The Lutheran Review

Psalm 23, Our Resource

Stewardship Series III

Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

            Martin Luther wrote of the psalms, “Would you see the holy Christian church painted in living color… and put into one little picture? Then pick up the Psalter, and you have a fine, bright, pure mirror that will show you...your true self, God himself and all creatures.”  For Luther the Psalms were a never ending resource for life and faith.

            Our theme today is Resourced.  When we read, “The Lord is my Shepherd” we picture Christ the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us becoming the resource for all our wants and needs in life even unto eternal life.  With the Lord as my shepherd I shall not want.  God the giver of all good things gives me all the good things I need to support this body and life.

But we think we need more than the shepherd gives.  Our eyes are always on the other side of the fence, where pastures are presumed greener.  When we raised sheep on the farm, it wasn’t enough to put up a fence with strands of barbed wire, that held the cattle in.  Woven wire was needed for the sheep; otherwise, they would venture into the alfalfa field and literally gorge themselves to death.  We are, after all, sheep who have gone astray, everyone of us going our own way.

It’s against our appetites and desires that we confess that the Lord is my shepherd.  The sainted Martin Franzmann began a Thanksgiving Day sermon declaring, “We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.”  Then he asks, “Why, then, do we give the appearance of being pastured on weeds? Why are we such worn and draggle-tailed sheep?”  He cites a couple of reasons, One is lurking paganism, “If we have good weather in June we will pay in January…if things are good now, it can’t last…If things are bad now, it had to come.  The second problem is the perspective of the flattened nose.  If God gives us 99 percent good and 1 percent bad, we flatten our nose against that 1 percent…We are like a person who sticks his nose in a dish of ripe limburger cheese and the whole world stinks.

From such a perspective we can’t see that God has not abandoned this world, this flock, nor myself.  Rather than abandoning our stumbling, fumbling world, God entered our pasture.   Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, laid down his life for you and me, his straying sheep.  Notice, I said, “his straying sheep.” We may abandon God for a moment, a day, a year, a decade, but God has never abandoned us.  The cross on which the Lamb of God was crucified always stands as our resource, like a beacon guiding us back into the flock.

But our lurking paganism and the perspective of the flattened nose makes us look at ourselves and our life and how I think it should be. We make our own comfort the center of all things.  We are like the princess in the fable.  She had 20 mattresses under her, and under the 20^th mattress was one dry pea.  When they asked her how she slept, she said, “Terribly.” It’s all well and good that our Good Shepherd died in agony on the cross.  But it’s this one little pea under 20 of God’s cushioning blessing and grace that makes our whole life one sleepless night.

  However, the one and lasting truth is that the Lord is my shepherd and he leads me to rest in green pastures and beside quiet waters.  There my shepherd revived my whole being in the life giving waters of Holy Baptism.  Here in the word I come to him with my spirit exhausted and my life weary from the pace and problems, the worry and anxieties of the week.  I come worn down.  The foundation of my faith is weakened by the battering events of the week.  Here God’s grace in Jesus Christ, my Shepherd, flows out to me and causes my life to be restored.  He leads me in paths which convey me to my salvation.  He does so by leading me to himself.  For it is Christ who said that he was drawing all people to himself on the cross.  There upon the cross I see God’s Savior, my Savior.  The resource for my life.

Yes, he is the resource for life even in the dark valley’s where death casts it long and thick shadow.  I recall a photograph in a restaurant along I-80 in Iowa.  In the foreground is a pastoral scene of cows grazing on green grass amidst the rolling countryside.  But in the background, emerging out of the clouds is a funnel moving across the rolling pasture land directly toward the grazing cattle.

Sudden descent into the valley of deep darkness can happen to any of us.  However, even there My Lord, My shepherd is not absent.  “You are with me.”  Baptism and our faith does not guarantee a pathway which leads around the dark valleys of life.  But it does promise the presence of the Lord with me as I proceed through the dark valley.  It is not you and me who walk that lonesome valley by our self.  It is our Lord, Jesus Christ, who did make that trek alone and abandoned that he might now lead us through it.  He knows the way.  He is the way.

