Immanuel Lutheran Church - Benson

“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.  Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”
1 Peter 1:13-16

What does it mean to be holy?

We Christians are called a holy people.  Certain actions that we do are holy.  Some words we say are holy.  Some places are called holy places.  Some things we touch, taste, or look at are called holy as well.  Is holiness some intrinsic piece of the atom, or is holiness added, like we add seasonings when we cook?

A simple definition of “holy” is: Set apart for God’s use.

Something that is holy is something that God has decided to use for a specific purpose.  This requires three characters in the drama of being holy.  The first character is God, who gets to use things.  Why does God get to use certain things?  Because God made all these things, put everything in motion, and maintains all creation through the Word.  God gets to use things because all these things belong to God.

The second character is the thing, person, or place that God decides to use.  This could be something as normal as a little bit of water, that mixed up with the Word, becomes a baptism.  Or maybe a little bit of bread and a little bit of wine, that mixed up together with the Word becomes the Eucharist.  Or it might be a place, like a church or a specific site like the little French city of Lourdes, that God decides to use for people to gather and worship.  Or God could pick a person, or a group of people, and use them to further God’s work in the world.  This is exemplified in the calling of Abram: “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing’” (Genesis 12:1-2).  This is also shown when Jesus calls his fishermen disciples: “And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people’” (Matthew 4:19).  People are selected to do something, to be something, and that something is to spread the Good News of God’s love to an unbelieving and unloving world.

Just like Abram so long ago, and the disciples a little bit more recently, we are called to be a holy people.  Notice, that this does not mean we are called because we are better than anyone else.  Nor does it mean that, by being called, we are intrinsically more special than anyone else.  We are not called because we were special, we are special because we are called!

And being called out, specifically picked to be holy people in the world, we have a job to do because Holy is as Holy does.  This is why the letter 1 Peter does not hedge its claims on us like a lot of Paul’s letters seem to do.  The writer of 1 Peter does not allow us to dodge God’s calling.  God is the creator, the only one who has holiness.  But because God calls us, sets us apart, we are made holy.  So, the apostolic author tells us to be holy in all our conduct.

But what does holy conduct look like?  As with any conduct, there are two sides, the personal conduct (how you act when you are alone and no one is watching) and public conduct (how you act when others are around and everyone is watching).  Personally, holy conduct means following the Ten Commandments, living according to the Lord’s Prayer, and allowing them to shape your life.  But notice actually how small guidelines those are!  There are only ten fairly simple rules!

Holy public conduct, however, is much more complicated.  It is not easy to live a public life of not judging others (Matthew 7:1), of interpreting our neighbors actions in the best possible light (Small Catechism, Eighth Commandment), and always working for the best for the world, whether we agree with it or not (Philippians 1:9-10)!

How do we live a holy public life?  The first step is to remove from ourselves the idolatry of self.  We are all too often disposed to believe that we are right, we are correct, and if anyone disagrees with us, they must be wrong.  We are not holy by ourselves, but only because God calls us, just as God has also called others to be holy.  We work with God when we act as the full body of Christ, complete with disagreements and dysfunction that works to build up the whole body.  We are not made holy alone, but only together, with the whole history of holiness that God has been working on since the creation. 

Holiness is our calling, and holiness is our job.  Together with all the other holiness in this world, we get to live and work in God’s kingdom now, before it comes to be fully and completely to everyone whether they want it or not. 

Who are we?  God’s holy ones.  Now we behave that way.

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:1-6

Have you ever gotten a phone call, late at night, from a friend in need?  Maybe they needed a ride home, or maybe they were lost.  Or maybe they just needed to talk.  Whatever the reason, that person called you, and expected you to help them.

What did you do?  Did you stay up late talking with them, or did you ignore them and hang up the phone?  Did you drop whatever you were doing to go out in the dark to find them and bring them safely home, or did you leave them to their own devices?

