One Little Thing

It’s just one little thing.

In this case, the “one little thing” is the letter E.

In itself, it may be a minor matter.

But when you’ve watched the denomination you’ve loved and that you labored and prayed, in your own small way, to help birth, as it slides deep into error through a profusion of “little” things, one little thing is just one more thing.

And that one little thing points out how desperately the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) needs reform and renewal. (Which I pray for regularly.)

The E in question was called to my attention this past Sunday morning at breakfast. Our daughter, who was to read the Bible lessons in worship, was going through them one more time when she saw something she hadn’t noticed before.

Our lessons for each week, which are largely taken from the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), are printed on bulletin inserts published by the ELCA Publishing House, Augsburg Fortress. The inserts are called Celebrate. On the inserts, each of the lessons is preceded by brief explanations. Those explanations, which are meant to be read during worship just before each of the lessons is read, are designed to give context to the Bible passages. They’re often helpful. (The explanations also appear in an annually published book called, Sundays and Seasons.)

Here’s what our daughter saw when she read the introductory explanation for this past Sunday’s first lesson, Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18:

The book of Daniel was written in the second century B.C.E., when the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes was severely persecuting the Jews. Daniel’s vision of the four beasts serves to proclaim the message that human kings will come and go, but the kingdom will ultimately belong to God and to God’s people.

“What’s this E doing after BC?” our daughter wondered.

“Is that a mistake?” my wife asked.

“No, it’s not a mistake,” I said. “But it shouldn’t be there!”

The old designations of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for Year of Our Lord), have been replaced in most contemporary scholarship and journalism by new designations. B.C.E. stands for Before [the] Common Era, while C.E. stands for [the] Common Era.

And you know what? I get that. Christians, varied and as numerous as we may be, members of the fastest-growing religion in the world, are still just one group among many who occupy this planet. We live in a world whose most enlightened people eschew cultural, racial, or religious imperialism, a world in which diversity is celebrated. And as a Christian, I embrace this trend. In fact, I pray for it to continue.

I think that this trend favors a project very dear to me, the central calling of all Christians: fulfilling the great commission Jesus has given to the Church. We’re to make disciples—followers of Christ—among all peoples.

In looking at history, I see that Christianity first spread not in the artificial hothouse of being the favored religion of an empire and not just in defiance of state condemnation and persecution, but in the context of theologically diverse societies, where people believed in many different gods and philosophies. History, to me anyway, shows that true pluralism and democracy always favor Christianity; when people are free to explore differing beliefs and come to know the relationship with God offered by Jesus Christ (as opposed to the "religion" offered elsewhere), following Christ will always look good. The more diverse, pluralistic, and free societies are, the more likely people are to become disciples of Christ.*

But, to me, pluralism and diversity are good for another reason. In a nutshell, Christians shouldn't even appear to be throwing their weight around, forcing their faith and worldview down other peoples’ throats. It isn’t right. It isn’t how Christ won disciples. It’s unloving. And it sets the cause of Christ back, not forward.

And so, though confessing that part of me cringes a bit every time I see “B.C.E.” or “C.E.” in books and articles from the fields of history, science, or the arts, I understand the use of these terms.

I accept it.

I even support it.

Nothing about the faith of Christians should be forced on others. People who subscribe to other religious convictions and people who have no religious convictions should not be forced to see history in terms of what happened before Christ or after He came to earth bringing the reign of God. Non-Christians don’t see what the theologians call “the Christ event,” as the center of human history.

But, here's the point: We Christians do! We see Jesus as the center of our history. We see Jesus as the center of all history!

When Christians read the Old Testament, we see the God of creation, by grace, calling a people—the Jews—to believe in Him, to become a light to the nations. We see prophecies pointing to the Messiah Who would come into the world to offer, by grace, new and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. For the Christian, everything before Christ, points to Christ.