This same Lord is also the perfect host.  In the presence of enemies he sets a banquet before me-even the last enemy death.  He anoints me with the joy of his presence.  He provides me with an overflowing cup of his mercy and forgiveness.  The meal I take in Holy Communion is a prelude to the great banquet I will attend in eternity with the Good Shepherd.  Thus our coming together with others as “the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand” to worship and sing praise to God anticipates the day when we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

            In Scotland, so the story goes, a church sent one of their more gifted sons to study to be a pastor.  They would pay his whole way, if only he promised to come back and be their pastor.  So it happened.  There came the day when their favorite son led the worship.  When it came time to read the 23^rd Psalm the kings English rolled off his tongue like drops of honey.  The people cheered, clapped and knowingly nodded to one another in approval.  The next Sunday the reader was an elderly woman of the community, stooped and wrinkled.  The kings English came forth in halting and stumbling words.  The people did not cheer and clap.  Rather they nodded their heads in rapt silence, many weeping.

            After the service, the young pastor asked the woman why the people nodded and wept at her reading and clapped and cheered at his.  The old woman answered, “You, young man know the psalm well, but I know the shepherd.”

  Know the shepherd.  The shepherd knows you and you shall not want.         

  

     

 

Cardinal Resurrection

 

“Now it is done.  Now the story ends.  And there is no way to tell it.  The art of fiction is dead.  Reality has strangled invention.  Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”

The above words well express the epic journey of the St. Louis Cardinals from 10 and a half games out, to twice be down to their final strike in the sixth game of the World Series, to a hometown boy winning the series MVP.  However, the above words were written by Red Smith in 1951 in response to the New York Giants winning the National League Pennant on Bobby Thomson’s bottom of the ninth inning home run.  The St. Louis writers have sought to write in the same poetic terms as Red Smith, but unlike the Cardinals themselves their words, though good, have fallen short.

Perhaps Becky is right.  I should preach this weekend on how the Cardinals came back from the dead, were resurrected to new life and now reign in victory.  Perhaps the story of Jesus’ resurrection is the frame of reference for this unlikely resurrection on the green pastures of the ball diamond.

I must admit that one time I did use Red Smith’s description of Thomson’s home run in a sermon.  Perhaps the joy and celebration of Cardinal fans gives us a glimpse of the joy and celebration which will be ours in our resurrection upon Jesus’ return.

   

 

Three Hymn Writers

 

As we near the end of the church year we likely will sing,

“Wake, awake for night is flying.”

The watchmen on the heights are crying:

“Awake Jerusalem, arise!”

Midnight hears the welcome voices

And the thrilling cry rejoices:

“Oh, where are ye, ye virgins wise?

The Bridegroom comes, awake!

Your lamps with gladness take!

Alleluia! With bridal care yourselves prepare

To meet the Bridegroom, who is near.” (LSB, 516, st. 1)

“Wake, awake,” known as the King of Chorales, was written by Philipp Nicolai while pastor in Westphalia, Germany. He served the congregation in Unna in the 1590’s during the time of a plague that killed 1,300 members of his congregation. He died on October 26, 1608.

Johann Heerman, a poet and pastor, is also remembered this day. He died in 1647. His town was plundered four times during the Thirty Years War. Despite all these perils he wrote 400 hymns. During Lent we sing one of his best known hymns.

O dearest Jesus, what law hast Thou broken

that such sharp sentence should on Thee be spoken?

Of what great crime hast Thou to make confession,

what dark transgression? (LSB 439, st. 1)

Finally, we remember Johann Gerhardt one of the greatest hymn writers of the Lutheran tradition. He became a pastor in Berlin in 1656. Though an excellent preacher, he lost his position when he refused to sign a doctrinally compromising document issued by elector Friedrich Wilhelm. Gerhardt wrote 133 hymns. He died on June 7, 1676.

We sing one of his best known hymns on Good Friday.

O sacred Head, now wounded,

with grief and shame weighed down.

Now scornfully surrounded

with thorns, Thine only crown.

O sacred Head, what glory,

what bliss, till now was Thine!

Yet, though despised the gory,

I joy to call Thee mine. (LSB 450, st. 1)

 

Stewardship Series II, Nurture

Stewardship Series II

Nurture

I Peter 4:7-11

             At the seminary Friday a young man in hooded sweatshirt was driving a machine fertilizing the lawns.  It reminded me that I needed to provide some nutrients for my daffodils, azaleas and other plants. While winter passes and all above ground is dormant the roots and bulbs will be nurtured.  With the lengthening and warming days the nourished plants will be ready to emerge and leaf out producing a wide variety of beautiful blossoms.

