Resurrection Life

The thing about your identity in Christ is this:

2 Pentecost 2013

 

2 June 

 

Galatians 1: 1-12

 

Pastor Chris Enstad

 

Brothers and sisters, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

Carrie and I joined about 150 other people for a truly blessed moment on Friday night.  Brooke Boon, the founder of Holy Yoga, was in Minneapolis leading a conference and so we went to Christ Presbyterian Church for worship and Holy Yoga.  It was a blessed time, preachers are not often ministered to.  But Brooke did something at the beginning of her sermon that I am going to bring in here today and that is to bring an awareness of breath into even sitting still listening to someone else speak and so we are going to do that right now.  Let’s take two deep breaths and on each exhale, a sigh.  Do that with me.

 

There.  Do you feel it?  It is good to settle into an awareness of our selves and now we can take that awareness and apply it also to our awareness of God.

 

And here’s what I know.

 

You can not be something apart from who you are.  You are who God created you to be.  It can take a lifetime’s journey to become comfortable in one’s own skin.  Or not.  Either way, you are who God created you to be.  

 

You can pretend.  You can work really hard to change.  Some of those changes will work.  Some won’t.  And you’ll learn from your failures and you will try again.

 

But your core identity has been set.  Your code was downloaded into your heart when you were baptized at the font in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  And your identity as a child of God was sealed with the sign of the cross.

 

You cannot be, any longer, something apart from who you are.

 

But other voices will tell you otherwise.  They will give you cause to question your identity in Christ.  Life will happen.  Life.  Man, if life hasn’t given you cause to ask questions about your faith and Jesus Christ then you are either really really lucky or you haven’t been paying attention.  

 

Voices in our culture will tell you otherwise.  What do you need from God?  You can worship God, if you even think you have to believe in him, out here with us in the world.  Or why even give time to faith?  What difference does it make in yours or anyone’s life?

The Galatians were running the risk of living into the identity of someone other than who they had been called to be.  Professor Mary Hinkle Shore likens it to when you are driving into a car park how the spikes in the ground drop out of the way when you are going the right direction but if you try to reverse they will shred your tires.  The Galatians were about to shred their tires.

 

Galatia is a region in the center of Turkey.  The Roman govenment put it together from people that were not related to each other.  The southern towns were put together with the country folk to the north.

 

It was the country folk who we believe Paul ministered to along with Silas.  And they weren’t even really Galatians... these were Celts who had been part of the invasion of Greece by Brennus some three hundred years before Christ was born.  These were the people that Paul was writing to.  The Celts.

 

Celtic spirituality was an easy thing for Paul to work with because the Celts Gods did not live up on Mt. Olympus like Zues.  Celtic spiritualty from the earliest days believed that the divine and the human exist with only a thin line separating them.  A liminal place.  Modern day seekers who experience faith in this way will often talk of liminal places those places where night is about to change to day or where we can sense that the spiritual and corporal worlds are interacting.  I’ve experienced that liminality along the north shore of Lake Superior but also in the city dump of Juarez, Mexico.  The key is to have eyes and hearts that are aware of just how close God is.

 

The Celts were ready, then, for the message that in Jesus Christ God had been made incarnate in man.  Ok.  Great!  We can do that.  Paul was there to preach not Gods but God, the God who created the whole kit and caboodle and the Celts in Galatia were converted.  And Paul left.

 

And new teachers showed up.  Paul said what?  Him?  But he wasn’t even with Jesus or even the disciples?  By what authority can he say those things.  No, if you want salvation you have to do it by first becoming Jews.  We have the law, we have Moses, it is to the Jews that Jesus preached.  Trust us.

 

And when he received news of this Paul tried to jump in front of the car as it was about to reverse over the spike strips.  NOOOOO.

 

Paul reminds the Galatians that God alone is incarnate in Jesus Christ and the Gospel that Jesus preached is the only word that one need hear or heed.  No extra rules, no ceremony other than what Jesus commanded.  

