330 Spiritual Maturity

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Spiritual Maturity” originally shared on September 25, 2024. It was the 330^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 been said that growing old is required. Growing-up is optional. I’ve said it. But, is it? Today, we’re going to find out.

   We live in a youth-oriented, even worshiping, culture. Youth is where the trends start, the disposable cash is, where marketers pay attention, and where the present, if not the future is invented.

   Some people will spend big bucks to gain and maintain a youthful appearance, they’ll spend millions to reverse aging. Why? Personally, I feel that I’ve earned every one of these gray hairs! 😊 But that’s not what our culture values.

   Culturally, what is “new” is what sells. “New” is regarded as implicitly “better”.

   I expressed an opinion at a gathering of pastors recently and another pastor replied, “That’s an old way of thinking” and, for the first time that I can recall, that didn’t make me feel defensive. I just looked surprised and said, “So…?”

   “New” may only mean a new direction. But it does not necessarily foreshadow progress.

   C.S. Lewis once defined cultural progress in this way, in his small book, The Case for Christianity:

 “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man (sic) who turns back soonest is the most progressive man (sic). There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”

   “New” is not necessarily better, though that’s what our culture acts as if it believes, or, at least it believes is expedient.

   Some people will grasp the new and untried to avoid having any responsibility, or belief, or even having opinions that others might challenge. They will say, “I have an open mind”.

   But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” 😊

   That is to say, “I’ve reviewed the information available to me and, now, this is what I believe”.

   Otherwise, we remain in a perpetual state of immaturity. Peter Pan. Ever a child, as if it were some idyllic state, desirable by definition.

   Some just want to retain their inner child, always full of wonder, innocent of the world (except when it suits us), open, trusting, accepting, and focusing on play. Some people value immaturity as if it were a virtue.

   So, when do we grow up? When do we take responsibility for our lives and seek the good of others, and of the needs of the world, outside of ourselves?

   Well, like everything else, the standards of maturity are ever changing.

   I spent a semester in Israel when I was in college and stayed some time in Rome on the way there and on the way back. Jogging outdoors in running shorts was becoming widely popular in the United States but not in Europe. In fact, wearing any kind of shorts outside was only done by boys. Men would wear running pants only if they were serious athletes. In many places, running was seen as undignified for a grown man. So, when a group of us jogged around the Piazza Navona in Rome, adults would point and laugh. Children would run alongside and make fun of us. It wasn’t a grown-up thing to do, then. But now I understand that things have changed.

   When I was a teenager, getting a driver’s license was a rite of passage into looming adulthood. It meant a measure of freedom. I got my learners permit as soon as I was eligible, and I took my driver’s test the day I turned 16. I passed, and I remember my dad letting me drive him back to work and then saying, “You take the car, David. I’ll get a ride home.” I was ecstatic! Today, many teenagers aren’t all that interested in driving. At least not at that age.

   “Adulting” is hard. Their maturity is not defined in the same way.

   “Things change” is often said as a statement on the inevitability of change.

   And change happens. That’s true. But it doesn’t just happen. It needs acceptance, or at least acquiescence. It requires both openness and conformity. Not spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is the end, not the means. It is about being a spiritual grown-up.

   The Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches around the world this coming Sunday, Mark 9:38-50, is about growing-up spiritually.

   It begins with verses 38-41,

³⁸ John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹ But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰ Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹ For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

   God is at work in the history of Salvation. God’s presence in the world is the world’s default setting. God is the world’s ultimate reality. In the end, God wins.

   “Whoever is not against us is for us.” That is the good news that we have to share. The work has been done.

   The paradox of the Christian faith is that we grow up when we realize that we are dependent on God for everything.

   Jesus said, in Matthew 16:25,

²⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

   Spiritual maturity comes when our prayer, as Pastor Rick Warren has said, is not to ask God to bless what we are doing, but to do what God is blessing.

   What does spiritual maturity look like?

   Whatever else it is, spiritual maturity is not our achievement. It comes from God. We are a new creation, a people set apart. We are born again, God’s people, and we live from the inside out.