            Today our theme is nurture.  Psalm 1 compares us to a plant growing in the nutritious word of the Lord.  Such a person is “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither…”  At the baptism font we were planted beside the river of the Lord.   There, the flowing water of baptism drowns our old person, allowing a new person to daily emerge living before God in rightness and purity forever.  Baptism is like the Meramec Springs at St. James, a constant source of spring water producing a never failing stream for our daily nurturing.  But that is only the beginning of the nutrients that God uses to nourish our life in Christ’s death and resurrection.  Eugene Peterson offers his take the first psalm, “You chew on Scripture day and night.  You’re a tree replanted in Eden…always in blossom.”  As if Baptism and the Word of Scripture didn’t offer sufficient nurturing, God provides for our dining pleasure the very body and blood of his son Jesus Christ.  In the sacrament we receive from his table, food for the forgiveness of our sins, our life and salvation.

            It’s of import that we use the nurturing grace that God gives.  Peter writes, “The end of all things is at hand.”  We are living between two great bookend events. First, Jesus who came announcing, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.” Jesus established his kingdom on the throne of the cross wearing a crown of thorns.  Peter writes, “(God) has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave.”  The other book end is Christ’s return in glory and sitting on his glorious throne.  Between those two great comings, God’s kingdom calls us to live a balanced life “preparing our minds for action and being sober-minded.”

            When I used to go the gym and work out I was often amazed at the some of the conversation.  They often talked about how much they drank that weekend.   I could never put it together why they worked out all week only to undue it on the weekend.  They thought that such binge drinking would not affect their performance in the gym, in the classroom or office or whatever their job might have been.  Peter says that we are called to live self-controlled and sober lives for the sake of our prayers.  When ones prayers Sunday morning are for deliverance from a headache and a spinning room, that is hardly a life where in everything God is glorified.  For you and me, to live our life in the Lord, it’s important we do not waste the Lord’s nurturing word and sacrament with a life that is poisoned by strife, divisiveness deceit and reviling.    

       “Above all,” Peter continues, “keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” Recently, the soap opera All My Family ended its more than a forty year run. I read an article that said that Erica Kane, one of the characters in the show, had been married 12 times.  12 times Erica declared  undying love, a love frequently spoken and 12 times easily broken.  The article also mentioned that Susan Lucci, who played Erica Kane, has been married to one man for over forty years.  That’s more like the love Peter is talking about in our text.  This is a love that is whole hearted, single minded and full bodied.  It’s a love that like a team of horses strains forward in the harness to pull a load toward its destination. Such love is full of action, and reaching out to other people.

Love that covers a multitude of sins is found in God’s love shown us in Christ.  We might paraphrase Hebrews in saying, “for the joy set before him Christ strained in the bonds of love toward the cross.”  When we receive that love in faith the words of psalm 32 apply, “Blessed is the one who transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”  In Jesus our sin is covered by his sinless life, death and resurrection.

            Now laying aside our sin we nurture one another by laying their sin aside too.  We extend that single minded, whole hearted, full bodied love which we have received from Christ to one another.  Thus we practice a stewardship of God’s grace.

            What does the nurtured life look like?  It means welcoming one another and others with outreached and open arms.  When Jesus returns at the end of time, one of things Jesus will look for is hospitality.  He will say, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”  Remember that redheaded guy who showed up here earlier this year?  He had a lot of knowledge about the church.  He kind of made himself at home and you welcomed him.  He was with us until Easter and then he was gone.  I wonder who he was.  Of course, there is that verse from Hebrews, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

            The nurtured life is also a life of the stewardship of God’s varied graces.  Each of us has received gifts.  Peter says, “Use them to serve one another.”  Or to put it another way, nurture one another with your gifts.  We don’t produce any of these gifts from within ourselves.  God calls us to use them by the strength he supplies.

Now we may not know what our gift is right off the bat.  We may even have to try this or try that to discover them and likewise discover what we aren’t gifted.  Well, when we discover it, God calls us to use those gifts to serve one another.  I remember Stan from Marshfield, Wi. He had the gift of giving.  He gave and he gave and the Lord kept replacing what he had given away.  Before we left Marshfield Becky and I took him and his wife Barb out to eat.  We paid for the meal.  Stan expressed that it was a strange feeling, because he always felt more comfortable being the giver rather than receiver.  As stewards of God’s varied grace nurture one another that we might all grow in Christ.