Well, if was a good enough friend, I suppose you did the good and helped them.  You lived up to the hope that they had in you, and fulfilled their need, which was why they called you in the first place.

This is what the writer of Ephesians had in mind when he wrote, “I … beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”  Each one of us is called by God through our baptismal relationship with Jesus Christ to do something.  Callings take different shapes and sizes for all people, and change over time depending on the person.  Some people are called to be parents, some people are called to be teachers, others are called to be factory workers, others farmers, others mechanics, etc.

Most people have more than one calling, just like most of us have more than one friend.  God calls people to multiple duties: a farmer may be a parent as well, and both are important callings.

But to live out these callings, to live a life worthy of them, we need to do what God calls us to do.  Just like your friend calling you in the middle of the night for a ride home, you should do your best to fulfill your friends’ need.  So it is with God’s calling of you.  If God has called you to be a teacher, be the best teacher you can be!

So how do you fulfill God’s calling?  The writer of Ephesians gives a few guidelines to help us out.  The life we are to lead, no matter what our calling, is to be a life of humility, gentleness, patience, bearing each other, and maintaining our unity.

We’ve already talked about humility (check out my Feb. 19th post on this blog).  Humility, basically, means not taking yourself too seriously, and putting other peoples’ needs before your own.  This is what Paul means when, in the letter to the Philippians, he writes, “And being found in human form, he [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.”  Jesus put our needs before his own desires, and laid his own life down so that we might take on his new life for our own.

Gentleness means just that, to be gentle.  This does not mean to be weak.  It means to be strong in faith, but soft in touch.  Dealing with other people is much like catching eggs.  You must have soft hands, but a firm grip.  If you grab the egg to strong, it will break in your hand.  But if you go limp, it will fall on the floor and break there.  So it is with our daily interactions with other people.  If your words are to strong, it will crush their feelings, and break them away from what we want, to gather them into Christ’s church and his loving embrace.  But likewise, if we are limp in our faith and dare not speak out, then they will fall through the cracks.

To be patient is to be able to wait, to not expect immediate results.  Some people have to wait for their calling, patiently waiting for their great desire to meet the world’s great need in a miraculous turn of events that only God could have transpired.  Other people wait to see the results of their work.  But patience is a must in our life, because God works only on God’s time table, not ours.

Bearing each others’ burdens is hard.  This is a derivitiveof humility, where we place others’ needs before our own desires.  To bear anothers’ burden is to take their sins as our own, to declare their forgiveness before they even ask!  This is not something we are used to doing!  Usually, we want forgiveness to follow repentance, and if there is no repentance then there is no forgiveness.  But notice: Jesus did exactly the opposite.  Never did Jesus wait for someone to express repentance.  Jesus just forgave sins and hoped that repentance (turning around) would follow.  And that is just what Jesus does for us still.  We, poor unrepentant sinners that we are, are still given forgiveness whether you turn from your sins or not.  What is the difference between “us” and “them,” then you ask?  Really, nothing.  The only slight difference is that we know we need forgiveness.  But in order to know our need for forgiveness, we need to know our sins.  And for many people in the world, both us and them, “sin” doesn’t really mean anything any more.  That is why “we” need to grow more in bearing each others’ sins, for the sake of this world.  We need to sacrifice our self-righteousness on Jesus’ cross, and take up the sins of the world and offer them to God.

Finally, we must live a life that maintains the unity of the one Spirit in whom we have been baptized.  This was a radical call in Biblical times, because the first Christians came from both Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, men and women.  This is an even more radical call today, when we have let our divisions define us.  There are those who support abortion rights and those who oppose abortion rights.  There are those who support homosexual marriage and those who oppose homosexual marriage.  Maintaining the unity means that the Spirit comes first, before any and all of our differences.  Maintaining the unity means finding a way around lines in the sand that divide us to reach a new goal, a new life, and the new calling that we have all recieved to be children of God together.