 

We can receive it wherever we are at and be transformed by it.  But the unique way in which any person is caught up by the Gospel is going to look different.  There is no one story that brings a person in God except the story of Jesus Christ however that story is received.  You cannot be something other than what you are.

 

And Paul reminds the Galatians, as he reminds each of us here today, we are woven together in the story of Jesus Christ not despite our differences but because of them.

 

Jew or Greek, male or female, Norwegian or Swedish, white or black, gay or straight, those differences should not be cause for alarm or even surprise but can now be received as evidence of just how majestic and amazing and diverse the Gospel was, is and will be.

 

Now breathe.   Breathe again.

 

On the seventh day, God rested.   He allowed creation to just be creation.

 

Let this Word, this Gospel good news, be.  Whoever you are, whatever brought you here, whatever awaits your return when you leave this place, you are God’s children.  A family of unique, different and beautiful people that spans the ages.

 

Amen.

 

Gotta love a good Lukan head-fake: A sermon for Advent 2 2012

2 Advent 2012

Luke 3: 1-6

Pastor Chris Enstad


Being a Christian follower of Jesus is at the same time the easiest and the hardest thing to be.  Easy in that one need merely declare oneself a Christian and there you are, a Christian.  Maybe, then, you buy a cross to wear and find a church to attend.  And there you are, a Christian.

And for most of us that is where our following ends.  I mean yes, we give to the church, we volunteer to make programs and services work but, even then, it is typically around 10 to 20 percent of a congregation’s membership that makes church happen for the other 80 or 90 percent of us.  

But, if we show up enough eventually the Word that we are hearing starts to make a claim on us.  We start to hear words like repentance, confession, transformation, and purification.  And then, one day, at the call of the Holy Spirit, we wake up and realize that hey, that Book, that Bible, those Words that are written in there are talking about things going on out here in the world, they are talking about me  and my life.  And that’s when things start to get hard, but the work that God calls us to in following his Son, while not easy, is definitely filled with joy and, as we are reminded in our theme for this week, it is a life filled with peace.

Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ.  We spend these weeks making things ready for the birth of Christ.  This space is gradually being transformed to the festive and cheerful sanctuary where we will soon sing, “Hallelujah!” Our homes are being transformed as well, our tree is up, the lights are lit, our girls have discovered the thrill of wrapping little presents for each other to the joy of the wrapping paper industry, we discovered that our internet radio station has not just one but eight different 24 hour Christmas music channels from country to family Christmas music all the way to my new favorite “peaceful holidays” channel... yes, our homes are ready for Jesus to come.

But Advent doesn’t exist for any of those reasons.  Advent is a season of preparing our own lives for the coming of Christ.  We are accustomed to taking all of the good feelings that come with this season and forget one important truth: Christ is coming!  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that “It is very remarkable that we so calmly face the thought that God is coming, whereas people previously trembled at the day of God, and the world fell into trembling when Jesus Christ walked over the earth.”  

For you see, God coming so close to us in the form of an infant child was not so that we could gather around his manger and fawn over him, God comes close to us to lay claim to us and to sever our relationships with all of the things of this world that we so falsely believe will give us the security, status and prestige that we long for.  And so, yes, while we do get excited about the birth of Christ, this season let us also reconnect with our fears and questions: if you were to hear that Christ was coming to your house tomorrow, that you could expect a knock on your front door, what would your first reaction be?

Listen to how Luke sets it up for us today:  In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Traconitis and Lysanias rulers of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas...  the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in. the. wilderness.

Luke firmly roots this story not only in the historical facts of who was ruling and when, but after this long list of the high and mighty, naming the political and religious elite, he then, pulls our gaze away from Jerusalem to the woods.  Not to Caiaphas and Annas the high priests, but to John, the son of... who?  Zechariah?  

And, John began to preach, he preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.  Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight.”

