Immanuel Lutheran Church - Benson

You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety.
Job 11:18

The book of Job is one of my favorites in the Bible, mostly because it defies all expectations.  The story begins rather simply: Job is a faithful follower of Jewish Law, a man who loves the Lord and his neighbors.  He is blessed in many ways: a faithful wife, many children, wealth, and health.  However, it what seems like a random cosmic game, the Tester (Satan) asks God if he can test Job’s faithfulness.  Satan here is God’s tool for testing people on earth, and Satan is good at his job.  Satan inflicts upon Job all of the worst things in life: his children die, his wife leaves him, he loses all his wealth, and becomes very ill.  But Job, proving God correct, does not sin.  Verse 1:22 “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

But then comes the part that defies our expectations: Job’s three friends come to comfort him.  Now, we would think that having three friends come to console us when we are sick, broken, starving, and alone would be a great remedy.  But these friends only end up confusing the issue.  They tell Job that only bad people suffer, so thus Job must have done something wrong since he is suffering.  But Job doesn’t believe it.  Job tells them that only when God comes down to explain what wrong Job has done will he believe that he has done something wrong.  Until God comes down to hear Job’s complaint, he will continue to defend himself and proclaim that he has, in fact, done nothing to deserve this.

This particular verse, while sounding wonderful and comforting, is part of one of these friends’ arguments, saying that Job will only be secure and safe again when he repents of sin and admits to God and people that he has done wrong and deserves to be punished.

Finally, a young man named Elihu (meaning, “He is my God”) asks to be heard.  This boy has listened to Job and the three friends, and finds none of them are correct, because they are talking about how things “should” work on earth, not how things really do work for God.

Elihu speaks with wisdom, which we often don’t expect to come from the mouths of youths.  We usually expect wisdom to be grown over years and years.  We don’t often realize that our youth can teach us as much as we can teach them.  Elihu teaches Job and his three friends that God is so mighty, so majestic, so good, so above the basic laws of cause and effect, that God will rule creation the way that God chooses, not the way that we expect.

And this is, in the end, what God tells Job face to face.  God comes and answers all Job’s questions with the over-simple explanation, “I created everything; I can do what I want with it.” 

This has always seemed a little cruel to me, and defies my expectations for a benevolent God who cares for each hair on my head.  But this is a God who loves all of creation, from one little person like Job to the tester Satan to the biggest fish in the sea.

When confronted with the majesty of God, Job can only humble himself.  While we would expect God to comfort Job, care for him, repeal all the things that have happened, this does not happen quite yet.  Instead, God pushes Job’s smallness to the front, making Job and us acknowledge that there are things bigger, more important than us little human beings.

Only then does God restore Job’s fortunes, give him a family, new riches, and a long, happy life. 

So what do we hope for?  Most of us probably hope that we never have to experience a turn of events like Job, losing all that we hold dear.  But whether we want this or not, most likely this is what will happen.  We will all suffer.  Loss, sickness, pain, grief: these things come to us all, faithful or not.  And even those of us who are faithful believers do not always know how to deal with our sorrow while we are suffering.  And, we have all probably known people like Job’s friends, those people who come to us with good intentions, but say the absolute wrong thing and only make our sorrow worse.

What can we expect for this life, then, if we cannot hope for it?  We can expect suffering.  We can expect friends who may or may not be helpful.  But just as we can expect suffering, we can also expect that suffering will come to an end. 

More than our expectations, though, is what we know.  We know that we are small, tiny creatures on this small tiny planet; just a fraction of the wonders that God has created.  What we know is that God loves us, and cares for us even though we are just that small.  But only after we have humbled ourselves like Job to the wonder and majesty of God can we experience the hope that comes from knowing God is in charge of this great universe.  Then we can look around us and know we can rest in safety, that nothing on earth or above the earth, no powers or principalities, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Pastor Bryan 

Another thing we can experiment on this blog is all the wierd or funny church news that we run across. Check out this!  It’s an article about the megachurches using a new a dfferent way to spread the message: the holographic pastor!  Could be useful, maybe, but I doubt it.  I like being a pastor in front of people, where I can see them.  I wouldn’t want to record my sermon on Thursday and have it played on Sunday, or be preaching at one church and have the sermon relayed over to another church.  That would just be too wierd for me!