   I think Paul describes this new life in his description of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, in Galatians 5:22-26,

²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

   How do we live in such a way? We see it in the conclusion to this weeks Gospel text, in Mark 9:42-50,

⁴² “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. ⁴³ If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵ And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.^{,  47} And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸ where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

⁴⁹ “For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰ Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

   We do not help new Christians, “these little ones”, by keeping them spiritual children.

   Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr spoke of the message coming from some of the churches in his day in 1938 as being, “A God without wrath brought men (sic) without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”

   He is, of course, speaking of women as well as of men. We do no good to anyone by diminishing the power and centrality of the cross.

   We are not the Church if we allow a message of accommodation to be the norm in our day. That is, if we lose the message of the cross in order to chase relevance, to pander to the trends of the day, to put the fun in funerals.

   We are called to a different standard for life: the will of God. And that will is that no one be lost, but that all be saved. God died on the cross for us to proclaim and demonstrate that selfless love. It can only come from God and is given to all who will receive it as a gift.

   We grow toward spiritual maturity when we seek not a generic spirituality of ourselves, but the living relationship with God, external yet grounded in history, in God’s mighty acts for our sake and for the sake of all humanity, for which we were created.

   It’s been said that Jesus taught adults and played with children. We do just the opposite.

   How do we grow toward spiritual maturity as a Church?

   A child-like faith knows of its dependence, is open to the presence of God in the Word of God and in the Sacraments, and trusts in God for guidance in a living relationship with God.

   Paul, writing in Hebrews 15:11-14 writes of spiritual maturity,

¹¹ About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. ¹² For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; ¹³ for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

   People come to faith by the grace of God, as a little child receives what he/she cannot achieve but is wholly dependent to receive. But we grow out of a childish faith through the Word of God and the Sacraments, through the transforming relationship with God in prayer and discipline, through sacrificial service to others, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

   Does anything in your life draw you away from God? Get rid of it. Lean-in to God, the Word made flesh, and live by the work of the Holy Spirit that is within you, as God made you to live, as Paul writes in Philippians 4:8.

   ⁸ Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

   Be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit that brings you life, not conformed to the world that is killing you.

   Let go of the cares of this world and whatever takes you away from being Whose you are.

   Alan Jones, former Dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, once said that “We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven.”

   We have a much better message to proclaim! Christ crucified for the salvation of all who accept His gift! New life and the forgiveness of sins. Repent and be baptized and know the real spiritual maturity that comes from living in the one true living God as a gift! 

   The Holy Spirit renews us to such a degree that we are described as a new creation.

Paul writes, in his 2^nd letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5:16-17,

¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

   That is the “new”-ness that is eternal.

   We don’t know everything, and we are not the Light. But we can be reflectors of the Light. In that is our spiritual maturity as Christians, the selfless love of God that re-creates us in God’s likeness.

   As Paul wrote, in what has become known as “the Love chapter”, speaking of “agape”, the selfless love that defines us and can only come from God, the foundation of the spiritual maturity that comes as a gift from God, in 1 Corinthians 13:11-13,

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 

329 Transformed, Not Conformed

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Transformed, Not Conformed” originally shared on September 21, 2024. It was the 329^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Everybody likes the stories of Jesus and the children, but what are they intended to teach us? Nothing. They are meant to transform us. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I was in a locker room after a workout a few years ago and one of the guys near me said to his buddy, “You know, I had this dream last night that I was back in school, and it was finals week, and I hadn’t been to class all semester, and I didn’t know where the final exam was, and I hadn’t studied, and I was running around campus looking for the exam room so I could take the test for which I hadn’t studied…”

   And someone else nearby said, “Well, I’ve had that dream.” And someone else said, "I’ve had that dream.” And I said, “I’ve had that dream, too!” 😊 And so did several other people around us.

   It turns out that it’s a fairly common dream, common enough that its cause has a name, “performance anxiety”. It may mean that you have too much to do. It may mean that there is something in your life for which you don’t feel adequately prepared or for which you haven’t adequately planned. It may just mean that you are conscientious. It’s fairly common

   Have you ever been in a class where you wanted to ask the teacher a question, but you were afraid to ask it? “Maybe,” you think, “the teacher already covered that and I was daydreaming. Or the answer was in the assigned reading and I missed it, or I didn’t read it.  Or I forgot.”

