400 Anything But

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Anything But”, originally shared on February 20, 2026. It was the 400^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 playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist anything but temptation.” Today, we’re going to see why that is the foundation of the Good News.

    The American humorist and satirist of all things Lutheran, Garrison Keillor, once said that, for Lutherans, every Sunday is in Lent. I hope that he meant that every Sunday points to the love and grace of God in full exhibition and accomplishment on the cross, and not to our storied reserve.

   We marked Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, last Wednesday.

   Somebody actually asked me once what day Ash Wednesday was going to be that year. I think that they meant “date”. At least I hope so, anyway. 😊

   The Christmas Cycle has finished. Now we’re in the Easter Cycle (Lent to reflect and prepare, Holy Week and Easter Sunday for the event, and the Easter season after Easter Sunday to learn and to apply).

   We will mark the first Sunday in Lent this Sunday with a reflection on temptation.

   Jesus, the promised Messiah, the Anointed One, the deliverer, has arrived and is about to begin his work after1,000 years of waiting by God’s people.

   Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness to give up what he hasn’t even started yet, his public ministry, his death and his resurrection.

   We will see in Matthew 4:1-11, that Jesus was led up into the wilderness to be tempted. The context is set in the first two verses, Matthew 4:1-2,

¹Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.

   I just want to point out something that, I think, we sometimes forget.

   Jesus wasn’t on a retreat to prepare for his public ministry. He wasn’t in the wilderness to learn what he was supposed to do. And Jesus wasn’t sent there by the devil.

   Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Why?

   I think that it has something to do with us. I think that Jesus is there to demonstrate who he is, that there is not some cosmic struggle going on between good and evil. God is in control. Jesus knows that we are sinners, that we need a Savior. Jesus knows where he is going and is ready to go. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

   I saw a meme a while ago that showed a woman wearing a headscarf reading a note. The caption said, “It sure wasn’t easy being the mother of Jesus…” The note read, “Dear Mom, Gone into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by Satan. Don’t worry! xo J.”

   I’m very sure that it was difficult being the mother of Jesus.

   Forty is a significant number in the history of Salvation. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights while Noah and his family and the animals floated in the Ark, Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days, the liberated nation of Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years before they could enter the promised land, the prophet Elijah fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, Saul, David, and Solomon ruled over Israel for 40 years, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights before his Temptation, there are 40 days in Lent (excluding Sundays) and there were 40 days between Jesus’ Resurrection and his Ascension,

   The devil comes to Jesus in the wilderness in what would be Jesus’ very physically weakened state and right off the bat hits him at his point of greatest vulnerability, in verses 3-4,

 ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

   The devil questions whether Jesus is who he is, sowing seeds of doubt, i.e., “If [note: bold added] you are the Son of God,” and challenging him to prove it at a time when Jesus might be the most easily tempted to do so.

   I once fasted for 3 days and nights. A fast was called at my college after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. People signed-up with the food service on campus and the money saved was donated to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. By the second day, I was dreaming about food.

   Food would have been a huge temptation for Jesus. Any physical need is a huge temptation. Any perceived need is an occasion for temptation.

   We are sometimes tempted, and sometimes we fail, and when we have messed up the devil says, “What a hypocrite! You aren’t a Christian. Why pretend? Give up!”

   But, that’s not the Word of God, that’s the word of the devil. That’s the word of the forces that defy God.

   God’s answer is that we have been given a Savior, Christ the Lord. We can resist anything but temptation. The Good News, the Gospel, The Word of God says, “I died for you. I overcame temptation, sin, death, and the power of the devil, for you.”

   Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, answers the devil by quoting from scripture, in Deuteronomy 8:3,

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

   So, the devil tries to get Jesus to prove who he is by an act of spiritual courage, in Matthew 4:5-7,

 ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

   The devil’s words sound plausible, and he answers Jesus’ resistance by also quoting scripture. The devil knows the Bible, and he quotes from Psalm 91:11-12,

11 For he will command his angels concerning you

to guard you in all your ways.

12 On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

   But the devil is quoting scripture to serve his own purpose and not the purpose of God.

   Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16,

Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.

   I thought of this section during the pandemic when people said that they were not wearing masks, or getting vaccinated, or washing their hands or anything else because they trusted in God to protect them.

   It seems to me that they were putting God to the test.

