January 24, 2021 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday                      Text:  Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Jonah wants an abortion.  Jonah wants God to do it.  He would never do it himself, but he supports the option remaining available for Nineveh, even if it means crossing state lines to Tarshish.  Clearly these Ninevites were a mistake – sinful and against the Israelites – unfortunate and unwanted.  One way or another, Jonah wants to see the Ninevites euthanized.

            Their continued existence makes him uncomfortable.  They embody his mistake.  Should he suspend his career aspirations to single parent them?  Should he be saddled with their responsibility?  Does he have any use for them?  Surprisingly he finds them quite important.  They matter.

            Their punishment matters – “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!” Jonah is delighted to cry out.  He camps outside the city and waits for the worst.  Their suffering matters to Jonah, to demonstrate his superiority.  Their mistakes are pawns to advance his agenda.  They are trophies to justify his self-indulgence.  They matter, but not as hearts and lives.  They matter to Jonah not for their own sake but for his.  Use them, but abort and euthanize when done.

            You matter too.  To supporters of abortion, you matter.  To advocates of assisted suicide, you matter.  To embryo experimenters and fetal tissue pharmaceuticals, you matter.  To power hungry lawmakers, you matter.  You matter to the consumer culture and sexual freedom.  You matter to crusaders for progress.  To hands that want to hold authority over life and death, you matter.  To sinful souls that long to play god, you matter.

            Your ambitions need to be exploited for their benefit.  You need their support for your political aspirations and they need yours to stay legal.  Your crisis is leveraged for their profit.  They need your insurance coverage.  Your rebellion and sexual choices validate their services.  Your unborn and elderly make great sacrifices to the god of choices; they can’t speak for themselves or are too old or frail to put up much an argument anyway.

            Your suffering warrants my freedom.  Because you sin, I should get to also.  I stand on the side of history.  Everyone wins when you let me use you.  Never mind that it looks like hell.  It only costs humanity.

            Rather than punish, God pursues and persuades.  Instead of condemning, He courts and convinces.

            “GOD’S LOVE MAKES EVERY LIFE MATTER”

            His love is big enough to make Jonah and Nineveh matter.  Where the Ninevites settle for sex scenes, God writes them into a love story.  Jonah angles for a divorce while God is already arranging a next date.  Instead of slinking into a one-night stand, God would have none of it and He serves up happily ever after.  Jonah and the Ninevites would accept spiritual prostitution, but the Almighty Maker of them all can’t stand any less than proposing marriage, and family as well.

            He wants to win their love.  He craves their heart and prizes their eternity.  “When God saw what they (the Ninevites) did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” (v. 10)  It only takes four chapters and three days and God moves the heaven and earth for Nineveh.  His Word secures their survival and salvation.  Faced with keeping Jonah or Nineveh at the other’s expense, God sacrifices himself and His justice instead.  All suffer loss, but only the loss of self, and they gain the other two for the price of that one.

            Your life matters as much as any other life.  Your entire being matters to God so He leads with the full-force of the Law, but He follows with the sweetness of the Gospel.  God doesn’t perform sleight of hand and make your obstacles disappear.  He sends Jesus.  He enters and involves Himself.  He sets His mind, heart, body, and will next to and in front of yours, because all of you matters.  Mary’s manger, violent cross and vacant grave show how much you – yes, you – do matter.

            Time and servanthood He inhabits.  In suffering and humility, He reaches the infant and elderly and unplanned and accidental ones, because your life matters right now and ever after.  With body and blood, He touches the harlot and Pharisee, because your life matters – earth and kingdom come.  He gives life to unwanted and unworthy and selfish, because your life matters – resurrection and immortality.  For better and worse and richer and poorer and sickness and health; to have and hold and love and cherish; from this day forward and even forevermore; and not even death do us part, because your life matters. 

            Jesus ascended but present, Christ enthroned but intervening, Savior imminent – your life matters and others just like you.  Their life matters because your life matters.  Our lives matter because His life matters.  Jesus life given into death was sufficient to save us all.  The same Word, Baptism and Communion grace us all.  Faith in Jesus saves us all.  Forgiven and redeemed changes world like it changes Church.  This Father, Son, and Spirit God of ours knows nothing other than love making lives matter out of once did not.

