287 The Chosen

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Chosen”, originally shared on November 29, 2023. It was the 287^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What does the end of the world have to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? And where do we fit in with what God is doing? Today, we’re going to find out.

   The year is about to change. Next Sunday will be the First Sunday in the season of Advent. It will start a new Church Year.

   Here is its geometry:

   The whole Church Year has two halves. It is designed to tell the major events of the history of salvation in its first half, and a fuller teaching of the Christian life in its second half.

   The first half is divided into two quarters, or “Cycles”: the Birth of Jesus Cycle and the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Cycle.

   Each Cycle is divided into three thirds, or “seasons”: a third of preparation for an event, a third of the event itself, and a third of reflection on what the event means.

   So, the Christmas Cycle begins with Advent (preparation), which is followed by Christmas (the event) and then by Epiphany (reflection).

   The Easter Cycle begins with Lent (preparation), which is followed by Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday (event), and then by the season of Easter (reflection).

   The time of Pentecost covers the remaining half of the Church year.

   Each season has its own color that reflects the mood of its season.

   This coming Advent season, beginning this coming Sunday, is represented by royal blue, a color of hope. The word “advent” means “coming”.

   The Advent season begins four Sundays before Christmas (though some clergy have inexplicably begun lobbying for seven Sundays).

   The Church calendar does not only change each year. The Bible readings, or “the lectionary” move through a 3-year cycle, with each year featuring one of the three Gospels that have similar structures: Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

   This Sunday we begin Year B, or the year of Mark, and most of the Gospel readings this year will come from Mark, with readings from John scattered through the whole three-year cycle.

   Fun fact: some churches have chosen to move Advent up one Sunday this year so that the Fourth Sunday in Advent doesn’t fall on the same day as Christmas Eve.

   Funner Fact: the Bible readings for each week in the Church Year are structured so that if you came to church every Sunday for three years, you would hear the entire history of salvation and almost the entire Bible read out loud. So, if you have been a regular worshiper for a while, you have heard almost the entire Bible read out loud many times!

   The vast majority of churches all over the world uses these same readings. You could worship at any one of them on any given Sunday and you would hear exactly the same scripture being read out loud as in every other church!

   Liturgy nerds get excited about this stuff. But there’s a reason for this tradition.

   The liturgical year infuses the good news of Jesus Christ with time itself. We mark the passage of time with the history of salvation proclaimed through the Word of God.

   It is central to a life of faith. Paul writes, in Romans 10:17,

17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

   And it helps us fulfill Christ’s command to “Keep awake” in Mark 13:37.

   Those words are preceded by Jesus speaking of the end of time, the Final Judgement, and the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth. Jesus says in Mark 13:24-27,

²⁴“But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
²⁵and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

²⁶Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. ²⁷Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

   What does it mean to be among “the elect”?

   It means to be among the chosen.

   Paul uses the language of adoption, in Galatians 4:4-5,

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.  

   It means that we have been saved by God’s grace, through God’s gift of faith.

   Jesus says to his disciples, in John 15:16,

16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

   There’s nothing that we can do. God desires that all people be saved and died on the cross to make it possible. We can only receive the gift or reject it.

   In the TV and streaming show, “The Chosen” we see an artistic rendering of Jesus’ core disciples and how they respond to being chosen.

   I’ve found myself watching with mixed reactions to the show.

   I’ve wondered how far the writers can go in “filling in the gaps” of the Gospels without it becoming a distraction. I’ve watched some of the episodes on TV and find it jarring to be watching a scene from the life of Jesus and then cut to a commercial. I’ve been startled by seeing actors from the show, including the one playing Jesus, selling products in those commercials, however “useful” they might be. I am concerned about those actors sharing their personal political views and wonder if some people will not have difficulty, at least on some levels, separating the actor from the person they play.

