Month: March 2018

There’s been a lot of talk lately about honesty and accuracy in reporting the news. A new phrase, “Fake News,” has entered our vocabulary, and is thrown around or denied by various politicians and media pundits. While some people seem too ready to cast the term accusatorily when they read or hear something they don’t like, as if they could change reality by changing what we say about it, it really is important that we strive to speak, write and report, to the best of our ability, only what is true. We need to be able to trust what we hear, especially when it comes to things that can have an important impact on our lives. Unfortunately, some people report things that are false, not just because they themselves are misled or too lazy intellectually to check their facts, but because they intend to deceive others for some personal or political gain.

With that in mind, I thought I might test your ability to recognize “Fake News.” Following are a number of statements about myself that are either true or false. What I challenge you to do is figure out which is (or are) fake and which is (or are) true. So, here goes; true or false?

1. I was once the only white singer in a Gospel choir.
2. Boris Yeltsin once chided me personally and told me, “Mind your own business!”
3. I was a National Merit Scholar.
4. I rode a Soviet Army tank in Siberia.
5. I won a citywide tennis tournament, undefeated in my division.
6. I shook hands with Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton.
7. I once invaded Canada.
8. I found gold, rubies, and sapphires in North Carolina.
9. I was the lector (Scripture reader) at Martin Luther’s church in Wittenberg, Germany.
10. I visited Santa Claus Land above the Arctic Circle.

Have you decided which of the above statements are true and which are false? Answer: they are all true statements! Yes, even the claim about Santa Claus Land; it’s located in Rovaniemi, Finland, which I visited in 1988! No “Fake News” here! So score yourself accordingly: if you guessed they were all true, you are gullible (but right). If you thought they were all fake, consider yourself skeptical (but wrong). If you thought some were right and some were wrong, you are thoughtful, a discerning thinker who was still wrong part of the time.

As you can tell by my phony labels, “gullible, skeptical, and thoughtful,,” the truth of a statement or claim rests not in the perception of the hearer, but in the accuracy of what is reported. Contrary to postmodern ideas of relative truth and subjective realities, there are objective, real-life events that really happen. What we know about them is imperfect and limited, how we feel about them will be different based on who we are and how they affect us, and what we tell others about them will likely be shaded by our biases. But regardless of flawed human perceptions and motives, there is real news of real events.

This Sunday, we celebrate the greatest real event that ever occurred: the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. By rising from the dead, as he had prophesied and promised, Jesus proved his sacrificial death for the forgiveness of our sins had been accepted by God the Father, and opened the way for our eventual resurrections to eternal life. He defeated death, proving that his promises to us will also be fulfilled. This is not “Fake News,” but Good News; in fact our word Gospel comes from an old English word, godspel, which means “good news” and is a translation of the New Testament’s Greek word, “euangelion” (evangel).

Because of Christ, others were also brought back to life. There were those he raised during his ministry: Jairus’ daughter (Matthew 9, Mark 5 and Luke 8), the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7), Lazarus (John 11). Also there were those saints who rose from their graves at the moment of his death on the cross (Matthew 27:52-53). And not to be forgotten, there were those people raised in Jesus’ name by Peter (Tabitha – Acts 9:36-43) and Paul (Eutychus Acts 20:7-12). But as far as we know, each of them eventually died again, and awaits as we do the return of Christ and the bodily, permanent raising of all people, including you and me, some to eternal life, and some to eternal punishment.

Christ’s resurrection was a real, objective, historical event. It is as certain, from the perspective of history, as any other event that has ever happened on earth.

1. There is the empty tomb.
2. There is the failure of any doubters or persecutors of the Church to ever produce bones or other evidence of Jesus’ non-resurrection.
3. There is the written, eye-witness testimony of multiple apostles in the New Testament.
4. The testimonies were written shortly after the events, and texts of those testimonies dating from within 40 to 80 years of the events still survive. Compare this to Julius Caesar’s Gallic and Civil Wars, which texts date to no earlier than 1100 years after the writing, yet which everyone accepts as true history written by Caesar.
5. There was Jesus’ appearance to the disciples, to over 500 followers, and finally to Paul.
6. There was the self-sacrificing evangelism and willing martyrdom of the disciples. People are not likely to die for something they know to be a lie; all the disciples died for the sake of the Gospel except for John, who was persecuted and exiled on the Isle of Patmos for his preaching.
7. There is even testimony of ancient non-Christians, who though disbelieving the resurrection, gave testimony that the early Christians believed Jesus had risen from the dead. One such testimony was a letter from a father to his son, explaining that the noontime darkness (at the crucifixion, Matthew 27:45) was not from an eclipse, since it was a full moon at the time which made a solar eclipse impossible.