   I believe that God does act in our best interests, but in what form and by what means are not always clear to us. God is God and we’re not. We cannot use God for our purposes. That is putting God to the test.

   The temptations continue with verses 8-10,

 ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

   So now it seems to me that the devil is getting frustrated. He resorts to a flat-out lie, some plausible disinformation, offering Jesus something that isn’t his to give, something that belongs to God, something that is Jesus’ for the asking, “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor”, and the devil shows his true desire when he says, “if you will fall down and worship me.”

   Jesus responds, quoting Deuteronomy 6:13,

13The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.

   The devil has no power over us. God promises us that we will never be tempted beyond our ability to endure. All the devil has is lies.

   The Gospel reading concludes with verse 11,

 ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

   I’ve read a fair amount online from intercepted messages sent home by Russian soldiers in Ukraine on digital media. Some conversations are with their mothers and wives and girlfriends. Many of them discuss how war has changed their behavior, particularly their values of right and wrong. What was once unthinkable becomes commonplace. Fear, peer pressure, and the sinful human heart have carried them to everyday atrocities. War can do that.

   We have come to call it “moral injury”.

   So, what are we to do when we are tempted to do what we know is wrong? Well, the short answer is to not do that. But how do we resist temptation? And how do we know the difference between what is right and what is wrong?

   We learn about that from Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.

   Jesus was fully God. But he was also fully a human being. He was tempted because the devil thought he could break Him. How did Jesus know right from wrong, and how did he act on it? What can we learn from Jesus?

   First, we learn that Jesus knew the scriptures. He knew them by heart. He knew the words and he knew the presence of God in reading them.

   The same Spirit that had led him into the wilderness to be tempted had prepared him through scriptures.

   Second, we learn right from wrong from the Law of God that is in our heart. It becomes who we are and that becomes what we do.

   This is very different from what much of our culture teaches.

   Is everything just right for one person but not for the other? Or are some things right for everybody.

   Who decides what is right from wrong. Christians and Jews and Muslims all agree and believe that morality comes from God.

   Morality, knowing right from wrong, has to come from outside us. Otherwise, morality is just what we decide it is.

   We see what happens when people forget about God in the Old Testament.

   When you see that there is no one to rule the people for God and the words (i.e. Judges 17:6), “In those days there was no king in Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes,” appear, you know something very bad is about to happen. It happens again and again.

   Third, we learn that the devil seeks us at a point of weakness with something that seems desirable, even good.

   The devil tempted Jesus with an easy way out of the cross, with things that anybody might want, like us.

   I once talked with a man whose vocation was in sales. He was a good salesman. His job required some travel, but he was also able to spend time with his family, which he loved.

   One day, someone from higher-up I n the company offered him a promotion at a sizably higher salary, but in a position that would require a great deal more travel, so much that he would have very little time with his family.

   The man declined, saying that he wanted to be there for his wife and children.

   “But,” the executive said, “think of all the good you could do for your family with more money.”

   That’s a temptation. That’s the way the devil works.

   Fourth, we learn that we are not alone. We have a model and helper for doing what is right, whatever the cost, in Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in Hebrews 4:14-16,

14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

   Fifth, we learn that resisting temptation is more than denying ourselves things. It takes us to a whole new life of devotion and purpose, and we are called to live it.

   Two little boys were eating the pancakes that their mother had made for them for breakfast one day.

   When the mother stepped out for a few minutes and came back again, she found them fighting over the last pancake. “Boy, boys”, she said. “What would Jesus do?”

   The older brother said, “She’s right, Billy. You be Jesus.”

   Everybody wants to be like Jesus, until it’s time to be like Jesus.

   The plain fact is that all human beings are a mess. We have always been a mess.

   We sin, we separate ourselves from God. We put ourselves above all else.

   We can make no claim to righteousness of our own.

   All we can do is to point to Jesus, who has given us new life and salvation through the cross, Jesus gave his life for we sinners, and then he took it back again in the Resurrection to validate the power of the cross. No one can do that for us but Jesus. He who is God has reconciled us to God. We just live the new, transformed life he has given us, from the inside, out, in a living relationship with the one true living God.

   Sixth, we learn that the devil is a liar and that God is in control. It’s why we pray.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, in his Small Catechism on the basics of the Christian faith, in his explanation of the Lord’s prayer, in his explanation of the words, “And lead us not into temptation”, asks, “What does this mean?”, and he answers:

   “God tempts no one to sin, but we ask in this prayer that God would watch over us and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final victory.”