God is coming near, today is the day to prepare your hearts and your lives for his arrival.  What in your life needs straightening out?  What valleys of resentments do you need to fill up with the love and grace of God?  What mountains of ego and accomplishment need to be leveled out in the perspective that it isn’t about you and that we can’t all exist together if we are all at the center of our own little universes?

That’s where my thoughts go when I hear that Jesus is about to arrive, the fully human fully divine Son of God coming near to us in the form of the exact opposite of what we would expect from God, not another mighty ruler, not another religious elite, an infant child, sent to us in judgment, God’s judgment that we cannot be saved on our own.  We need help.

But, then, we give thanks for in coming to us as one of us God’s judgment on us came also with a gift, a gift of salvation wrapped up in the body and the blood of this little baby boy.  We do not have to do this stuff alone for we now know that God is with us.

And that, my friends, is Advent, the coming of the Lord.  That’s why Carrie and I love the joy in our girls’ faces when they hang the ornaments on the tree and sing Christmas carols and are nearly popping out of their bodies counting down the days until Christmas, but it is also why, after they are asleep, we catch ourselves sitting by that same tree with a different kind of joy, the joy of knowing that through all of our struggles in this last year since the last time the tree was up, God has also showered us with all sorts of goodness.  And we know that if Christ knocks on the doors of our home or the doors of our hearts, we would turn and see that yes, it is still pretty messy in our house and it is definitely messy in our hearts and yet we will open our doors regardless to worship the God of judgment and mercy.

May our Church reflect those same truths, may our mission and ministries be done in the fervent expectation that we do them always to be ready for Christ to come again, and may we find ways to open our doors to Christ who comes to us unlike anything we could expect, may we welcome him into our homes, into our church, and into our life together.

Amen.

Let the children come, Let Thy kingdom come

19 Pentecost 2012

 

October 7

 

Mark 10: 2-16

 

“Let the Children Come, Let Thy Kingdom Come”

 

Pastor Chris Enstad

 

Brothers and sisters, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

“Let the children come to me”

 

Children have been elevated nowadays to the point that adults almost worship childhood in unhealthy ways.  One only needs to turn on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to get at that idea.  Children have such a high status in our culture and society today that it is often hard for us to remember that it was not that long ago that children had absolutely no status in society at all.  There was a time not long ago that children had to work at hard jobs, daylight saving time was instituted to allow children, in part, to get home from school in time to help in the fields, children were to be seen and not heard.

 

That is the culture into which Jesus is speaking today.  The culture where children were an annoyance, where they had a status less than human, where they were a distraction and drag on families until they were old enough to contribute to the chores and the family purse.

 

Jesus was receiving children that were being brought to him by the people but the disciples found it to be a distraction.  They rebuked the crowds.  But Jesus, when he saw that, was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.  Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.  And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.”

 

Let the children come to me; do not hinder them.

 

Jesus invited the least and the lost and the lowly into his presence elevating their status by lowering his to be with them just as he lowered his divine status to come and live with us in the first place.

 

In a culture that is so hung up on status and power it is a telling thing to watch how our Lord and Savior acts with those who have been relegated to the outside of society by their status.  Children, women, non-Israelites, all were treated as less than human but then Jesus comes along and not only gives women the right to divorce but then commands his disciples to let the children come to him for to such as these belongs the kingdom of heaven.

 

Whoever does not receive the kingdom like a child cannot enter it.

 

That phrase has caused a lot of problem in Christianity throughout history, maybe not as much trouble as it should have caused, but problems nonetheless.  You see we can intellectually acknowledged what it means to receive the kingdom of God like a child.  Oh, sure, we just need to remember that faith is simple and no matter how many questions we might have about God we should just suck it up and act like a pure unpadded uncynical little child.

 

But when the phrase is translated using a better work for “like” from the Greek word, “hos” we get another truth altogether:

 

Whoever does not receive the kingdom as a child cannot enter it.

 

Whoever does not receive the kingdom as a child cannot enter it.