   In this regard, I’ve been concerned that the show itself is a violation of the commandment in Exodus 20:4,

4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 

(NOTE: Roman Catholics and at least some Lutherans incorporate this verse into “You shall have no other gods,” the First Commandment when numbering the 10 Commandments)

   One other hand, I’ve been impressed with the dedication to understanding the culture and conditions in which the Gospels were written as a means to amplify their meaning and make them more relatable. I was initially put off by the idiomatic speech of the characters, but finally felt that it may be the means by which post post-modern people can find them understandable. I have been deeply moved by some scenes, especially some of the miracles of healing.

   On balance, I think that “The Chosen” can be a useful means to growing in God if we are listening to the voice of God through it, if it draws us closer to God. It can be a means to make the Gospels meaningful to a new generation of believers and even point them to new life.

   Jesus continues this passage from Mark with what I think could be another way of infusing the Gospel message in time, in Mark 13:28-31,

²⁸“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. ²⁹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. ³⁰Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. ³¹Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

   Obviously, there have been many, many generations of people come and go in the 2,000 years since these words were spoken. But I think that, in a sense, we are still a part of that first generation that first heard Jesus speak. I think that every generation is called to live as the terminal generation.

   How does every generation respond to God’s gift of a full life and salvation?

   In part, by staying awake. Jesus makes the call in Mark 13:32-37,

³²“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³³Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. ³⁵Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, ³⁶or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. ³⁷And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

   As I said earlier, “Advent” means “coming”. It refers both to the first advent of Jesus in his incarnation in his birth at Bethlehem, and it refers to his second “advent”, his second coming to judge the world and bring in the new heaven and the new earth.

   We are living in the generation that exists between these two advents.

   We are the chosen, drawn to God by God’s grace through the gift of faith that is a living relationship with the one true living God. Our ticket to heaven was stamped “paid in full” with Jesus’ blood on the cross.

   As 16^th century Church reformer Martin Luther presents it in his explanation of the part of The Apostle’s Creed that presents the Church’s core beliefs about the Holy Spirit,

   I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.

   Our lives are lived in the transformation power of the Holy Spirit to give new life and in response to the love of God made plain for us    on the cross. We are made God’s people by the cross. There is nothing we can do to be saved; we can only accept the gift.

   As Jesus said in John 6:44,

44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 

286 C the K

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “C the K”, originally shared on November 22, 2023. It was the 286^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   This coming Sunday is Christ the King Sunday throughout the world. The news in many churches is not going to be good. Today, we’re going to find out what the good news is, and where to find it.

   Some things, even when we know that they are coming, when they do happen, come as a surprise. For example, Christ the King Sunday comes and we think, “What?! Next Sunday is Advent? There are only three more Sundays before Christmas Eve!

   Or when the Rolling Stones announce another tour, and it’s sponsored by AARP!

   Or the second coming of Jesus Christ.

   This coming Sunday, churches all over the world will celebrate the end of the Church year. They will consider the end of history on Christ the King Sunday. They will consider the Final Judgement, the coming of a new heaven and a new earth. And, in many churches, they will hear bad news. And there will be lots of it.

   Some people just dislike the term “kingdom”. It sounds too male, too authoritarian, too distant. To some it sounds too white. Too colonial. Too established. Too absolute. Too Western. Too judgmental. Which is ironic, given that the Gospel reading for Sunday is about the last Judgement.

   Some would replace “kingdom” with “kindom” as a more communal way to describe the kingdom. To do that, they must replace “king” with “kin”. We must replace God’s kingdom with our own.

   Some others would replace “kingdom” with “reign”. They remove the maleness and soften the power dynamic, but still have the authority and the enforcement to deal with.

   Some would replace “kingdom” with “realm”, as if to say that God had one and should stay in God’s lane.

   But I get it. We in the United States had a revolution to get rid of kings so that the people could rule. It was a radical idea then, in human history, and it is a radical idea right now. One that we are still fighting for.

   We don’t want to be dominated.

