310 The Common Relationship

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Common Relationship” originally shared on May 8, 2024. It was the 310^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What relationships do you value most? There is one relationship that defines every other relationship, and we in the Body of Christ all have it in common. Today, we’re going to find out what it is.

   The LA County Fair is going on now, not far away from here, in Pomona.

   It has petting zoos that make you think that farm life is all about cute and cuddly farm animals, concerts for commercial music fans, and exhibition halls, some with contests and judged skills in the arts. And a carnival.

   Circus side shows used to be the things that got people talking to their friends. But today it’s things like 70 carnival rides to challenge the iron-clad stomach folks, 29 carnival games for those who think they can beat the odds, and 20 food concessions, many with bizarre carnival foods like, I don’t know, a stick of butter, fried in butter. Things like that These are things that are designed to get people talking in a way that will make others want to also go to the fair.

   Word-of-mouth is how churches grow too. But we actually offer something important, something real, something that endures forever. Something that transforms us into the dwelling place of God.

   Do you remember when you were born? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are alive and healthy? Do you remember when you were baptized and born again? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are a child of God, spiritually alive and healthy?

   This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day. I mention this as a public service. Do not forget. I repeat. Do not forget. She’s your mother. Honor her.

   Don’t be like the family that saw their mother get up from Mother’s Day dinner, pick up some plates, and head right to the kitchen sink.

   “Oh, no, no,” they said. “Don’t do that. This is your day, mom. Relax. Take it easy.” they said. “Just leave them there. You can do the dishes tomorrow.” 😊

   Don’t do that. Honor your mother. It’s a commandment. It’s about a key relationship. And the 10 Commandments are all about relationships.

   Have you ever looked closely at traditional art showing Moses with the 10 commandments? You might have noticed something odd.

   God gave the 10 commandments on two stone tablets, but the commandments are not always represented with five on each tablet.

   Instead, you’ll often see the numbers 1-3 on the tablet to the left, and the numbers 4-10 on the tablet to the right.

   Why? Because the first three commandments have to do with our relationship with God, and the remaining seven have to do with our relationships with one another.

   And The Fourth Commandment, the very first commandment in that second group is:

   “Honor your father and your mother.”

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, describes the meaning of this commandment in this way, “We are to fear (note: respect) and love God, so that we neither despise nor anger our parents and others in authority, but instead honor, serve, obey, love, and respect them.”

   When one of my aunts died (she was my mother’s sister) one of her sons, a cousin, was going through her papers and he found something that he thought I would like. It was a letter from my mom, when she was a young married woman, to her sister, my aunt, that started “Great news!” The great news in that letter was of her happiness that she was expecting her first child. Me. Can you imagine what a great gift that was to me?

   I’ll be thinking about the love of my mother for all her children this Mother’s Day, but I’ll be thinking in particular about my mother’s bedroom set fund.

   My mom had a beautiful coloratura soprano voice. She sang regularly at church.

   She was also one of the go-to soloists in our town for weddings and funerals. Whenever she received an honorarium for singing, the money went into her bedroom set fund.

   She taught voice lessons in our home, too. Everything she received for teaching went into that bedroom set fund. Her goal, her dream, was to buy a new bedroom set for her and our dad.

   But, whenever any of us kids had some need that wasn’t in the budget, from jeans to college tuition, it came out of that fund. No questions asked and without hesitation.

   She finally was able to buy that bedroom set, but it wasn’t until I was in college.

   I learned a lot about love and sacrifice from my mother.

   My wife, Rev. Sally Welch has been a wonderful mother to our son and has made innumerable sacrifices out of love along the way. I have learned a lot about love and sacrifice from her, too.

   In addition, our mothers are often our first teachers and, in many places, are the first evangelists we know in life.

   Paul writes to Timothy, a young pastor, about Timothy’s mother and grandmother in his second letter to him, in 2 Timothy 1:5,

⁵ I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

   He spells out how Timothy has experienced the witness of his mother and grandmother a couple of chapters later in 2 Timothy 3:14-15,

¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 

   Many of us could tell similar stories about the mothers in our lives, but not everyone. And, for some of us, Mothers Day will be a painful day. Some of us grew-up without a mother, but who had people who served as mothers and sometimes that was their fathers. Some had mothers who were not so loving. Some of us desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t. Some of us no longer have their mothers and miss them.

   All those feelings about Mother’s Day are an expression of a deeply important relationship.