 

Ahh, you see, where we always like to make these Gospel teachings about us, more often than not Jesus turns those expectations on their head and makes us think more about God and the kingdom of heaven.

 

For just as children were relegated to the sidelines of society with no status or regard, so is the kingdom of heaven.  If we cannot get over the fact that our God has chosen to act in the simple way of sending his Son to die on a cross, and that the kingdom of God will enter into our lives and world with little regard, little status, and little for people to get excited about, if we cannot wrap our brains and our hearts around that truth then we will not enter into that kingdom.

 

God comes to us in the form of the opposite.  The opposite of just about everything we could ever expect.  He comes to us in the form of a prisoner, someone we would rather put away and forget about for thirty years, he comes to us in the form of the homeless, the hungry, the ultimate outsider, asking us for our hand and our blessing.  My brothers and sisters, if we cannot figure out how to lay our hands on the least and the lost and the lowly, then how can we ever fathom the truth of the kingdom of God, and how will we ever enter it?

 

Ask yourselves in this coming week where the outsiders are in your lives?  Where have you come across the least and the lost, how have you withheld your blessing and attention from someone or something that seems beneath your time and energy?

 

And then give thanks to God that he has not done the same thing to you and to me for while we were outside God sent his Son to die for you and for me.  Let us share that blessing with those in our own lives beginning today and in all the days to come.

 

 

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Easter 5, 2012: In which the preacher invokes "The Big Lebowski" in a congregation full of 80-year-olds. Crickets chirped. Oh, and Jesus teaches us to "abide".

Gospel: John 15: 1-11

 

Today’s Gospel text follows on the heals of the message that Glenndy Ose brought to us last Sunday.  Last Sunday Glenndy spoke of Jesus as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep an image we quite like to have until we recall that, hey, Jesus is calling us sheep.  All we do is just kind of stand there and let Jesus do all the work.  To which I respond: exactly.

 

This morning we hear Jesus refer to himself as the vine and to us as branches.  Another quite intriguing picture of who Jesus Christ is but again, kind of a disheartening image for someone who wants to know what it is they need to do to get into heaven.  

 

Each of our girls developed their independent gene in similar ways and they both made those developments known to us in their use of language.  For one of them it was they word, “Self”.  If we tried to do something for her she would snatch whatever it was out of our hands with the words, “self self!”.  Likewise our other daughter notified us of her independence by grabbing the spoon or whatever we were trying to do for her with the words, “Oni me, oni me!”

 

Those traits continue in each of us as we grow and develop as adults.  We are a people who are proud of the things we accomplish for ourselves.  We pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on making our way through life to each his own.  

 

The news has had quite a few stories on the decline of the mainline church and the rise of the mega non-denominational church.  Why is this happening one radio commentator wanted to know?  One young woman phoned in and said, “I go to such and such church because their message is relevant to my life and is filled with good advice.  The sermons teach me how to be a better spouse, a better Christian, and a better person.”

 

We like to have a checklist of things we have to do so that we can then be assured of our place in God’s presence.

 

But then these little vignettes pop up in Scripture and it turns everything that we want to do on our head, instead it is showing us what it is God is doing to bring us together and to give us life.  We just sit there in the sheepfold or stay clinging to the vine.  No branch gets to exclude any other branch, it’s not our job, God does the pruning and tending to His garden.

 

Our job, if it can be called that, is to abide in Christ.  In the movie the Big Lebowski the character played by Jeff Bridges was called simply, “The Dude” and the dude was known for one thing and one thing only... the Dude Abides.  The dude was always around and always would be.  The dude stays the dude even when everything else around him was going crazy.

 

So when Christ is talking about the branches abiding in the vine is he using the same definition as the dude?  I think so.  We cannot win our salvation by doing checklists of good works, our salvation was won for us by Christ, our good shepherd, our vine.  

