On the Way to Wonder

The battle of the Gods!  What moves a god into action?  Perhaps the god’s reputation is at stake. Moses reminds God that if the people of Israel die in the wilderness, the people of Egypt will think God led his people into the wilderness but then was powerless to guide and protect them.  Moses’ real plea was not to be abandon.  God acted.  Elijah, on the other hand, calls for a contest between his God and the gods, Baals, of Queen Jezebel.  On Mount Carmel it was one prophet facing 400 priests of Baal.  Which god would rain down fire from heaven and consume the animal sacrifice?  Baal did not respond to his priests but Jehovah did.  How we long to see a God who demonstrates that he is real, active, and responsive to his followers in this world.

         In our political arena today we are debating who can give us the good life, return a healthy environment, balance the budget, control global warming, and act meaningfully on the global political scene.  Those are huge arenas that I suspect fall under the domain of God. 

     Grace Alone challenges our suppositions of what leads God to act.  We believe it is not just to protect his name or demonstrate his power over the factors in our lives.  Each morning as I watch the sun rise, I am reminded that God cares about the people on the other side of the globe even as he cares about me.  His sun shines on the good and the bad.  When rain falls I remember his concern for the earth and for all the hungry, not just me.  When a sparrow flies by I marvel that the Bible reminds us that not one sparrow falls from the sky without his awareness and we are more valuable than they.

         Grace is the word we use to describe a God who acts not out of interest for himself but out of concern for us.  God did not need to prove to the Israelites or the Egyptians that he could lead his people.  God did not need to prove to the Baal worshippers that he was powerful.  But he did and we read about it so we can remember, we are saved by grace, by God’s actions, not by the wonderfulness of ourselves.  We do not earn salvation but receive it with both hands, open and facing up to heaven.  May we go to the polls with humility and may we remember who really controls our universe.  Blessings.

“Aha!” moments are few and far between.  The lights go on.  The truth dawns.  We suddenly see the answer to the issue we have been chewing on.  For Martin Luther who lived during the 1500s, at the time the printing press was invented, who studied one of the hand copied Bibles – in Latin!, the lights went on when he read Romans 5:8, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  Sola gratia, grace alone.  God comes to me, dead in sin, unaware of him, and initiates relationship – not because of the wonderfulness of myself but because of the wonderfulness of him.

         I love to watch the TV serial, “Call the Midwives.”  About three times an episode some woman in the East side of London, in humble living circumstances, yells and screams as she delivers a baby, often at home.  Nothing fancy.  The midwives attend and are the cheerleaders. The man paces the floor in the other room.  Finally the baby appears and almost invariably the mother holds the little person and declares, “You’re beautiful!”  The man comes in and declares, “Perfect.”  The new, infant coos and we smile as all is right in the world for a few minutes.  Perhaps the parallel isn’t perfect but that idea of being totally unknown and undeveloped but loved for just being born gives some of the flavor of “grace alone.”  We are drawn into a world we need to learn to live in, with talents that need to be developed, and a family we need to get to know.

         Last week I shared about the paralyzed man who is lowered by friends into a house where Jesus is meeting the masses and Jesus heals him.  There is no indication that the man is a person of faith.  We know the friends believed and hoped Jesus would heal.  We know the leaders thought it a scandal that Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.  Take up your mat and walk.” But in the story, Jesus initiates the healing.  Why?  Because that is the nature of God.

         So if God is willing, why is the world not perfect?  Perhaps we have no friends willing to brave the censure of the crowd, willing to dig through the ceiling of the room, or willing to bring people to Christ not knowing the outcome.  Perhaps we ourselves believe we are beyond help in our area of struggle be that addictions, defeated relationships, or overwhelming circumstances.  And it is true that bad things happen to good people.  God is not a magician to make my life work and to make me be happy.  God, by grace, because he cares, is willing to walk with us on our journey as we put our hand in his.  May we sense his presence and his grace initiating relationship with us today.  Blessings.