God calls us to this new life not because it will be fun, or easy.  It is hard work to be humble, gentle, patient, bear each others’ sins, and maintain the unity of the Spirit in word and deed.  In fact, it’s impossible!  But luckily, in God, even the impossible is possible.  And God calls us to the impossible, simply to show the rest of the world God’s true and wonderful power and glory. 

Today, give thanks to God for allowing us to be a part of this wonderful endeavor of being workers in the Kingdom.  Listen, God is calling YOU!

“The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”
Psalm 34:10

During different times in our lives, different words comfort us.  When things are going well for us, we may not need too many words of comfort at all.  But when things are going badly for us, when we are suffering from death, loss, disease, or other catastrophes, we need all the comfort we can get.  Sadly, though, a lot of what people say to try and comfort us can be insensitive or even harmful.

Statements like this verse from Psalm 34 can be rendered harmful to people undergoing suffering in their lives.  After all, if those who seek the Lord lack no good thing, and I am, in fact, lacking good things in my life, then what does that say about my relationship with God?

But, thankfully, that is not what this verse is talking about at all!  Psalm 34 is a song for someone who has come out of the other side of suffering.  No more does this person feel the sting of the loss, the depression, the doubts and fears that accompany suffering.  In fact, they attribute their new-found hope on God: “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4). 

This is a song to be sung on the other side of the Red Sea.  Every time we read “delivered” in the Old Testament (and probably most of the time in the New Testament), we recognize God’s mighty acts of deliverance throughout the history of the Israelite people.  And no one act is more important, more typical of God’s actions, or more referred to than the Israelites crossing the Red Sea in Exodus. 

Remember the Exodus story?  Moses and Aaron are sent by God to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to set out for the land promised to Abraham for the Israelites to live on.  After arguments, miracles, plagues, and a passing over of God’s Spirit, the Israelites are freed and sent on their way.  However, the Pharaoh rethinks this, and sends his army out after the Israelites, who are celebrating their freedom and lazily walking out of Egypt.  Here begins a prehistoric car chase, with zig, zags, explosions, and fatalities.  Up to the point when the Israelites come to the banks of the Red Sea.  Here they think they are doomed to be crushed between the Egyptian army and the hungry waters.  But instead of seeing the people destroyed, God parts the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites can cross the boundary of the water on dry ground.  When the Egyptians follow, however, God closes the waters back over them, drowning them all.

This story became the prototypical story for the Israelite people.  Everything that they knew about God was based on the fact that God delivered them from death through the deathly waters to new life.  God took what would have killed them, and used it to bring them to new life!

And so it is with suffering even today.  God doesn’t take suffering away from us.  Nor does God rearrange the universe so that only I may never suffer.  We suffer mostly through our own deeds and doings.  We suffer also simply because we are mortal, finite beings who are aware of our impending death.  It would be, after all, more than luck to get out of life alive.  We will all die, and when we encounter our impending death (either through stark reminders of our own finitude like sickness and disease or vicariously through other deaths or other’s sicknesses), we suffer.

But what we know to be true, like the psalmist who wrote Psalm 34, is that God delivers us through suffering.  God does not take it away from us.  God walks through it with us.  God did not abandon the ancient Israelites to the whims of the pharaoh and the Egyptian army, but as a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, walking with the Israelites through the parted waters to the other side.

God will walk with you through your suffering, caring for you even as you cry and scream, and other people seem like no help at all.  God will deliver you from suffering to new life, on the other side of the sea, so that you can, with this psalmist, proclaim the good news of life: “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble” (Psalm 34:6).

So if you are going through suffering now, my prayers are with you.  And my faith is for you, because I know God will see you through this present suffering, this present darkness you find yourself in now.  If you have come through suffering, join with me in praising the Lord using the words of Psalm 34, because there are many people who need the support and care of the loving, living Lord:

“I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.  My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.  O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.  I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.  Look to him, and be radient; so your faces shall never be ashamed.  This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.  The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.  O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.  O fear the Lord, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want.  The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing”  (Psalm 34:1-10).

God bless you today!