            The result will be “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.  To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.”                    

 

St. James of Jerusalem, Brother of Jesus and Martyr

 

At His resurrection, Jesus appeared to his brother James, (I Cor. 15:7). Some believe that is when Jesus’ brother first came to faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

James played a vital part in the first conference at Jerusalem. Some Jewish believers had come to Antioch in Syria where Paul and Barnabas were preaching the gospel. These visitors insisted that the Gentiles must not only believe in Jesus, but also be circumcised. Acts 15:2 records, “Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them.” Talk about an understatement.

The matter of Gentiles conforming to Jewish Law was taken up at a council in Jerusalem.

The apostles and elders gathered to consider the matter. Again in an understatement we read, “After there had been much debate…” Peter stood up and declared that the Holy Spirit had also come to the Gentiles. So why was anyone putting a yoke on these Gentiles that even we Jews could not bear?

Peter concluded, “We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

Finally, Barnabas and Paul shared what God had done among the Gentiles. The whole assembly fell silent and listened

Then in a display of churchmanship, Jesus’ brother James shared his judgment that they ought not the load down Gentile Christians with the burden of Judaism. However, to ease the consciences of Jewish believers the Gentiles should avoid things polluted by idols, sexual immorality, and not eat what has been strangled or still containing blood.

James demonstrated churchmanship, a virtue vital in every age of the church.

Heavenly Father, shepherd of Your people, You raised up James the Just, brother of our Lord, to lead and guide Your Church. Grant that we may follow his example of prayer and reconciliation and be strengthened by the witness of his death; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 

Passing Through Things Temporal

 

Prayer of the Day for proper 24

O God, the protector of all who trust in You,

Have mercy on us

That with You as our ruler and guide

We may so pass through things temporal

That we lose not the things eternal;

Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord,

Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,

One God, now and forever.

How has it been going this week in this temporal realm through which we are passing?

This afternoon I was feeling overwhelmed for a time by a campaign our church is launching to reduce our indebtedness.  On another front I’m feeling like St. Paul must have felt when his plans for his missionary trip in what is now Turkey, kept running into roadblocks.  It wasn’t an evil spirit putting up the blockade, but the Holy Spirit.  Finally, a man from Macedonia appeared in a dream or vision and it all became clear.  He was to cross the Aegean Sea and take the Gospel into Greece.  We have things planned to launch in our ministry at Immanuel, but it’s like the doors are locked and we need the Holy Spirit to show us the one that is open, or create a new one for us.

Isn’t that what we .prayed for on Sunday?  We trust that God is merciful and will rule and guide us in our lives and the life of the church. Through his guidance and rule we will not lose the things eternal as we face the things that are temporary.  Part of our prayer would that we are able to know the difference between what is temporal and what is eternal. 

Our prayer is prayed through Jesus Christ who is our ruler.  He it is that lives and rules with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Our goal while passing through the temporary is to spend eternity with our one God.    

This and That II

 

It’s a cool, windy, misty and cloudy day in St. Louis.  Good time to write about stray thoughts that refuse to be corralled.

I’m still not able to get my head around a comment in the council meeting last week.  The church has a large lawn area with some very unlawn flora growing.  It’s regularly cut during the summer, but otherwise not put to use.  In our planning the last year one of the ideas was to use part of the area as a community garden.  When the idea was mentioned at the council last week, one member said that the community behind the church would never allow it.  The people along the street behind the church keep a watch on things at Immanuel Chapel.  If they would see corn stalks growing they would not like that at all.  Draw deer and raccoon and what not.

I counted us blessed when we lived on the edge of town in Marshfield, Wi. with a field behind us.  Likewise, when we lived in the country outside Collinsville, IL, with corn, wheat and soybean fields bordering our yard on two sides.  

We really have the world upside down.  Offering a place where people might come and raise their own food and experience working with the earth, suddenly became a bad and dangerous thing.  Just across the street from the church parking lot are at least ten acres of largely unused asphalt parking lot.  The businesses have gone elsewhere but the buildings and the asphalt remains.  Nearby a former auto dealership has left behind several acres of asphalt also.

