Matthew 2:1-12 A Star in the East

How in the world does the story of the Magi coming to see Jesus relate to the present day? Who comes today to seek Jesus in Bethlehem? Maybe when people see the rising of the star of Christ, a person or a nation who truly follow the teaching and way of Jesus, this attracts them to come and worship him. When we let our light shine, displaying a bright example of love and mercy, healing and comfort, people come and discover him in the house of bread (beth = house + lehem = bread), which is the Christian church. Luther said that the oral preaching of the gospel is the star/light that leads people to Jesus, and it remains over him alone. The truth teaches the pure grace of God and pure faith instead of the law.

Luther identified Herod as being the first non-Judah leader of Israel, fulfilling the prophecy that would bring Shiloh, the messiah (Gen. 49:10). Luther placed the pope in Herod’s shoes as one attempting to destroy the Christ child through requiring obedience to church doctrine and teaching over faith in Christ alone. Who is Herod today? Herod reminded me of Judas Iscariot, anyone who pretends they love and worship Jesus by kissing him on the cheek, but then they turn around and betray him by lifting the law higher than him. Who lifts the law higher than Christ today? Who acts like they want to worship him, when in fact they want to silence him for their own benefit?

Brother Martin credited the ability of the Magi to recognize the messiah in a humble, insignificant child to faith that goes beyond reason or natural intelligence. He says ‘nature wants to feel and be certain before it believes; whereas grace believes before she perceives.

Back to the star as the gospel: we noticed that verse 10 says when the Magi saw the star, they were overjoyed. They were overjoyed before they saw the baby? The star attracted them. The good news drew them to where he was laid, gave them joy, and then they met him personally.

Luther mentions that the gospel teaches salvation is by faith alone. Adding other requirements to it is to weaken faith’s power and risks losing it in favor of works. We can be joyful in knowing that obedience and works are not the route to find him. When we finally meet him, obedience and works become our offering to him.

When they got to the house (not the stable? not the manger?), they worshiped him and gave him their gifts. And then, as always, God finds a way to warn us so we don’t go back to the Herodian (self-serving) way of thinking.

This is one of Luther’s sermons in which he refers to the scriptures as “the swaddling clothes and manger (#36) in which he was wrapped and laid; that is, the writings of the prophets and the law; in these he is wrapped, they contain him, they speak only of him and bear witness of him; they are his sure sign”… Blessings - PWM

John 21:19-24 - Using the Gifts We’ve Been Given

We fudged a little this week and added verse 18 so we knew what Jesus was telling Peter. After asking Peter three times if he loved Him, Jesus repeatedly told Peter to feed His lambs or sheep. How many times do we have to be told that’s what we are supposed to do if we love Jesus? Throughout Luther’s sermons, he says the way we love God best is by loving our neighbor. FEED MY SHEEP! Have we learned anything yet? And then Jesus told Peter what kind of death he was going to glorify God. That’s an interesting way to put it. Glorifying God in our death? Is this physical death or spiritual death to the life our flesh desires or thinks is best? How will we glorify God, whether it’s physical, fleshly, or living? Jesus says, “Follow me.” How do we do this? How do we follow Jesus when He cannot be seen? Luther says by being the best we can be – if you are a husband or a wife, best the best husband or wife you can be. If you haven’t been specifically called to use your gifts in the ministry of the church, you be the best spouse, child, parent, laborer, employer, etc. that you can possibly be. This is how we glorify God until we see Jesus calling us to follow Him in another direction. He won’t pull us away from being a good spouse in order to follow Him. If church work or sacred acts are conflicting with our ability to be a good spouse, parent, or other, we should spend less time with the religious stuff that really doesn’t do anything for God anyway. We love God when we love our neighbor, spouse, child, friend, etc. We also don’t need to be trying to be someone we are not. That does no good to try to be someone else. God has given us gifts, formed us in our mother’s womb for a specific plan that will bring glory to God. If we deviate from that plan, we won’t experience the kind of joy the Father planned for us. So how in the world do we know what “plan” to follow? Peace. Three early church fathers, separate from each other, in different centuries, came up with similar methods of discerning the spirits. In a nutshell, follow the path that brings peace deep inside you. If a choice creates anxiety, distress, unrest, uncertainty, hesitation, or desire for worldly gain – that’s not a desire in line with God’s will. On the other hand, when making a choice you find a sense of calmness, interior peace, confidence, attraction to God in all things – these are movements of good desires. Many times “no decision” is a decision, and a good one. More time may be needed for God’s answer to surface, so one can follow Jesus. One of the main themes of this passage is that Jesus tells Peter he is to use the gifts he has been given and not worry about what God has planned for others. Keep your focus on what God is calling you to do and do it well. It’s none of your business if another disciple appears to have fewer sacrifices to make or won’t die a violent death, but you will. People are not content with their own work, and complain that someone else has it better. God’s plan is perfect and each has his or her own part in it. Blessings - PWM