   Maybe you don’t want to stand out as the only person who doesn’t know, or that you think for whatever reason, that you should know, but you don’t. So, you’re afraid to ask the question.

   I think that that too is fairly common. In fact, I think we see it in the Bible.

   One day, in a part of the Gospel of Mark that will be read in the vast majority of churches around the world this coming Sunday, Mark 9:30-37, this happened, in verses 30-32.

³⁰ They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹ for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” ³² But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

   Why didn’t they understand what he was saying?

   I think that it was because much of what Jesus was doing, and most of what he was saying, was so unexpected. Many people expected that when the Messiah, the anointed deliverer, came, the one they’d been waiting for for 1,000 years, that he would be a great military and political leader like King David. On the other hand, people like St. Peter were beginning to believe that Jesus was God in human form.

   Now he was telling them that he was going to be betrayed, killed, and then rise from the dead. They had heard all of this before, we read it last week from Mark 8, the chapter before this one, and it still made no sense to them.

   And they were afraid to ask about it. We can understand that, right? 😊

   Teachers used to say that, if you have a question, ask it. Most likely someone else in the class doesn’t understand either. That there are no stupid questions.

   I once taught a class for 3^rd Graders receiving their first Bible where they and their parents came and highlighted one verse from each book of the Bible that they would receive from the church. One year, I had them highlight Titus 3:9,

⁹ But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

   And when I read the verse, including the word “stupid”, one of the little girls leaned over to her mother and said quietly, “He said a bad word.” 😊

   So, I’m guessing that teachers don’t say that anymore, at least not in that way.

   It’s not hard to imagine why the disciples didn’t want to raise the question, though.

   Jesus had been explaining for years who he was and what he was there to do, and they still didn’t get it. And not one of them wanted to be the one to look, well…, out of the loop. 😊

   And, instead of asking Jesus about it, they were concerned with their personal status.

   At this point, if this Gospel reading were clickbait, you would see the words,

“What happened next will shock you!” 😊

   The reading concludes with Mark 9:33-37,

³³ Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵ He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷ “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

   I have served on our synod council (a synod is a group of over 100 churches in our denomination) and on the executive committee of the synod council. One of the things that impressed me during those years was how synod council members would say, “We don’t have any power, the executive committee has the power.” The executive committee would say, “We don’t have any power, the bishop has the power.” And the bishop would say, “I don’t have the power. The synod council has the power.”

   Sometimes who you think has “the power” is totally a matter of your own perspective.

   Most children, especially older children, can’t wait until they get to be the adults in charge. Many adults would like to go back to a time when they were children.

   I don’t think that there were many of them in Jesus’ day. Children were at the bottom of the pile.

   But what do Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading tell us today? In the end, nothing. They are not meant to teach us, they are meant to transform us.

   It’s been said that growing old is required; growing-up is optional. Is there something we can learn about growing-up from being a child? How do we receive the gift of faith as a child without being spiritually childish? A lot depends on who we think has the power, at least the kind of power we want.

   We think of young children as young people who need to be protected and cared for, whose each stage of life is precious, who are treasured and who parents sometimes wish could “stay that way forever.”

   This is not at all how children have been regarded in most places for most of human history.

   Have you ever visited a museum, like the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Gardens in San Marino? Or some other place where they show Early American art? Children are portrayed in adult clothing, only they are smaller. They are not cute.

   Children were portrayed as they were perceived, as incompetent adults. To be seen but not to be heard. Drags on the family finances until they could do some income-generating work.

   At the time of Jesus, women were not allowed to learn or to worship at synagogue services, their testimony was not admissible in a court of law, and children’s status was seen as even lower than that of women’s. They were not worthy of the time of a respected teacher like Jesus.

   So, when Jesus brought children into the midst of the disciples, and told the disciples that the greatest must be the servant of all and, ³⁷ “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”,

this was shocking!

   Children are human beings, and all people are created by and belong to God. Children have a faith that is appropriate to their spiritual age that is still genuine faith. They too are recipients of the inbreaking Reign of God.

