January 28, 2024               Text:  1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Dear Friends in Christ,

Let’s start with a little background about the city of Corinth, so we can better understand the subject matter in our text.  Corinth had temples to pagan gods.  Corinth had a temple with 1,000 priestesses who were sacred prostitutes.  To live “like a Corinthian” meant immorality and debauchery.

In these temples the worshippers would offer sacrifices.  You would bring in your animal, the priest would kill and clean it and then it would be burned.  A plume of smoke would ascend to the heavens to influence the gods.  Only a small part of the meat was incinerated, the rest was roasted.  Everyone knew if you wanted a good cheap meal, you could pick one up at your neighborhood temple.  It was the fast food of the day.

Some of the Christians were eating the meat as a matter of Christian freedom.  Since the idols were nothing to them it didn’t bother them that the meat had been offered to idols.  On the other hand, there were Christians in Corinth who had weak consciences because of their former association with idols.  This became a stumbling block and faith was destroyed.

How do we use our Christian freedom?  What are some of the issues of our day that can relate to the text?  Do we lift up or hurt our weak brothers and sisters?  Paul warns,

“DON’T BE A STUMBLING BLOCK”

What is going on in 21^st century where-you-are-ville?  No one these days is writing e-mails to their Pastor or our Synod’s Theology Review Board concerning “food offered to idols.”  But what issues do we face that might cause us to be a stumbling to a weaker brother or sister?

The first one would be alcohol.  Again, this falls under Christian freedom.  Should we have a cocktail in front of someone who is struggling with alcoholism?  Probably not because this might lead them down a path, we don’t want to see them go.

Another one is a more recent phenomenon.  It is the idea that anyone can get a license to marry someone.  Our family attended a wedding like this, and the ceremony was God-awful.  The only way I survived was through prayer and putting my head down for the whole half-hour.  Because marriage was ordained by God and has usually been the duty of the Church and the Pastor it is a bad look.  It cheapens my ordination and the ordination and education of my brother Pastor’s.  It does not build the faith, but it sure does put up a stumbling block to husband and wife under the auspices of their Creator.  Yes, again we have Christian freedom but is it the right way to use it?

For Paul and the Holy Spirit my right to exercise some of these freedoms stops when a brother or sister is tripped up.  We don’t live in a closed system.  We live in a family of brothers and sisters.  These are brothers and sisters for whom Christ died.

We get stuck on ourselves and our rights.  Stop looking at your belly buttons – innies, outies, things get stuck in there.  Nasty.  We need something else to look at.  

Look to the beautiful.  Look to the forgiving.  Look to the forever.  This something is a someone, and his name is Jesus.  From all eternity he has been concerned about you.  Two thousand years ago he was concerned about living and dying for you and rising for you.  

Today he was concerned about making sure you woke up on time to get here.  See, he wants to be sure you know that you are forgiven.  He wants you to know that if you have been a stumbling block, you can repent and start anew with better judgment and an uplifting attitude.  Today he wants to feed you his body and blood as a member of his family.  

The relationship between God and us is always one of grace, pure and undeserved love.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”  In Christ, we have been freed from the Law, “but take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” (v. 9). We are saved by grace alone, for Christ’s sake, through faith, and our love is a love that builds up our Christian brother and sister.  

Let’s use our freedom wisely, for Christ’s sake.

Amen.

January 21, 2024 – Sanctity of Human Life Sunday               Text:  Jonah 3:1-4:3

Dear Friends in Christ,

Is the church today a reluctant messenger when it comes to life issues?  Do we run away from sharing this message?  Don’t we want families dealing with an unplanned pregnancy or those facing end-of-life decisions to know about a God who does not abandon them in their challenges?  Don’t we want men and women to know God’s compassion and forgiveness and direction?  We can’t run away just because it might be uncomfortable.

We have a man in our text who knows about running away from the uncomfortable.  Jonah’s the name.  He is a . . . 

“RELUCTANT MESSENGER”

God has a plan and wants Jonah to carry it out.  Go to Nineveh and tell them to repent.  In his first try, Jonah ran away.  But being swallowed up by a big fish and then vomited up has a way of getting a man’ attention.  He is still reluctant.  So, he pouts.  “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry.” (4:1)  Didn’t he want the people to be saved?  Did he want them to suffer God’s wrath?  OK, OK, the Ninevites were enemies of Israel, but Jonah this is still rather selfish.

Jonah had a message, but it wasn’t his, it was God’s.  God told him, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” (3:2). Reluctantly, he went to Nineveh with God’s message.  This wasn’t easy.  Nineveh had thousands of people.  Jonah was alone and he wasn’t going with a popular message.  “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3:4)

There was power in that message because it was God’s message.  It wasn’t Jonah they believed, verse 5 says, “the people of Nineveh believed God.”  They understood the truth and power of the message.  They humbled themselves and it brought about godly results.

Look at what happened when they repented.  “God relented of the disaster he said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” (3:10). He did not punish as He had a right to do.  His great love restrained Him from carrying out His judgment.  This frustrated Jonah.  He wanted these people punished.  Then he prayed and he says this, “you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” (4:2)  This reluctant messenger had a powerful message because it was God’s message.

When it comes to life issues, we have a powerful message because it is God’s message.  The message is not only a “do this” or “don’t to do that” but it is a message that says, “Look what God has done.”  He created the first humans in his own image.  Even though sin messed it all up, God is still involved, The Psalmist writes, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Ps. 139:13).  Job reminds us that in God’s hand are “the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” (Job 12:10)

The value of each human being comes through God’s redeeming hands.  The same hands that knit you together stretched out on a cross to pay for your sin.  You were bought with a price, the holy and precious blood of Jesus.  That gives life value.