 

We, in turn, have been grafted into Christ by virtue of our baptism, we have become part of the vine.  It is our job to make sure we stay that way, thus, while good works are not our salvation, making sure we stay near Christ is.  Like any living thing our faith our relationship with Christ needs to be nourished to stay alive, thus, when we come to church, study God’s word, find fellowship with other people on their life’s journey’s, we find ourselves drawing our life and our light from the true vine, Jesus Christ.  But, when we do not we find ourselves soon lost and dried out, ready to be thrown on the fire.  When I get into conversations about faith with seekers or with those who just aren’t sure about the whole God thing yet I like to explain our my spirituality, my faith, is like having an extra gear waiting for when the going gets rough.  People of faith have been proven to be more resilient to life’s curve balls because we know when confronted by these things that we are not alone.  It is not up to us alone to walk through this life.  We have each other, and more importantly, we have our true vine, jesus Christ.

 

Amen.

 

Thoughts on Caine's Arcade

This video:

http://cainesarcade.com/

Is making the rounds of the internet.  I think it is a tremendous teaching tool for companies, entrepreneurs, and congregations.

The lessons I take away from a story like this in regards to church life go like this:

1. Do what you are called to do as a church.  Don't look around wondering if you're doing it right, just get moving and figure out the details as you go.  Many congregations are stuck in "talk" mode and don't ever get to "do" mode.  Caine just started doing it, and he made it his young life's mission to staff that arcade... that's what we're called to do for the Gospel Good News!

2. Find your congregation's square root button.  It slips by so fast you might miss it but did you notice that Caine uses square roots to determine the validity of the fun pass?  What's your cool button at your church?  Or did yours fall off years ago and no one has thought to clue it back on?  The highest functioning congregations are the ones having fun doing what they're doing.

3. It's ok to be proud of something you and your church have done.  We often, as congregations and leaders, don't like to wear our "Caine's Arcade" shirt to school because we're afraid someone will make fun of us.  In the church world we are reknown for eating our most promising young leaders because of the scorn heaped on them for trying something new and breaking established traditions.  The last words out of Caine's mouth in the film credits are, "I'm proud."  I think God says the same thing when we forget about the critics and the naysayers and just get to work doing what He has called us to do as congregations.  Celebrate the victories!

 

"Makings" vs. "Meetings"

Seth Godin recently pointed out that there is a huge difference between making something and meeting something. We organize and prioritize things differently if we were, say, to be meeting a train over and against making a train. Working in the church can often end up in days of endless meetings. Meetings are necessary but they invite hurried boredom, frustration and downright rudeness (for the chronically late) because more often than not creatives and producers on your staff would rather be out DOING something than sitting in a room talking ABOUT doing something.

I wonder if we might not invite each other into "makings" where the staff team is invited into a relationship where they are making something not meeting about something.  What kind of inspiration would come from that?  How many silos might get torn down when different areas of your church stop defending their turf and start making something new and exciting?

Challenge: Try preaching 1000 of your best words this Sunday

In listening to a singer-songwriter speak about his craft recently, he said something that struck me as quite poignant.  A woman asked, "How do you know a song you are working on is 'done'?"  His response, "When I am making an album I know that I have to say everything I want to say in 3 1/2 minutes, that kind of economy forces me to be creative with what I am saying and how I am saying it."

As preachers we have often been led to believe that we should preach until we are done, but there are often no brackets around the sermon moment.  Often preachers circle the landing field three or four times before landing the plane, as they say.  

And so I have been challenging myself to paint my sermons as though the canvas is only so wide and so high.  I have been crafting sermons that have a limit.  In self-limiting the sermon I believe two things are happening: I am making my points in a clearer, more succinct way and two, I see fewer glances at the wristwatch.  

How am I doing this?  By challenging myself, each week, to limit myself to 1000 of the very best words I can use to preach on any given text.  1000 words is a lot of words, why not try it and tell me how it goes?