   Seventh, we learn that there is no easy fix, only the honor and challenge of right living, and growing through life transformation in a living relationship with the one true living God.  There is only one Supreme Being, and his relationship is personal.

   You may have seen people wearing clothing with the word “Supreme” in white letters on a red background. The “Supreme” brand is based on an interesting business model.

   The clothing it sells comes in limited batches from new lines that are released twice a year. That makes the street-wear merchandise seem exclusive, yet the merchandise keeps coming. So, when one of the few actual stores are open, selling a few pieces every Thursday, huge lines form and sometimes fights break out, both in the line and in the store, because many people buy goods to sell online. Clothing bought for about $150 in a store can sell for $500 online. 

   That’s a huge mark-up, and some people do make money. But other people pay the inflated prices because they think that they are getting something exclusive, even if that “exclusivity” is artificially produced to be highly prized on the street.

   That’s the thing about temptation. It only offers us something that is not real and can actually bring us harm.

   Martin Luther once said, “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.” We can’t keep from having thoughts that are contrary to the will of God, but we can keep from acting on them or allowing them to change who we are.

   Lent is a time for reflection on that, for turning away from those things in our lives that grieve God, and for living in the power of the Holy Spirit, which wells up from within us, and opens our hearts and minds to the presence and power of God in the Bible, in ourselves, and everywhere around us.

   Let us grow in our sense of Christian morality during this Lenten season and seek to live more deeply in the transformational relationship empowering us to live as the people of God. Especially in the wilderness times in our lives.

   Let us make it a practice to spend time in self-examination and show our appreciation for what God has done for us in Jesus Christ on the cross, and express it through love for God and love for one another and for the world.

   And, though temptations may come to us to give up the narrow way and follow an easier path, let us be grateful that we are not alone. That we are never alone. That Jesus fights with us, and that Jesus, our light and our salvation, has overcome the world! 

399 Life In Ashes

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Life In Ashes”, originally shared on February 18, 2026. It was the 399^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 know all too well in Southern California that ashes are the refuse of destructive fires. Today, we’re going to find out how ashes can also be signs of new life.

   We’re getting some rain this week in Southern California. We had a blast of rain at the beginning of the rainy season, and then nothing, and now another deluge.

   It’s come with some chilly weather, too, at least chilly for us.

   Snow is accumulating in the mountains. You can go there if you want to, or you can just look at it and enjoy it from afar.

   Which reminds me of a visitor to a deep southern state who passed by a church that had a nativity scene displayed out front for Christmas. All the wisemen, a common image in the Church’s just ended season of Epiphany, were dressed like firefighters.

   The visitor had to know what that was about, so he went back to the church office and said to the secretary, “I was just driving by, and I had to come in and ask, ‘Why are the wisemen in your nativity scene wearing firefighter clothes?’”

   “Well, that’s just the trouble with you Northerners,” she said. “You don’t know your Bible!”

   “What?” said the visitor.

   She answered, “The Bible clearly says that the wisemen came from a ‘far.” 😊

   Some of us could use a ‘far this week to keep us warm. But, instead, today, we will be receiving ashes.

   I grew up in Wisconsin where it’s said that there are four seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction, and I used to go jogging outdoors. I would dress in layers and run all through the winter as long as the temperature outside was above 20 degrees below zero.

   When I came to my first church in California and winter came, people asked me if I was still running outside now that it had gotten so cold. It was 60 degrees outside!

   What we think of as cold weather depends on what we’re used to.

   And, as the Norwegians say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s just inadequate clothing.”

   On Ash Wednesday, instead of clothing, we will learn to put on Christ, and see what that looks like.

   The Gospel reading for today that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world is another section from the words of Jesus to the crowds in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21,

   This reading begins with these words, in verse 1,

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

   Jesus then warns against giving alms (“alms” is money given to the poor after your offerings) to make yourself look good, and against praying in public to make yourself look good, and against making a suffering-face when you fast for religious reasons in order to make yourself look good.

   Then he warns against trusting in your accumulated wealth but instead advocates for giving it away to send it to heaven so that your heart might be in the right place. As in, “You can’t take it with you. But you can send it on ahead.”

   We read and hear these things, and then we put ashes right on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday and we wear them in front of each other!

