Who Do You Put First?

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

Matthew 6:16, 16-21

In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”

He goes on to give three concrete examples:

• When you give charity to the poor, don’t make a show of it. 
• When you pray in public, don’t pile phrases one on top of the other in order to wow the people around you. 
• And when you fast—that is, give up food for a time, don’t let your outward appearance call attention to your “sacrificial” religious devotion.

Spiritual disciplines are meant to draw us closer to Christ, deeper into His orbit, and to create habits of dependence on God within us.

When we give, we’re trusting God to keep providing for our needs even though we have less.

When we pray, whether publicly or privately, we’re acknowledging our complete dependence on God and not ourselves.

When we fast, we’re seeking freedom from what we want and asking God to give us only what we need, what Jesus calls “our daily bread.” (And that, above all, means Him.)

Spiritual disciplines aren’t meant to give us bragging rights, so that we can show the world how faithful we are.

All of that is easy enough to understand. It’s easy to understand too, when Jesus says that those who make shows of their acts of religious piety get the very shallow, meaningless rewards they seek: People notice them.

But the notice of people, the applause of the crowd, won’t get us what only Jesus, Who bled and died and rose again for us, gives.

To those who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Him, Jesus gives the only rewards that last after the cheering has stopped, after the crowds have turned away. Those rewards include forgiveness of sin, eternal life with God, and purposefulness for the living of these days.

Don’t forfeit the only reward worth having, Jesus is telling us in tonight’s Gospel lesson, by allowing your life with God to boil down to things you do for show.

The fact is that what people think of us doesn’t matter. Jesus commands us to play to an audience of One. The opinion Jesus Christ has of our beliefs and motives is the only opinion that will count on judgment day, when He will return to the world to judge, as we say in the Creed, "the living and the dead."

The apostle Paul knew all of this. The first century church of Corinth that he founded, after a time, became a dysfunctional mess requiring him to send at least two letters of correction, both of which the Holy Spirit has inspired the Church to include in the New Testament portion of the Bible. One dispute among many that existed in the Corinthian church was between those who liked the teaching of Paul and those who preferred that of a preacher who came along after Paul left Corinth, named Apollos. Paul wrote to say that such arguments were silly. Paul hadn’t died for their sins and Apollos hadn’t risen from the dead for them. Only Jesus could save them, Paul reminded them.

In the midst of this conflict, some of the Corinthian Christians who aligned themselves with Apollos said nasty things about Paul. Paul couldn’t have cared less. He wrote, “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you…I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord Who judges me.”

Paul knew well what Jesus is getting at in this evening’s Gospel lesson:

• Don’t worry about showing others what a good Christian you are; just be a Christian. 
• Don’t call attention to your acts of Christian devotion; just be devoted to Christ.

We could end the sermon right there, I suppose. But, as Lutherans, we believe that we can’t just take pieces of Scripture and leave them as isolated proof texts for the hobbyhorse of the day. Martin Luther said that we should let Scripture interpret Scripture. In other words, a single verse of Scripture, without consideration of the witness of the whole Bible, can be used or misused to say anything. Do that enough with single passages of scripture and you distort the whole Bible and the entire Christian faith.

The distortion to which Jesus’ words for us this evening often get subjected seems especially popular among we Lutheran Christians. Historically, Lutheranism has its roots among the people of northern Europe: Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians. These aren’t folks known for being talkative or demonstrative. So, Lutherans have often taken Jesus’ admonition to not make a show of religious piety to mean that we're to never talk about our faith, never tell a friend what Jesus means to us, never invite others to come and see what God is doing in our church family. This is why Lutherans are sometimes called “the frozen chosen.”

But in what Jesus says to us tonight, He isn’t telling us not to live our faith in Him out in the open where the whole world can see it. Pull out a pew Bible and turn to page 553, please. Take a look at a passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which we discussed a few weeks ago, Matthew 5:14-16. Jesus says: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Now, turn to page 557 in the pew Bibles and look at Matthew 10:32-33. Jesus says: “Therefore whoever confesses Me before [people], him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before [people], him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”

Then, turn to page 572, and find Matthew 28:19-20. There, the resurrected Jesus, about to ascend to heaven, gives the Great Commission to all who believe in Him. The Great Commission is of equal importance for us as the Great Commandment, which Jesus gives in Matthew 22:34-40, to love God and love others. In the Great Commission, Jesus says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

We are to live our faith out loud. We are to share Christ with others. We are to seek to make disciples of our neighbors, friends, and family members. Jesus commands us to do these things. But what He says to us this evening is a simple admonition: “Watch your motivation. If you’re out to glorify yourself and not Me, Your religious observances are meaningless.”