In the New Testament, we see God becoming flesh, living in our world, being spurned by Jews and non-Jews alike, bearing the sins of the whole human race on His shoulders, dying for our sakes, and being raised to life again by the Father, so all who repent and believe in Jesus, will live forever with God. After Jesus died and rose, we believe, everything changed. The lives of all people were marked by new possibilities. "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Christians believe that, after the fall of humanity into sin, all of human history has been the theater in which God has worked for the time—what the Bible calls God’s kairos time, as opposed to chronos, human or chronological time—when Jesus Christ would enter the world, bring the reign of God to all who believe, promise that one day, He will return and make all things new, and, in this intervening time--in these Years of Our Lord--will fill those who follow Him with the Holy Spirit, fortifying them for lives of loving God, loving neighbor, sharing Christ in words and actions, and living "in the sure and certain hope" that even though we die, we will still live with God for eternity.

The timeliness of God’s action in Christ is emphasized by the apostle Paul in the New Testament’s Romans 5:6: “…while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…”

In another New Testament book, Hebrews, which is a sermon preached to Jewish Christians in the first century, we see this Christian confession of Christ as the center, the goal, and the fulfillment of human history, of cosmic history: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1-2) (emphasis mine, of course).

Since we Christians believe that Christ is the center of history, why would a document prepared by a Christian denomination for use in Christian worship shy away from the use of the terms, B.C. and A.D.?

And why do some professors who teach at some seminaries of the ELCA “correct” students who use B.C. and A.D., rather than B.C.E. and C.E.?

Why should Christians be in any way wary of making the inherent confession of Christ as the center of all by using B.C. and A.D. in their own internal communications or in their public worship?

Why should we avoid declaring Christ’s Lordship? Jesus didn't avoid it!

He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

He said, "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30).

He also said, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33).

And He said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:16-18).

If Jesus claimed to be the Lord of everything, the center of history Who changes everything, the only access point to God, the liberator of humanity from the enemies of sin and death, then why should the Church claim anything less when speaking of Him? Why should we be shy about Christ's Lordship?

Is this “shyness” mere political correctness?

Is it absent-minded acquiescence to a cultural norm?

Or is there something more sinister about it?

Whatever the answers to those questions may be, the “little things” keep piling up in the ELCA. The Lordship of Jesus and the truth of God’s Word seem denied in numerous little ways all the time among us. When it doesn’t make me mad, it makes me sad. Then it makes me pray. (And write blog posts.)

You see, it isn’t really such a little thing, after all, because, no matter how many little things get piled on, the Bible still says of Jesus, the center of history, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

It may be a single letter E. But its addition to B.C. says a lot about the state of the ELCA and what at least some of its most influential people really think about Jesus.

The early Church faced persecution and death to declare that Jesus is Lord. Many Christians in many parts of the world today face the same threats for their faithfulness to Jesus as Lord. So, why can’t we North American Lutherans own Jesus’ Lordship in the comfort and safety of our sanctuaries as we worship? That’s a big question. And every member of the ELCA must, I think, eventually answer it.

*I speak from personal experience. For about a decade, I considered myself an atheist, but, in a pluralistic society in which I was free to explore other possibilities, Christ wooed me into relationship with Him.

"Are we willing to keep coming back to God for help in getting the spiritual character enhancement we need?"

This should be a question that every Christian faces every single day, hard as it is. It appears in today's installment of Our Daily Bread.

Martin Luther said that the life style of a Christian grateful for the free gift of salvation in Christ, is "daily repentance and renewal." Pursuing this life style--a life of pursuing Jesus, really--requires a courage and an honesty that only God can provide to us. But each day, we need to be willing to pray with the psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).

But be warned that if you pray that prayer and mean it, and aren't just mouthing pious words you've been taught, God will show you your sins. God will show you your character deficiencies. God will show you the ways in which you need to align your heart, your will, and your actions with God. The simple fact of the matter is that if God and you disagree about whether you've sinned or even about what constitutes a sin, God is not the One Who needs to have a change of mind. God has made clear what is right and what is wrong, putting it all in black and white on the pages of Scripture, no matter how many fancy theological end runs we might try to pull to elude the truth.

But God will never show us our sins and deficiencies--as I experience God doing with me every day--out of malice or spite. God doesn't want you to feel like a worm.