   The Kingdom of God is a rejection of the old order and the power of this world. It’s not about conforming to the world, but about being transformed in the presence of the one, true, living God.

   Sometimes, when Jesus talks about little ones, he is talking about new (spiritually young) Christians, as in Mark 9:42,

⁴² “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

   Jesus uses exaggeration as a rhetorical device to emphasize the importance of not obstructing the work of God in new Christians.

    But here in today’s reading from Mark 9, I think that Jesus is teaching that salvation is not something we achieve because it is coming through Jesus at the cross. Salvation is something we receive in the transformational gift of faith, the living relationship of faith in God.

   We can’t earn it. We can’t do anything to deserve it. We are totally dependent upon God for it, like a little child is dependent for everything on their loving parents.

   We all must enter the Reign of God the same way, as dependents. As recipients of God’s grace. As little children.

   In this, we do not to come into a childish faith. When we think of someone being childish, we maybe think of being irresponsible, selfish, or immature. We receive a child-like faith.

   A child-like faith knows of its dependence, is open to the presence of God in the Word of God and the Sacraments, and trusts in God for guidance in a living relationship with God. It is given for all people.

   Richard Halverson, former 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.”

   Would it be better for the Church today to re-focus, to be “a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ”?

   Near the end of his book, Bad Religion, Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, observes that the Christian Church has been in decline several times in its history and two things have brought it back: holy living and the arts.

   We can see the great music, literature, dance, painting and sculpture that has conveyed the Christian message through inspiration and patronage over the centuries. We can do it again, today with a child-like faith. How do we do that?

   I remember when our son came home with a letter from his grade-school saying that they would be having an active shooter drill.  “What a world!”, I thought, when children have to prepare for the possibility that somebody might come into their school or onto their playground with a gun and start shooting people.

   Then I thought of when I was about the same age. We had nuclear war drills. You know, where you don’t look at the windows, you get under your desks, or go downstairs to the hallway without windows, or into the basement where food and water were stored in case there was so much destruction outside that we couldn’t get to our parents and they couldn’t get to us. Yes, that was a bit traumatic. But, as I remember it, we were kids and we didn’t show much trauma.

   It’s often said that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. We are in-between. We belong to God. We are God’s dependents, and we need have no anxiety about anything, and no fear, but just to be Whose we are. How?

   By holy living that is not just being nice but is living our lives transformed by God.

   By worship that is not just checking the boxes but is focused and engaged and directed toward the one true living God.

   By doing justice that is not defined by political attachments but by the Bible’s definition of justice: doing God’s will.

   How do we talk about that with a world of people who are often, at best, indifferent?

   Not by pandering to the world by looking like a bland version of it, but by looking like a people whose lives are expression s of the holy and for common ground to communicate,

   Not by being a community that is based on smug self-righteousness, or being a social service agency using religious language, but by being a community of people that loves Jesus as our Savior above everything else and acts on that transformational love.

   Not by appealing for popularity while at the same time pretending to have an outsider status, but by being a people who knows it is set apart, a people who provide clear differences and superior alternatives to being of the world,

   Paul writes, in Romans 12:2,

2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

   We are a new creation. We are a transformed people. We are the died-for on the cross, the dependent children of God.

328 A Good Question

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “A Good Question” originally shared on September 11, 2024. It was the 328^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We sometimes say, “That’s a good question” whether we know the answer or not. Jesus once asked a question when he knew that the answer was not the answer. What? Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The temperature here improved today, but it has been well over 100 degrees for the past six days. There are several major brush fires to the north of us, enough so that it smells like a campfire out here, and there are ashes on outside surfaces, and people just miles from us have been told to be ready to evacuate.

   This is the kind of weather that leads many people to reexamine their values and priorities.

   Today, we’re going to look at an incident that raises an even more fundamental question.  

   I’ve been trying to learn a little Mandarin Chinese over the past almost two years. A man who was helping me in the beginning once told me that it was impossible. Not just for someone of my age, but for someone of almost any age who has not grown up in a Mandarin-speaking country.