These are great words for us to remember as we begin the season of Lent. I knew a guy who gave up all sweets during Lent. He seemed to tell everybody he knew that he had given up sweets for Lent. “Want a cookie?” someone would ask him. “No,” he’d say, “I gave up sweets for Lent.” “Want a piece of cake?” Same answer. “Want a can of pop?” Same answer. The first twenty or so times he said, “No, I gave up sweets for Lent,” the response was predictable. People applauded him for his discipline and self-sacrifice and altogether upright behavior. He basked in their compliments. But after a time, people quit asking him if he’d like a cookie, a piece of cake or candy, or a can of pop. Without these offers and the opportunities they gave him to brag about his Lenten discipline, he found it harder and harder to stay away from sweets.

This fellow's desire for compliments isn't unique. Just yesterday, I read about a study conducted by scholars at Ohio State who determined that receiving boosts to their self-esteem was the thing that college students loved more than anything. The compliments of others can be addictive.

Taking on a discipline for Lent (or at any other time of the year) can be a fine thing. But, Jesus says, if it’s all about getting compliments, we’ve got it wrong.

The other night, Ann and I saw an interview on TV with an educated, middle clas Libyan man who had never before held a gun in his hand and, despite having so much to lose, had enlisted in the fight to bring down the dictator Moammar Gadhafi in his country. He said that, for him, it boiled down to a simple sentiment: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” We who confess Jesus as our God and Savior belong to the Kingdom of God. Tonight, Jesus challenges us to set our egos aside, to ask not what our acts of religious devotion can do for us, but how our acts of religious devotion can make us more submissive to the will of God and how they can help us to tell the whole world the story of the God Who loves all so desperately that He became one of us, died for us, rose for us, and gives everlasting life to those who dare to put Him first in their lives.

That’s the dare Christ lays before us this Lenten season, the dare He lays before us every day we live: Put Him first just as He did when He went to a cross for you two thousand years ago. Jesus characterizes His call to us in this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Don’t ask what’s in it for you; just follow the God revealed in Jesus, whether anybody else notices it or likes it or not.

May seeking God’s kingdom and the righteousness that belongs to followers of Jesus be our chief motivation this Lenten season…and our whole lives. Amen!

We've Had the Revolution...Now What?

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

Matthew 5:13-20
This past week, we have witnessed a kind of revolution happening in Egypt. It looks as though this revolution will result in the end of a long period of iron fisted rule. But assuming that the pro-democracy demonstrators there are successful, there will be questions the people of Egypt will be asking of themselves soon. They’re questions like, “What now?” “How do we go forward?” People who go through revolutions always wrestle with questions like these in their aftermath.*

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, taken from the opening verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was a place where Jesus laid down an absolutely revolutionary life, one that puts the world’s standard operating procedures on their heads.

In it, Jesus described people as blessed the world might see us unfortunate, at best. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t just laying down God’s law in the Beatitudes, but also describing a way of life that seeps into the minds, hearts, and wills of those who cultivate daily closeness to Jesus Christ. Even if we have questions about all that though, because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, because of His resurrection, and because of the new life we know He offers to all who repent and believe in Him, we hear the Beatitudes and we want to sign up for the Kingdom of heaven.

But after Jesus, through His death and resurrection, works this revolution of transforming us from the enemies of God we were when we were born into the friends of God we become when we are born from above, we have questions: What now? How do we go forward? Jesus starts to answer those questions in today’s lesson. Please take out your Celebrate bulletin inserts and look at today’s Gospel lesson.

Now, as you read the opening verses of the lesson, you’ll have to keep the Beatitudes in mind. In verses 13 and 14, Jesus is saying, “You blessed ones are the salt of the earth. You blessed ones are the light of the world.”

With that in mind, read verse 13 along with me silently, please: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Most of us love salt. It enhances the flavor of food. But salt is also a great preservative. Those who walk with Jesus preserve what is true and godly. Without moralizing or judging, true followers of Jesus remind us all of God’s will, God’s love, and God’s ability to express His power through weak people surrendered to Him.

Ernest Gordon was a young Scotsman studying Philosophy and History when World War II broke out. He joined the military and was captured by the Japanese in the summer of 1942. He and his fellow prisoners were given rations of one lump of rice each day. They were tortured daily and were worked incessantly, under blazing sun and torrential rain. The brutalization included savagery and thievery among the prisoners themselves, who stole food from other prisoners too weak to defend themselves. Gordon, suffering from multiple diseases, was sent to a holding hut, one where all those certain to die went. One prisoner though, dared to do something that no prisoner had previously done. He cared for weaker prisoners. He took Gordon under his wing, giving him massages, encouraging words, and the occasional smuggled banana. Improbably, Gordon survived and through his benefactor something else happened. Though he had never been interested in God, Gordon came to follow Jesus Christ. He would later say, “'Faith thrives when there is no hope but God.” Folks, the man who cared for Gordon, a Christian, was salt of the earth. He preserved the kingdom way of life. In a place of horrors, he preserved the life of love and compassion and righteousness Jesus sets us free to live. That’s the kind of life we’re called and commanded to live too.

Read verse 14, please: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 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.”

