Pastors don’t have an easy job, if they take it seriously. They have many duties, but of highest importance is the stewardship of God’s Word with respect to their congregation.

I have great respect for pastors in the Lord’s Church, and I thank God for them.

I do have a request, though, of any pastor that is inclined to delve into a little politics from the pulpit…please don’t.

We are grown men and women who are fully able to decide political issues on our own. We don’t need a biblical spin on the main political issues of the day, unless you are going to site an issue as God’s law.

“Christians shouldn’t bomb this country or that country, but maybe this country or that country.” “Christians should look the other way with respect to this dictator, but not that dictator.” “Christians should snuggle up to this political party and not that one.”

 Bunk.  Pure, plain, and simple…bunk.

Go home and call up your pals and hold rallies for Party X and rent an ice cream truck with loud speakers and call loud and long to elect ‘Bob Smith’ for President. Have at it. But when you are in the pulpit, please leave ‘Bob Smith’, or whomever, in the ice cream truck.

The pulpit ought be reserved for the Word of God and the Word of God alone. The Bible says nothing about ‘Bob Smith’, and nothing about who we as a nation, should or should not fight in the defense of our citizens, and our way of life.

I know there is a lot (not enough) of talk about the “theology of the cross” vs. the “theology of glory”, and those of us who think we understand this ‘Christian faith’ thing have come down on the side of the cross…but that is not really who I am, and what I believe.

I basically am a theologian of glory. I am constantly thinking about myself and my ’situation’.  I enjoy and am pleased with all the “progression” and ”victories” in my life, while I bemoan the losses and the pain. I blast the Almighty for His unwillingness to fix all the problems in my life and the lives of my family members. Instead of thanking God for all of my pain and adversity, I am angry with Him.

Do I even want to try and understand the reasons, or believe that “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called for His purposes” ?   Not really. I am too busy with my own purposes to give any time to His purposes.

I am basically a “theologian of glory”. The only way I could ever be a “theologian of the cross”, is if He were to make me one. And thanks be to God, that He does make me one. He puts that ”theologian of glory” to death everytime He gives Himself to me in the law, and the gospel. He makes me a “theologian of the cross” everytime He gives Himself to me in His supper. He makes me a “theologian of the cross” everytime I return to my baptism, which carries me through life the way a mother safely carries her baby in her loving arms.

I am a “theologian of glory”, who is basically content to stay that way. But that is not the way that my Lord would have it. He is not content that I stay that way. He has commanded me not to stay that way, and invited me to receive unto myself the “theology of the cross”… the pain, the suffering, the sorrow and lonliness of death…and then the joy of the resurrection and new life.

He knows full well that I basically do not want any part of His cross. Once again (as it has always  been and ever will be) our Lord has taken care of everything. “This is my body…this is my blood…do this,  and I will work my love and forgiveness in you. I will create in you a clean heart, against all your struggling and complaining.”(my paraphrasing)  That is how our Lord makes us into “theologians of the cross”…he takes us there, and then He dies for us, and then He enjoins us in that death for our own good.

 If Christian faith says ‘done’, and if Christian religion says ‘do’, then which one would require a guide?

But if you’re going to join the ‘done’ crowd (not much of a crowd, to look around at the American Christian landscape), you won’t need a guide. For done means… done. “It is finished” , actually means …it is finished.

“Oh, that’s just your justification.” Now you just cant’t live any way you want.”  I beg your pardon, I actually can live any way I want.

“Not as a Christian, you can’t!”

Sorry…wrong answer. You certainly can live any way you want as a Christian, and indeed you already do. (live anyway you want)

Each of us lives our lives exactly as he or she desires. We haven’t suddenly stopped our ’sinful activity’ for a more righteous way of going about our daily lives.

You might have stopped (or cut down) cursing after you became a Christian, and that is a good thing, but you still commit a smorgasbord of sins in your daily walk with Christ.

“So what? What does that have to do with the price of eggs in Alaska, Mrs. Calabash?”

Just this… you want to walk and live in the Spirit of God? Then you don’t need a roadmap, the Spirit is the One who is driving. You want to take the wheel… then you’ll need a map, a compass, and a fuel gage. The Holy Spirit can crawl in the backseat and take a nap, while you focus on your endeavor.

If the Spirit of God cannot motivate you to live as God desires, then no guidebook will do the trick.

I’ve said this before, here on this blog and elsewhere, ‘you already know what to do’.

You know exactly what to do …you (and I) just flat out refuse to do it.

But the One who did do it…still does it!

He still works His love and forgiveness in us. He still still comes to us, does He not, in His Word and sacrament. He is not relegated to some act He did …way back there. He is not locked onto the pages of a book, with ink long ago dried.

Either the Word of God is living and active (as the book of Hebrews says)…or It is not.

If It is not, then you’d better get a hold of that guidebook for living, and you’d better get busy!