   So, I thought, “win-win!” If I don’t learn it, “Well, it was impossible”, and if I do learn it, “Wow!” he did the impossible!” 😊

   I’m still a beginner and probably will be for some time. I think of myself as being on the edge of a vast ocean and my goal is just to swim in the shallow waters. But, even now, when I try to speak Mandarin with a native speaker, I hear a lot of encouragement.

   I think, though, that when a Westerner speaks Mandarin, or even tries, the compliments they receive are like what is said about the dog that dances on its hind legs. It’s not that he does it well, it’s remarkable that he does it at all. 😊

   Some people had lowered their expectations for who Jesus was, as well.

   One day, when Jesus and his disciples were on a small trip outside their country, Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying that Jesus was.

   They shared the things that they had heard, that people had relatively modest expectations for who Jesus was. Did they expect a complement from Jesus for answering this question? They didn’t get it. What they got was another question. A really good question.

   It happens in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, Mark 8:27-38.

   It starts this way, with Mark 8:27-30,

27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

   Jesus’ disciples had been following him around for a while. This question must have occurred to them. Maybe they were afraid to say what they were really thinking for fear of being disappointed, so they lowered their expectations with what they answered.

   We live in a time when, just like in Jesus’ day, the world has lots of opinions about who Jesus is, and most of them are wrong.

   C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, said,

   “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

   Peter answered Jesus’ question plainly, “You are the Messiah”!

   But that’s not the answer to Jesus’ question. That’s an opinion, one that could be interpreted in many ways, as we will see in the next verses.

   The answer to this question is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s an expression of a relationship. It’s an active presence.

   Jesus had asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”,

   The Gospel of John is full of Jesus’ “I am…” statements, like “I am the vine”, “I am the good shepherd”, “I am the door”, and “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”, and they all point to his being God.

   The Gospel of Matthew, in Matthew’s version of this event, speaking of Jesus in Matthew 16:16-17 says,

¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.

   That is the answer that is not an answer. Jesus is God the Son, the deliverer. This has not been revealed to us by humans. It can’t be. It can only be revealed by God the Father. It is not an answer, it is an relationship. But Jesus ordered his disciples not to tell anyone.

   Jesus was the anointed deliverer that God’s people, the Jews, had been waiting for for around 1,000 years. No one wanted to say it. They didn’t want to get their hopes up by admitting it. But now, there it was. And Jesus sternly told the disciples not to tell anyone about him.

   Why? Why not have them tell everyone about this good news?

   Maybe Jesus didn’t want to be seen as a celebrity, but as the Savior.

   Maybe Jesus didn’t want to attract the attention of the Roman occupying empire. Yet.

   But, this is the best news in the history of the world. How could anyone keep that a secret. Well, apparently, it’s not as hard as one might think. 😊

   I read a story once about a preacher who had delivered a sermon on the struggle of serving God in the world in the army of the Lord.

   Afterward, a man came out of the worship space to shake the preacher’s hand and said, “I too have served here for many years in the army of the Lord.”

   The preacher said, “Really? I don’t remember seeing you at worship before today, or in any of our community activities or ministries.”

   The man leaned forward and whispered, “I’m in the secret service.”

   I think that Jesus didn’t want people to believe in Him just because of the show. I think that He wanted people to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and of faith in Him because of what He had done, the love that he was about to show by giving his life on the cross for the redemption of the world, validated by his taking his life back again and rising from the dead.

   Jesus continues, in Mark 8:31-33,

31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

   Peter went from having a really good encounter with Jesus, to having about the worst.

   Many people in Peter’s day believed that when God sent a deliverer, the messiah, an anointed one like the great kings of Israel, like King David, he would be a great military leader who would deliver them from the Roman army. That’s one of the reasons Jesus drew such an enthusiastic crowd as he rode into Jerusalem on the day we call Palm Sunday.

   People are people.

   We all tend to want Jesus to serve us, and on our own terms.

   Peter had come to believe that Jesus was God. When Peter heard that Jesus was going to suffer and be rejected by the religious authorities, and be killed and then rise again, this just sounded nuts to him. He began to rebuke Jesus!

   Jesus looks at his disciples and in turn Jesus rebukes Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” Why? Because Peter was thinking, as we  often do, only of human things, not on the things of God.

   Jesus, who was at the same time fully human and fully God, came to die.