John 20:19-31 Jesus Appears to his Disciples & Thomas

This has been a hectic week. Vacations tend to make the following week busy. And since I downloaded Internet Explorer 8, it's messed up my pasting into this blog. Time burns faster than fuel. In this lesson, we spent time talking about Jesus breathing on the the disciples, saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whosover sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whosoever sins you retain, they are retained." To forgive means 'to let go.' Does this mean we are in control of giving out God's forgiveness or our own? Some thought letting go of the wrongs others commit against us brings us peace and unburdens us of the wrongs we feel others have done to us or their neighbors. Some thought forgiveness was more for our benefit than the benefit of the forgiven. This may be true, but Luther said that the giving of forgiveness is not for the benefit of God, the church, or the individual, but for the receiver only. To know the offenses you have committed against someone are completely forgiven is more likely to make you return to that person to attempt a relationship than if you felt there was something you owed. Isn't that what might attract more people to God - to hear they are forgiven without qualification, without payment, without obligation to pay back once you got in the door? Why aren't more people attracted to the church today? Is the church an image of forgiveness? Brother Martin says our only law is love. There are too many Lutherans who disagree with him. Thomas is known and minimized for his doubting attitude, but is that the point? After all, the other ten disciples had seen, heard, and touched Jesus a week earlier, and this was the only reason for their belief. Thomas simply asked for the same evidence. Maybe Jesus wanted a teaching event because he wouldn't be able to hang around for two thousand years - especially since he was fully human - so everyone could see him. And yet, we do see, hear, and touch Jesus in tactile ways now through the body of Christ and its members. That's why it's important for us to share the times we know Christ's presence in and through each other - so people will hear us talking and claiming to have seen him, and they will also want to see him. People are blessed when they believe without seeing, but Jesus seems willing to comply even with those who want evidence. Just ask. Luther pointed out that Jesus does not break down doors to get to us. By this he means he doesn't change the outward affairs of government or nature, but in orderly appearing to us. Jesus never forces his way into our hearts.We come to him because we have heard he is kind, able to help us, and willing to help us. As the body of Christ, is this the image we are giving? Peace in Christ - PWM

John 16:23-30 - The Practice of Prayer

“In that day”, the day Jesus is talking about is when he returns from the grave, the resurrection, when their grief will be turned to joy. In that day the disciples will no longer ask him for anything because they will know that Jesus has opened the door of relationship/communication with the Father and they can go directly to the Almighty with their requests. The reason they had not asked anything in Jesus’ name yet was because he had not made them righteous in God’s sight in the crucifixion, and until the resurrection / receiving of the Holy Spirit, they had not trusted completely that He was the Son of God, Mediator to the Father.

Luther finds five requisites for true prayer in this text. First, the foundation for prayer is the promise of God to hear and answer it. Why would anyone approach God with requests if they did not believe God could provide an answer? And since the promise has been made, Luther questions why anyone would fail to take advantage of the riches offered since God is more willing to give, and even more than we ask.