When we ask God to tell us about the wicked ways that are in us, we really ask God to let us see our actual selves, stripped of the masks that we put on to fool other people, to fool God, and to fool even ourselves. It's only when God helps us get real with Him in this way that we understand how desperately we need Jesus Christ.

Vulnerability before God and confession of the sins of which God makes us aware when we are honest before God, will allow us not just to ask God for forgiveness, but also open the way for God to give us the power to combat our faults, to live in different ways, to be reconciled with those we may be hurting, to walk away from the sins that we, in our own power and under our own self-driven reasoning, find irresistible.

"Are we willing to keep coming back to God for help in getting the spiritual character enhancement we need?" If we can answer, "Yes," to that question, even if the size of our affirmation is that of a small mustard seed and no matter how incapable we are of resisting the sins to which we are oriented, we will be well on the road to wholeness, to life with God, to becoming the people God originally intended for us to be.

Jesus Christ, the only one given under heaven through which we can be saved from sin and death and ourselves, makes this possible for all who are willing to turn from the world's futile ways and trust in Him alone.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here's the New Testament verses on which today's Our Daily Bread devotional is based:

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24)^{18192021222324}

Why I Care So Much About Sharing Christ with Others

Ephesians 2:8 reminds us that we are saved from sin and death by God's grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. That's why I am so passionate about sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with others. I want all people to experience the forgiveness, joy, and everlasting hope that comes to those who end their inborn rebellion to God and surrender to the Savior.

Sharing Christ with others is the only activity to which we can commit themselves that will make any real difference, whether in our own lives or in the lives of others. It also happens to be the mission every Christian is charged with fulfilling.

Please click on the links above and please also read the following passages of Scripture:

 "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)

[Jesus told Nicodemus:] “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3:16-18)

 [Peter and John said:] "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). 

Check out today's devotion from Our Daily Bread.

The Church's Call: Welcome All People, Tell the Truth About Sin and the Son, Jesus

Over on Facebook, Holly Robinson, who, like me, is part of the crew that produces the blog The Moderate Voice, wrote to say that a friend of hers is leaving an ELCA [Evangelical Lutheran Church in America] congregation because the ELCA is not "gay-friendly enough."

I'm a pastor of the ELCA and, as many readers of this blog will know, I remain opposed to recent policy changes in the denomination allowing gays and lesbians in monogamous relationships to be ordained as pastors in the church. (By the way, current policy states that heterosexuals living in monogamous relationships without the benefit of marriage may not be ordained, unlike their gay and lesbian counterparts. Figure that one out, if you can.) My opposition to this policy change is based on the clear teaching of Scripture that the genders were created to express sexual intimacy in covenants of marriage involving one man and one woman (see: Genesis 2:18, 20-25; Exodus 20:14) and the overt Biblical condemnation of sexual expressions outside of lifetime heterosexual marriage (Leviticus 18:22*; numerous Biblical condemnations of fornication, which is sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage; Romans 1:26-27, where homosexual activity is seen as a consequence of humanity's utter disregard for God's will).

None of this discussion, so far as I'm concerned, has anything to do with the debate over gay marriage as legitimized by state governments, by the way. The state's interest in domestic relationships is entirely different from that of God and the Church.

Here, slightly revised for clarity, is how I responded to Holly's comment:

The question before the ELCA is not about friendliness or hospitality.

The Church should welcome all people and should stand for civil rights for all people.

The question before the ELCA rather, is whether we will stand under the authority of God's Word or will stand over it as its judge. "Unsinning" that which God calls sin is not an option.

  Another question is whether we will uphold the Scripture's teachings on such issues as Jesus as "the way, and the truth, and the life." (See here, here, here, and here.) (There are no other pathways to God but through Jesus.)

Another is whether we will uphold the Scriptures' teachings on the physical resurrection of Jesus. (See here.)

Yet another question is if we will uphold the Scriptures' teaching that there will be a physical resurrection of the dead who trust in Christ as God and Savior. (See here.)