   Then Jesus told the crowd with his disciples that sacrifice was central to being a follower of Jesus. The presence of Jesus in our hearts is like a brush fire. It purifies us, but it also causes us to re-examine our fundamental values. Our reading continues in Mark 8:34-36,

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

   Jesus said that those who want to follow him must deny themselves, they must invest their entire lives for the sake of the Gospel.

   Money can’t save us. We could own the whole world and everything in it, and that would not be enough to buy us eternal life.

   I know this makes us feel uncomfortable, but Jesus talked about money and the way we use our money more than any other subject other than the Kingdom of God.

   Why? As he said in his Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:19-20,

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰ but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

   It’s hard for us to talk about this, because our money means so much to us. We think that our security depends on it. It’s hard to let go of that.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, said that, when a person becomes a Christian, the last part of them to be converted is their wallet. 😊

   Because we tend to turn to it in every time of need.

   The good news of Jesus Christ, however, tells us that eternal life is built in a living relationship with God, and that it is a gift. It’s free for all who believe.

   God doesn’t need our money, but we want to give our money as an expression of our new life with God, and our desire that all people come to eternal life in Jesus as we have.

   God has already given every Christian community everything it needs to accomplish that God has called us to accomplish. Including, if it is God’s will, big things.

   Therefore, we don’t ask for equal gifts from all people or all households. We do ask for equal sacrifices.

   We are stewards of all God has placed in our hands. We are managers of our time, our abilities, and of our money.

   We have been born again. It is natural for us to give. We are a new creation. It is natural for us to help others. We have been given eternal life starting right now, so that we now give naturally.

   That’s why Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 9:7,

⁷ Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

   So, here is Peter, first praised and then rebuked by Jesus.

   How would you be feeling if you were Peter? Betrayed? Confused? Angry? Ashamed? Would you double down, or wait and see what happened next? If you were Jesus, what would you do?

   Here’s how the passage for this Sunday ends, with Jesus speaking, in Mark 8:38,

38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

   Jesus lived in a culture that was based on honor and shame. For Jesus to say that, at the end of time, in the Final Judgement, that he will be ashamed of those who are ashamed of him made a huge impression.

   Can you imagine what it would be like than to encounter Jesus and to see that he was ashamed of you?

   And yet, what is our hope? Only the cross. That the cross, the blood of Jesus, has set us free from all our guilt and ____ shame!

   Jesus knows that his teachings are going to be unpopular with some, even counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. What is his answer? “Be not afraid”

   Jesus is the Messiah, our deliverer, fully God and fully human being. In him, we have been given new life! As Jesus said, in John 16:33,

33 I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”

   When I speak Mandarin to a native speaker, they sometimes look at me like I’m deranged because they do not expect the Mandarin language to be coming out of a Westerner’s mouth.

   When they realize that I am speaking their language, they relax a little bit, and maybe they’ll respond in Mandarin. And often they are generous with their compliments.

   But sometimes, they’re insulted because they think that I don’t think that they know English.

   And sometimes, they don’t want to speak Mandarin. They want to practice their English with me, a native English speaker. 😊

   It is the same way when we begin sharing our faith with friends and relatives, even strangers.

   When we first start to share our faith, people sometimes look at us as if we are deranged. The good news sounds like crazy talk to those who are perishing. But, when they hear a little about Jesus, he sounds like a nice guy, or a positive influence. But that’s all. And maybe they will even compliment us on our Jesus.

   But sometimes they are insulted and ask who we think we are to judge them, or to believe that we know the truth and they don’t. And sometimes they want to convince us that they are OK just as they are and don’t need to know who Jesus is.

   Who do you say that Jesus is? The answer is not the answer. The answer is the relationship. The answer is knowing and being known by God, God in Jesus Christ. Jesus is our Savior. Jesus is the answer.

   Answering that question is just as important today as it was when Jesus asked it of the first disciples. The answer is God’s gift. It is eternity. It’s everything. It is our Savior. Jesus. 

327 God's Work

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “God’s Work” originally shared on September 8, 2024. It was the 327^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The official tagline of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, my home denomination, is “God’s work. Our hands.” It’s too long. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The official tagline of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is “God’s work. Our hands.”