Nevertheless, from the very beginning, there have been people who have cried, “Fake News!” about the claims of Christ’s resurrection. The first doubters were the disciples themselves! They doubted the women’s claims that they had seen the risen Lord, until they saw him for themselves. We think especially of Thomas, who disbelieved the other disciples’ testimony, demanding to touch Jesus’ wounds himself before he would believe.

But the ones who cried, “Fake News!” the loudest were the chief priests who had sentenced Jesus to death and convinced Pilate to carry out the sentence. We are told in Matthew 28:11-15 that they actually bribed the guards they had placed at the tomb (Matthew 27:62-66) to report that the disciples had come and stolen the body. And so the “disinformation” campaign began and was accepted by those who rejected Christ.

One of those people was a man named Saul of Tarsus, who actively persecuted the first Christians. This enemy of Christ and denier of the resurrection, was confronted by Christ himself while on the way to persecute the believers in Damascus. The encounter and call by Christ to serve him, changed Saul into the greatest of the Apostles, who as Paul wrote much of the New Testament Scriptures and established churches around the eastern Mediterranean. His testimony and theological teachings have convinced many millions of the truth and meaning of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. The truth was too much for him to deny; he had to set aside his biases and pride and submit himself to the Truth, eventually giving his life as a martyr for the faith.

That’s what the Truth finally does. It comes out, and proves itself true to all who believe now by faith, and eventually to all, by sight. For we are told in Philippians 2:9-11 that the day will come when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

That’s not “Fake News,” but Good News! For on that day we will rejoice at Christ’s triumph and vindication, and at the final fulfillment of all God’s promises, which are “yes!” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). That’s something you can truly believe in: the Truth which Christ’s resurrection on that first Easter 2000 years ago made real.

May you have a joyous Easter celebration this year, as you celebrate the greatest Good News of all!

Now may the (risen!) Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: John 20 and 21

 

Today’s blog is from a sermon I preached at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church in Yuba City last Sunday, March 18th, the Fifth Sunday in Lent:

Have you ever had the chance to meet some well-known person, a celebrity such as a pro athlete or rock star? I have; in fact, I actually met several presidents before they took office, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, the Russian Boris Yeltsin (no collusion involved!), and Martti Ahtisaari (who became President of Finland and won the Nobel Peace Prize, in case you didn’t recognize his name!). But the real celebrity champ was a friend of mine who with confident boldness could almost always talk his way backstage to meet big-name performers – except for the time the Ohio State Police stopped him in his tracks from meeting the performers at the Ohio State Fair. They would not be fast-talked into letting him through. I was with him at the time, and for a moment I thought we were going to be arrested!

In last Sunday’s Gospel, we read about a group of Greeks who wanted to meet a famous celebrity of their day – Jesus of Nazareth. They approached one of the Disciples, Philip, and said, “We wish to see Jesus.” Now, we don’t know why they wanted to meet Jesus: maybe they had heard of his great miracles such as the recent raising of Lazarus from the dead; maybe they were attracted to what they had heard about his teachings; maybe they hoped that he was the long-awaited Savior, the Messiah. Or, maybe they were just thrill-seekers, wanting to add Jesus’ name to their list of famous people they had met.

We don’t know their motivation, though from the text we can learn a few things about them:

1) They were “Greeks” which could mean either gentiles, or Greek-speaking Jews. We are told that they were among those who had gone up to Jerusalem to worship during the Feast of Passover, which would have meant they were Jewish either by birth or conversion. Of all the disciples they could have approached, they chose Philip, who bore a Greek name and was from Bethsaida, a town in a region of Galilee where Greek was commonly spoken.  Philip took them to Andrew, who also had a Greek name.

2) Jesus treated their request with respect, not challenging or testing them as he so often did with the religious leaders like the Pharisees. That would lead us to believe their inquiry was due to genuine interest in Jesus, which he recognized.

3) They got more that they asked for, because Jesus laid down some heavy teachings about his impending death, including the purpose for his death and even the way he would die.

So, what did Jesus have to say to them that was so important? Let’s look at that by comparing what Jesus said to what celebrities today commonly talk about:

• Celebrities boast of all they have gained in life: fame, money, and accomplishments in their fields; Jesus talked of losing his life and what that would accomplish for our sake.
• Celebrities boast of their many fans, endorsements from other celebrities, and what future presidents they have met; Jesus spoke of his endorsement from God the Father.
• Celebrities glorify themselves; Jesus glorified the Father and said he would be glorified by him.
• Celebrities are raised up by adoring fans for their own benefit; Jesus said he would be raised up – on a cross – to benefit the world.

