How Big is Your God?

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

Luke 24:13-35
On this third Sunday of Easter, our Gospel lesson from Luke confronts us with a mystery about two of Jesus’ disciples. And that mystery, ultimately, leads us to an important question about ourselves.

There is no mystery about what the two disciples we meet in the lesson are doing as our passage starts. We can  understand their sense of sorrow and why, because, just like you and me, they had never seen a dead and buried person rise to life again, they left Jerusalem, certain that the report of Jesus’ resurrection couldn’t be true. But there is something about the entire incident recount in our lesson that baffles us.

As Luke tells it, the two disciples walked with a stranger they’d met on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus for some distance as He explained to them that the events of the previous Thursday and Friday, when Jesus had been arrested, tried, condemned, and killed, didn’t add up to the tragedy or dead end they surmised them to be. Everything had happened precisely as that part of the Bible we call the Old Testament had said it would. “Was it not necessary,” the stranger asked them as their hearts pounded within them, “that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into His glory?”

Encouraged by the stranger’s words of clarity and hope, they begged him to eat and converse with them once they reached the village. But through all this, they had no idea who this stranger was.

It was only when the stranger “took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” that they finally recognized Him to be Jesus. Then, Jesus disappeared.

In spite of their earlier fears of traveling at night in open country where thugs and wild animals might lurk, the two disciples hurried back to Jerusalem to tell the others that they too had seen the risen Jesus.

Still, we wonder: Why hadn’t they immediately recognized Jesus?

Our lesson says that “their eyes were kept from recognizing” Jesus. Had Jesus, God-incarnate, been playing hide and seek with these grieving disciples only to finally play “gotcha” by revealing Himself in a way they readily recognized?

No, God doesn’t play games.

But He does allow people to live with the hardened hearts and thickened skulls with which they choose to live their lives.

Those of you who have read the book of Exodus know exactly why the disciples’ eyes couldn’t recognize the risen Jesus. Exodus tells us that about 1500 years before Jesus was born, God’s chosen people, the Israelites (or Hebrews), were enslaved in Egypt.

God told Moses that He was going to send Moses, along with Moses’ brother Aaron, to demand that Pharaoh, king and deity of Egypt, let God’s people go.

But Pharaoh wasn’t about to let Hebrew slaves tell him what to do.

Nor was he going to let Yahweh, the God of these slaves who they claimed as the one and only God of the universe, call the shots.

As you remember, God performed a total of ten plagues through Moses, all of them designed to convince Pharaoh to relent, repent, and let God’s people go. But Pharaoh dug in.

After the first five plagues, Exodus tells us things like: “…Pharaoh…hardened his heart”; and “the heart of Pharaoh was hardened.” Then, after the sixth plague, the plague of boils, a shift comes in the Bible’s narrative of these events.

Take a look at Exodus, chapter 9, verse 12, on page 36 of our pew Bibles. No longer is Pharaoh hardening his own heart to God’s call to repentance. God is doing it for him. There we’re told:

But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharoah; and he [that is, Pharaoh] did not heed them [that is, Moses and Aaron], just as the Lord had spoken to Moses. (NKJV)

God had given Pharaoh repeated opportunities to conform to the will of God. Pharaoh had dug in his heels. Finally, God said, “Have it your way, Pharaoh. I will now escalate the level of the plagues and prevent you from changing your mind. I will let you live with the consequence of the path you have already chosen. We have hit a point of no return.”

The disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus had chosen the path of disbelief when they set out on that first Easter Sunday.

In spite of the reports of Jesus’ resurrection, they were convinced that Jesus was as dead that day as He had been on Friday and Saturday.

But thank God—for them and for we who gain strength of faith from their story, they hadn’t yet reached “the point of no return.” They remained open enough to God to be able to see the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

The question remains, though: What took them so long to recognize Jesus? 

The answer is simple: Their God wasn’t big enough.

In spite of all the signs and promises made about the Messiah in the Old Testament and the promises and signs which Jesus Himself gave during His earthly ministry, it was still beyond the scope of their imaginations to conceive...

• that Jesus could rise from the dead, 
• that God could wring life from death, 
• that the perennial enemies of humankind—our own sin, death, and pointless living—could possibly have been defeated by a Savior Who had, just days before, been crucified at the garbage dump just beyond Jerusalem’s walls. 