   What’s a “tagline” you might ask, and how does it differ from a “motto”, or a “slogan”, or a “catch phrase”?

   Well, if you’re asking, I’m answering: “not much”. Except that a “motto” might have a little more connection to your core beliefs.

   This coming Sunday is “God’s work. Our hands” Sunday in the ELCA. It’s intended to be a day of service, though some churches schedule it for a Sunday around this time. And, yes, for Christians, every day is a day of service.

   So why do we do it? Why is social service the annual defining event of my denomination, as it says in the ELCA toolkit for that day?

   Well, it makes more of an impact when many ELCA churches are doing it. And, if many are doing it at any time, it makes a bigger impact in the community. And you can buy event T-shirts for $12.95. Customized for a little bit more. 😊

   It’s also a good tagline. It’s memorable and it gives people good feelings and a sense that they’re doing something.

   The world likes it because it tells them that we do useful things. We help people. We help the environment. We aren’t harmful. We save tax dollars by doing good works.

   It can also provide an alternative to sharing our faith. It gives people a chance to say things like, “I don’t talk about my faith, I show it in the way I live”. It distracts us from the fact that most of our churches have no expectation that people will be led by God from zero to faith, from repentance to new life, and have no process for leading them from convert to disciple if they did. The world gets kind of hostile to us when we do that. Even some people in the Church oppose it. It’s way easier to point to our good works.

   And people get to quote Francis of Assisi saying, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” Which he never actually said, and which would be odd if he did say as he is only known to us because he used a lot of words and a lot of words were written about him. Because words are necessary. Sharing our faith is necessary.

   And this special day gives people a chance to point to the end of Matthew in chapter 25, verse 40, where Jesus says,

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.’

   As if that was the only thing that the Bible says about salvation. Which is truly odd thing for a Lutheran to say. As if good works could get us into heaven. As if they were ends in themselves and not an expression of our ultimate end, salvation through faith in Christ, made possible only by God’s grace, through the death of Jesus on the cross to restore the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created. A gift.

   Which brings us to this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world, Mark 7:24-37.

   Jesus did great things for two people. He cast a demon out of the daughter of a foreign woman because of the woman’s faith. And He healed a deaf man with a speech impediment of both things.

   Why? And why them and not everyone who was oppressed by the consequences of human rebellion against God from the beginning of Creation? Or just everyone in Jesus’ time, or just everyone in Israel, or everyone in Galilee, or even just only all those in his hometown?

   Jesus performed miracles, and the miracles got word of mouth going around about who He was. But miracles aren’t about overcoming the laws of nature. They are what John’s gospel often calls “signs”.

   Jesus’ “signs” point to something. They point to the way God Created the world to be in the beginning, and the way God will restore all things to be in the end, in the new heaven and in the new earth.

   What’s in between? The greatest miracle of all. Paul describes it in Romans 5:8-9,

⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. ⁹ Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.

   That’s the Good News! God made possible what we had made impossible.

   The Gospel reading for this Sunday begins with the story about an outsider, the foreign Syrophoenician woman, in verses Mark 7:24-30,

24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

   A non-Jew, a gentile like us, received the miracle, the action of Jesus that points us to the way that the world was intended to be and the way that it will be again in the new heaven and the new earth. She was a foreigner, she did not keep the religious Law, yet her daughter was healed instantly. Because of her faith.

   Her faith, her relationship with Jesus, fully God and fully human being, her connection to God was all that was necessary.

   But her daughter wasn’t healed by the woman’s faith, she was healed by Jesus, the agent of her relationship of faith. That faith made her part of God’s people.

   We are God’s people and, like the Syrophoenician woman, we have received mercy. Why? Not by keeping letter of the religious Law, and not because of our good works. We are not people of God because of who we are, but because of Whose we are!

   It’s not what you know. It’s Who you know. And we have been given the gift to know Jesus.

   When our son James was in the college application process, his school invited an admissions officer from Stanford to come and explain how things work. She said that, contrary to popular belief, they didn’t look for well-rounded students. She said that their goal was to make well rounded student bodies, so that a-typical abilities and experiences carried a lot of weight.