   “Domination” is a bad word in our culture, outside of the sports world. But the root word in “domination” is the Latin word “dominus”, i.e., lord or master. As is the role of a king.

   It’s the same root in the word “dominion”, as when God creates and commissions human beings, in Genesis 1:26-28,

26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

27 So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

   To have “dominion” means to have authority over, as a manager does in our culture. It’s a role given by God in which human beings are empowered to manage and care for Creation, like a good King, acting under the will of God, would care for a kingdom.

   We describe Jesus as our lord and master. That is, as our king. And we long for his return.

   And the reading from the Gospel of Matthew that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, on Christ the King Sunday, tells us what his return will look like. It starts with Matthew 25:31-33,

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

   There will be a judgement and there will be a division and it will be undertaken by Christ the King. The good king. The king of kings. The Lord of all. He is not the figurehead of a system that must be decolonized and dismantled. He is the head of the Church, the body of Christ.

   He is the one that people long for when they know that they are powerless, when they need a good ruler to be in charge, when they know they need someone who is both Savior and Lord, Christ and King. When they know that they need Jesus. And it has always been so.

   The first recorded Christian prayer comes in the second to the last verse of the very last book of the Bible, in Revelation 22:20,

20 The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

   And when he comes, how will this judgement and this division take place?

   We see the mechanics of it, continuing in Matthew 25, in verses 34-45,

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

   That part is very bad news. At least on the surface.

   It seems to say that whether we go to heaven or hell depends entirely on how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, people passing through, the unclothed, the sick and those in prison.

   It’s said that rock ‘n roll has reinforced the Biblical messages that there’s a highway to hell but only a stairway to heaven. But can it be that hard to go to heaven if all we have to do is help the needy?

   Yes and no.

   If that is all we have to do if we take a literal view of this text, then why the cross and empty tomb? Why salvation by God’s grace through faith?

   If good works is all we have, haven’t we just substituted one form of the letter of the law for another?

   If that is all we have then that is very bad news.

   How can we ever know if we have done enough? Is the Christian life lived planning how to manage our resources so that we can go to heaven? How can we know where the line is between the needy and the not needy, so that we do not run out of resources?

   Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that the world’s greatest challenge is that we don’t define the word “family” broadly enough. What does it mean to care for “the least of these who are members of my family”? This text was written when almost everyone was poor; does it have a different meaning in our more affluent culture? Should it make us feel inadequate or guilty as Thanksgiving approaches?

   Those are the questions of those living under the Law, not the Gospel.

   I don’t think that “doing” is what it’s about at all. I think that this text is about “being” the new Creation in Jesus Christ. The “doing” is what then follows.

   I think that Jesus is describing a life of faith, of a transformed life, of a life lived in a living relationship with the one true living God. We care for all to whom God sends us in the name of Jesus!

   I think that Jesus is describing a life in which faith produces works, not the other way around. It’s what a life of faith looks like.   

   That is, that Christians don’t need a Bible reading to tell us to care for others. It is as natural for us as it is for a fruit tree to bear fruit.

   I think it’s like the story about the man who died and went to heaven.

   Just before he entered the pearly gates, however, he turned to St. Peter and said, “I’m really looking forward to what I know is on the other side of these gates but, I also know that once I get inside, I’ll be changed. I don’t know if it will happen, but I think that I might always wonder what life in the other place was like. So, I’d like to ask if it would be possible to visit the other place, just briefly, to see for myself.”

   “Granted,” said St. Peter, and the man found himself at the gates of hell.

   He walked through and was greeted by a horrible sight.

   Inside, he saw rows and rows of tables stretching to the horizon. Each table was piled high with delicious food and drink, but the people sitting at the tables were starving.

   The reason they were starving was that three-foot long forks and spoons had been fixed to their arms, and while they could put food in the utensils, the ends were too long to reach their months, so they were starving.

   “I’ve seen enough,” he said, and he was transported back to the gates of heaven.