They couldn’t believe that God was that good, that gracious, that loving, that powerful, that big.

So, having solved the mystery of the disciples’ failure to recognize Jesus for so long, here’s the uncomfortable question all of us must answer: How big is the God we meet in Jesus Christ for each of us?

Is the God Who bore all your sins and all the death and futility we confront on this side of the grave big enough to be entrusted with your biggest problems, your sternest challenges, your most vexing worries?

Or do you want to keep dealing with these issues on your own?

Is the God Who defeated your sin on the cross to be trusted when He promises you victory over the temptations and sins you can’t beat on your own?

Or will you insist on trying to go it alone in facing sin?

Or will you try to fake yourself out, telling yourself...

• that it’s not too bad to put your family or your work above God; 
• that using God’s Name for purposes other than prayer, praise, or thanksgiving is a minor matter; 
• that ignoring God’s Word in Scripture or the fellowship of the Church is OK because you’re so busy; that dehumanizing and demonizing others through mistreatment or unkindness isn’t really, as Jesus teaches, really murder; 
• that stealing the gift of sexual intimacy God meant to be opened only by husbands and wives in marriage is acceptable today; 
• that little thieveries from others are justified because “everybody does it’; 
• that gossiping about others who strike you as too weird for words is entirely understandable; 
• that being obsessed with having what others have is no big deal?

In short, will you lie to yourself in saying that the Ten Commandments, the moral law of God for all time, have been rescinded by advanced human enlightenment? Or will you accept the commandments as God's clear statement of His will for your life, allow them to show you your need of a Savior, and trust in Christ to send the Holy Spirit to point your life in God's direction even as you live in the certainty of the grace and favor God bears for those who repent of sin and believe in Him?

Is the God we meet in Jesus Christ a first-century version of Pee Wee Herman, weak and compliant to our wills and whims?

Or is He the God and King of the universe...

• Who faced down money-changing extortionists in the temple of the Lord, 
• Who upbraided hypocrites for concealing their sins behind the whitewashed façade of moral perfection, 
• Who stood up to a raging crowd about to stone a woman to death caught in the act of adultery, 
• Who accepted a cross that we deserve to give us the forgiveness and new life we don’t deserve?

How big is your God?

He gave His life for you. Is He big enough for you to give your life to Him in return?

Dare to surrender this moment to God.

Tell God, “My faith in You is puny. But right now, at this moment, I ask You to...

• handle my problems at work or at home; 
• conquer my sins and strengthen me to beat temptation; 
• overcome my worries and my grief. 

Conquer this moment for me, please, Lord. Help me to entrust this moment to You, God.”

If you will give your life, moment by moment, to the big God made known to all the world in Jesus Christ, it will, by His grace and power, add up to an eternity with God!

A man in northwest Ohio told me that shortly after his wife died, “I fell on the floor and wept and asked the Lord just to get me through that night.” God did that. That man said he kept praying that prayer each night. He learned over time that the God we meet in Jesus is big enough to comfort us, to give us hope, until our hope encompasses the certainty that, like the Savior in Whom we believe, we will one day rise again.

Let the God of Easter reach out and transform your life, moment by moment.

Leo was a member of the congregation in Michigan where I did my internship. Leo never knew anything about the Lord before he met his wife, Betty. She was a Lutheran. He started attending worship with Betty and, as happened to me years later when I went to worship with Ann, he got hooked. Jesus Christ grabbed hold of Leo and Leo didn't want Christ to ever let go!

Leo came to believe in Jesus and his life was transformed.

He had purpose and hope.

He became a better man.

Though he never went to college, he became the head of a company’s engineering department.

Because of Christ, it seemed to me that Leo’s life was always firing on all cylinders.

He was a terrific husband and father; a talented carpenter and quilter; a great photographer and cook.

And Leo understood the power of surrendering to the big God we know in Christ through incremental, baby steps.

He used to tell skeptics: “Promise me that you’ll go to worship six Sundays in a row. And then try to miss the seventh Sunday. You won’t miss, because by then, you’ll want to be in worship. You’ll want to get closer to God.”

I promise that if you will dare to give the moments of your life to the control of the big God of the universe, you will, just like the disciples who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, see the risen Jesus working in your life.

You will see just how big and wonderful God is!

But watch out: If you give God an inch of your life, He will soon take the whole thing. Let Him take it!

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.