Keep Holding On!

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

Luke 21:5-19
As followers of Jesus Christ, we know and cherish the promise that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ receive the forgiveness and grace that God freely offers the whole world. Believers in Jesus are the only people in the world who have an authentic and eternal hope for life with God. This hope should mean everything to us!

In twenty-six years as a pastor, I have seen that there is a qualitative difference between how those who trust in Jesus Christ face eternity and how those who are without faith in Christ face eternity.

Christians grieve the loss of other Christians, of course. It would be strange and unnatural not to grieve the loss of loved ones and friends. But, as Paul writes in First Thessalonians in the New Testament, believers in Jesus do “not grieve as others without hope” do.

To the grieving sister of His friend, Lazarus, Jesus says in John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me, will never die.”

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.”

We can live each day in hope and confidence because we have good news, bought and paid for with Jesus’ blood on the cross. This is the good news to which Jesus points all people in the Gospel of Mark when He says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

Jesus has secured an eternity of hope for us!

So, how do we live now? How do we live in this messy, sin-infested, dying world? How do we live today, in all of the moments of our lives?

It’s ironic that today’s Gospel lesson is really all about how to live in the day-to-day world in which you and I live. It's ironic because our lesson, Luke 21:5-19, is the first segment of a section of Luke’s Gospel that is described by the scholars as “apocalyptic.” From our look at Revelation earlier this year, you’ll remember that the word apacalupto, from the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, literally means, “I reveal.”

Apocalyptic literature in the Bible, which includes most of Revelation in the New Testament and Daniel in the Old Testament, basically contains God’s revelation of how this world will end and what lies beyond that end for you and me.

In the apocalyptic words of Jesus quoted in Luke 21:5-38, Jesus does reveal much about the end of the world. But in the verses that make up our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells us how to live today.

So, please pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to our Gospel lesson. Verses 5 and 6 set the stage:

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Imagine Jesus being here with us this morning and someone asking Him if He didn’t agree that Saint Matthew’s sanctuary was beautiful and Jesus saying, “It won’t last. Some day, it's going to be destroyed.” Or, imagine Him being shown, in a single moment, Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Statue of Liberty in New York City and hearing Him say that every fragment of those places would one day crumble to pieces.

Scenarios like these can only approximate how Jesus’ words about the Temple must have seemed to His first hearers. The Temple in Jerusalem was the living symbol of Judea’s religion and nationhood. It was the place where the presence of the God of the universe came to be among His people.

Yet Jesus says the Temple would be destroyed. Little more than forty years later, it was destroyed, undoubtedly caused by the God Who, in Jesus, said that worshiping Him “in spirit and truth” was more important than having the "right places" for worship. Jesus' words show us that often, places of worship like the Temple devolve into monuments to human egos rather than the places of humility and submission to God they were meant to be. Jesus’ words suggest that some of our most cherished religious traditions may be worthless, especially if in keeping them, we forget about truly worshiping Him as God and King over our lives!

In verse 7 of our lesson, no doubt frightened by Jesus’ words, His listeners ask what sign will be given that the Temple would be destroyed. Read along silently with me at verse 8 for Jesus’ response:

 “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.’” 

Jesus warns us to not fall for false messiahs. Years later, in letters like First and Second Timothy, which we looked at a few weeks ago, the apostle Paul warned Christians not to fall for false teachers. Such people still pop up today. They’re on religious TV stations, on the New York Times lists of best selling books, and even in the assemblies of the very Lutheran body to which we belong and that we cherish.

The moments when these false teachers make their plays to lead us away from God can come at any moment, which is why it’s important for us to use as many moments as we can steeping ourselves in God’s Word, getting to know the God of the Bible, not the false versions of God pushed by false teachers. That’s why Sunday School and other opportunities to study the Bible with others are important, even for we adults.

In verses 9 to 11 of the Gospel lesson, Jesus says not to be surprised or frightened by all of the disasters, natural and human-made, that happen in this fallen world.

Then, starting at verse 12, He warns that persecution will naturally befall believers in Him. We’ve seen exactly what Jesus was talking about in recent international events.

• Two weeks ago, a Catholic church in Iraq was attacked during worship; 70 people were killed. 
• This past week, a series of roadside bombs was detonated in Iraq, 11 in all, were set off in Christian neighborhoods there. 
• This past week, in Pakistan, a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, a mother of five, whose crime appears to be that she offered water to some co-workers who deemed her unclean because of her faith in Christ, was sentenced to be hanged for blasphemy. 
• And frequently, all across China, where a groundswell of conversions and baptisms help to make Christianity the fastest growing religion in the world, Christians are, every day, subject to arrest, torture, and execution by the Chinese government. 