When I mentioned this challenge on my Facebook page it ignited a small firestorm of pushback from several of my ordained colleagues but several more "attaboy" thumbs-ups from my friends who have to sit in the pew and not stand in the pulpit.  I wonder if preachers were to challenge themselves to hone their craft on a more consistent basis, more like a singer-songwriter, if we might not find ourselves with a cadre of energized, talented preachers rather than burned out, dried out, emptied out ones?

What do you think?

This post was 319 words.

 

On the Verge: a journey into the apostolic future of the church by Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson. A Review

On the Verge is an amazing snapshot and leadership guide to what church just may be in the first part of the 21st century.  Hirsch and Ferguson have teamed up to give us a look inside 12 churches that are experimenting with life "on the edge" of where contemporary Christian communities are in an effort to bring forward the best practices for how we can be church whether large or small, urban or suburban and yes even rural!

Because, face it, we aren't being churches all that well right now.  But the authors' main point is salient and very well-taken... churches as they are constructed and run today are basically competing for the same share of the marketplace with other churches and so they are in the arms race of being the "best" everything to everyone.  We have lost our missional impulse, the impulse that says, "No, the real market is the world of unbelievers who are running around outside our door and never being invited into a community of faith!"

These 12 profiled communities are examples of those who "get it" in the 21st century... there will be no more institutionalization of the church, we simply can't affort to calcify traditions.  What is needed is a constant cycle of imagination, shifting and innovation.  If a church leader can help his people capture that process as their new life together, they will have every chance of surviving and thriving in the new era.

The book is hard to put down.  It is something every leader will want to explore with their council or elders.  I especially implore pastors in smaller mainline churches who think they don't have much else to offer the world to give the world that Hirsch and Ferguson are painting a look.  It may just be the hope you are looking for.

A Sermon in which the Pastor combines Rally Sunday and 9/11 around a Bible verse on Forgiveness.

13 Pentecost 2011

September 11

Pastor Chris Enstad

Matthew 18: 21-35

Brothers and sisters, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

Rally Sunday has become in our church culture another high holy day.  The air is festive, the choirs are back in full swing, Sunday School and Confirmation, Adult Education, all of our new Health and Wholeness offerings, things are back in gear at Elim Lutheran Church.  But, we have not been hibernating over the past three months, when we put our regular ministry offerings on hiatus, it gives the church as a whole, a chance to breathe and think and pray.  We are putting together at this very moment our Community Ministry Project Team who will work with our Consultant, Joy Skegstad, and me to plan for our next 90 years of ministry on the corner of 40th and Broadway.  Our mission is not longer restricted to inside these walls but, we aim to be a church that equips our members to serve their community and their neighbors, multiplying our reach and our impact throughout Robbinsdale, North Minneapolis and beyond.  I invite you to pray for the team as they begin their work next week and then, keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to become a part of this work.

But, today also carries with it an air of remembrance of the events of 10 years ago.  I’m sure just about everyone in this room who was alive that day remembers where they were and what they were doing when those planes hit the World Trade Centers.  

That day changed us as a country and a people in some good ways but, also some bad.  I received an email written by the CEO of Meetup.com on how he saw an opportunity in the shadows of 9/11 to help neighbors come together, to see each other and perform community service and other things together.  

But, we also have retreated to many stereotypes and tribal instincts.  When we are threatened it is easy to respond with a defensive stance that means we begin to distrust people who look act or talk differently than us.  Those things have and continue to happen today, yes, in some cases it has proved to be worth it but, I continue to wonder if our ability as human beings to grow in our understanding of people who may not have been born in the same circumstances, or who believe in quite different things than we do, I wonder if that ability has been stunted in some way and if that is a permanent condition.  The hatred and fear of Muslims and Islam, or dark skinned Arabs, is deep.  It’s all over the internet and on the 24 hour news stations.  People are profiting from keeping us afraid of each other.

Fitting then, that this Matthew text might appear today, on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, this text from Matthew 18 on forgiveness.