Pastor Bryan

As I promised, we can experiment with what we would like on this blog.  One thing we could do is post sermons preached at church here in print form.  So, I thought I’d give you the example of last Sunday’s ( 8-10-08) sermon that I preached.

The first lesson was Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28.
The second lesson was Romans 10: 5-15.
The Gospel reading was Matthew 14:22-33.

Last week, I had a funeral for an unchurched young man who was killed suddenly and unexpectedly in a car accident.  Through a series of circumstances, I ended up taking care of this family.  When they came to me, they had a lot of questions about salvation, wrapped up in their worry that their son would not be saved because he was never baptized.

Even though they had this personal piety, they never sought to get this man baptized when he was a baby or encourage him to be baptized as an adult.  It shows a little uncertainty even in their own piety, but what it really shows is a lack of understanding about what salvation is: What does it mean to be saved?  What does it take to be saved? And, What do we do now that we are saved?

As my librarian-wife tells me, when we want to find out what a word means, the first stop is the dictionary.  So I looked up the definition of “saved” and this is what I found: “to rescue from danger, or possible harm, injury, or loss.  We see this definition in action in our first lesson today, when Joseph’s brothers seek to kill him for all the wrong he has done to them.  But Rueben, the oldest, speaks up and says, “Don’t kill him, just throw him in this pit.”  Rueben said this in order to save Joseph from death, and return later that night, pull him up and return him home, hoping that a day in a pit would teach Joseph a lesson in humility.

We also see this definition in action in our Gospel lesson, where Jesus saves Peter from drowning in the water that was rushing up over his head.

But being a good Lutheran boy, I couldn’t just stay with a basic definition of salvation - I needed a Lutheran definition.  Luther, in his Large Catechism, defined salvation as: “to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil, to enter into Christ’s kingdom and to live with him forever.” 

We see from this definition that to be saved is a past, present and future event.  Jesus Christ lived, died, and was raised from the dead one time, “for us and for our salvation” as the Nicene Creed says.  Jesus never has to do that again.  One time was effective for all time.  Which is good because that death part could not have been fun!

We are baptized one time as a sign of our salvation.  We never have to be baptized again.  Even if we were little children and didn’t know what was going on, or like me, threw up on my dad three times, we never have to be baptized again.  Of course, when we get a little older, we stand up in front of the church and affirm the promises made for us in our baptism, but we don’t get washed again.  We say that this is what we want for us.  But the baptism is still an effective sign. 

Luther knew how effective of a sign baptism is.  He exhorted us to remember our baptism every day.  Daily, we remember that we have died and rose with Christ, and because we are a new creation, we live a “saved” life right now!

And we know that when Jesus comes again and we are raised from the dead, we will be given a new, eternal life on a new eternal earth to live with Christ forever.  We are still to this very day plauged by sin and death, and salvation seems so very far away.  But we are also “saved” people now, and there will come a day when Jesus returns to finish his work of ending death and sin, and saving all people.

So, what does it take to be saved?  What do we have to do?  All this being saved stuff sounds really good, doesn’t it?  If we had to, we’d even drive across town to go and buy it.  So, what do we have to do?  According to both our Romans and Matthew readings today, there is only one thing we can do: Ask!  

Peter, as he is sinking in the water, cries out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!”  And Jesus does.  Paul says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!”  That is how the disciples knew and we know now that Jesus is Lord.  Not because he walked on the water, or stilled the storm, but because he saved Peter when he cried out.

Jesus saves us from sin and death by taking away the power of sin over our lives.  Through his grace, we have the power to stop some of our sinful behavior; obviously not all, because we are still sinful people.  But because of Jesus, we are forgiven.  Our sins that we confess and ask for forgiveness from no longer count against us. 

Jesus took away the power of death by dying and rising again.  Sin causes death.  Sinful people die.  It’s a cause and effect, as far as God is concerned.  We each face the reality that because of sin, death will occur, not only for ourselves but for our loved ones as well.  But death is not the end.  By resurrecting Jesus, God broke the power of death to hold us in the grave.  We can now face death knowing that Jesus will return and call us from the grave to live eternally with him.  As St. Paul says, death is now the gateway to eternal life, a much more wonderful life than we have even now!