So it would seem that before we cultivate and allow anyone to plant productive plants on the church’s property, we will need to cultivate the folks in the neighborhood behind the church.  Well, it’s one of the things we have been planning anyway.  We will just have to add another bottom to the plow.

Was God mistaken or have we been translating Genesis 2:8, 9 & 15 wrong, “and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…and the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden TO WORK IT AND KEEP IT.”

Perhaps God meant to say.  “And the Lord God asphalted the land and set the man in the middle of a parking lot to sweep it and to ensure that no tree pleasant to the sight and good for food be allowed to grow.  Only the thorns and thistles that grow between the cracks will be allowed to flourish.”

In a world so upside, that the right side up where life abides and abounds appears a threat, such a world can only be saved by God himself.  Oh yes, God already did that by raising Jesus from a grave located in a garden.

         

 

 

St. Luke, Evangelist

 

October 18^th is the day the church remembers St. Luke, the Evangelist. Some churches hold a Service of Health and Healing for Luke was a Gentile physician. He was a follower of Jesus but not one of the 12 disciples. He was a companion of Paul. The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are attributed to him. More than one-third of the New Testament comes from the hand of the evangelist Luke. Tradition says that he was one of the seventy commissioned by Jesus. Some think that he may have been the other disciple with Cleopas whom Jesus met on the road to Emmaus that first Easter evening. Tradition also says he was a painter, that he preached in Bithynia (in what is now northern Turkey bordering the Black Sea), and that he died at the age of 84 in Boetia (northeastern ancient Greece).

Luke’s symbol is a winged ox.

Though we don’t know much about Luke we do know, “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We also know, “What man of you having a hundred sheep, if he loses one…” or “A certain man had two sons…” or “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.” Our faith would be less sweetened had Luke not recorded Jesus’ life for Theophilus.

Almighty God, you inspired your servant Luke the physician to reveal in his gospel the love and healing power of your Son. Give your church the same love and power to heal, to the glory of your Name; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Addendum: Chuck Berry is 85 today, “Go, go Rock and Roll.”

Identity

Stewardship Series

The Very Essence of Faith and Life.

Ephesians 3:1-12

If I said, “Look at those Cardinals.”  What would look for?  If this winter, I said, “Look at those Cardinals.”  What would you look for?  If I were in Rome and said, “Look at those Cardinals.”  What would you look for?  The same word identifies more than one thing.   

Identity is important to us:  My social security number identifies me as someone not born in Missouri.  At two doctor’s appointments this week they wanted a photo ID.  We need our birth certificates for identity.  Our Baptismal certificate identifies us as someone who has been washed free of sin in those quiet waters.

Today we begin a series in connection with our Partnership in Ministry Appeal entitled, The Very Essence of Faith and Life.  Today our focus is on IDENTITY.

Ephesians 3 identifies us as Christians who are chosen and called by God.  St. Paul writes, “I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace given me by the working of his power.”  Paul writes from prison.  He appears to be in the grip of the Romans authorities, he is really in the grip of Christ Jesus, “the prisoner of Christ Jesus.”  God chooses and calls throughout the Scriptures.  Moses in the burning bush.  God identifies Gideon hiding in a wine vat for fear of the Midianites, as a man of valor chosen to free Israel from the threat of the Midianites.  The prophet Jeremiah writes, “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’”  Jesus said to his disciples, “Follow me.”  Later, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last.”  God has chosen and called us.  He says, “I know you by name, you are mine.”

God has called us to be His son, His daughter in Christ Jesus. We recognize our identity in Jesus Christ.  I remember a scene from a movie in which an interviewer asks a man to tell who he is.  The man listed all his accomplishments, his job, his family etc.  The interviewer persisted, ‘But who are you.”  The man is totally at a lost to answer a question about his identity.  Everything he thought identified him could be removed and lost.  But when we recognize our identity in Jesus Christ, we have an identity that we are able to count on.  Christ is the one and only person who will never let us down.

Identified as chosen and called by God in Christ Jesus marks us as stewards.  Paul writes, “You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation…”  God desires Paul and all followers of Jesus, including you and me to understand our identity in Jesus Christ as stewards.  A steward is not the owner, he/she is not the one in control of everything.  A steward does not have final authority.  A steward is a manager, like a manger in baseball, who is not the owner of the team, who does not have final authority, but who has a lot of responsibility entrusted to him for the team functions and plays.  A steward is a caretaker and a servant.