Now, there’s all sorts of persecution in the world, of course. Some of it is even perpetrated by those claiming to be Christians. Whenever persecution happens, it is always wrong.

It’s also true that if you proclaim a Lord and Savior Who is more important than you, your family, your country, your neighborhood church, the denomination with which you’re affiliated, or anything else, you will incur opposition, snubbing, and persecution. Bank on it, Jesus says.

All forms of persecution toward those who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior of the world are the death throes of a sinful world Jesus is going to destroy, the early warning signs of the new creation that is already being born in all who repent and believe in Jesus.

In verse 13, Jesus says something peculiar about being persecuted for faith in Him: “This will give you an opportunity to testify.”

If you have a pencil or pen, you might want to circle that word, “opportunity.” In Jesus’ mathematics, Persecution=Opportunity.

Jesus is telling us that when Christians are persecuted, that’s when the depth and reality of our faith shows. It’s easy to confess faith in Jesus on Sunday mornings in a free country. But the authenticity of our confession is seen when being a Christian is marginalized, dismissed, or distorted, as happens today to Christians in America, to Christians in Logan, Ohio.

Listen carefully: God’s primary project in you and me is not to give us easy lives, but to build our characters, to retrofit our sinful natures, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, to recreate us in the very image of Jesus.

The character that people see in us when adversity strikes is our “testimony,” for good or ill. There is really only one way to ensure that our testimony for God is positively Christian and that’s to humbly own up to our imperfections, turn ourselves over to Christ, repent for our sins, and allow the Holy Spirit access to our lives every moment of every day.

And, we need to do those things every single day if we are to become, in Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, which I’ve mentioned before, “the Holy Spirit’s workshop.”

Acts, chapter 4, in the New Testament, is a very important place in Scripture for me. After a decade of atheism, I came to faith in Christ through the witness and confessions of the Lutheran Church. The first book of the Bible I read as a new Christian was Acts. I chose it because, in recounting the history of the Church in the first three to four decades after the risen Jesus' ascension, it would show me how Jesus' imperfect followers lived from day to day without Jesus being physically present to them. 

I'll never forget coming to Acts, chapter 4. It tells about how the apostles Peter and John, after healing a man in Jesus' Name, were dragged before the religious authorities, beaten, and told never to again speak in Jesus’ Name. "Whether it's right for you to forbid us to speak in Jesus' Name," they said, "we can't say. But we can't help but speak His Name because there isn't another name God has given by which we must be saved." Despite their defiance, the religious authorities released them.

Peter and John, the wounds from the whips still fresh on their backs, sought out the company of the other disciples. They all prayed together. When I first read their prayer nearly thirty-four years ago, I was thunderstruck. It begins: “And now, Lord, take notice of the threats they have made, and allow us, your servants…” And there, I expected them to ask God to help them to exact revenge against the men who had harmed Peter and John, the same authorities who had conspired with the Romans to crucify Jesus and who were then trying to stop the spread of the Gospel. But they didn't pray for vengeance. Instead, they asked God to help them “to speak your message with all boldness.” 

I remember that tears filled my eyes when I read those words and I stopped to pray, “Oh, God, please give me a faith like that!”

You see, God had forged new characters in these first Christians. They weren't interested in obtaining revenge on their persecutors. They only wanted the boldness to share Christ with others, in spite of persecutions.

I don’t know about you, but in my daily life, that’s what I want more than anything! I want to be faithful no matter what!

Persecution and all adversity are, as Jesus tells us, opportunities to live our faith and to share our testimony about Jesus, not just with our words, but with our lives. Jesus promises, you see in verse 18 of our Gospel lesson, that if we will be steadfast in following Him, seeking His help in all the moments of our lives, “not a hair on your head will perish.”

Jesus isn’t offering a cure for baldness here! Nor is He saying that all will go well in this life if we follow Him. He’s saying that, no matter the adversities we experience in this life, we can live each day in the certainty that we will be with Him for all eternity!

“By your endurance,” He says in verse 19, “you will gain your souls.”

Eternity, you see, belongs to those who hold onto Jesus even when the chips are down.

Today, Jesus’ message for us is simple: “Keep holding onto Me! Keep holding onto Me!"

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!