Jesus spoke clearly about his approaching death and compared it to a seed which falls to earth and dies. So why such a somber message from our Lord? Why would he say things that might scare off these potential Greek or Greek-speaking followers? The answer lies in the promises that came with his prophesied death:

1. First, he promised that his death was the seed whose death would produce much fruit. Jesus’ death was not going to be a failure of his ministry. It was not the end of the road for those who believed in him. It would not be a defeat, but a victory. His death would bring about much good by producing eternal fruit in the lives of all who would believe in him. Before coming to Jerusalem for the last time, Jesus made this promise to Martha, sister of his friend Lazarus who had just died. On his way to raise Lazarus from the dead, Jesus promised Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

How did his death accomplish this? In Mark 10:45, Jesus said that he, the Son of Man, came “to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mankind was held hostage by sin, death, and the devil, unable to free itself from the consequences of its sins, so the One who was without sin had to pay the ransom price in our place. He took our punishment upon himself, and we were set free. As Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

How abundant would the fruit of Christ’s death be? 2000 years earlier, when God called Abraham, he promised that all the nations of the earth would be blessed by one of his offspring; and Revelation gives us a vision of heaven populated by a vast multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, and language. The effect in the world is such that 2000 years after the small group of disciples and women watched their Lord die, the Christian faith has more adherents and is wider spread than any other faith ever.

2. The second promise Jesus gave that day was that God the Father will honor whoever follows and serves Christ. I’m reminded of the great scene in the movie, Chariots of Fire, in which the British athlete, Eric Liddell, refuses to run in his favored race because it was to be held on a Sunday. Everyone, even the King of England, appeals to Liddell’s patriotism, but he won’t run on the Sabbath. So instead, he runs on a different day in a different race, not his best distance, as his third race of that day. Just before the race begins, an American runner slips him a note that says, “It says in the old Book, ‘He who honors me, I will honor.’” Eric goes on to win the race. But the greatest honor was yet to come, for the following year Eric Liddell went to serve the rest of his life as a missionary in China, eventually dying in a Japanese prison camp.

Jesus didn’t say the honors would come easily; elsewhere he said that his followers had to take up their own crosses to follow him and that the world would hate them, for Christ’s sake. But the rewards of discipleship, of honoring God before others, will be great. Jesus promised that those who acknowledge him before the world, he will acknowledge before his heavenly Father (Matthew 10:32). Imagine how great that day will be, when we stand before the Judgment Seat of God: our name is read, and Jesus calls out, “It’s okay – she’s with me . . . or . . . he’s with me . . .”

3. The third promise Jesus made was that his death would defeat the devil and all the evil that rebellious creature had brought into the world. Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” By referring to Satan as ruler of this world, he is not denying his own or his Father’s sovereign ownership of all creation. He is referring to the fact that much of the world is living in rebellion against the true God and has made the devil their god, whether overtly through idols and demon worship, or more covertly through pursuit of wealth, material possessions, fame, pleasure, or power. To the world, the devil is their ruler; but Christ’s unjust murder by the powers of evil has revealed their bankrupt nature and brought judgment upon them. Christ’s death won victory over sin and the devil his resurrection completed the victory by defeating the wages of sin, death as well.

Of course, we still see the effects of sin everywhere in the world. It shows itself blatantly in hatred and violence, murders and wars. But it also permeates even the best of our efforts to live good lives, hurting our relationships and corrupting our institutions – whether political, economic, or religious. Even our own personal sins and mortality show that world is not yet freed of the consequences of evil.

But the difference is that evil is a defeated enemy. Like a rattlesnake that can still bite soon after it is killed, evil is still dangerous. But we know that Christ has won the victory, and that no evil can separate us from Christ’s love or final victory.

And what is the sign of Christ’s victory? His death and resurrection.

Recently I was in Indiana, where I drove past a tire shop that had a sign out front that read, “Jesus will rise, but our prices will not.” I was pleased to see a statement of Christian faith proclaimed publicly. Of course, I couldn’t help but silently correct it each time I drove by, “He already rose! It’s we who will rise, even if your prices won’t!”