   And many of us will be going straight home after our Ash Wednesday worship service at night, but some Christians will get their ashes earlier in the day and will be wearing them everywhere they go, all day. Either way, we wear them in front of each other, right after we have just heard Jesus say, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

   But wait a minute. Let’s take a closer look at those verses.

   Each one of Jesus’ warnings in Matthew 6:1-6 and 16-21 is not about our actions, but about our motivation for those actions, not about what we do but about the “why’s?” that are behind them.

   When we act “in order to be seen by them”, or “so that they may be praised by others”, or “so that they may be seen by others”, or “so as to show others”, we are acting to serve ourselves.

   Is it wrong to give money, or to pray, or to deny ourselves for the sake of the Gospel, or even to accumulate wealth? “Yes”, when we do those things for ourselves, and not to glorify God. We are spiritually poor when we are not materially rich toward others.

   And, “No”, when we do those things to glorify God. We are spiritually rich when God lives in our hearts, our true selves.

   That’s why a character says, at the climax of T.S. Eliot’s play/poem “Murder in the Cathedral”, “The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

   The Christian life is lived in response to the new life that God has given us in faith. It comes from within, from the inside, out.

   Doing the right things to appease or to satisfy God, or to look good to others, is a betrayal of that gift. The only thing that matters in our lives is what comes from our transformed hearts. That’s why Jesus was always knocking heads with the Pharisees.

   Faith is what the Christian life is about. What we do comes as the result of our faith, of what is inside us, from our true selves.

   Study after study for decades has found that 80-85% of Christians come to faith through the influence of a friend or relative, someone whose is seen has having nothing to gain personally, whose words are credible to them.

   We are the first Bible some people will ever read. God doesn’t see us that way. But people do. How will people read you?

   Today is a good day to think about that. Lent starts today. Lent is the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, but excluding Sundays, which are like little Easters. Lent is a season to reflect on living the Christian life, and of being led to repentance and to turning that reflection into faithful action.

   Lent is about living in ashes. It’s about knowing that we are sinners, about knowing that we are dust and to dust we shall return, it’s about knowing that though we live in ashes, they are signs of our salvation.

   Jesus went through the fire for us. We have been made pure at the cross.

   Some of us will give things up for Lent, and others will add certain things to make us more open to the work of God within us, recreating us, defining us, freeing us.

   Though we live in ashes, they are a sign of our salvation. Lent is a time to grow!

   The religious Law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The religious Law is now written in our hearts. When we live as a new Creation of God, motivation is everything.

   Before pop-tops, beer and soda cans had rims on both ends of the can and had to be opened with a special pry-tool that made a triangular hole on one side of the can to drink from and another hole on the other side to allow air to flow in in order to let a person drink from the can.

   When pop-tops made their appearance, my grandfather on my father’s side didn’t like them. He said they made the beer taste funny. So, he would drive all over town looking for the places that still sold beer in the plain old cans. One day, my dad said to his dad, “Why don’t you just turn the can upside down?”  😊

   Do you remember, or know, what people called the tool used to open soda and beer cans before pop-tops? A church key.  😊

   What’s the key to understanding Ash Wednesday?

   Turn it upside down. Ashes come from fire. Ash Wednesday is a reminder that worship is not some vague spiritual practice. Worship is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is active, its presence as tongues of fire over the heads of the apostles brought the Christian Church into being. It brings the means of life and salvation to all who receive it! It is our strength!

   Have you been watching the Winter Olympics?

   The athletes have had to struggle to be where they are, many since childhood. Some have endured great personal tragedies, injuries and set-backs, even deaths of those close to them, yet they endured.

   The ancient Olympic Games began in 776 B.C. and ended in 393 A.D. They were a big deal, and Olympic sports would have been familiar to Paul.

   Athletes didn’t compete for medals, but for a crown of olive or laurel tree leaves. That’s where our expression for honors as “laurels” comes from.

   Paul refers to Olympic sports more than once in the New Testament, but I’d just like to highlight one, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. ²⁵ Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶ So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; ²⁷ but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

   Notice that Paul didn’t describe athletic events from the point of view of a spectator, but as a participant. That is who we are during Lent.

   It’s like what happens when we worship.

   Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, once reflected on people who go to a worship service and sit there as spectators, as at a movie or a play. They expect to get something. But that’s consumerism, not worship.