   When he walked through, however, he saw people sitting at the same kinds of tables stretching to the horizon, piled high with the same food and drink. And the people also had three-foot long forks and spoons fixed to their arms.

   But, here, people were laughing and healthy and singing praises to God.

   The difference was that, here, people were using their utensils to feed each other.

   That idea had never occurred to the people in hell and that, in part, was why they were there.

   We serve others because that is our new nature as people who have been remade by God. That’s the good news!

   Words of Jesus near the beginning of his public ministry in all four Gospels have a similar theme:

Matthew 4:17,

17 From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Mark 1:14-15,

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Luke 4:43,

43 But he said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.”

John 3:3,

3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

   Jesus says more about the kingdom of God than about any other subject. He came to establish the already but yet fully established kingdom. Citizenship in it is preceded by our being born from above.

   We are brothers and sisters in Christ because of Jesus. As a colleague said online the other day, you have to have a kingdom before you can have a kindom.

   We have a king in Jesus and in him we have kin.

   Many people today see CK and think “Calvin Klein”. Some think of the stage name of comedian Louis C.K. (the sound of his family name, Székely). We think of Christ the King.

   Though, it’s hard to picture “Christ” and “King” in the same sentence unless you know Jesus as Savior and Lord. It’s hard to picture a loving God, who is both merciful and just, committing people to heaven and hell, unless you trust in Him.

   Father Nicky Gumbel, the Evangelical Anglican priest, and founder of the Alpha program, said, that he believes that after the Last Judgement the hosts of people gathered will consider what God has done and they will say, “That’s fair.”

   Jesus Christ is our King not to give us more laws, but to fulfill them in his death and resurrection. We simply live in response to what he has already done for us. It’s why we celebrate this coming Sunday on Christ the King Sunday.

   Current events in Israel have sent many people to their Bibles to search for the signs of the end. They need look no farther than the Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday.

   The good news of life and salvation, the gospel, is found in God, not in ourselves.

   Instead of striving for things, Jesus calls us to strive for the kingdom first and let God handle the rest, and then says, in Luke 12:32,

32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

285 How To Share The Faith

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “How To Share The Faith”, originally shared on November 15, 2023. It was the 285^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   It’s hard to talk about Jesus in a way that leads people to receive transformational faith from God. Today, we’re going to find out how.

   I read a story years ago about an older woman who lived by herself.

   She woke up one night to the sound of breaking glass and went to investigate.

   She found an intruder in her living room. She picked up her Bible and yelled, “Stop! Acts 2:28!”

   The intruder froze and stood there while she called the police.

   When police came and arrested him, they asked the woman, “What did you do to subdue that guy?”

   She said, “I wanted him to repent, so I yelled, ‘Stop! Acts 2:38’!

   “That stopped him?” asked one of the officers.

   “Well,” said the older woman, “Acts 2:38 says, ‘38 Peter said to them, 'Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ So, I guess it did.

   Then they went to the intruder and asked him, “What happened?”

   “Well,” he said. “I thought it would be easy. But that crazy lady waved something at me and said, “Stop! I’ve got an axe, and two .38’s!”

   The law of unintended consequences says that we can’t always know what our actions will accomplish.

   For example, those little carrots you buy at the grocery story are the marketing work of a pair of Lutheran brothers near Bakersfield, California. Their carrot peeling machines peeled a lot of carrots, but they also left a lot of small pieces behind. One day, one of the Grimm brothers (yes, that is their name) got the idea that those little pieces, like cheese curds before them, might be transformed from waste into money. And it did. That’s where “baby carrots” come from.