   Jesus had a mother, and he loved her and provided for her. We don’t hear about his “step-father” Joseph after approximately Jesus’13^th birthday. But when Jesus was on the cross, about 20 years later, in unbelievable agony, his thoughts turned to his mother, in John 19:26-27,

²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” ²⁷ Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

   In this third of his seven last statements from the cross, Jesus expresses care for his mother, as her first-born son, and he entrusts her to one of his disciples out of concern for her spiritual care, as well as for her material security.

   We love our mothers out of gratitude for all they have done for us, but most especially because of the deeply bonded relationship we share, both physically and spiritually.

   We love Jesus out of gratitude for all that he has done for us, but most especially because of what he has done for us on the cross that restored the living relationship with God for which we were created.

   John 17:6-19 is the reading from the Gospels that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday. It’s Jesus praying for his disciples at his last supper; it’s sometimes called his High Priestly prayer. Jesus is praying for us. It begins with verse 6,

⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

   It’s about relationships: Jesus, God the Son, fully God and fully human being, in his relationship with God the Father, and our relationship with Jesus, and our relationship with God the Father revealed through Jesus.

   Is your head spinning? That’s because, in its purest form, our relationship with God is not an idea but a transformed life. We often live that life before we understand it.

   Jesus prays about what has taken place in his public ministry, and then prays about his death, asking that, after his death, his disciples will be protected for a purpose, in verse 11,

¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

   He prays for our protection in God’s name, that is, in the full living reality of God shared by The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, one God, the Holy Trinity. How many God’s do we believe in? One. In Three Persons. That is a relationship that is tighter than we can even conceive.

   He prays to God the Father that his disciples might be one, “as we are one”. That’s a unity of relationship.

   Jesus prays for Christian unity as the relationship with Jesus that we all have in common.

   We are like the spokes on a wheel, with Jesus as the hub. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another. The farther we go from Jesus, the farther we get from one another.

   Christian unity isn’t finding common ground through compromise; that’s politics. Our unity is us living in the gift of a common relationship with the one true living God.

   When we get to the part of the worship service called the “Passing of the Peace”, we’re not just sending a friendly wave or catching up on what’s happened during the week. We are saying to one another that “we’re good”. We aren’t holding any grudges, as in the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:23-24,

23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

   We are our relationship with God, and our relationships with one another are an expression of that defining relationship. We come to worship God because we live in a common relationship with Him. That’s the Church.

   We are in the world, Jesus says, but we are not of the world. And, as God the Father has sent God the Son into the world, Jesus has sent us into the world, from the outside.

    Jesus concludes, in verses 14-19,

¹⁴ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁵ I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁷ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

   We are sanctified, we are made holy, in the truth, and the Truth is a person. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We are sanctified, we are made holy, in the truth, and God’s word is truth, and Jesus is the Word made flesh.

   Jesus is our Savior! He has restored the relationship with God in which we live that has changed everything. He has given us the relationship that defines everything else about us. He has restored the relationship that binds us together as the whole Church on earth, the Body of Christ.

   What does this mean for us in the work of Jesus on the cross? John describes what this means in the very first chapter of his Gospel, in John 1:12-13,

¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

   It means that we are born separated from God by sin. And then we are born again, reconciled because of the mighty acts of God’s grace through our repentance and in the gift of faith, in a living relationship with the one true living God.

   When a woman is expecting the birth of a child it’s fashionable today for a couple to say, “We’re pregnant”. Well, OK, it encourages the dad to feel involved in the process, but, “Really?”. You know who is going to be going through what here.

   So, I’ve seen it proposed that birthdays should primarily be a celebration for the mother. I mean, she did do the work, or should I say “labor”. There is nothing that we did to get born. 😊 And, there is nothing that we did or can do to be reconciled to God and be born again.

   Our relationship with God has been restored at the cross.

   We thank God each day for our mothers and that we were born. We thank God each day for God’s self, for Jesus Christ our Savior, who sacrificed his life to restore our right relationship with God, who prayed that the Church may be one, as He and The Father are one, in an indestructible relationship that cannot be taken away. We are born again, made a new creation, reconciled to God and to one another, made to be the Church, and defined by a common living relationship with the one true living God! That is the relationship that defines us.

   That is the relationship that we all have in common, the relationship that we all have in Jesus. That’s the common relationship that makes the Church one.

309 20/15 Vision

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “20/15 Vision” originally shared on May 1, 2024. It was the 309^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   How can we improve our vision? Today, we’re going to find out.