Yet all of the alternative views roused by these questions have been legitimized by the ordination of and the failure to discipline those pastors who adhere to them by the ELCA. For many of us, including myself, the actions of the ELCA last August are the official, public confirmations of the denomination's slide away from Christ, the Scriptures, and the Lutheran Confessions which has been ongoing for twenty-one years.

In the name of being friendly or nice, we as a denomination have often forgotten the Gospel and our call to share it with the world. (See here.) That, in fact, is the core purpose of the Church and everything we do should revolve around this Great Commission given to us by Christ Himself.

The consequences of our ELCA's spiritual amnesia can be tragic for all whose lives we touch! To consider this point, imagine a little scenario for a second. If you see a pedestrian floating unknowingly into heavy traffic, what is the most loving thing to do: allow them to do it unchallenged in the view that such floating expresses their natural inborn impulse, or warn them with all the compassion and passion at your disposal that her or his life is endangered by this behavior? The Church is called to proclaim God's Law and God's Gospel, because until we recognize that our eternal lives are endangered by heedlessness of God's Law, we won't understand what the Gospel--the good news--of Jesus' death and resurrection, involves. Until we who are blind are helped to see, we won't understand that Jesus has come to give those who dare to turn from sin and trust in Him, new, everlasting lives.

There is no love in a "Gospel" that fails to explain that our sins put the sinless Jesus on the cross and that apart from repentance for those sins and faith in Jesus, our deaths will result in eternal separation from the God Who wants nothing so much as to forgive us and live with us for all eternity!

The ELCA has chosen to float along with the prevailing winds of the intellectual currents in this post-modern world. We've bought into what C.S. Lewis once described as God as grandfather, a jolly old soul who doesn't mind what we do so long as a good time is had by all. God is turned into an irrelevant caricature with no sense of right and wrong and with no need to send the Messiah to save us from sin and death.

I believe that the Church is called to cling to the God revealed in Jesus and to His cross, no matter what.

So, whether the congregation I am privileged to serve votes to stay or leave the ELCA, I will continue to proclaim the Bible as it stands and pray for the moment when the ELCA or what's left of the ELCA turns back to God and proclaims the Word in its truth and purity.

I am a sinner, an imperfect person saved only by God's grace. I welcome others to worship and study and repent with me because God welcomes me, imperfections and all.

I have learned though, that while God loves me just as I am, God loves me too much to leave me that way. I, like all who repent and believe in Jesus, are, in Martin Luther's phrase, "the Holy Spirit's workshop," submissive to the often painful and jarring, but always rewarding and joyful process of being made over in the image of my Savior. That painful, jarring, rewarding, joyful process will continue for the rest of my days on earth so long as I keep submitting to Jesus. I love Paul's words in Philippians 3:8-16:

I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. ¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

¹⁵Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. ¹⁶Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.

Being a Christian is about submission to God and to God's will, even when we don't like it. Absent such submission or the daily desire for submission to God, there is no reason to speak of God as God. Without submission to the God we know in Jesus Christ and to the revealed will of God, the one true God of the universe becomes just another entree in a spiritual buffet, a choice among many, rather than the one God Who will reign over us without rivals or will not reign over us or have anything to do with us at all. I honestly struggle with submission to God each day and this is why confession of sin is a daily part of my life. This is also why I refer to the Church as a fellowship of recovering sinners who have hope not because of their rectitude or their virtues, but solely because the God revealed in Jesus has covered our sins and sent the Holy Spirit to help us make the painful midcourse corrections we all need to undergo each day in order to keep walking with Christ.

When we--members of the ELCA or human beings, in general--reserve the right to call our own shots irrespective of God's revealed will in Scripture, we become our own gods and that is a violation of the first and most basic commandment, the one that inheres in each of the other nine: "You shall have no other gods before Me."

God wants to welcome all the prodigals home. But God can't welcome prodigals who want, simultaneously, to come home and do their own things. It is impossible to follow two gods and that, sadly, seems to be what the ELCA is currently intent on doing: the God of Israel and Jesus, on the one hand, AND the God of post-modern me-worship, on the other. In Exodus 20:5, we're told that God is a jealous God, meaning God will not accept our spiritual waffling. God will either reign over us and our churches or God will be absent from our lives and from our churches; there is no other course. ELCA members who, in the name of not hurting people or of being nice, want to waffle, are flat-out refusing to unambiguously adhere to the basic Lutheran understanding of "grace alone, faith alone, word alone."