                              - Steve Martin

“Can we throw out the map, then? NO! There are clearly delineated thornbushes on the map that we ought stay out of. And we need to keep the map and refer to it often to realize that we are lost (because of  our unwillingness to trust the map maker), lest we delude ourselves that we are headed in the right direction.     

“Purpose Driven”, “Jesus Shaped”, “The Ten Principles for more Godly Living” …or whatever self focused program or project you can think of, have as their outcomes, the affirmation of the self.

That’s a pretty bold statement. After all, these programs/projects/mindsets have helped millions of people both within the Church and outside of the Church, right?

Maybe.  Maybe not. There is no doubt that those on the receiving end of whatever “good work” was wrought from a “Jesus shaped” view of the faith have indeed benefited from this idea of what Christianity ought be. Who can argue with giving a homeless guy the shirt off your back? That is a wonderful thing for the guy that needs a shirt. But what about the giver?  Was it such a good thing as far as he was concerned? Maybe. Maybe not.

What’s the alternative, then? How will we ever get people to act in the manner that God requires of them?

Do you think letting the Spirit move someone who has been freed by Jesus’ death and resurrection is enough?

“The law which came on tablets of stone is the dispensation of death.”

“Christ is the end of the law for all those who have faith”

 ”The law was our custodian until Christ came.”

 ” We are not children of the slave (the Law), but of the free woman (Grace).”

  “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…”

 ”For freedom, Christ has set us free.”

 There are many verses in the Bible that constrict, and suffocate, and eventually kill (law verses). And there is a good purpose for those passages. For we need to die to ourselves.

And then there are verses in the Bible that bring life (gospel verses). Gospel verses destroy the condemnation and death that comes from law verses. Gospel verses give us the new life that we need. Gospel verses give us freedom. 

When I hear verses like the ones highlighted above, I feel the chains of the law falling from me, and I can breathe again, freely.

“Biblical principles”, or any “guides for living”, in the context of the Christian faith are formulas for death…for they are the law. There is no life in them.  It is dangerous to tell someone that there is nothing they can do to justify themselves and that they are free in Christ, and then slip the law in the backdoor by calling it a “guide”, or “principles for living”. 

There is nothing wrong with guides, and there is nothing wrong with principles, and there is nothing wrong with the law in the context of our creaturely existence. But mixed with our Christian faith they steal the freedom and spontaneity that the Spirit inspires by grace, and replace it with fear and bondage.

Thanks be to God for the freedom He has won for us on that bloody cross. May God bless and keep all those who proclaim and defend this unpopular, but gospel truth.

I just want to make sure you took that all in. They saw Him raise people from the dead …and yet they did not believe.

So… what will you say to someone to convince them that Jesus is God? Do you have some sure fire arguments that will make them believe? Or, are you going to tell me that it doesn’t work like that, and that you are just giving them some good arguments to soften them up?

The Holy Spirit is not quite capable of breaking down someone’s defenses without a little help from us and ‘our reason’. It’s like the big guy holding another guy, so that the little guy can wallop him.   Is the Holy Spirit ‘the little guy’ ?

  Is the Word of God so weak and impotent that it needs help from human reason to accomplish it’s purposes?

Some say they know of some that came to faith with the help of some apologetic prodding.
In all of the arguing for Jesus, was not the Word present there in some form? Could it have been the Word of God, the gospel promise, that brought that person to faith…if even he really did come to faith. To have one’s confession of faith is not to know one’s heart.  Jesus Himself tells us that “all men are liars.”
We cannot know for sure who the believers are. We know who the baptised are, and we give people the benefit of any doubt, and trust that their confession is true. But that is not really the point. The point is that God is the One who calls and chooses us, and that He has chosen to do that in Word and sacrament.  Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it  is the power of God for salvation…”

The Word of God vs. human reasoning. Or, the Word of God, plus a little help from human reasoning. Knowing what you know about God and how He works, which one is more plausible? Which one in more scriptural?

Bearing the Yoke.

 Listen in to Pastor Mark Anderson’s sermon  titled   ‘the Yoke of Religion‘.  (17 mins.)

What exactly did Jesus mean when He told us that He wanted to give us rest and that His yoke was easy?

Hey, that’s great!  Where do I sign up!?

Every Christian worth his or her salt wants to know the will of God for their life, right?

Of course you do! You are a Christian! You are all about doing the right thing!

OK. We’re going to let the cat out of the bag ahead of time. You won’t have to sign up for seminar X and pay $75 to Pastor Gnosticfeld and buy his latest book, “Green Socks, Red Socks…know for sure which ones God wants you to wear today.”

Here is the super-special, hard to find out secret that all Christians everywhere are yearning for…

towards the end of Matthew 22, our Lord Jesus says it Himself when asked what is it that we need to do to fulfill all righteousness, ” Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And, love your neighbor as yourself.”

Also in John 6 verse 28,  the people asked Jesus, “What must we do to be doing the works of God?”  Jesus replied, “Believe in the one whom He has sent.”

There it is.   You want to know God’s will for your life?  “Love God and your neighbor as yourself.”   You want to do God’s will?  “Believe in the one whom He has sent.”