   The 3M Corporation had, and maybe still has, a policy that gave every employee a certain number of paid work hours to pursue ideas for new products. They could form work teams if they found any other employees willing to use their hours developing that product. And, if a saleable product came out of it, the inventor could rise in the company to become the manager of the division that manufactured that product. One day, an employee had a problem. He sang in his church choir and marked pages in the church’s hymnbook with scraps of paper. The problem was that when he turned to one page, the markers in the other pages would fall out. Meanwhile, another employee had tried to invent a super glue, but it was a failure. It was only slightly tacky. Paper that had been coated with it didn’t even pull the ink off a page when it was removed. They worked together to produce hymnbook markers and thought that the product would have a very limited market. Until the office secretaries saw what they were doing and asked for some. And that’s how Post-it Notes were developed.

   Good things can happen when we are trying to do something else. But lots of bad things can happen when we do nothing.

   Hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  

   Dwight L. Moody, the 19^th Century Evangelist, school founder and publisher, was once told by a critic that she didn’t like his Evangelism methods. He replied, “I agree with you, I don’t like the way I do it either. Tell me how do you do it?”  The critic replied, ‘I don’t do it.’  Moody said, “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”

   That’s the dilemma, isn’t it?  

   How do we share our faith? Our message is always the same, but how do we find creative ways to solve new challenges in communication? How do we find words for what is real to us to communicate with people who don’t know things that pass human understanding? How do we communicate our convictions in a world that doesn’t understand our spiritual vocabulary?

   We don’t want to lose friends over this. We don’t want to be the office weirdo.  We don’t want people to misunderstand, or to judge us, or to think that we’re like those other people who call themselves Christians. We don’t want to alienate family members; “I have to pick my battles,” we say.

   All of which is to say that, to some degree, faith isn’t as important to me as my status, my popularity, or my reputation, or what my family thinks of me. I need those things.

   “Let’s make a deal.” That’s the arrangement we in the Western world have made with the societies and secular governments in which we live. We get a certain level of freedom as long as we agree to a certain level of restriction on what is an acceptable public conversation. Your beliefs are your personal business. Otherwise, you’re weird, disruptive or intolerant.

   We rarely even talk about our faith in our churches. We mostly use religious language in our worship services. We may talk about our faith in our Bible Studies or prayer groups.

   But, for the mainline churches in particular, we talk about social services and social justice and social groups, sometimes using religious language. Leaders have become less shepherd and more community organizer.

   Listen to what people talk about before or after a worship service. Mainly we talk about ourselves and our interests. We build organizations of like-minded people.

   There’s a significant difference between building an organization and building a Christian community that is formed to proclaim the Kingdom of God and is calling people to receive the transformed life that is the result of a living relationship with God for which we were created.

   Rev. Richard Halverson, who was a Presbyterian minister and Chaplain of the United States Senate, once said,

“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.”

   For many of our churches, being successful by worldly measures is all that matters.

   There is a growing group of people in my denomination that want to take the word “Evangelical” out of our name because they believe that its meaning has been irredeemably lost in the United States, while in the rest of the world it is synonymous with “Lutheran”. But that is not our biggest problem with being evangelical.

   “Evangelism”, being the means through which God works to lead people to a transformational relationship with God that becomes new life, isn’t even on many, perhaps most, church’s radar screens. I read a 60-page recap of a self-study of our synod’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (a SWOT study) a few years ago that didn’t mention words like “evangelism”, or “outreach” or “sharing the gospel” one time. Not one time.

   How can we overcome that? How can we become evangelical without choosing the government over God? How can we share our faith where it is not welcome? How can we become, as Rev. Halverson points to, “a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ”?

   The first step is to be that fellowship. To focus less on buildings and church culture and on maintaining the power of those in power, and to focus more on Jesus and the transformational relationship He gave to all who believe with his death on the cross.

   Second, I think that it’s more important to work on ourselves than on what we’re going to say. I don’t mean, “I don’t tell people about my faith, I show them by my deeds.” I mean, that the new Creation that God makes for all who ask means that the Holy Spirit will speak through us when we get out of His way. Programs don’t lead people to let God work in them. People do.