Do you remember those little sayings that help us remember important truths?  “Lefty loosey, righty tighty” was one. My children would hold up their hands, thumbs to the center and pointer fingers up.  The left hand formed an “L” and they knew that was the left.  I memorized “Grace: God’s riches at Christ’s expense.”  This week we are going to look at the third “solae”, Sola Gratia, grace alone, that came out of the reformation. Ephesians 2:8, “ ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹ not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” Is the verse often referenced.

        Core to this point is an underlying belief in the character of the God we profess.  Is God distant and remote, treating us as his robots or drones?  Is God a super gas existing in the atmosphere that makes life work but is impersonal?  Is God or the gods like all the Roman and Greek ones, limited in scope and power and having super powers in one area?  Sola Gratia affirms God as merciful and proactive with creation, initiating salvation out of love for us.  God comes to us with sunshine, with mercy, with forgiveness.  We do not work our way to God by our good deeds.

        John Newton wrote the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace”, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”  Newton was a British, outspoken atheist and slave trader who changed, became a pastor and spoke out against slavery in the mid 1700s.  God came to Newton in his lost-ness and sinful life and offered Newton salvation. 

        Most of us would agree that we do not “deserve” nor have the power to make the sun shine daily.  We probably do not even deserve to be forgiven.  But we believe we follow a God who proactively comes into our lives to walk with us and to lead us to a better place (perhaps that means walking through death with us) because of who he is, “by grace.”  Perhaps a good spiritual exercise today would be to think of five ways our lives are better because the God of the universe walks with us and cares and reaches out to us.  And let us pray for a peaceful resolution to the upcoming elections!  Lord, be merciful!

In an article on the “Five Solae” of the Reformation, the author wrote, “The Sola fide doctrine is sometimes called the material cause or principle of the Reformation because it was the central doctrinal issue for Martin Luther and the other reformers. Luther called it the “doctrine by which the church stands or falls” (Latin, articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae).”  Rather than further ponder the meaning, I’m going to share one of my favorite stories from the Bible.

         One day I thought I was being spiff and tried to teach this story in a foreign language we were translating.  Four men had a friend who was paralyzed.  They carried him to the house that Jesus was teaching in but the house was crammed with people.  The men carried their friend to the roof, that was probably flat, dug through the roof and lowered the man down to the presence of Jesus.  Jesus seeing the faith of the four men, said to the paralyzed man, “Son your sins are forgiven.”  The audience was flabbergasted and mumbled about Jesus forgiving sins.  Jesus knowing their thoughts shows his authority by telling the paralytic to take up his mat and go home.  This is a marvelously intriguing story about faith.

         The women returned to the meeting the following week remembering the story very animatedly.  “Four camels” came into town with a sick man, they shared.  I was confused.  Had I truly talked about camels?  It ends up that the word for friend is “haal” and the word for camel is “haal” but with a different tone!  Whether the man came by camel or friends, faith works marvelously in this story leaving us with a picture of the dynamic of faith.  The friends believed and came to Jesus.  The paralytic believed enough to stand up afterwards!  The crowds were not so believing at first but amazed. “Faith is confidence in what we hope for (our friend will be healed) and assurance about what we do not see (Christ’s power to work beyond what we can even imagine).” Hebrews 11:1.   It works in us, through us to others, and impacts reality even as wind blows in the trees.  Let us not loose hope today as our faith responds to the challenges we face and may we bring others to Christ for healing.  Blessings.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is one of those questions children ask that shows the interrelatedness of two issues.  You cannot have a chicken as it comes from an egg but the egg comes from the chicken!  Faith that is so private, it cannot be known does not seem real.  Often to defend our faith, we turn to the two thieves on the crosses with Jesus.

         Luke 23:39-43  “³⁹ One of the criminals who were hanged there        kept deriding him (Jesus) and saying, “Are you not the         Messiah? Save yourself and us!” ⁴⁰ But the other rebuked him,         saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same       sentence of condemnation? ⁴¹ And we indeed have been          condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴² Then he said,    “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” ⁴³ He   replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The thieves were at the point of death and had no way to live out their beliefs further.  One ridicules and one pleads for mercy.  The latter acknowledges his guilt and pleads to be remembered.  “Today” is the response from Jesus.  “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Faith looks not to the works of our hands but to the state of our heart.  Comparisonitis, looking at my track record of deeds is always discouraging.  The good I hope I did, never outruns the list of uncompleted or forgotten deeds I should of, could of, might of done.  Sola Fidelis, faith alone, reminds me that God looks at my heart while people evaluate my deeds.  I find that comforting.  If I were to be grilled before the USA about every word I have written, every decision I have passed down as a parent, about my philosophy of parenting, I fear the grilling.  Jesus turns to the thief and to us as we know we have not done things right and says, “today.”  Thank you, Lord.