“Yeah…that’s great…but what color socks should I put on today…?”   Holy mackerel!!!

There has been a lot talk recently in the state of California over the implementation of a new ‘hands free’ cellphone, while driving, law.

I started to think in terms of how this might play out if we were to think about ‘hands free’ in a theological context. Maybe this in an indicator that I have a problem, but that’s a discussion for another time.

If ‘hands free’ (on our part) is what God is after, when it comes to a right relationship with Himself, then it seems to me that we might have a problem. As creatures, we have a tactile nature. We operate in terms of our senses. We must touch, smell, taste, hear, and see to get along in life. We can get by without one or two these senses, but in general, I believe it is fair to say that these senses help us to get through life and to enjoy it as much as possible.

 If we look at our relationship to God as something where we have had a role to play, or something whereby we must do certain things to maintain the relationship, then we might say that there is a certain ‘hands on’ aspect on our part.

But if God tells us that our hands are dirty and that He doesn’t want us to take a role in establishing or maintaining this relationship, then what are we to do as ones that are in need of something concrete that we might even know that the relatioship has been established and is still ongoing?

Well, we can get busy trying to prove to ourselves and others by our ‘fruits’, that we are now Christians and that Jesus is our Lord. We can start climbing the ’spiritual ladder’, getting closer to God each day by our studies of scripture, our prayer, our good works. We can use Jesus as our supreme example of what is means to belong to God, and to live our lives each day in such a manner as to show that we really have the Holy Spirit within us.

But this is very dangerous. To be up on a ladder and also somehow still be ‘hands free’ is very dangerous indeed. To use a ladder one must hold on. One must grasp the siderails for safety as one progresses up the rungs to each new level. ‘Hands free’ is virtually impossible. How could one ever expect to eat dinner up on a ladder without some elaborate scaffolding system or maze of ropes tying one off for safety. Could one eat the bread and wine of Holy Comminion while climbing a ladder?  I guess one could, but it might be a very shaky excercise at best.

The ultimate ‘hands free’ devices are the ones that God has given us. The sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are designed by God, for us, for our benefit. They are pure gospel. They do exactly what God intends be done for us without our dirty hands making a mockery of the Holiness of God. They give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. The high price of death being paid for us by our Lord Jesus.

If you want to go to God, go ‘hands free’. Trust in His hands. The hands that have done, are doing, and will yet do for us everything that is necessary.

That frees up our hands for the work that was always intended for us to do… that of loving and helping our neighbor to the best of our ability.

‘Hands free’ where God is concerned…’hands on’ where our neighbor is concerned.

Was I close…or did I really miss the mark on this one?

Thanks!

    - Steve M.

There is a lot of ‘talk’ in the blogesphere these days, as well in the churches, of a ‘Jesus shaped’ spirituality. “Doing” our best to walk like Jesus, to talk like Jesus, to act like Jesus, to do the things that Jesus told us to do.

That certainly wouldn’t be a bad way to live, would it?  Of course not, in fact it would be a great way to live!

There’s just one little problem. We flat out refuse to live that way.

 ”What would Jesus do?” Well, first off, none of us knows what Jesus would do in any particular incident that might arise in our lives.  Secondly, we are not Jesus…we are us.

I have said it before in this blog that I am reminded of these things whenever I come across a homeless person that I will not take home and feed and clean up. The same homeless person that is in every city, large or small, that no other Christian will step outside of his comfort zone to take care of. The same homeless person that might have been saved from a life scrounging through trash cans, or from drug abuse, or from mental illness that comes with living alone on the streets.

With so many professed Christians in this country you’d think that there wouldn’t be any homeless left to wander the streets.

I do imagine that the ‘Jesus shapers’ have taken a large number of these poor folks off of the streets and into their homes. They are not concerned with anyone stealing their goods, or attacking them physically, for Jesus would not have feared those things. They are not concerned about having to spend a bit more of their hard earned money on a stranger if it means bringing someone back into society and giving them back their self respect and possibly a job and possibly getting them back to church or in one for the first time. They are not concerned about what other people in their family, or what their neighbors might think. Jesus certainly would not care about what others might think.

“Well, I don’t have to do all these ‘Jesus things’ perfectly, I just have to make an effort.”  What is that all about? To me, that kind of talk is a cop out. That kind of talk is feel good talk for the self. A kind of balm for the conscience. That kind of talk allows me to continue to play the game. That kind of talk is not countenanced when Jesus says, ” Be perfect as thy Father in Heaven is perfect.” What kind of games will we play with that one?  All kinds.

I have a better idea. Why don’t we let Jesus be Jesus, and we just settle for being us?

Why don’t we just live as best we can, doing the best we can, and trust that the Lord will be there with us in all things. Why don’t we realize that our job is not to try and impress the perfect God with our feeble efforts at emulating Him, but rather we are to live our lives and help our neighbors wherever possible. And when we fail to do so in a way befitting our calling then we are forgiven.

Isn’t that enough?