   The popular ‘70’s-80’s Jesus music Christian rock group, the “2^nd Chapter of Acts”, describes not only the formation of the Christian Church by the Holy Spirit in verses 1-21 of that chapter, but the Christian proclamation that came as the result, where the apostle Peter speaks hard words of Jesus’ crucifixion that could be said to any one of us.

   And then he writes in verse 24,

²⁴ But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 

   And in verse 32,

³² This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.

   The good news he proclaims is the Resurrection of Jesus. And then this happens in Acts 2:37-39,

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸ Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 

   The good news is for everyone, including children. The first converts come to newness of life in the promise of life in Jesus Christ. Sharing that news requires effort. God works through Peter’s arguments and exhortation to lead the people to receive God’s gift of new life. We see it in verses 40-42,

⁴⁰ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. ⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

   Peter begins sharing the faith at a point of commonality. He shares the bad news  before he offers the good news of the Resurrection. He shares something important. What happens to us after we die is no less relevant to human beings today than it was 2,000 years ago.

   Third, talk about Jesus. Talk about what He means to you. Talk about our hope in Him. Talk about what Jesus talked about: the already but not yet reign of God for all people. Talk about forgiveness and new life in Jesus. Talk about what Jesus did for human beings: he gave his life, and then He took it back again so that we might live forever. He died on the cross, and then he rose from the dead! That is the heart of the Christian message.

   Tim Keller, who was the Christian author and pastor of a large Presbyterian church in Manhattan, once wrote, “When people tell me that they once were believing Christians but now have rejected it all-I often ask them (after long, close listening) why they originally believed Jesus rose from the dead and how they came to decide that he now didn't. They usually say it's a helpful question.”

   It is a helpful question, because whatever else the Christian faith is and however it is expressed and lived, it is built on three words, “He is Risen!”

   Someone may ask you what you did last weekend, and you may say, “On Sunday morning I went to church, and this was what happened that was important to me…” But something must have happened that is important, something more than social groups using religious language. People need transcendence, they need to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they need to know that they have hope, they need to know that death is not the end, they need to hear the Gospel of Jesus. And they are longing for it, even when they can’t quite put that longing into words, because all human beings were created for a living relationship with the one true living God.

   Fourth, talk about reality. It’s hard for people outside the Christian faith to understand what Christians actually believe. As with stained glass windows, who Christians are only makes sense when the Light shines through.

   When I try to explain what I believe I tell people that, when I talk about my faith, it’s not a random belief. “Faith” is a synonym for “reality”. It’s not something that we made up. God created me and then re-created me. God would exist if nothing else did. It’s not something that “works for me”, it’s reality. And that seems to help them understand.

   You may ask someone, at the right time, “Have you heard about Jesus?”, because believe it or not, increasing millions of people right here in the U.S. have not, or what they have heard is not at all connected to reality.

   There are tons of ways to share the faith. Google it and you’ll find the ways. The challenge is to find the will.

   Let me modify what I said above about, “The first step.” The first step is to take the first step.

   When I was in college, Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Black Power movement in the ‘60’s, spoke at a nearby school. One of the things he said that I still think about is, “If you have something that’s really good, you don’t have to cram it down people’s throats. They’ll steal it from you.”
   Christianity is the really great good news. So, why aren’t people clamoring for it, demanding it, stealing it? Partly, I think, because we have turned toward ourselves and all but given up on the transforming goodness of God, and we have turned our attention away from proclaiming it.

   It’s hard to share our faith at any time, especially in a world that increasingly doesn’t see it or want to hear it. A world that naturally rebels against God and resists the truth.

   We are instead a new Creation. We are called, equipped, and sent to share the faith because it is the joy that is in life itself. It is a relationship with God given to us by God.

   Franciss of Assisi is reported to have said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” But he never said that. He never made an unnecessary distinction between words and actions.