Don Quixote sang and I warbled along with him the song “To Dream the Impossible Dream”

“And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage.
To fight the unbeatable foe.
To reach the unreachable star.”

That song captures for me the secular explanation of faith, Sola Fidelis, that we are talking about this week.  

The Bible story that I love is about a little girl in 2 Kings 5.  She was captured in war and became a slave to the wife of the army captain.  The captor who separated her from family and the familiar had leprosy.  Like Don Quixote, this little girl, navigated her life with a “confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not see.”  The girl told her mistress about a prophet in her country that healed people.  The wife told her husband.  The husband told the king and the captain was sent to meet the prophet Elisha.  The faith, the hope, the confidence of that little unnamed girl forgotten by history but remembered by God, impacted her world as she held on to faith and “fought the unbeatable foe.”

Most of us are not that heroic in faith but I like this story because while faith may mean slaying a giant like David and Goliath, it may also mean just sharing our hope and faith in the everyday trenches of our ordinary lives.  The world will be better for our faithfulness.  We will be covered with scars most likely but we will also “lie peaceful and calm when laid to our rest.”

 Faith is not just a theory, a clinical fact we believe, but a confidence, life orienting relationship that impacts our lives and produces daily works of courage.  As you go about your journey today may you live in the impossible dream, knowing there is a God who sees and cares and empowers you to live.  May we be faithful like that little slave girl.  Blessings.

“Shazam!”  Have you ever had one of those moments when your whole world changes, the way you see life expands?  In the darling children’s Christmas story The Best Christmas Pagaent Ever  a family of unchurched children join the Christmas play and the one who plays the angel yells, “Shazam!” and appears to Mary to say she will mother the baby Jesus.  A life changing moment for Mary and many other lives too!

Like Martin Luther, I struggled with a child’s faith in an angry, distant God.  “Wait till your father gets home!”  Luther came to Romans 1: 16-17,

            ¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for        salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to     the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed       through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous          will live by faith.”

Shazam, Luther’s life was changed.  Faith, he realized, is not a moment when you begin to believe something, a new fact, but a lifelong journey of a reoriented life.  Sola Fidelis spoke into that fear that we must work our way to God, through good deeds or buying indulgences.  Our faith leads to good deeds out of the love we find in God, not a doing of good deeds to earn the right to be with God.  Faith alone became a pivotal cry of the reformation.

Has there been a moment in your life when faith became real?  For some raised in the church, it is a gradual transformation from doctrinal church truths taught from childhood to a living dynamic faith that under girds life.  For others it is a dramatic moment when truth breaks through. In either case we do not earn the love of an angry God but are released to live a life of love founded in a loving God.  Today there will be opportunities to help, to forgive, to accompany, to share and even more.  May you respond to the challenges of your day in the confidence of a God who loves you and walks with you.  Blessings.

Who do you trust?  I find a deep cynicism seeping into my thinking as I listen to political debates, aids on which product is going to make me thinner, or am encouraged to get a second opinion.  All think they are telling me the truth as they see it…I hope.  But I am slow to believe and trust.

In the Reformation, Luther proposed that our beliefs must rest on truth found in scripture only.  Not just one verse but themes that go throughout Scripture.  We looked at scripture last week.  Sola Scriptura is our first foundation stone.  Second is Sola Fideles, Faith Alone.  This tension between faith and works is found in the question of the rich young man who wanted to know what he should do to inherit eternal life.  In the book of James, the author asks, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?”  He continues on to say, “Is the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”  This week we will look at faith.  We do not work our way into heaven (indulgences) nor idly cast our vote for Jesus as if it were an election.  Somehow faith and works are molded together in our journey.  We do not do good to get to heaven but our faith is the foundation that is revealed in our actions.

