A Real God, In Real History: A Meditation on 1st Kings 8-9 for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished

the building of the house of the LORD, and the king’s house,

and all Solomon’s desire which he was pleased to do,

That the LORD appeared to Solomon the second time,

as he had appeared unto him at Gibeon. 

And the LORD said unto him, I have heard thy prayer

and thy supplication, that thou hast made before me:

I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built,

to put my name there forever; and mine eyes

and mine heart shall be there perpetually…

But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children,

and will not keep my commandments and my statutes

which I have set before you, but go and serve other

gods, and worship them:  Then will I cut off Israel out

of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I

have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and

Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people

In 1^st Kings 8-9, we have the recounting of King Solomon’s dedication of the new temple he built, the prayers of intercession he made on behalf of his people to God before it, and God’s answer to him after the festivities died down.  This moment brought to fruition a number of promises God made through His servant Moses more than 500 years prior, and for which the people of Israel waited.  God blessed Israel with peace and prosperity on a scale that amazed the ancient world, after having spent the last several centuries liberating them from slavery and the endless assaults of various enemies.  Solomon’s fame and that of Israel would draw the leaders and representatives of various other nations to his courts, where he would pour forth his God-given wisdom, and build strong alliances with many.

In this moment of peace and prosperity, however, came both a promise and warning to Israel.  God had heard their faithful prayers for mercy and grace, and had given it to them without measure.  He blessed them with riches and produce, a kingdom which the world would envy, defended them from their enemies, and dwelt among them as their salvation.  3000 years ago, the nation of Israel was united and prosperous.  Sadly, it didn’t stay that way.  In the years and generations that followed—even within the lifetime of this great King Solomon—the people let go of their faith in God and His Word, and found that the warnings God gave them were just as real as His promises.  Without His protection and grace, the Israelites suffered famine and drought, pestilence and war, and eventually the destruction of their nation under various invading armies. By refusing to dwell in the peace and prosperity of God’s Gospel promises, they chose instead to dwell under the severity of His curse.  These were real people, in real history, dealing with a real God whose Word was inescapably real, as well.

By the time Jesus would come to Israel nearly 1000 years after Solomon’s reign, the nation was an occupied state of Rome.  Under Ceasar’s vassal rule, the people of Israel were not full citizens, did not have full rights under the law, and lived under the tyranny of their occupiers who they supported with their taxes.  Israel had wandered far from the promises God had given them through Moses and Solomon, and often ignored the repeated warnings of the Prophets God had sent them.  But God had preserved a faithful remnant in Israel from the beginning, who despite the vast unfaithfulness of the people at large and their leaders, He would use to bring forth the salvation of His Messiah.  When Jesus encountered the faith and humility of the Roman Centurion in John chapter 7, He turned to His own people to say that He had not found such faith throughout all Israel.  It was an echo of the Word He spoke to Solomon so many years before, and it taught the people that God was less interested in nationality and heritage than He was in living faith and repentance.  In faith, the Centurion received the blessings of grace and providence which healed his beloved servant; without faith, the nation of Israel languished under the rule of the Romans.  Jesus’ Incarnation as the very Word of God made flesh walking among them in the fullness of divine Truth, was a declaration once again that they were in the presence of a real God whose Word made real what it said.

2000 years later, that Truth still remains.  There is still a real God who continues to speak His real Word to His people, showing forth the blessings of His mercy while warning about the calamity of His judgment.  The same Jesus who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, who spoke to Solomon and the Prophets, who walked the ancient streets of Palestine, who suffered, died, and rose again for the sins of the whole world, who sent forth the Apostles of His Holy Church to preach His Gospel of salvation to all people, who ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father until the time would be complete for His return to judge the living and the dead:  this same Jesus speaks to our world today.  Today, He calls His people to hear His Word, and to abide by faith in His promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation.  Today, He sends His Holy Spirit to work through His Word, so that everyone who hears might turn from their evil, believe and live. Today, He gives His grace to all who will leave the ways of darkness behind, and preserves them in His sanctifying grace unto life everlasting in His Kingdom which has no end.  Today, He promises that His eyes will not depart from the temple of your heart as long as you abide in His Gospel promises by His grace through faith in Him and His Word.  Today, this very real and eternal God speaks His very real and eternal Word to you, that you might rise up in the newness of His life forever.

But He also speaks His Word of warning, as well.  Apart from Him, His Word, and His grace, there is no peace, no prosperity, no hope in this world or the next.  Apart from Him, our enemies gather at the gates to destroy our nations, our communities, congregations, our families, and ourselves.  Apart from God’s grace in Jesus Christ, we are left alone in the darkness of a dying world according to the consequences of His Holy Law, where we become downtrodden by the wicked and the malicious.  The spirit of evil still runs throughout our fallen world always seeking whom it may devour, lusting after whomever has drifted from faith in the saving promises of God our Savior—those who have forgotten the deep and eternal realities of God and His Word, and who may thus be easily led by deception unto eternal destruction.  He is a real God, and we are real people, living in a real world with real threats on every side.  We face real life, real death, and a real eternity as either the friends or enemies of God.

Today, let the Word of God’s eternal truth pierce through the fog of lies which have befuddled your heart and mind.  Hear Jesus make His appeal to you through His Word, to gather you to His eternal people, and to add you to the number of those who would abide in His grace and mercy forever.  Hear Him as He shows you the price of your salvation written in the holy blood He poured forth through His Cross, how He sends His Holy Spirit to make of you a temple more grand and enduring than the splendors of Solomon’s temple.  Hear Him as He reconciles you to His Father forever, forgiving you your sins, taking away your death, and giving you His never ending life.  Turn from the unfaithful sirens of a dying world, whose saccharine sweetness call souls to be crashed upon their rocks of destruction, and instead abide in the love and mercy and grace of the God who comes to save you.  Your God is real, and He comes to you in this very real time and place, to speak to you His real Word of promise and life.  Abide in Him, and live.  Amen.