Forgiveness.  That has got to be the trickiest part of the Christian message that there is.  Peter approaches Jesus and asks, “How many times should I forgive my brother if he sins against me, seven’?  You see, traditional Jewish faith taught that forgiving somebody three times was a sufficient display of a humble and forgiving heart.  

But, Jesus responded, “No, seven times isn’t enough.  How about seventy times seven?”.  In fact, Jesus is saying, you shouldn’t even keep count... just keep on forgiving.

And, he then, tells the tale of the unforgiving servant.  The servant had a debt of ten thousand talents.  It was forgiven.  Do you know how large a debt ten thousand talents is?  Well a talent was roughly equal to 20 years of labor.  If a laborer earns $15/hour and works about 2,000 hours/year he earns about $30,000 a year.  So, a talent would be equal to $600,000.  So, 10 thousand talents is worth, in today’s terms, about $6 billion.   In other words, that servant was forgiven a whole lot of money... an unpayable debt was forgiven.

That servant then went and found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii which was about 20 weeks worth of labor or $12,000 and had him thrown in prison.

The one who was forgiven an unpayable debt repaid that grace with impunity at someone who owed him so little.

Brothers and sisters, forgiveness is tricky isn’t it?  So often we want to hold onto our grudges or the wrongs that have been done to us in an effort to wait for our offender to ask for forgiveness.  But, what if that conversation never happens?  We think that holding a grudge means that we have power over another person, but, in reality we are still allowing our offender to have control over us because, that grudge or fault eats away at our very soul.

How many times must I forgive a brother that has sinned against me?  Seventy times seven times.

Remember this,God did not wait for us to come to him to ask for forgiveness.  God did not wait for us to get our act together and come on our knees asking for admittance to the kingdom of heaven and the family of God.

No, while we were still dead to sin, God wiped our debt clean.  Our invoice from God says, “You owed me $6,000,000,000 but, that debt has been paid in full by my Son, Jesus Christ.  

How do we repay that debt?  By forgiving our brothers and sisters from our hearts. whether they ask for it or not.  Whether or not their heart has experienced God’s forgiving Word, yours.  Yours has.  
May God continue to work his transforming ways with each of you today and in all the days to come.  It has to start somewhere, why not start with you.  Today.

A little girl heard this passage one day and said to her pastor, “You know, forgiveness must be like the aroma of a flower after it has been crushed.”  

Life does that to us, doesn’t it?  Who of us has not been hurt at some point or another.

May each of you be given the power to forgive by the Holy Spirit, that we might each become the aroma of Christ in an unforgiving world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Reading the Bible: Day 87: Acts 22 - Romans 4 (August 31)

Well we are getting close to completing the challenge of reading our entire Bible this summer!  Some of you have already finished, I hear so way to go!

Today I am going to focus just a bit on the Book of Romans.  The entire book is dedicated to Paul's theology of the Righteousness of God over and against the unrighteousness of man.  In the letter he exhorts the church in Rome to preach the Gospel rightly divided between law and gospel.  It is this little hook, law and gospel, that launched the reformation and continues to inspire churches in their evangelistic endeavors to this day.

We live lives under the law.  Follow the rules and you will not get in trouble.  When we mistakenly bring this line of thinking into what Christ did for us we miss the point of the death and resurrection completely.  It is because we cannot follow the law, for instance the Ten Commandments, that God sent his son to fulfil the law on our behalf.  This now frees us to live new lives in him.  And so we go about our lives ministering to the needs of others and proclaiming that good news not because we have to but because we can.

So the first four chapters of Romans center on God's righteous judgement.  We are not the judge, God is.  And God has already judged mankind and found us to be lost and hopeless.  The birth of Jesus Christ, that we celebrate on Christmas, is actually a judgement day for us!  Could we make our way back to being right with God on our own?  God determined the answer to be, "no".  And so he sent his only begotten Son to get us back.

And so our righteousness is not counted to us by the number of rules we follow but by another important reformation phrase, "faith alone".  To those who believe in Christ comes the justification of the sinner... you and me.