   Words are necessary. Our words are necessary to share the faith. God has made us God’s evangelists in proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to the lost. As Paul wrote in Romans 10:17,

17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

284 Forgiveness

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Forgiveness”, originally shared on November 8, 2023. It was the 284^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Can we all be forgiven? God is merciful and God us just. Which do you hope God will be toward you? Which do you hope God will be toward those who have wronged you or who have wronged others? Or are mercy and justice the same? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Today is Trash Day in our neighborhood. There used to be one guy who passed though three times. He’d stop here on his break and we’d talk. Now the drivers seem to be rotating, but we still remember each one with a Christmas card and a cash gift. We are grateful that our trash is hauled away.

   Of course, we put more out to the curb than trash. We also put out separate containers for green waste and for recycling. But it’s all stuff that we want removed.

   And the trash company comes and takes it away. It’s that simple. But somebody has to pay.  

   It’s kind of like forgiveness.

   There’s a very old joke about a little boy who misheard the “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” part of the Lord’s Prayer (from Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:1-4) and recited “and forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.”

   Cute, but either version seems to say that the forgiveness of our sins is conditional. It’s conditional on our forgiving others.

   And then there is the passage in Matthew 18:23-35 where Jesus tells the parable of a king who forgave a servant a huge debt, and about that same servant who refused to forgive a fellow servant a small debt. The king called his servant back and then sent him to horrible punishments until he would pay everything he originally owed. And the passage ends with verse 35,

35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

   Is God’s forgiveness conditional upon our forgiving others?

   The key to this passage, in my opinion, is the words, “from your heart.”

   I don’t think that it just means “sincerely”. I think it means that knowing the enormity of the unearned forgiveness that we have received transforms us. Our true selves are changed.

   The 16^th century Church reformer, Martin Luther’s explanation of that “forgive us our trespasses…” part of the Lord’s Prayer, in his Small Catechism asks, “What does this mean? He writes,

   “We ask in this prayer that our heavenly Father would not regard our sins nor deny these petitions on their account, for we are worthy of nothing for which we ask, nor have we earned it.

   Instead we ask that God would give us all things by grace, for we sin daily and indeed deserve only punishment. So, on the other hand, we, too, truly want to forgive heartly and to do good gladly to those who sin against us.”

   Our hearts are transformed, and a sign of that transformation is our now natural life lived in response to what we have first received from God. We naturally forgive. Our hearts have been transformed. As Luther said, “we, too, truly want to forgive heartly”. We forgive from the heart.

   But more than trash gets taken away on Trash Day.

   There are three cans in front of our house.

   I think that they represent three ways to live the Christian life in response to what God has done for us at the cross: forgiven us and reconciled us to God.

   The first is recycling. Recycling lets some of what we want to get rid of be put to use. For example, it’s been said that every life serves a purpose, even if it’s as a bad example. I think that someone who is a bad example made that one up. 😊  But, if we repent, if we turn away from the holes we have dug for ourselves, and we teach others to avoid the darkness of our lives, God may recycle our lives into something that is light to the world.  

   The second is green waste. Green Waste lets some of what we want to get rid of bring new life. Its purpose is to be the compost that provides good soil for new life to grow. Its decomposition brings nourishment for the fruit of the Christian life to develop, just as our failures and redemption can be a bridge to life and a credible witness to those who were lost in the same way.

   We have recently been told that we can also add food waste to the green waste can. Some have embraced this act of stewardship, but I don’t think that it’s really caught on. That kind of waste rots, smells terrible, and attracts rats and disease.

   And that brings me to the third can: trash. Trash is foul. It serves little to no purpose, It’s not healthy to have around. Our image of hell as an unimaginably horrible place filled with worms and fire comes from the trash dump in the Valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna, outside of Jerusalem. It was a place of spontaneous combustion, city trash, and the corpses of dead animals.

   Our trash is our sin. It is the consequence of our condition before God. The awareness of our sin tells us to give up. God tells us that we are loved.

   The world tells us that we need to try harder. God tells us that we have a Savior, and that that Savior is Jesus Christ.