   We raised the money and built two buildings at the church I served in San Dimas. One of the many things that I learned through those processes was the importance of sticking with a vision. Especially when questions arose.

   We were building buildings. Our vision was to build the means to proclaim the already but not yet Kingdom of God, and to help people through repentance and forgiveness to the new life that is God’s desire for all people.

   So, why were we investing money in facilities? They were a means for ministry.

   Why were so many investing so much time? We saw the work that God was doing through us as a small contribution leading to a greater outcome.

   Why were we asking so many people to invest so much? We didn’t ask for equal gifts, we asked for equal sacrifices, in order for all to keep their hearts focused on what is important, the vision.

   We were, and we all are, called to keep our eyes on the big picture, the long-term plan, and live into what God provides.

   We see in Proverbs 29:18, in the New Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible,

    18      Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint,

    but happy are those who keep the law.

   Prophets bring prophecy, God’s message to the people.

   The author of Proverbs (some say it was King Solomon) tells us that all that is good comes from God.

   Proverbs 29:18 in the King James Version reads,

   18       Where there is no vision, the people perish:

      But he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

   For a while, it was popular for Lutheran church growth consultants to say, “Where there is no vision, there is a Lutheran parish. 😊

   OK, yes. That’s funny, and a bit harsh. Lutherans don’t have a monopoly on having no vision. And there are many Lutheran churches that have a grand vision, doing what God has generally and specifically called, equipped, and sent it to do.

   That vision is at our foundation.

   One other of the things that I learned through those two building projects was not to panic when the foundation is poured.

   After the building plans are approved, and the land grading is done and approved, and the forms are set and approved, the concrete foundation is poured.

   And then the shock sets in.

   Both times, I looked at the concrete foundation of those new buildings and thought, “I/we have made a terrible mistake! It’s too small! We’re paying all that money for this? This is not what I had imagined the size of the building was going to be! Not even close!

   One contractor explained that this is because, when you are inside a building, your eyes go to a wall. But when there is no wall, your focal point is much farther out, and the foundation that you see looks small compared to infinity, or even to just the land around the foundation.

   You need walls to see things as they are.

   One of the reasons that we need the religious Law is to provide behavioral walls. Another is that it helps us see things as they are. The boundaries of the Law tell us that we are transgressors who need a Savior.

   Our sometimes lack of vision is a reminder of the importance of knowing and doing what God has called us to know and to do. Even when we don’t know where the journey might take us, to know is to do.

   I think that that’s why some people don’t want to understand much about Christianity or to grow in their faith. They’re afraid that they may change, that they might lose friends, that their lives might change, that they might know that it’s right to do something that, right now, seems hard. So, they chose not to know, in order not to grow.

   But the reality is that God only takes us to better places in life. It starts when we trust. It begins not just by seeing things as they are, but by seeing things as we, our transformed selves, have been created to be.

   My eyesight used to be very bad. 20/400 bad. In 4^th grade, I got glasses, and I could see things that I never saw before.

   Then, in my later years 😊, I got cataract surgery and a lens was placed in each of my eyes that enabled me to see distances. Without glasses!

   Except for reading. 😊 But, hey!

   My vision improved to better than 20/20, to 20/15! Better than normal. I could see things that people with normal vision couldn’t see!

   Likewise, when we are transformed. When we become a new creation in Jesus Christ, we see things that others cannot see. Our eyes are opened, and we are given the grand vision, the big picture. We see things as they are. And we, by God’s grace, live into God’s vision for us!

   When we held the kick-off fundraising dinner for our new parish hall at the Roman Catholic church up the street (because, well, we didn’t have a parish hall 😊), our main speaker was Marge Wold, a prominent and respected member of our Lutheran denomination.

   She was one of nine children. She told a story about how, when she was growing up poor on the South Side of Chicago, her mother was so obese that they weren’t really sure when she was pregnant and when she wasn’t. All they knew was that, every once and awhile, their mother was gone. And, when she came back, she would have a new baby boy or baby girl.

   Their mom would explain that, while she was gone, the stork brought the baby to her. But, that when the stork unwrapped the baby, it was so beautiful that the stork wanted to keep the baby for itself. So, mom had to fight the stork to keep the baby, and that’s why she was tired and needed to rest for a while.

   Marge said that, while we might think that that story was quite naive, for all most of us know about where our church buildings came from, the stork might as well have brought them.

    She said that we, however, are now privileged to participate in the struggle and the sacrifice of bringing a new facility into being. And, when it was done, we would forget the struggle and sacrifice and just marvel at what had been brought into the world through us.