   The question to ask, Kierkegaard said, when worship is over is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?”

   We live and work and worship like an Olympic athlete in response to what God has given us at the cross: an imperishable crown of forgiveness of sins, and life and salvation.

   Ash Wednesday is a reminder that death is not the end, it’s the gate to another way of living.

   We have already died with Christ in our Baptism. It’s done. Eternal life has already begun for us, it’s just yet to be made perfect, as Paul says in Romans 6:4-6,

³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

   Jesus warns against accumulating wealth because we tend to put wealth at the center of our lives and put our trust in it and not in God. We tend to hoard it and to not be generous with it. And, in Jesus’ day, many people believed that if you had a lot of money, it was because you were a good person and God was blessing you, so you wanted to hang onto your money.

   But Jesus says that the Christian life is about a living relationship with the one true living God, lived out in response to the great grace God has already given us in Jesus Christ. 

   We don’t live to impress others with our goodness. We live freely as the new creations God has made us to be.

   We are blessed, but we are blessed to be a blessing, not to show off our righteousness or to serve ourselves.

   That’s why Jesus can say what he does about not making a show of your religiosity in today’s Gospel reading and can also say, in Matthew 5:16,

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

   Ash Wednesday is a reminder to us that we live in the same world, but in a different environment than non-believers.

   We live in an environment where we can hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” and be filled with a sense of faith, and not fear.   

   We live in an environment where we see, in the ashes of Ash Wednesday, creation and decomposition from Adam and Eve, humility from Abraham before God, and sorrow from Jeremiah over the coming destruction of Jerusalem.

   But we also see in ashes a sign. The ashes that are placed on our foreheads are drawn in the sign of the cross, the sign of our salvation, on the same spot and with the same cross shape placed on our foreheads at our baptism. They come with the declaration that we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

    The world may see destruction and death in ashes, but we see something else: the restoration of life as it was intended to be lived from the very beginning, lived as the fruit, the natural outcome of our transformed lives in the fire of the Holy Spirit described by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23,

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.

   Ash Wednesday is the beginning of our 40-day Lenten journey towards the gift of the cross on Good Friday and the victory of the resurrection on Easter Sunday over everything that defies God.

   The world is full of ashes in Israel and the Palestinian territories, in Ukraine and Russia, North and South Sudan, and in a thousand other places around the globe.

   But today, on Ash Wednesday, we are given the sign of the cross drawn on our foreheads in ashes, as a sign that in death there is life. It is the gift of God to all who will receive it.

   From nothing comes everything: the cross of Jesus Christ, given to you for the hope of the world. 

398 Mountain-tops and Valleys

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Mountain-tops and Valleys”, originally shared on February 12, 2026. It was the 398^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Which are better places to be, on mountain-tops or in valleys? Each have their benefits, but only one has changed the world. Today, we’re going to find out which.

   Football season is over. The Super Bowl championship game was played last Sunday. Between 125 and 130 million people are said to have seen it. Do you remember who won? Probably, but by next month I’m guessing it’s going to be a fading memory. In six months, forgotten.

   If your team won, you are probably still having a mountain-top experience.

   If your team didn’t win, well, researchers have said that the shock can take 3 days to wear off, while the accompanying depression can take months to go away. That’s a valley experience.

   But, for many the game itself was almost irrelevant.

   It was all about the half-time show for some. I myself have been increasingly put-off, though, by the spectacle of the Super Bowl bordering on religion (and sometimes crossing the border) including the half-time show that was particularly crude and offensive this year, while managing at the same time to be boring.

   For others, it was about the food! Super Bowl Sunday is a “cheat day” for people who are watching their diets. It’s a feast, a mountain-top experience.

   So, I imagine, many people awoke the next day in an emotional valley, like the speaker in a portion of the poem “For the Time Being” about a large family gathering after the Christmas holiday celebration, by English poet W.H. Auden,

“There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers.” 

   Most people are much better at recognizing the valleys of this life than the mountain-top experiences. And maybe that’s not so unusual.

   Something truly extraordinary did take place in an event described in the Bible as the Transfiguration of Our Lord, recorded in the Gospel reading that will be shared in most churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Matthew 17:1-9, but not many saw it for the mountain-top experience that it was at the time.

   Today, it’s common to describe anything we like as “awesome”.