As Jesus finished his message to the Greeks and those others who had gathered around him, he said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John tells us that Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die – being lifted up on a cross. But Jesus was also lifted up from the grave and from the earth at his ascension. Together, Jesus’s being lifted up means you and I will also be raised up from our graves, and lifted up from the earth to meet Jesus in the air, to be with him forever.

That’s quite a promise, and quite a message those Greeks took with them that day.

And it’s the message we should take with us in our hearts and in our mouths for the sake of all for whom Christ died. For we are ones who have “crossed” paths with the greatest Celebrity of all.

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: John 12

 

 

 

This is proving to be a very difficult article to write.

The first part is easy: to thank all of you who have been praying for my sister during her recent surgeries and for me during my 10-day visit to be with her during this trying time. Your messages sent by email and through Karen have been incredibly moving and encouraging; after about five in a row Karen sent them to me with her added note that she was tearing up just reading what you had to say. Maybe all of you should be writing blogs, instead of me!

Now comes the hard part: knowing what to tell you, and trying to put it into words that draw from our faith and the promises that God made in his Word that he would never leave us nor forsake us, that he would be a very present help in time of need.

First: deciding what to tell you. Without wanting to compromise my sister’s privacy, and recognizing that many of my reactions have been subjective, I can share just the basics: my sister went into her local hospital due to a mild heart attack and collapse of the arteries in her one remaining leg. After two surgical attempts to restore the circulation to the leg failed, the doctors determined that the leg would need to be amputated. This is about three years after losing her other leg. Knowing the blow this would be to her, and her critical condition, I flew out to be with her and help where I could. The doctors did amputate the leg on Monday the 5th. She came through fine surgically, but has medical conditions that still need attention and require her remaining under hospital care until she can be released. When she is stable enough, she will move to a rehab facility in the area.

Unfortunately, her medications and surgery have impacted her mental and emotional clarity. This has been as hard on me as was seeing her suffer before the surgery; I knew the amputation would relieve her pain and infection, but her subsequent mental and spiritual issues have no such clear ending point.

Through this all, we have prayed for a miracle, first that her circulation surgery would take, then that her leg could be saved, and now that she will recover and heal in every way.

During this time, I talked with one of our national church leaders, and after our prayer together, we agreed that we expect God to do a miracle in this situation. I still believe that God will do something powerful and amazing, but as the title of this blog states, “Just Not Yet.”

Faced with the apparent delay in answers to our prayers, I offer the following thoughts:

1. The fact my sister made it through three serious, back-to-back surgeries in spite of complicated medical conditions, is a miracle in itself. God answered our prayers and brought her through safely. (He also brought me home safely!)
2. We don’t know what God has in store in the days and weeks ahead. God is not bound to our timing, definitions of what a miracle is, or what kind of miracle is best for everyone. What I want to see may not be as good as what he will do.
3. The miracle may have already begun without my knowing. God doesn’t have to tell me everything he is doing. My role is not to approve his work, but to trust him completely.
4. This is not just fatalism or wishful thinking on my part: Jesus told us to call on the Father with all our needs in his name, and God will answer our prayers: “Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (John 16:23). He also encouraged us to pray, saying, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11) Jesus tells us to pray, and then sits at the right hand of the Father to intercede on our behalf (Isaiah 53:12, Romans 8:34, and Acts 2:33)
5. Dealing with my sister’s mental confusion and emotional sensitivity right now has forced me to evaluate my own response to her and her condition. While I have always loved her, we are very different in many ways, and I found that many of her responses to her situation have been difficult for me to handle. This has forced me to consider two things: one, how would I respond to having both legs amputated? And two, I realized better what unconditional love is about and what it demands. She is looking forward to being reunited with her pet dogs and cat, because they give her unconditional love. They don’t care what has happened to her; she is still their world to them. If animals can have and show such unconditional love, then so can I. After all, isn’t that the kind of love Christ showed for me? “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
6. As I wrote in my previous blog, my faith in God and in Jesus Christ does not depend on him answering my prayers. Along with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I say that our God is able to deliver us, “But if not . . .” still I will worship only him (Daniel 3). Likewise, as Job said in the midst of his physical and emotional anguish, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15), and “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) Therefore, even if there is no further apparent miracle, my faith will not be shaken.

Finally, please continue to pray for her. She has a long road to recovery ahead of her, with serious changes in her life as a result of the surgery. Please pray especially for a strengthening of the true faith in her heart and mind, that she may trust fully in Christ’s atoning work on the cross for her salvation. Let her have assurance of the greatest unconditional love of all, that of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And thanks again for your prayers!

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Matthew 7 and Job 1