Part of our responsibility as stewards of God’s grace is to grow in our identity in Jesus Christ.  Paul writes that we are all fellow inheritors of the riches of God’s mercy through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We are “members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through this gospel.”  Through God and His grace we are each strengthened by His power, that growing in His mercy and grace, we share and build one another up in the promised inheritance.

Furthermore, we are stewards of God’s grace.  As such we focus on Jesus Christ.  Paul says, “In Christ Jesus our Lord…we have boldness and access (to God)

with confidence through faith in him.”  Stewardship of God’s grace is not a matter of being all that we can be, but being all that God calls us to be in Christ Jesus.  We don’t focus on ourselves and our potential but on Jesus and the sacrifice he made for us and for our sins by laying down His perfect, holy godly life and taking our sins unto himself, by allowing his flesh to be nailed to the cross and rising in victory for us on Easter morning.  Stewards of God’s grace focus on Jesus Christ, because while we are not perfect, we are made clean and acceptable by Jesus and his love which led him to the cross that we might be acceptable before our heavenly Father.

Sometimes loving and serving others seems impossible.  However, we need to view each other through rose colored glasses.  That’s right, rose colored glasses, the rose color of Jesus’ love and the blood he shed for us and our sins and for all other people and their sins!  God calls us to follow the example of Joseph in the Old Testament sold into slavery by his brothers, wrongfully accused of sexual advances by Potiphars wife, thrown into prison.  He used his God given wisdom and insight to help Egypt and his own family during a time of famine.  God calls you and me to follow His example in serving others as God provides the opportunity.  We served others at the Prayer Vigil.  We can support a food pantry, visit the sick, write or email words of encouragement, get better acquainted with fellow Christians, lend a listening ear and a caring heart to those in need. These and countless other opportunities God puts before us to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ, who continues to love and serve us.

The love of God motivates us to serve others that they might know and be assured that they too are chosen and called by God.  Paul says, “although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given to me: to preach to the (non believers) the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the stewardship of this mystery…made known … according His eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This good news is not something God wants us to keep to ourselves-he wants us to share it freely with all people even as He shared it freely with each one of us.  That is why Immanuel Chapel exists, so that in partnership with our fellow congregations and with our Lutheran schools more and more people have what you and I possess and treasure-an identify in Jesus Christ as children of God and steward’s of God’s grace and may one day hear those happy and joy-filled words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”                 

 

 

 

 

Christ for a Day

 

In the 1950’s we used to listen to a program called “Queen for a Day.”  I think it had already been on radio for several years by that time.  I don’t remember much about the show, other than it seemed to be on WCCO after Arthur Godfrey.

The Old Testament lesson for this week, Isaiah 45:1-7, is a sort of Christ for a Day event.  “Thus says the Lord to his anointed.”  Anointed means Messiah, which in the Greek is Christ.  But Yahweh isn’t talking to Jesus of Nazareth.  He is talking to Cyrus, “Cy.”  Yahweh has grasped his Christ by the right hand.  Yahweh will lead him to victory.  Kings would come out against Cyrus prepared for battle with loins girded.  Yahweh would disarm them and render them powerless.  Bronze plated city gates would be smashed and the iron bars that holds them shut God would simply cut through.  Yahweh will deliver to Cyrus the treasures of the kingdoms hidden in the deepest of vaults.

Yahweh calls Cyrus by name authorizing him to carry out his saving purpose.  Israel exiled in Babylon would never have looked for a foreign Messiah.  In fact, it would have been unthinkable and offensive that a gentile pagan would be their savior.

Of course, we can’t help of think of Jesus of Nazareth a Jew, who God sent as the Messiah.  He was offensive.  It was unthinkable that such a nobody from such a nowhere place who was crucified in weakness and dishonor would be God’s chosen Christ.

As Yahweh says in Isaiah 45:5-6, “Hey, I’m the Lord and there ain’t nobody else.  You can look from sunup to sundown and you won’t find anyone else.  So you want to argue with me?”

If Yahweh wants to make “Cy” Christ for a day, who’s to stop him.  If Yahweh wants to make Jesus, God enfleshed in human form Messiah, “Hey, you’re God, God.  Go right ahead.”

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.  Let it be so among us.