What a positive message of God-given life we have to share.  The embryo in the petri dish, the baby in the womb, the child on the playground, the child with Down syndrome playing with him, the athlete, the paraplegic in the wheelchair, the energetic businesswoman, the young woman with MS, grandpa on the golf course, grandma in the nursing home – all are people created by God.  All of these are people from whom Jesus died.  Therefore, all have value and dignity and purpose.  Why be reluctant to share such a powerful message?

There are those out there and maybe in here that have made bad decisions about life and death.  But we never take the attitude of Jonah that we hope they get what they deserve.  In my lifetime I have heard so many speakers who have made bad decisions and regretted it.  God changed their lives not through bashing them but through loving people and loving organizations that were there to support them.  They had God’s message of forgiveness.  Remember from our text that God is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  Steadfast means that it is always there.  God promises never to leave or forsake.  There is no situation beyond God’s power to help.  Look at the positives He has brought about with life issues just in the last few years.  He uses us, His reluctant messengers for His purposes.  We counsel, we walk, we attend banquets, we rally.  We are there if it affects our family or our church.  We don’t run away.  That is never the answer.

Jonah, the reluctant messenger finally realized this.  God knew what He was doing.  In this Epiphany season may be reminded of the Church’s responsibility to share the message of what God has done in Jesus.  We apply what God has done in Jesus to the life issues of our time.  It is a message of repentance.  A message of God’s love and compassion.  We don’t have to be reluctant to share such a powerful and positive message of life.

Amen.   

January 14, 2024 Text:  1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Dear Friends in Christ,

What is our identity?  Who exactly are we?  Does our body play any role at all?  Robert George claims we live in an age of “Gnostic Liberalism.”  According to this worldview, “You and I as persons, are identified entirely with the spirit or mind, or psyche, and not all with the body that we occupy and use.”  The soul is merely the ghost in the machine.  The body is merely the container for the inner-self.

The pro-life movement points to bodily DNA, a beating heart, and the ultrasound picture.  Biology is on our side.  But a Princeton Professor Peter Singer can still say, “The life of a newborn baby is of less value to it than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee is to the nonhuman animal.”  A body is not enough to claim personhood.  People claim we need more.  

St. Paul says in our text, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (v. 13b). Paul then offers this, “and God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.” (v. 14). If the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and the resurrection is real, then the destruction of the body will be dealt with in the age to come.

In our funerals we have less casket and burial and more urn and cremation.  We celebrate life after death in our local bar but neglect to talk about the life to come.  We talk less of death as falling asleep, for if we did, we would be reminded we are going to awaken and see Jesus face-to-face.  If the body is gone, judgment day will never come, and the things I do today are inconsequential.  But let us not lose hope.  St. Paul encourages us . . . 

“AT HOME IN THE BODY”

Jesus is King.  Even as we fight these different worldviews, we are still about seeking and sharing the message of the Gospel.  We see and know those who have no hope.  We have something to live for and something worth dying for.  Children of divorce long for identity.  Those mutilated by transgender surgery, those who have found the gay lifestyle depressing, and those raised in same-sex marriages have come to see that the pot at the end of the rainbow flag was fool’s gold.  I read more and more about those on the road to Damascus.

We are not chastising others for their mistakes.  This is a bodily sickness that affects our whole society.  As the body of Christ, we are in this together.  While we don’t need to justify ourselves, we can give people a chance to start over.

What might the church have to offer?  We have a message of affirmation.  A way for our people to be at home once more in their physical body and in the body of Christ.  We don’t teach a means of escape, we proclaim forgiveness and recovery, a re-creation, a new Genesis.  We speak a message of a fallen nature meant for better things, a humanity created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s blood.

The life to come should make us all courageous.  We anchor our hope in Christ’s resurrection.  We fear no one, except God.  As we recover the sacredness of the body, we will no longer be flippant when a baker or florist is driven out of business.  We can’t just stand idly by as a teacher is fired for wrong pronouns.  They are fellow members in the body of Christ.  St. Paul writes this, “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” (1 Cor. 12:26). Their burdens are ours.

We can’t just fast forward to the resurrection.  We must speak of the crucifixion, the body on the cross.  As we look at that man, himself scarred and abandoned, we say, “Behold the Man.”  In that crucified body, we view the hope of the world, the one who invites us into the home of His Father.  A return to the crucifix, so we can see our wounds have been sanctified.  This means a return to our Baptism into the body of Christ.  This means a return to the altar, where we eat true body and true blood.  There is no spiritual worship apart from bodily worship, whether it is the body of Christ or ours.

In Christ, we reclaim our identity as men and women, husbands and wives, members of God’s family, so that we might feel at home in the body of Christ, His Church.  We have a message that heals wounds and helps body and soul.  Remember this:  the body matters, it belongs to Christ like our text tells us, “You are not your own for you have been bought with a price.” (19b-20)

In our age of scattering, this brings us together.  Blest be the tie that binds us to the Lord.  These are the ties that bind husband and wife as one, that bind parents to their children and grandchildren.  As people go their separate ways, we offer a homecoming, a seat at the family table, a place of belonging, a place where we matter to others and to God, a place where we know who we are as Christians.  At Home In The Body.

Amen.