                                                                                    Amen.      

January 17, 2021                                                                Text:  1 Corinthians 7:29-32a

Dear Friends in Christ,

            We have some city slickers in our congregation but when I look at the cherubs in the sanctuary and those worshipping at home most of us are familiar with the farm.  We grew up on one, worked on one or lived near one.  So when I use this opening illustration and talk about silos/grain bins you will understand.

            You don’t see as many silos as you use to.  Today you see more grain bins.  Chopped up corn known as silage would be put in a silo to feed the cows.  Hay would be put in the loft of the barn and straw in a different part of the barn.  Grain would be in a grain bin.  Corn in one, soybeans in another.  Everything was kept separate from the other.

            We live lives that look like silos.  There is a family life silo and a work silo.  We have a church silo and a recreation silo.  Here is one for our role as citizens and another for our friends.  They are separate from one another.  The people we know at work are usually not the same people we know at church.  What we do at home is different than what we do at school or at our job.  How we use our money recreationally is different than the offering we leave at church.  Do you see how this works?  We live in silos.

            The problem with silo living is that Jesus is often kept out of parts of our lives.  We go to work and Jesus recedes.  We pull out our credit card quite easily but does our tithe come first.  We get caught up in fun that we neglect worship.  Politics and church do not mix.  We relegate Jesus to a church silo.  He is not guiding all areas of our lives and this is no good.

            We need a better way to conduct our day-to-day living.  The Bible as always has the answer, let’s take a look at . . .

“LIFE AS A WHEEL WITH JESUS AS THE HUB”

            The Apostle Paul writes in our text, “The appointed time has grown very short.  From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they have no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealing with it.  For the present form of this world is passing away.  I want you to be free from anxieties.”

Paul is encouraging that we live every day for Jesus.  Why?  Because the time we have left is “short.”

            Paul isn’t trying to predict when Jesus will return, but one day He will.  What a glorious day!  Tears and sickness gone.  Evil in hell forever.  No more bullying.  No more cancel culture.  Jesus will rise from the grave and a new creation will come forth.  Our bodies will be whole and healthy and we will be in perfect peace and safety.  I can’t wait for that day.  How about you?  Come, Lord Jesus.

            We live with that hope because Jesus has already risen from the dead.  On the cross He took on our death and hell.  He took all the evil and buried it in a tomb.  Then on Easter He burst forth in glory and life.  Be free from anxiety because you know what awaits.  There will be groaning pains as we are experiencing but hang on to the hope that will not disappoint.

            Yes, the world will pass away.  Before that the Lord calls on us to live in this critical time with Jesus in every area of our lives.

            Instead of living in silos, we live as if life were a wheel.  The hub is Jesus.  The cross is empty.  Jesus is present now in our lives.  With Jesus at the center everything revolves around Him.

            The spokes coming out of the wheel are the various areas of life we live every day.  Work is connected to Jesus.  Honesty and integrity.  Our money and stuff are not our own.  It is all a gift of Jesus.  Money decisions are made after the Lord receives what is due Him.  We respect our governing authorities because again He has placed them there.  Our recreational decisions include Him.  We vacation or travel with our children to an event and we ask – where will we worship?  Do you see how it works?  Live life as the wheel with Jesus as the hub.  Eternity is our hope and so every spoke is lived with Jesus and for Him.

            Time is moving on.  Shoveling on Sunday morning two weeks ago reminded me of that.  I’m in-between.  Two months ago a kid asked if I wanted the senior discount.  He got a not so nice look.  Ten days ago I told a man at the funeral I had been a Pastor here at Good Shepherd for 21 years.  He looked at me and said, “What, did you start in the ministry at age 16!”  No matter what age we are or feel the end could come at any time.  I guess as you age these thoughts creep into the mind more and more.

            Jesus could come back tomorrow, wouldn’t that be nice?  Or it could be 125 years.  I could have a lot more years or very few.  You as well.  That is not the key question.  The key question is this?  How do we live when life is so short?  Not as silos but as a wheel.  The hub is Jesus risen from the dead and the end is glorious.  The time now is critical and what an opportune time God is giving us to live with Jesus and for Him.          Amen.