At our congregation, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, I believe, the welcome mat is always out for all people. But all who come should consider these Biblically-rooted lines from an old Randy Stonehill song:

"You'll be tempted, tried and tested
There'll be wars the devil wins
But God's love is not a license to lie
there in your sins
He understands the human heart
His mercy is complete
But His grace was not intended
As a place to wipe your feet"
('Angry Young Men' Randy Stonehill, 1984)

God bless you, Holly!

*Not all of Leviticus should be read in the same way all through. But the section from which this verse comes is one in which the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Law, valid for all peoples everywhere, are explicated. In Leviticus and other places in the Old Testament, there are three different kinds of laws. I talk about this issue here.

Staying Rooted in the Basics

[This was prepared for worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Colossians 2:6-15
One of the best hitters in the history of Major League Baseball was Tony Gwynn, Sr. of the San Diego Padres. In a twenty year career, he got 3141 hits and compiled a .338 batting average, meaning that he got hits almost 34% of the time he was at bat. (The average major leaguer hits the ball just 25% of the time.) As the baseball people would say, “Tony Gwynn could flat-out hit.”

Of course, every major league batter tries to hit the ball and all would like to be able to do it as often as Tony Gwynn did during his career. So, why don’t they? Well, not everybody may be as talented as Tony Gwynn was, of course. But I think I learned the real reason for Gwynn’s success as a hitter during a game I watched in his last season. A commentator said that every single day, on top of team batting practice, Tony Gwynn watched video of his at bats from the days before. With bat in hand, he analyzed his swings, correcting what he had done wrong, and reminding himself of the right way to swing a baseball bat. In short, Tony Gwynn’s success as a major league hitter came down to this: He always went back to the basics. He realized that if he didn’t get the basics right and build on them, his whole game would go nowhere. So, before every one of his 2440 games, Tony Gwynn schooled himself on the basics of hitting. That’s how he became one of the greatest players of all time.

In a way, the New Testament letter to the first century Christian church in the Asia Minor town of Colossae was a call to get back to the basics of Christian faith. That’s because the apostle Paul and his assistant Timothy had gotten disturbing reports that the Christians there were starting to hear from people selling a fake Christianity. We don’t know exactly what it was these people were selling. But it seems that they were telling the Colossian church that Jesus and His cross were OK, but that to be truly acceptable to God, they also needed to keep the right diet, be circumcised if they were male, observe certain festivals, and maybe, worship angels, have visions, and, as Paul and Timothy put it, get “puffed up by a human way of thinking.”

These enemies of the Gospel were commending what Martin Luther once condemned as “Christ and” theology. Salvation, they claimed, came from “Christ and abiding by certain rules, by worshiping angels, or keeping special feast days.” In Jesus Christ, God has revealed that there is but one way to reconciliation with God, one way to freedom from sin and death, and one way to personal wholeness. That one way is through Jesus Christ and our faith in Christ alone. In the New Testament book of Acts, Peter and John said of Jesus, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” And Jesus Himself, after affirming that God had sent Him into the world so that all who believe (or trust) in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life, referred to Himself in the third person and said, “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

The most basic fact of Christian faith and of life itself is that life, true life, abundant life, life with God, comes from Jesus Christ alone. If we fail to root and build our lives on that reality, our lesson from Colossians tells us today, we risk veering away from God and from eternity with Christ as surely as a major leaguer risks veering off into mediocrity by failing to attend to the basics. “As you…have received Christ Jesus the Lord,” it says, “continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Already, earlier in their letter, Paul and Timothy had taken great pains to remind the Colossian Christians of Who Jesus is and how all their hope for life, purpose, hope, and eternity reside in Him. In today’s lessons, those ideas are carried forward. Paul and Timothy say that, “in [Jesus] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” They say that Jesus “is the head of every ruler and authority.” And then they make a basic statement of Christian belief that, even though basic, is, at the same time, amazing. Please be patient here, close your eyes, and try to hear what they write with fresh ears. Listen:

In [Jesus] also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands.