But now for the big question: Is baptism necessary for salvation?  Many people think so, like this family I helped last week.  So I turned to the Bible for answers, and knowing that I was reading from Matthew today I looked through that Gospel to get an answer, and three things struck me.  The first time baptism appears in Matthew’s gospel is at the beginning when Jesus is baptized.  John didn’t want to baptize Jesus, but Jesus says something a little cryptic: John should baptize him “to fulfill all righteousness.”  Looking that up, it means: ”because it’s the right thing to do.”  So Jesus is telling us here that being baptized is the right thing.  But he didn’t say that it is necessary.  

The second thing that struck me about baptism in Matthew’s gospel is that Jesus never baptized anyone!  He fed people, he healed people, he taught people, he argued with people.  But he never baptized anyone.  That, it seems to me, means that while it is the right thing to do, it wasn’t as important as the rest of Jesus’ mission.

The third thing about baptism is the second time it is mentioned, at the very end, in the great commission.  Jesus tells us to go and make disciples, baptizing them in the Triune Name, and teaching them all that we have been taught.  So, once again, baptism is the right thing to do in the process of making disciples.  But nowhere is baptism necessary for salvation.

So what is baptism?  It is a sign of our salvation.  Remember Luther’s explanation in the Small Catechism?  Baptism is the mixing of water and Word.  The water does nothing on its own, but the Word of God can do everything!  The Word and water are mixed together for our sake, so we can see, feel, smell, taste and hear the power of God’s Word for us.  That is the power of baptism!  It is not our doing; it is God’s work. 

So what do we do because we are saved?  We are saved people, of course, because we have called on the name of our savior and he has graciously forgiven our sins, claimed us as his own, and loves each one of us dearly. 

We are to live out this “saved” life, following the Commission our Lord gave us to turn sinful people in saint/sinner disciples.  We do good to others (even our enemies), we care for those in need.  We do unto others as we would have them do to us. 

We tell others about how good this saved life is for us.  We tell others that we no longer fear death.  What seems to people without this hope as emptiness and a definitive end, we see the gateway to eternal life.  Death is a rest from our labors on earth, and the patient wait for Jesus’ return to bring us to everlasting life!

We pray for those who cannot ask for salvation (babies) and for those who will not ask (unbelievers).  We do this because we KNOW that salvation is what we all want, even those who do not know it themselves.  We pray for others because we are saved, so that they may be saved as well!

To be saved is to be rescued from the emptiness of this life, to be pulled up over the waves, to be reminded that faith is the only thing that can see us through the difficult times when the storms rage and the waves threaten to overtake us.

At any time, any day, any place we can call upon the power that faith gives us to see us through any trouble.  Faith is the power of God in our hearts to trust that God has saved us.  Faith gives us the confident trust that we will, in the end, be set free from the power of sin and death, that while they torment and sadden us still in this life, we will rejoice in the world without end.

Thanks be to God!
Pastor Bryan

“I am the Alpha and the Omage, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13).

At the end of John’s revelation, he reports these words of Jesus Christ.  In a letter that scares us, frightens us, confuses us, this verse in amazingly clear.  Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, is the source of all life, all being, and all we receive.  Jesus Christ is also the ending of our life.  Whether we live or die, we belong to Jesus (Romans 14:8).

I thought that this was the perfect verse to start off the brand new Immanuel Lutheran Church blog.  We begin knowing that we who post here, read here, and enjoy here belong to Jesus.  This is a blog for us, about us, and above all, to praise Jesus Christ in our words.

To that end, we will experiment here with all kinds of wonderful, neat multi-media, and the power of the internet to connect us, entertain us, teach us, and inspire us.  We’ll try not to get too crazy, but you never know what this is going to lead to!

No matter what we do here, we are going to keep our beginning and our ending in sight; we will never lose track that this is another adventure in our life as a church, another avenue through which we might spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, and that he alone is the source and end of our life.

So, enjoy as much as you would like.  Let me know what you think, with whom you share this blog, and what you would like to see happen.  We will update as often as we are able, and hopefully we’ll start something fun and exciting here.

Thanks be to God!
Pastor Bryan