The second requisite is faith by in the individual that the promise is true. This may be obvious, but it may be the reason why many people don’t pray. They don’t have faith that God will be true to God’s promises. Yet, faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit, so how can we criticize those who don’t pray? If you haven’t been given the gift of faith, why would you pray? So, if you have been given the gift of faith, then why not pray for high and lofty things? Like Elijah, who prayed that it not rain for 3 years – he became lord of the clouds! By faith. Our trust grows when we taste the sweetness of God’s promise in seeing prayers answered (1-#6).

We talked about answers to pray that help us to grow in our confidence in prayers being answered. Weeks ago, our church prayed for a preschool mom who had an inoperable brain tumor. Yesterday, she found out it was gone. What happened to it? She said to thank our church for praying for her. God is glorified when we proclaim the power of prayer and give evidence for God’s presence and power and activity in our world today.

A third requisite for prayer is to be specific in naming what we want. Jesus taught us to pray for specific things in the Lord’s Prayer. And we pray for needs, not necessarily frills. I suppose the more specific we are in our requests, the more clearly we can see God’s answers, and yet we can’t tie God’s hands with time limits, etc. One of our participants said her brother was very sick with a painful ailment, partially self-inflicted, and was living with her after her husband died. And she was praying that God would take him because she was so distressed about his discomfort. One day when she was at work, he fell asleep and dropped a cigarette, which burned down her house and killed him. She felt like she’d prayed for the wrong thing, and lost her house as a part of that ‘answered’ prayer. Maybe we should be careful what we pray for? Yes, but also what good came out of having to move? She moved out of Chicago to western KY where she’s in a wonderful neighborhood and gets to fish whenever she wants. Didn’t it all turn out good?

The fourth requisite is that our prayers arise from the depths of our soul that reveals the true desires within us, not just spoken words that are read from a page. The words are important to start the process, but our deepest needs are offered in wordless prayers in which the Spirit intercedes for us and which we cannot even speak. That’s pretty deep desire. Yet this is the truest prayer.

The fifth requisite is that we ask in the name of Christ. What he means by this is that we ask, knowing that nothing we have done or can do makes us worthy to approach the Almighty. But we ask, knowing that Christ has interceded for us, and God hears because we love Christ, the Son. Those who pray long, beautiful, and many prayers merit nothing. It is only because we trust our prayers will be answered for the Son’s sake and not our own sake that makes us worthy to receive answers.

Overall, the more we pray, the more we see the promises of God are true. So our faith grows in proportion to our prayers. Start praying, and don’t stop. Blessings, PWM

Update – Blogging the Gospels with the help of Martin Luther

If you’re checking this blog out, here’s what I’m doing: Last year I read Martin Luther’s Church Postil, at least his sermons on the gospels. I saw a different Luther, and heard a different voice. He was teaching local clergy to help them with their sermons, but he was also preaching to the people. Instead of trying to figure out his ‘theology’ and apologetic to Rome or the scholastic community, I wanted to hear what he said to his congregants. I was pleasantly surprised, as much as you can be when trying to wade through the length and breadth of his messages. Luther was no biblical literalist. The Word spoke to him in ways academia might consider superfluous today. Through 2008, I wrote a prayer every week based on his sermon(s) for the lectionary text for that week. The prayers were provided on Sundays for parishioners to pick up and use during their personal study/prayer time during the week. This year, I’m leading a weekly study on the same gospel texts. We are trying to determine how the gospel text speaks to our lives today, and we consult Luther’s thoughts to see if they add anything to our own ideas. This blog highlights some of the things we talk about and tells some of the more interesting things Brother Martin teaches in his sermons. You can find Luther’s sermon on the links in the right column. The fastest way to find Luther’s sermon is to scroll down the left column at the sermon website to find the appropriate Sunday’s lectionary text, and then click on it to move to the sermon location on the right. I hope you’ll be blessed somewhere along the line if you choose to follow it. Peace in Christ - PWM