   What if all that we knew about the world came from popular folk wisdom or from someone in authority? How do we know what we know?

   How do we learn the truth? Who do we listen to? Who do we trust to give us a vision, the bigger picture, and how could we improve our vision to be more than “normal”?

   It could only come from outside of us and of our experience.

   Our churches are communities. How can we find a common vision?

   There are a lot of points of tension in churches during normal times. Building programs can multiply the tensions that are already present, and we had some during those two projects, but not very many.

   How did we manage those projects, and many other large-scale ministries, in a time of gathering polarization across the political/ social/ denominational loyalty spectrum?

   The answer isn’t very complicated. It came from outside of us. We kept our focus on Jesus.

   We were united by much more than what divided us. And what united us was way more important than what divided us. It was Jesus. That’s where we kept our focus.

   I think that that focus can still be the key to church development today.

   We haven’t been living in normal times for quite a while now. But the answer to how congregations with members who hold widely divergent political and social views can work together to fulfill God’s call hasn’t changed.

   We see it in the Gospel text that will be read in churches all over the world this coming Sunday John 15:9-17, It’s a continuation of last week’s reading, and in some ways a parallel to it, starting with verses 9-11,

9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

   Jesus reminds us that the place where things come into focus and where we see things as they are is in Him. Jesus is who unites us. Jesus is where we see love in action and experience the bedrock joy that nothing and no one can take away from us. We may not always be happy. But nothing can take away our joy because it comes from God.

   To “abide” means to “live”. We live in the love of God freely given at the cross. That changes everything.

   Jesus’ commands, not suggestions, include the commandment to love one another, in verses 12-15,

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

   This is Jesus speaking, fully God and fully human being, and he shows the extremity of God’s love for us by dying for us on the cross.

   It’s a strange combination, isn’t it? For someone to give us commandments and to call us his friends at the same time. Would we call our commander our friend? Would we be friends with someone above us in the chain of command?

   Jesus has made known everything that he has heard.

   Jesus calls us His friends. Friends don’t keep secrets from friends. Friends don’t hide information or knowledge from friends. Friends have a relationship of trust. That is what Jesus gives us and what makes us His disciples, not a transactional relationship, like servants, but an organic relationship, like friends.

   Jesus concludes, in verses 16-17,

16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

   No one “makes a decision for Christ”. That’s an illusion. “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” is not a Lutheran hymn. That’s not how it works.

   God choose us. We are the adopted children of God.

   We can’t save ourselves. We can only acknowledge the gift of God’s salvation.

   We are naturally sinners, we are cut off from God. But God, as 16^th century Church reformer Martin Luther explains, in his Small Catechism, does this:

   “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him.  But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith.

   In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”

   Jesus appointed us to bear fruit, to naturally exhibit the characteristics of changed lives that Paul describes in Galatians 5:22-23 (we read it last week),

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.

   That fruit grows from our connection to Jesus. When Jesus says, “And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”, he’s not giving us a magic formula, like in Harry Potter where you say the right words in Latin and you get whatever you want. It doesn’t mean that you can get whatever you want if you just add the words, “In the name of Jesus”. Jesus is describing what we do that is consistent with Jesus’ true self.

   The idea of the “name”, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament parts of the Bible, is that of the “true self” or the “reality” of that person. We might say our true self is our “soul” or our “heart” or our “whole personhood”. The people of the Bible would say it was in a name. That’s why God doesn’t give a noun to Moses when Moses asks God’s name, but a verb; it’s inconceivable that humans could know God’s true being. That’s why Jacob’s true self changes when he wrestles with God and is allowed to live and his name changes to Israel, and when Sauls’s true self changes when he becomes a Christian and his name changes to “Paul”.

   We also bear fruit in the new lives of others, people who God reaches through us with the transforming Gospel, in all nations.

   After we dedicated the second building project, the larger one, the worship and administration building, I was standing between it and the parish hall and a member of the congregation came up to me and said something like, “Isn’t this wonderful! This is your legacy.”

   And I remember thinking, “No. This isn’t my legacy. This is a building. My legacy is the lives of all the people everywhere who have been touched by God through me and through this congregation.”

   That is the fruit that endures. No one can take that away, because that is the work of God.

   Seeing that comes as the result of our 20/15 vision. It’s what enables us to see what others don’t see. It’s what enables us to see Jesus in everything that we are and that we do, and it’s what binds us together in love. That vision is a gift from God!