February 26, 2017                                                                Text:  Matthew 17:1-9

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

One of the things I’ve learned in over 25 years of being a Pastor is that the church year has a certain flow to it.  There are the high feasts of Christmas and Easter.  Pentecost/Confirmation time in our church has an expectation feel.  Even the beginning of fall and a new year all have something the worshipping community can grasp on to.

Not Transfiguration Sunday.  Most years it falls somewhere in the gloomy days of February, the New Year has past and it is not quite spring.  The last two weeks being an extraordinary exception.  We also tend to have people gone, vacationing down south, family obligations, winter hangover.  Attendance figures I looked back on for Transfiguration Sunday bear this out.

Plus how important can it be when we have immigration, The President vs. the media, the state failing again to pass a budget, spring training baseball and is this the year the ISU basketball team makes the NCAA tournament?  Add on to that winter health concerns, kids activities and what outlandish thing will be said on the Oscars tonight?

Well, my friends, the Transfiguration of Jesus is big.  Dr. Louis Brighton stated it well:  “It is not by accident the church has chosen the…Transfiguration as a concluding text to the Epiphany season as a transition from the glorious light of the Epiphany to the darkness of the Passion of its Lord.  The church’s mission is the proclamation of the saving presence of the Lord Christ in the Gospel.  But this mission is carried out in the midst of suffering (the very thought we don’t want to hear).  The church proclaims the Gospel while bearing the cross; it proclaims life while facing and experiencing death . . .”

Cone along up the mountain to see . . .

“WHERE WE ARE GOING”

There was a lady who was meeting with her new Pastor.  She asked if she could have a church service when she died.  “Of course,” he said, grabbing his date book, “What day do you want?”  What you have here is a failure to understand what someone else is trying to communicate.

After six days Jesus takes these three disciples up the mountain.  The question is:  “six days after what?”  It was six days after He told them of His suffering, death, and resurrection and Peter rebuked Him.  Jesus has carefully outlined for these men what was going to happen from His crucifixion, resurrection to His Second Coming.  This trip to the Mount of Transfiguration was made so they would ultimately understand who Jesus was and that God in the flesh does exactly what He says He’s going to do and He is in control of everything.

One of the things for us to see before we get to where we are going is the importance of listening to Jesus as He reveals himself in the Word.  I am talking about maturing in our knowledge and application of Scripture if we are going to deal with the problems and concerns of life and a nation that is in the painful process of decay and collapse.  Knowledge of Christ ends a lot of confusion, and a lot of unnecessary worry.  Let me elaborate . . .

We all know where we are going, don’t’ we?  Eternal life.  We are on the road to glory…just like the glory Peter, James, and John saw on the mountain.  And it is more important than your college education, your next vacation, your early retirement!  The Road to Glory!

But we need to keep this straight.  The Road to Glory requires that we first bear a cross.  Jesus teaches this to the disciples.  Jesus’ return to Glory with the father will require Him to bear a Cross…a Cross for the sin of the world.  We also bear a cross on the path to Glory.  That is why Peter wanted to build the shelters he didn’t want to leave the glory for the cross-bearing.

American Christians don’t do well with this Biblical truth, do they?  We are success oriented.  We determine God’s blessings by our abundance and prettiness and numbers.  John Tunis said, “Losing is the great American sin.”  That mindset filters into the church.  Let’s build some shelters, gets lots of people with lots of money, grow big and successful and call ourselves “The Church Inc.!”

And Jesus reminds us, “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14:27)  We are going to heaven someday – glory.  The truth is that here we bear the Cross for Christ.  If we are faithful to Him and His Word…we will bear a Cross.  From the world’s perspective that may make us losers.  It’s not the American way!  It is the way of Christian disciples.  And strangely enough it is the way to ultimate victory and true success – if I might be so bold as to use that secular term.  Paul said, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Rom. 8:18)

And God the Father was pleased with the Son because the mission of Christ to salvage us was well under way – as God pleased!  A mission of terrible suffering and pain and loneliness and rejection – punishment and death – for our sin – so that we would never have to face punishment and eternal damnation.

“When they lifted their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.” (v. 8)  Nothing but Jesus.  In the good times and bad times…through the smiles and tears of life…in the midst of loneliness and pain…He’s always there.  He’s in the Holy Bible.  He’s in the bread and wine.  He ‘s in the water that brings newness of life.