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)”  The example in youth meetings is blind-folding a youth and telling them there is a chair behind them.  They may believe but when they actually sit down, trusting that the chair is there and will hold them, that we see faith being lived out.  James talked about Abraham who at an old age believed God who promised a child by his old wife, Sarah, so slept with her and they conceived.  Rehab believed the spies in Jericho and called her family to her house and hung a scarlet scarf out of her window during the falling of the walls.  Faith believes but then entrusts our life to that belief.

Must I keep doing good deeds to earn God’s love or because I know God loves me, I am motivated to do good deeds, that is the question.  It is a bit of a chicken and an egg discussion.  This week as we live out our Christian beliefs, let us take time to reflect on how motivated we are by fear of punishment or love to please a caring God.  Is our faith a historical statement that we keep in our scrap book or is it the foundation to daily decisions?  Blessings!

Presidential elections in the USA are coming.  How many days now?  Who’s voice or party will we pay allegiance to – for four years anyway?  That question alone will drive us to our knees in prayer!  The Reformation was also grappling with a similar debate – who is the ultimate voice of authority here on earth, given that we will all say we are Christian and believe in God.  But God cannot be seen and communicates through representatives who do not always give the same message.  Luther contended that the answer was Scripture not a human representative like the Pope.  We stand on Scripture alone.  Luther’s famous quote from the Diet of Worms in Germany started, “Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scripture…” he would not recant his writings.

Jesus in his third temptation in the wilderness faced a similar situation.  The devil offered Jesus everything if he would just let the devil be the ultimate voice of authority, if Jesus would bow and worship Satan, if Jesus would recant from his call.

            ⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him   all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹ and he said to him,      “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship   me.” ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

         ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Jesus quoted Scripture.  He did not show all his glory to impress the devil.  He did not refer to history and his role as creator.  He referred to Scripture.  His appetites had been tempted.  His identity had been tempted.  And now the question of who would he bow to.  We believe Scripture comes from God and we bow only to God.  That is not so easy because life is messy.  It is not easy to know how to choose or how to discern God’s will in any given situation.  I often say, I wish God would send me a fax that is specific.  God is not making robots that are programed with his instructions but followers who choose his way.

So the question becomes who are we worshipping today?  Scripture ultimately helps us sort that out.  The word of God is a light unto our feet and a lamp upon our way.  It teaches and reproofs and instructs us.  It has historical depth, honest transparent stories of lives of real people who failed and were forgiven, and it is thematically consistent.  As we face our challenges today, may our beacon of light in this foggy world be “Scripture Alone.”  Blessings.

Identity theft is a big security problem with modern technology.  When we get that email sharing the news that the security system has been compromised with some company our credit card is associated with, we cringe.  No amount of “sorry” compensates for the work of getting a new card and getting information tied to it correctly.  Our reading today from Matthew 4:5-7 challenges Jesus’ identity.  The devil demands Jesus prove his identity, not with a social security card or the secret answer to a security question, but by some act that would prove his deity.

            ⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the          pinnacle of the temple, ⁶ saying to him, “If you are the Son of       God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

         ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
          and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
         so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

            ⁷ Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your        God to the test.’”

Interestingly, Jesus does not tie his identity to his heritage, to his credentials of job assignment, or pull out heavenly witnesses.  He refers to Scripture.  One of the questions underlying the Reformation was a question of identity. It is involved in the question of indulgences, paying by money or good deeds for the sins of our life to remove years in purgatory before entering heaven.  Is my identity secure as a child of God or can it be stolen by some sin I do so that I am put at a social distance from God?

What does my identity depend on?  The Bible says that believers are “children of God” and that is information kept in the heart of God, in relationship.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  A challenge by Satan to our identity is a challenge to the character of a God who holds us.  Romans 8:38-39 assures us that not even life or death, angels or demons, height or depth, of anything else can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.  Our identity is secure.  Scripture confirms identity and so we stand on Scripture and not others sources like human testimony, social security cards or whatever.  May you rest in that security today!  Blessings.