   Did some do a small favor for you? That’s awesome! How were your French fries? They were awesome! How was the game? It was awesome!

   But was it? Awesome? Was it a transcendent experience that filled you with awe?

   “Awesome” means to be filled with awe, to be extremely impressive or to be daunting, inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.

   So, no, probably not.

   Can we recognize “awesome” when we see it anymore? Or have we become so focused on our own immediate sensations, on meeting our own needs and expectations, that we can’t?

   Today’s Gospel reading takes place on a literal mountain-top. It describes an event that transcended time, in which Jesus revealed himself in his heavenly glory to three of his disciples. It was truly awesome! And then, as they all came off the mountain to go down to the valley, Jesus told them not to tell anyone!

   What?

   Jesus took three of his first and closest disciples to “a high mountain”, by themselves, and gave them a vision of eternity. We see it in Matthew 17:1-9. It begins with verses 1-2,

   ¹Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ²And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

   Peter had just confessed his faith in Jesus six days earlier. He had said it out loud in front of God and everybody. It was the first time anyone had said, in Jesus’ presence, what the others had only been thinking, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter confessed that Jesus was the one that they had been waiting 1,000 years for, and that Jesus was God.

   “Six days” is also how Genesis describes God’s Creation of everything that exists out of nothing as an act of His will. The creative hand of God is about to be revealed again six days after the confession of St. Peter.

   Jesus is transfigured before these disciples, he is revealed to them in his heavenly glory, his face shines like the sun, and his clothes become dazzling white. And as they were still trying to process this, he reveals who he is in his earthly mission, in verses 3-4,

 ³Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

   Moses was the person through whom God gave the religious Law that defined the life of God’s people. Elijah was the great prophet, a person who spoke with God’s voice. Together they represented the Law and the Prophets, aka what were then known as the Scriptures and are known to us today as the Old Testament.

   Peter, who we already know is often the impulsive one, seems to be still trying to figure out what this all means. He proposes that the three disciples build a housing development there, three dwellings, one for Moses and for Elijah and for Jesus. He wants to keep them there. He wants to preserve the moment.

   Then, before Jesus cans respond, we see the meaning of the Transfiguration in verses 5-8,

 ⁵While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

   The disciples knew their Bible, and they knew that people don’t enter into the divine presence of God and live. So, the disciples fall down, overcome by fear. And what does Jesus say? “Get up and do not be afraid.” Jesus is fully human being and fully God. When they are in the presence of Jesus, they are in the presence of God, yet Jesus calms their fear.

   It’s been said that the words “don’t be afraid” or “do not be afraid” or “fear not”, or something like them appear 366 times in the Bible, one for every day of the year plus one if there’s a leap year. 😊  I haven’t counted them. 😊, but if that’s true, there’s one for every day of the year. And I do know that God can be counted on.

   The disciples were having a mountain-top experience. They had been told that Jesus was going to suffer and die in the previous chapter, in Matthew 16:21. Now they were being given the big picture so that they could see what it all meant. That’s what mountain-top experiences do.

   The traditional site for the Transfiguration is Mt. Tabor, about 9 miles from Nazareth. It’s not much of a mountain, but it stands out on the plain near Nazareth. I climbed it when I was a student during a semester abroad in college and it’s no big deal. I climbed it in the rain, though, and when I got to the top, the Greek Orthodox monastery there was not taking in tourists. So, I climbed down in the rain. I did not have a mountain-top experience.   

   The three disciples did have a mountain-top experience, but they couldn’t stay on the mountain-top either. Mountain-tops give us a long view, a grand vision, the big picture, but we can’t live there. Nothing grows on mountain tops. Valleys are where the soil is fertile, where things grow and transform. And Jesus and the three disciples came down from the mountain top to walk the path that led to the cross. They walked from the greatest mountain-top to the deepest valley where Jesus gave his life for the transformation into eternal life for all who believe and are baptized, giving us victory over sin, death, and all the forces that defy God.

   Have you been watching the Winter Olympics?

   The athletes have had to struggle to be where they are, many since childhood. Some have endured great personal tragedies, injuries and set-backs, even deaths of those close to them, yet they endured.