Are things a little clearer?  Do you see the importance of the cross and on the other side, it’s glory?  And no matter which side…there’s Jesus.  The reason we will get to where we are going.

Amen.

February 19, 2017                                                                Text:  Matthew 5:38-48

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

            I recently ran across an article from twenty years ago entitled “The Devil is One Radical Dude.”  Here is a portion:

            “…World Industries, a California skateboard manufacturer, includes an interesting brochure with the products it sends to customers. Titled ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ the enclosure urges buyers to sell their souls to hell, according to Religious Rights Watch. 

            “On the brochure, a smiling devil explains what happened in heaven when he was banished from God’s presence, in words that might appeal to the young, who probably are the principal users of skateboards.

            “First off,’ says the devil, ‘they set up a bunch of dumb rules, and then they imposed a really strict dress code.  I’ll wager people must be quite bored up there, but hey, that’s what they get for being good.’”

            Twenty years ago.  The mockery of Christianity has been a constant drum beat since then and the sounds just keep getting louder and louder.  The vulgarity of society just keeps growing.  Everyone wants to demonize and destroy anything that gets in the way of their pursuits.  As was discussed at my Pastor’s Conference this week, we all seem to be yelling at one another but is anything constructive coming from all the whining and hand wringing?

            I am asked by the Lord to stand up in front of you today and preach on Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson on retaliation and loving our enemies.  Not an easy task in today’s culture.  But then God’s Word is not always easily digested.

“HARD TRUTHS ABOUT GETTING EVEN”

            So we get to the hard truths right away in this section of Matthew.  If someone slaps us we are to turn the other cheek.  If we are forced to go one mile we should go two.  We shouldn’t refuse the one who wants to borrow from us.

            Right away when you hear these words, many of you are thinking “But Pastor..”  Then come your questions.  “Do I just let others beat on me?  Do I let them destroy my family?  Should I support those who are lazy and steal?”  The commentator R.C.H. Lenski writes, “The law of love is not intended to throw open the floodgates to unrestrained cruelty and crime…Love is not to foster crime in others or to expose our loved ones to disaster and perhaps death…Christ never told me to restrain the murderer’s hand, not to check the thief and robber, not to oppose the tyrant, or by my gifts to foster dishonesty, and greed…”

            Remember, in this text we are dealing with retaliation.  This is not a demand for “non-resistance”, but pictures a disciples mastery over his heart.  This is not about defending oneself or loved ones.  This is about getting even.  We are to walk away from it because it fills the heart with hatred and anger.  Aren’t there a lot of things we should be walking away from in today’s society?

            Jesus then tells us another hard truth.  He wants us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Was that your first thought when you heard Madonna and some of the other speakers at the women’s march?  When you watched the University of California being vandalized did you begin praying for those committing the destruction?  When I ask someone to stop using God’s name in vain at a ballgame and they assault with more profanities, these are not my first thoughts brothers and sisters?  What about you?  Hard truths, don’t we know it?

            Jesus wants us to love our enemies with agape love, the kind of love that God extended to us.  Love for the unlovable.  As Paul writes, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…” (Rom. 5:8, 10a)

            God took pity on us in spite of our separation from Him, and in some cases, hatred and denial of Him.  Here we are with anger at God for those times he doesn’t do what we think he should be doing.  But He loves us nonetheless.  He is always there to forgive and claim us as His own through Faith in Christ.

            That’s the kind of love we are to demonstrate to others.  Again, from Lenski:  “I can by the grace of Jesus Christ love them all, see what is wrong with them, desire and work to do them only good – to extend Christ’s love.”

            We can never accept the evil the world loves and pursues.  And we will always be looked upon as hateful by the world because we do not walk in its thinking and ways.  So be it.  But, regardless of what the world thinks and charges against us, we are to love them because “…God so loved the world…”

            There was a day when the great lawyer Daniel Webster was on his way home from the courts when he decided to stop by and see his daughter who was terminally ill.  As he entered the room, she looked up and said, “Father, why are you out on this cold day without your coat?”  Webster left the room and cried out, “Dying, yet she thinks of me!”

            That is what Jesus did on the Cross.  Dying, He was thinking of us; thinking of the whole world of humanity.  And we need to think about that.  Such are the hard truths about getting even.  God help us!

                                                                        Amen.