Over the past several weeks, several of our lessons have featured variations of the phrase, "light of the world." In the Old Testament, we’re told how God called the people of Israel into being to be a light to the nations, showing the world the one true God of the universe, preparing for the arrival of the Messiah. Jesus comes and we’re told in the New Testament that He is the light of the world. In today's lesson, Jesus is saying that those who follow Him—you and me—are to give light to the world. His fellow Jews would have found Jesus’ imagery unmistakably clear. The temple in Jerusalem was built on a high mount. From it, God’s people exalted God before the world.

Now, we Gentile Christians who, the New Testament says, have been grafted into the people of God by the grace given in Jesus and our faith in Him, are to lift Jesus up before all the world. Faith in Jesus Christ is a public thing. Jesus commands us to be lights in this darkened world; we’re to let everyone know about the new life that only comes through Jesus.

That can be a hard way to live. Many Christians, in fact, are like the young man desperate for a girlfriend who asked an unpopular young woman he didn't much like to go steady. She was elated until he said, “But let’s not tell anyone else about it. It’ll be our little secret.” “Don’t keep your relationship with Me hidden,” Jesus says. “Live it out loud.” If we keep our faith in Christ a personal thing, doesn’t Jesus have every right to think that we’re ashamed of Him?

In what Jesus has said so far, we see that we are blessed—saved by the undeserved, unearned grace of God—in order to be blessings to others. But this amazing grace does not bring an end to the commands— laws—of God given in the Old Testament.

Read what Jesus says next, starting at verse 17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished…”

So, what law is Jesus talking about? We know that the Old Testament contains dietary laws that God rescinded in the New Testament. We know that ritual laws revolving around sacrifices are no longer needed because Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world, once and for all.

Jesus here is referring to the moral laws in the Ten Commandments. These laws are inviolable for all time. Want to know the will of God for your wallet, your mouth, your sex life, your soul? It’s all there in the Ten Commandments and they haven’t changed in 3500 years. Jesus says they won’t change until heaven and earth pass away. They remain as protective fences meant to steer us always toward life at its best.

But you and I know that we can’t successfully obey these laws. The law can’t save us from sin and death. Only Jesus can do that. So why does Jesus still say the law is important?

Lutheran Christians have considered this question and said that there are three purposes that the Law still has.

• First, the law acts as a curb on the sinful impulses of all people, even before they know Jesus Christ. 
• Second, the law drives us to Jesus for grace and forgiveness. When we’re honest, we acknowledge that while we understand God’s commands, we don’t keep them. Our inborn sin prevents us from keeping them. Desperate, we turn to Jesus, seeking the same mercy He showed to the repentant thief who hung on a cross next to Jesus and to whom Jesus promised, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.” 
• But for the followers of Jesus, there is a third use of the Law. It’s a guide for us. Having been freed by grace from sin and death, the Ten Commandments become a road map for us. God told the prophet Jeremiah to tell His people centuries ago: “stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies…[to] walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” God was telling the people to remember His commands for them and so be led back to Him. When God’s law drives us to Jesus, it leads us to the place where life is found, where rightness with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves is found.

Now, look at the last verse of our lesson. Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This passage used to trouble me a lot! The Pharisees were righteous in their own eyes, but not in God’s. They thought that they were great people who had conquered their own sin. But, in their arrogance, they completely lacked the love for God and neighbor that the Law commands.

So, what, I wondered, did Jesus mean by seeming to tell all His followers to try to out-righteous the spiritual snobs He called hypocrites and whitewashed tombs?

Then I realized something: We will be more righteous than the Pharisees—we are more righteous than the Pharisees—when we are humble enough to let the shed blood of Jesus cover our sins and wash us clean. We will be righteous, right with God, when we rely completely on the God we know in Jesus Christ, and not our own wisdom, not our own pretended goodness.

For twenty years, I’ve been doing my taxes using the TurboTax computer program. And every year, I make the same mistake. I’ll be working on some part of my return and figure that I know something better than the program. I input data where I think it should go and totally mess things up. If I could get back all the hours I’ve spent on the unnecessary, grief-inducing side roads I’ve created for myself, rather than simply following the prompts the program gives, I probably could have done something productive with my life.

The Law is still important. It contains prompts from God, pointing us not only to the right way to live, but also to the One Who wants to lead us into His Kingdom. Unless we let the law lead us each day to Jesus, it will condemn us. But if we let it drive us back to Jesus whenever our lives go off course, we will be right with God, in sync with His purposes for our lives. We will be the salt of the earth who preserve what is godly and good. We will be the light of the world who show others the way to Jesus. We will be graced. We will be blessed. The Kingdom of heaven will be ours. Amen

*This approach to the sermon, how to live after the revolution, is that taken by N.T. Wright in his commentary on this text, found in Matthew for Everyone. I so liked his approach, finding that it so clarified what Jesus is doing in the sermon, that I couldn't resist using the same approach myself here.

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.