360 Be Prepared

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Be Prepared”, originally shared on May 21, 2025. It was the 360^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Have you ever felt that something terrible was going to happen and that you were totally unprepared? Today we’re going to find out why that could be a good thing.

    I was a Boy Scout. Many of us were Scouts of some kind. The Boy Scout motto is, “Be Prepared”. Scout or not, most of us try to live by that motto.

   That’s why we carry insurance. It gives us the feeling that we are prepared. Except when we find out that we aren’t.

   Many homeowners in the recent Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena monster fires thought that they were prepared, but found out that they didn’t have the coverage that they thought they had, or that they did and now they’ve been dropped by their insurance companies, and/or they have seen their insurance premiums rise dramatically. And it’s been proposed that all California residents should share in the costs related to those fires.

   Because we’re preparing for the next major fires.

   We want to be prepared, and we mostly think we are prepared until we discover that we’re not.

   You’ve probably seen stories in the news recently about the terrorist bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. I saw a story on TV this week about a person who lived within the destruction area.

   He was showing a reporter the damage to his home, and he said that he hadn’t worried too much about it because he had homeowners’ insurance. And then he called his agent and found out that he didn’t have coverage because his policy didn’t include “Terrorist Insurance”! Let that sink in for a minute.

   He thought he was prepared, until something came at him that was totally unexpected.

   Our Gospel reading last week took place on Maundy Thursday. We’re still with the disciples in our reading this week in the night that Jesus was betrayed, when he began Holy Communion, washed his disciples’ feet, and gave them a new commandment. “Maundy” is an Old English word from which we get our words like “mandate” and “commandment”, as in words from our Gospel reading last week in John 13:34,

³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

   He continues that theme in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 14:23-29.

   It begins with Jesus trying to prepare his disciples at this last supper for what was coming, in John 14:23-25,

²³ Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. ²⁵ “I have said these things to you while I am still with you.

   Jesus tells his disciples that loving Jesus looks like something. He tells them that what it looks like will come from keeping his word, that what they do comes from who they are, and that a transformed life will enable a person to live from the inside out, formed and guided by the Triune God.

   Maybe that’s why many people in our culture don’t feel prepared for what’s coming in the world today. Their lives are formed by themselves and not by the living relationship with the one true living God that Jesus restored for us on the cross.

   In fact, there is a tremendous sense of discouragement in the world today.

   I remember a meme I saw during the pandemic that was a parody of the popular children’s book, “Goodnight Moon.” Over the strangely calming primary colors and the starry night sky out the window of the bunny’s bedroom it said, “Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Zoom, Goodnight sense of impending Doom.”

   Things haven’t improved much.

   In fact, now we’ve added a sense of disorder in the world, particularly in our country, a sense of rootlessness, a worsened national polarization that could go anywhere, a technology that could replace us, a war in Ukraine that could easily spill-over into a calamitous World War, an unstable economy, and closer to home, a sense in the Church that something has broken and is getting worse.

   Why is this a good thing?

   Jesus answers that question as our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday continues in John 14:26-27,

²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

   Jesus leaves us with his peace. Not what the world gives, but his peace! In fact this peace is beyond all human understanding because it comes from God. We can’t achieve it. We can only receive it.

   An uncertain future makes us more likely to turn to a life that is solid, like a rock. A new life that comes from God.

   Tim Keller, the presbyterian pastor who started a healthy church in Manhattan, in New York, and a respected author, who died a couple of years ago, once tweeted (or “x”’d) , “The gospel is always more compelling to people who know their own inadequacy. The highly competent, confident, and successful have a harder time with the concept of salvation by sheer, unadulterated, totally unmerited grace.”

   The first and most important requirement for being saved is to know that you need a Savior.

   The first and most important requirement for being forgiven is to know that you are a sinner, and to repent.

   I saw another meme a while ago that said, “Everything not saved will be lost.” It was a Nintendo “Quit Screen” message.

   Jesus does not give salvation to receive anything from us. Jesus saves us because we have come to know that we need a Savior. He makes us prepared.

   How does this happen? It’s the work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the one God, the Trinity.

   It’s being like the woman in the song written by Carole King and partners and sung and made famous by Aretha Franklin, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”

“When my soul was in the lost and found
You came along to claim it”

   That’s exactly what the Savior does for us.

   When a man named Zacchaeus, who was also publicly known as a sinner, a chief tax collector, a thief and a traitor to his people, humbled himself before Jesus, Jesus ate at his house, a public sign of welcome. And when Zacchaeus repented before Jesus, this happened, in Luke 19:9-10,

⁹ Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

   So, if you’re feeling lost today, if you don’t know where you are in life or where things are going, if you know that you cannot save yourself, the good news for you is that you have a Savior.

   Don’t give up or surrender to despair. Jesus has come to seek and to save you. Let Him into your heart to make you new.

   Jesus concludes this week’s Gospel reading in John 14:28-29,

²⁸ You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. ²⁹ And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

   Jesus prepares us for what is coming.

   We don’t know what the future holds in this crazy world, but we do know Who holds the future.

   I’m a Lutheran and, like most Christians in Southern California, many of us are struggling. What does it mean to be a Lutheran in Southern California today? It means helping others to be prepared.

   Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, once said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” 😊

   We, the loose Lutherans who have landed here, are defined by our diversity, a foretaste of heaven that has resulted in a cross-pollination of vision and ministry in a place where people have come to invent, and sometimes to endlessly re-invent themselves.

   The old pastors used to say that the white stuff on the Sierras wasn’t snow, it was the church transfer letters that Lutherans were given back home, that they had thrown out on their way to Southern California. 😊

   “Being a Lutheran in Southern CA” means offering something solid to our often rootless and insecure culture: a grounded and meaningful life. We are intentional Lutherans.

   We point to a living relationship with the one true living God, freely restored for us by God on the cross, one that offers love where everyone else seems to be hustling to be popular.

   We live as a people set apart, as light, as salt, as leaven. We don’t live by the numbers.   

   We carry our social action in large containers of faith, and grace and the Bible as the living Word of God in a way that offers an alternative life to a secular culture that is not nearly as “alternative”, or as “radical”, or as “open-minded” as it thinks it is.

   We live a definition of “justice” that is “doing God’s will”.

   We are trendsetters and influencers in a way that the world cannot see because it only cares about appearances and we live transformed lives from the inside, out.

   We point the way to Jesus for everything that’s loose to be set free.

   That’s what being a Lutheran Christian in Southern California means to me.

   We are only two weeks away from celebrating the third biggest event in human history after the Birth and Death & Resurrection of Jesus: The Day of Pentecost. It’s the day when the promise of Jesus about the coming of the Holy Spirit, first to his remaining disciples the evening of his Resurrection and then to all who receive it, came true on The Day of Pentecost, in fulfillment of the Gospel for this coming Sunday, in John 14:26,

²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

   Jesus spent what we call Maundy Thursday in the Last Supper, talking about the prime importance love in the face of his betrayal by one of his closest disciples, showing them what service meant, that they were friends of God, and instituting Holy Communion, because they weren’t prepared. He was preparing them. He was telling them that they had a Savior.

   They were being told that everything that they had built their lives upon was going away. But Jesus was also telling them to trust him, that they would not be alone.

   That is the gift he offers to you. That new life is the gift that we all receive and that we point to for others.  Repent, open your heart, and receive it from him today. Be prepared by Jesus.