   Somebody has to pay to remove it, and somebody did. But it wasn’t us.

   Jesus paid to reconcile us to God. We are forgiven through his death on the cross. It is through Jesus that our sins are forgiven. We just open our hearts to receive the gift so that our hearts may be transformed by the one true living God.

   But how do we live that? Are we to just accept any wrong done to us? To forgive people out of hand? Without boundary or limits?

   Are Christians to be the doormats of the world? In some ways, “yes,” and it has been so from the beginning, when Jesus taught his disciples to be careful, in Matthew 10:16,

16 'See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 

   We are called to forgive those who have wronged us from our hearts. But, I don’t think that means we should forget. We are to learn from our experiences while not becoming that which we despise. As has been said, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.” We are to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

   This means that we forgive others because we have been forgiven, and because our unforgiving resentment only hurts ourselves.

   At the same time forgiveness does not preclude our desire for justice that may allow the kingdom of this world, the governmental authorities, to extend civil and criminal penalties.

   But how we do that, and to what extent we pursue or cooperate with that process, will also be weighed against the burden it places on our conscience, on our renewed self and our desire to both experience and to extend the forgiveness of God.

   We all want to receive some resolution when we have done things that we know are wrong.

   But there can never be complete restitution; we can never even know what all our sins are.

   I heard a story about Francis of Assisi, who is said to have received a visitor at his door one day. The visitor had been burdened by guilt over some gossip that he had passed along which turned out not to be true, but had harmed the reputation of someone in the town. He wanted Francis to tell him what he could do to make up for it.

   Francis told him to take a feather pillow, rip it open, and place a feather at the entrance to every home in the town and then to return to Francis.

   When he did this, Francis told him to take the empty pillowcase and collect all the feathers that he had set out on the doorsteps.

   The man said, “That’s impossible! Who can know where they have gone to by now?”

   Francis replied that it was the same way with gossip. No one can know where it goes.

   We are sinful by nature and we have earned only punishment, but the good new of Jesus Christ is that our sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus on the Cross.

   We don’t need to be better, we need a Savior, who will then make us want to be better from the inside out and who will make us better. And we have that Savior in Jesus Christ our Lord.

   It’s been said that guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. And we all want some resolution of it, but sometimes it is a burden to us.

   This is not only true for Christians, but for all people of good will. I’ve heard it called the “Ethical Paradox”. That is, that it is those who are most concerned with doing the right thing that agonize over it, while it is those who are the least concerned with doing the right thing don’t think about it at all.

   That’s why “doing good” requires a definition of good that can only come from God.

   I took a philosophy course one year in college from which, I think, I remember very little. What I do remember is what the professor said in the few minutes at the end of each class where he had finished his prepared “professor” notes early and went into what I would call his “cracker barrel philosopher” mode. 😊

   One day, while in this mode, he made the observation that, in his opinion, most of the world’s evil, and probably all of its most heinous evil, had been done by people who sincerely, in their heart of hearts, believed that they were doing good.

   One of the things that I think that means, is that we need to be very humble before God. We need to live in response to the new life that God gives us and renews in us each day, to self- examine what we do in order to consider both our motives and our actions, and to trust only in God as the source for a life that truly is life.

   Things weren’t any different for the Early Christians thousands of years ago. And yet the love of God seen on the cross that has won us forgiveness has changed everything about what it means to be truly human, as Paul writes his letter to the Romans, in Romans 8:35-39,

35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   Everyone who turns to the Lord will be saved. There is no difference in God between God’s mercy and God’s justice.

   When Job, in the Bible’s book of Job, struggled with God’s mercy and God’s justice, the answer he gets from God is essentially, “I’m God and you’re not.” 😊

   All we can do is to turn to God and live. To repent and trust in God’s forgiveness paid in full for us by the inseparable love of God, and to be grateful that our trash has been hauled away on God’s ultimate Trash Day. At the cross.