In a Little While - John 16:16-23

Four times, Jesus says the words ‘in a little while.’ We are comforted when we know trials and difficult times will only last for a little while. Jesus knew and we know the disciples were going to experience despair for three days when Jesus was taken from them. When you are in the beginning and midst of His absence, it feels like an eternity. But not to worry – in a little while, He will return in resurrection joy. How many times do we have to experience this feeling of His leaving us to figure out that if we will only trust His words to us – "in a little while you will see me again." Isn’t that part of the answer? It isn’t that He has left us, but usually we have left the presence of God in favor of sin, or simply following our own way. We can’t see Him when we depart from Him in distrust. And yet, He finds a way to open our eyes to His constant presence. Trust and wait patiently for His return. Every time He returns, our trust/faith gets stronger. Luther suggested that the disciples’ understanding about Jesus was hindered by their thinking that He was still going to establish an earthly kingdom, and they would be lords with Him. To go to the Father means Jesus enters the immortal life where time and the needs of the body are no more, and He can rule in the hearts of all people without the need for food or sleep. Luther equated the ‘world’ with the scribes and Pharisees who find joy in opposing Christ because they were always bothered by His teaching, and found no joy or peace wherever they interacted with Christ. Brother Martin liked the image that the Gospel is repeated in us – Christ dies in His human form in us and then rises to new life to reign in our hearts. He cautioned us to not judge ourselves or our faith according to our feelings as if comfort is lost and sorrow will not end when we sense His absence, but hold onto the words ‘in a little while’ when our sorrow shall be turned into joy, for Christ will arise in our hearts again (3-#32)…soon. Peace - PWM

Christ’s Kingdom and the Office of the Holy Spirit - John 16:5-15

Luther makes some interesting points on this text. One of his observations is that the world is blind to the reality of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Sin is actually unbelief, and other sins flow out of this root. Unbelief is lack of trust. When we do not trust Jesus will provide for our needs, we take matters into our own hands and steal, or work seven days a week. When we do not trust a relationship founded in God is sufficient, we seek to fulfill our need for relationship outside the boundaries of marriage and commitment to one person. When we do not trust God has set in place a system of consequences that follow wrongful actions, we take vengeance into our own hands. So those who trust in God through Jesus Christ have given up sin and their actions are motivated by love for God.

Righteousness is not good works alone because not all works are done gladly, willfully, joyfully, or with the right motivation. What is in the heart is more important than the outward actions. And even more important, for Luther, is that Christ has gone to the Father to mediate for us. Righteousness isn’t so much about our works making us any more worthy, but that Christ goes to the Father on our behalf. This causes us to love Christ and our works arise out of this love. The world doesn’t know how to judge rightly until it understands sin and righteousness. Reason is not able to decide what is right or wrong before God because it always relates righteous action to good works. Nothing is good that doesn’t come from Christ (who is love) or the Holy Spirit. Righteousness is having a pure heart more than outward actions, even though it always leads to outward actions.

Another point Luther makes is that Jesus rules a spiritual kingdom, not an earthly kingdom. That’s why he had to go to the Father, so people wouldn’t expect Jesus to rule a worldly kingdom. And yet, so many people think Jesus is coming back to rule the earth. This is where the Holy Spirit is needed as the teacher/counselor.

Concerning the office of the Holy Spirit, we can know any teaching and truth is of the Holy Spirit if it glorifies Christ as being known through his word (4-#75). The Holy Spirit’s work is to teach of the spiritual kingdom and to glorify Christ (4-#61). And Luther says the office of an apostle is teaching only, it cannot use worldly power (3-#4).

We asked the question: so, how do we hear from the Counselor? The word of God is one way, and our consciences are also aids to knowing what God wants. When you remember that the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy, kindness, goodness, patience, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, your actions that generate feelings or conditions other than these are suspect. The bottom line is that if we trust in Jesus Christ to be a gracious God to us, we will love God with all our heart so we will want to follow all his commands, which results in loving our neighbor. Grace and peace - PWM