   And then there are the alternative admissions routes, like donating a big chunk of money, as we saw in the college admissions scandals of a few years ago. Or, being a “legacy” kid, that is, being related to people who attended that school. Legacies ensure that the right kind of people will be admitted and that they will support the school for generations. The supreme court has now made some kinds of preference admissions illegal.

   The Heaven admissions process is not based on merit, or on bribes, or on who your parents were/are, or on what you have or haven’t done. It’s based on the gift of new life. It’s based on grace, and that grace is given on the basis of the great gift of God revealed and given to us in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

   All the Syrophoenician woman had going for her was that she knew Jesus. She was connected by the gift of faith. The connection that brings us life in His name.

   Sally and I were in Alaska about a year ago on our 40^th wedding anniversary trip, and we visited St. Michael the Archangel Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Sitka. After we left the cathedral, we walked across the street to the Grandfather Frost Russian Gift Shop. There was a sign prominently posted in the window near the entrance that said, “We Support Ukraine.”

   They wanted people to know where their connections were.

   Because connections are important. They often define us.

   Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel reading that we are called to do everything we do, including for others, in response to the gift of salvation.

   We are not to let our works define us, because we are connected to God.

   We are defined by faith in our connection to God. That’s what produces what we do. It is all that we need for this life and for the life that is to come. It’s “God’s Work.”

   We see a similar message in the second part of today’s Gospel reading, in Mark 7:31-37,

31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

   Let me ask you a question.

   If you had to lose one of your five senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, which sense would you least want to lose. I think that most people today would say “sight”; we are a visual culture. But in Jesus day it probably would have been “hearing”. People were illiterate. Hearing was how most people learned.

   And what does Paul say hearing comes by? In Romans 10:17,

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

   It was a big deal that Jesus made a deaf man hear.

   But, by our customs, Jesus healing the deaf/mute man was a little gross.

   When you were a kid, did anyone, usually a female relative, ever see dirt on your face and take out their hankie, touch it to their tongue, and then use their saliva to clean off the spot? Gross right? You probably make that “Ick!” face. But you were clean and presentable. Jesus didn’t even use a hankie!

   People back in Jesus’ day believed that saliva had actual healing properties. Jesus used it as a signal that a healing was about to take place.

   It was a “sign”, pointing back to what God intended in Creation before we messed things up, and forward to what God will make it in the coming new heaven and the new earth. It was about the mighty acts of God.

   “God’s work.” Period.

   As with Christian Stewardship, God doesn’t need our money, but we need to give it because giving it is an expression of our faith. God has changed us.

   God doesn’t need our time or our talent either, but we need to give it because giving it is an expression of our faith. God has changed us.

   Our hands, without God, don’t change anything. They may give us the illusion of goodness, but our goodness can only come from God.

   Our tagline, “God’s work. Our hands.” is two words too long.

   “God’s work.” is everything. Creation, liberation from slavery, the law and the prophets, the cross, the resurrection, salvation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the coming new heaven and the new earth, and more, are all God’s work. They are all that’s necessary. It is what has accomplished salvation for all who receive salvation in faith and are baptized. “God’s work.”

   We just live in response to God’s work in a natural and organic desire to make everything about this world more like what God intended. Not because we get points for it, but because it is the natural outcome of who we are. And because who we are is a product of Whose we are.

   Shohei Ohtani has been a superstar for the Dodgers this year. Last week was Shohei Ohtani bobblehead doll night. People stood in line in the heat for two hours to get one. I saw on TV that the cheap seats for the game were around $125. But, if you went the next night and saw the Dodgers play the same team, the Baltimore Orioles, the cheap seats were around $25. So, you paid around $100.00 for that bobblehead. Now, you could have sold it online and maybe you made $100.00, minus the cost of parking, gasoline, and two hours out of your life.

   People will spend their lives for very little.

   Our message is that there is something more.

   Our faith is more than a signature word for a friendly membership club. It is our word for “reality”. It is the only means, by God’s grace, for salvation through Jesus Christ, as He said in John 14:6,

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   Our faith is a gift that anyone can receive for a new start, a new life, because it’s not our work. It is “God’s work.”