough time to eat, because you are working, and there is never enough time to work, because you are eating.
One of the first steps in managing your time as God intends is to distinguish between spending time doing things and taking time to do things when the time is right to do them. You’ve heard stay-at-home parents say this very thing, “I want to be home while my children are still little.” What they are saying, in essense, is that this is the kairos time, the perfect time, to stay at home instead of working outside of the house. Other parents discover that, for them, when their children are little it is the perfect time to be able to go to work.
If you feel like your life is overwhelmed and that there is no time for anything, I challenge you for a week, a day or even a morning, to give each activity you do not just a certain amount of time, but the “right” amount of time to do it. If you are talking with your child, listen to them until they are done talking. Finish the conversation. That way you won’t have to take other time later to try and remember what it was they talked about. Pray for peace in the morning before your day becomes so hectic and unpeaceful that you don’t have time to pray. When you come home at night, give your spouse a hug until they are ready to let go. Then, maybe, you won’t be staying up later arguing about never paying attention to one another.
A second step to good stewardship of time deals with prioritizing. Are you spending your time doing the things that you want to spend time doing? In the book of Acts, the twelve disciples noticed that the widows in their church “were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food” it says. In other words, widows were not being fed because they disciples had too much to do and not enough time to do it all! So, what did they do? Work a few more hours, work a little bit more efficiently, and try harder? No. “The Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” They didn’t work more. They shared the work with someone else. What was the effect of doing this? “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.” How we use our time can affect God’s kingdom either positively or negatively, but doing more isn’t always the most Godly thing to do.
In the book, Time For All That’s Important by Tamyra Horst, she encourages people to try this exercise: 1. Write down what the most important things are in your life—your top priorities. 2. Write out your schedule for the week listing everything you do and plan to do even things like cleaning the house, fixing meals, playing and quiet time. 3. Write your priorities on a piece of paper in columns and list your activities in their respective category. 4. Reflect on how you are spending your time now and how you would like that to change.
Finally, Jesus has taught us a lot about how to manage our time. Remember, his ministry only lasted three years. He didn’t start until the “right” time, the kairos time, when he was around 30 years old. But his short ministry changed the whole course of history. We might assume that he spent every waking moment serving, healing, preaching and doing something knowing that time was so short, but our gospel lesson today gives us a different view of what was important to Jesus, “The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, Jesus said to them . . . “Great job fellas! That’s the spirit! We’ve got a lot of work to do again today, lots of needs to address, I’m sure you can eat later but, for now, the church NEEDS you.” No! That’s not what Jesus said. The apostles were impressed by how much they got done. And yes, there were a ton of people whose needs were still important, but Jesus actually said this, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.”
In Jesus’ mind, there was a time to work, a time to minister, and a time to rest and be quiet. Your life may be so impossible and out of control NOT because you don’t prioritize or give activities their needed attention, but because all you do is work-work-work. Even in your rest time, you work silently in your head. You are talking while you drive and texting while you eat. God does not want you to do this! Of all the things to write down about what Jesus did on this earth, isn’t it interesting that this episode is one of them? Why? Because it is important to rest, to recuperate, to be quiet and to sleep. Saying “Yes” to everything doesn’t make you more holy and Christian. Sometimes saying, “No” is the most Christian thing you can do. Sometimes saying “NO” and taking time to rest is what God intends for you to do even if it looks selfish to those on the outside.
God intends on you to have time to rest in your life. Have you ever wondered why the Bible tells us there were seven days of creation even though God only worked for six? I mean, it would have been more impressive to make the world is six days than seven, right? And yet, God knew that we needed to see how important rest was in our lives. The third commandment calls us to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. We are to take time out of our week to rest, to be quiet and to worship God. To stop speaking and to listen instead. To stop doing and just be still and know that God is God and we are not.
At the end of the story in the gospel of Mark, Jesus showed us what happens when we rest. The text says that even though Jesus and his disciples left to be alone, the crowd ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. Sometimes saying, “No” to people doesn’t mean they won’t still try and make you help them and use up your time!. The needs are still there. But it is only by trusting in the miraculous power of God that the disciples actually do what God is calling them to do. They have to just sit there, wait, be quiet and listen while God feeds these five thousand people miraculously. What can we learn from this? We don’t accomplish everything through our work. In fact, we don’t need to accomplish everything. Part of the Christian life is to wait for God to do HIS work on HIS schedule in his perfect kairos time and then worship Him for what He has done.
Time is powerful. How you use your time not only affects you, it affects others, it affects your relationship with God and it even affects God’s kingdom. So, perhaps today is the right time, the perfect time, the kairos time to start managing your time as God intended. Don’t just spend time doing things, do things at the right time, do things according to the priorities and values you hold dear and then, finally, take time to rest and trust God to work powerfully in your life in His time. Amen.
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