   Maybe you saw on the news a couple of years ago that a study of 1,000 people, a pretty good sample, showed that 40% overall, with 60% of men and 20% of women, believed that they were in good enough shape to compete in an Olympic event. Were they all thinking of Curling? Maybe they meant that they could finish an Olympic event. Maybe they were not aware that the Olympics have qualifying standards? Or maybe the study was just a test to identify the delusional. 😊

   The ancient Olympic Games began in 776 B.C. and ended in 393 A.D. They were a big deal and Olympic sports would have been familiar to Paul.

   Athletes didn’t compete for medals, but for a crown of olive or laurel tree leaves. That’s where our expression for “honors” as “laurels” comes from.

   Paul refers to Olympic sports more than once in the New Testament, but I’d just like to highlight one, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. ²⁵ Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶ So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; ²⁷ but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

   Notice that Paul didn’t describe athletic events from the point of view of a spectator, but as a participant.

   It’s like what happens when we worship. We enter into the presence of God. We confess our sins and repent of them, the valleys of our lives.

   We are assured of God’s forgiveness. It’s a mountain-top experience. We hear the Word of God, confess our faith.

   We’re reconciled with God and with each other and we receive the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, we pray, we are blessed, and we are sent into the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ that we ourselves have first received!

   Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, once reflected on people who go to a worship service and sit there as spectators, as at a movie or a play. They expect to get something. But that’s consumerism, not worship.

   The question to ask, Kierkegaard said, when worship is over is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?”

   We live and work like an Olympic athlete in response to what God has given us at the cross: an imperishable crown of forgiveness of sins, and life and salvation.

   How can we respond to the mountain-top of God’s presence in the Word of God and the Sacraments of Holy Communion and Holy Baptism?

   The disciples wanted to build temporary dwellings. The best memorial to God’s saving work, though, is the lives we live in response to the transformational gifts of God, from the inside out.

   And then Jesus makes a very strange request. No. He gives them an order, in verse 9,

 ⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

   Not only does Jesus not want to let the disciples stay on the mountain top, not only does He not want them to bask in God’s affirmation, Jesus does not want the disciples to tell anyone about what had to be the greatest experience in their lives!

   Why? Why not have them tell everyone about this experience. Wouldn’t it validate who Jesus was. Wouldn’t it make his path easier? And theirs?

   No, that’s not how faith works.

   Jesus did lots of miracles, and he had thousands of followers when he was providing free food and medical care. But when that all stopped His “church growth” graph dropped to zero.

   I think that Jesus didn’t want people to believe in Him for the show. I think that He wanted people to receive the gift 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 taking his life back again and rising from the dead.

   I think that He wanted people to see that the only life that lasts is the life that comes from God for the sake of the world.

   This coming Saturday, February 14^th, is the Valentine’s Day holiday, a shortened form of St. Valentine’s Day, a holy day.

   Our culture has long abandoned it as a religious celebration. Today, it celebrates romance. There is some basis for that too, though, in the Christian origin of the “holy day”.

   We have no record of a single historic figure called St. Valentine, but several Christian martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus have similar life and death stories that have combined to provide common ground ever since the late 300’s.

   Those elements include doing secret weddings for Roman soldiers and their fiancés when the Roman empire thought that single men made better soldiers and forbade marriage, imprisonment in a nobleman’s home and the healing of his daughter resulting in the whole household converting to Christianity, being sent to prison as a result and sending the girl a letter saying that he had no regrets which he signed, “Your Valentine”, and being tortured and then decapitated on February 14th.

   Red, the color of St. Valentine’s Day, is the liturgical color for martyrs.

   It is a martyr’s holiday for a saint who healed and loved selflessly, and it was so until the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer connected it with romantic love in the late 1300’s. And that’s how most people in our culture celebrate it today.

   Christians celebrate it as an expression of selfless love, as seen most clearly for us on the cross, a love that is no longer a secret. It is a love so strong that we can’t keep it to ourselves.

   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, or in any of our community activities or ministries.”

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

   Don’t be that guy.

   There is no secret for us to keep.

   We live on the “after” side of “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

   We live because of what God has done to reconcile us to God’s self.

   We live mostly in the valleys of life where we are called, equipped, and sent to serve, where things change and grow and are transformed.

   What was once a secret we now proclaim to the people we know and to the world that we do not know but that God does.

   We live on the other side of the Resurrection.

   Jesus has been raised from the dead and because He lives, we shall live also.

   We live to make known what was once a secret to the disciples and to follow Jesus with them down the mountain into our local communities, into our country, and into the world.