Circumcision, of course, was the Jewish rite of initiation for male babies. At eight days old, they were circumcised, a piece of skin lopped from their bodies. Christians undergo a circumcision; at baptism, the old self is drowned so that the new self can live forever with Jesus Christ. Paul talks about that in the New Testament book of Romans when he says, “we have been buried with [Christ] 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.”

Luther talks about this same subject when, in The Small Catechism, he tells what Baptism means for daily life: “It means that our sinful self, with all its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned through daily repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever.”

So, as Paul and Timothy push the Colossian Christians to go back to the basics, they remind them of two important things. First, they focus on the amazing fact that in Baptism, Christ shares His cross and resurrection with us. In Baptism, our old selves die and our new selves rise to live with Jesus forever. That fact ought to have an impact on us! We ought to be in awe of it!

At the McConnell Center in Riverside Hospital a few weeks ago, I lay on the table where my cardiologist had just finished implanting a stent in my heart. “I hope that none of you ever lose the sense of awe at what you’re allowed to do in this procedure,” I told the doctor and the five assistants then in the room with us. “It’s incredible!”

What I was urging them to do relative to heart catheterization was to always remember the basic fact that, in this procedure, they were giving people new leases on their lives. I would probably be dead without it. That’s awesome!

But how much more awesome is it that the King of the universe, the Maker of all creation, has come into our world to be one of us, has died to erase sin’s power over us and risen to give new life to fallen humanity? Not just the cross and the empty tomb, but the baptismal font where we actually share in Christ’s victory over sin and death, ought to cause us in the words of the old spiritual, “tremble, tremble, tremble.” That’s the first thing that Paul and Timothy wanted the Colossian Christians to remember.

Here’s the second thing they wanted the Colossians to remember: The gift of life with God through Christ is free. But we keep it only by, as our lesson puts it, “holding fast to the head [that is, to Jesus, the King of the universe], from whom the whole body [that’s we in Christ’s Church].”

Holding fast to Christ means consciously, each day, lopping off any trust we might put in the world and its supposed wisdom, even if that alleged wisdom comes from pastors, bishops, and theologians with miles of letters after their names, and instead trusting in Christ alone.

I thank God that my parents had me baptized as an infant; there at the font, God made His commitment to me. But I can tell you that had I died when I was nineteen years old, a time when I denied God’s existence and turned my back on Christ, I would have gone to hell. Christ never tires of extending His hand to us, offering forgiveness and life to the repentant. But we, in turn, in the strength of the Holy Spirit must grasp that hand, trust in Him to the extent we’re able, and hold fast to the One Who shares His resurrection victory with us.

Tryg Skarsten was one of my professors at seminary. He once told about taking an extended flight, on which he was seated next to a friendly couple. They asked Tryg about his work and Tryg told them that he was a Lutheran pastor who taught at a seminary. “How about that?” the man said. “I was baptized in the Lutheran Church.” Tryg and the couple talked for a long time. As they did, it became evident to Tryg that this couple had no connection with Christ or the Church. He felt compelled to make them an offer, “You seem like wonderful people. I wonder if you would like to pray with me to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior?” The man became incensed. “I told you I was baptized Lutheran, didn’t I?” What the Holy Spirit led Tryg to see though, was that while the man and his wife were baptized, they weren’t following Christ. God had done all through cross, tomb, and font, but they weren’t holding fast to Christ. That, say Paul and Timothy in today’s second lesson, is what we all need to do.

Mark’s Gospel quotes the risen Jesus as saying, “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” In Baptism, the amazing love and grace of God in Christ comes to us. But the question each day puts before us—at work, at home, in our daily decisions—is whether we’re holding onto Christ. Are we believing in Him? Are we trusting in Him? All eternity hangs on our answer to that question and if we want to say, “Yes,” the God Who understands our weakness, will help us hold on tight to Jesus today and eternally. Amen!