Before Abraham was, I Am: A Meditation on John 8 for Holy Trinity Sunday

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: 

and he saw it, and was glad.

Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, 

and hast thou seen Abraham?

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 

Before Abraham was, I am.

Then took they up stones to cast at him: 

but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, 

going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

One of the more difficult things to maintain in our time and place, is proper perspective.  We live in an era of cacophony, where words and pictures flood our senses nearly all the time.  The news networks run on 24 hour news cycles through both cable and the Internet, filling every moment of broadcast time with stories of greater or lesser importance.  Various communication mediums allow people to speak or write or share ideas on a whim, and make it easy for everyone to follow the whims of the people who post them.  Advertisers, movie and television producers, politicians, and every kind of huckster vie for your attention, your vote, and your dollars.  Most people now have devices in their homes and in their pockets which keep them connected to this stream of data at all times, constantly pushing into our eyes and ears words of variable veracity and worth.  In such a maelstrom of noise, it is no wonder that people lose their bearings and their perspective on what is really important, true, and necessary.

Take, for instance, the average driver these days who texts and operates their vehicle.  Moving in heavy traffic on the freeway or drifting along a country road, the proper focus is operating the vehicle in the world moving past-- to be conscious of the other drivers and obstacles which can be impacted by one's own vehicle.  Keeping all information in perspective, the driver would prioritize the lives of motorcyclists, pedestrians, a working mother in her car with her young children, over the endless stream of updates pulsing through her phone.  Sadly, too many people, either through an irrational addiction to their devices or a reckless disregard for the lives of others, kill themselves and thousands of others every year because they lost perspective on what is important at the moment.

While I don't think there's likely a good analog to texting and driving for first century Palestine (maybe donkey related accidents were up due to distracted scroll reading while riding...) Jesus was still trying to give His hearers better perspective.  Greek philosophy, various strains of folklore, pagan religious systems with all their various gods, political theory, news of intrigue and wars and revolutions, all competed for the Jewish people's attention.  They had been called together and into a nation by a God who made a promise to Abraham roughly 2000 years before Jesus' Incarnation, and as a people had undergone a variety of seasons both pleasant and terrible.  The Jews had at least 2000 years of recorded history (more, if traced through the earlier Fathers back through Noah and eventually Adam) and Moses who set that history into writing came roughly 1500 years before Jesus.  From Moses until Jesus' time, God had raised up heroic prophets, judges, kings, and deliverers, who bore God's Word to them and set before them the distinction between the way of life and the ways of death.  The Jewish people were the stewards of the oracles of God, unique upon the world's stage, and though sharing the same fundamental ancestry of all humanity, were called and gathered together in a peculiar way by the Word of God working among them.

Of course, God told Abraham that this blessing He was pouring out upon him was for more than just he and his descendants:  it would be for the whole world.  The Word of Life which came to Abraham 2000 years before Jesus was not just a local god with local intentions, but the Creator of the universe who had come to save all His people from the death and destruction they had brought upon themselves.  This God of Abraham knew that His fallen people could not maintain proper perspective between truth and error, good and evil, or even life and death.  He knew that Abraham, like all his kindred, were born into the world dead in their trespasses and sins, unable to breath into themselves eternal life, or rise above the cacophony of noise that the evil one poured out to distract them into everlasting hell.  The God of Abraham came to him knowing his weakness, and by the power of His Spirit working through His Word, gave Abraham the faith which would be counted as righteousness.  Abraham would be saved from death and hell, from his own ignorance and disordered desires, just as any and all would be from the beginning of the world to its end:  by the grace of God received by faith.

As Jesus talked with the Jews, He reminded them of Abraham.  2000 years earlier, God came to Abraham, and lived by faith in God's Word and promise of life.  Now among the Jews of first century Palestine, that same God came to speak His Word of life again, this time showing how He would fulfill this great salvation He had promised so many years before.  Jesus revealed Himself through His Words and His works to be the great I AM who appeared and spoke to Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, who cleared away the confusion of lies and distortions, and who restored to mankind the way which leads to eternal life.  Jesus revealed Himself as the eternal Son of the Father, who with the Holy Spirit are of the same substance and divinity, yet eternally coexisting as One God in three Persons.  And as Jesus shows forth His great triumph through His death and resurrection, He becomes though His Cross the everlasting sign of our life and hope:  of the Most Holy Trinity dwelling among men for our salvation.

Of course, such a revelation demands a response.  Some, like the Jews to whom He was speaking, will prefer to live in their darkness unto death, taking up created stones with their created hands and hurling them at their Creator.  Some will ignore the Word of life as lunacy, discarding what has been the unique and crystal clear 4000 year testimony of the God who comes to save, believing rather the lies of a devil who happily leads them into everlasting chains.  Some will prefer to return to the suffocating cacophony of incoherent and endless data, rather than to listen any longer to the simple and eternal Word which would transform, enliven, and save them.  Some will prefer to lose their perspective and their souls, rather than have them restored by the One God to whom all things in heaven and earth are ultimately ordered.

But some will hear this Word of life, and believe.  Some will hear Jesus speaking to them through Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, and through every faithful bearer of His Word down to our day.  Some will receive the life giving Word of Jesus by faith, trusting Him to be who He says He is and demonstrated Himself to be through His life, death, and resurrection.  Some will live by this faith in Jesus' Word, receiving the grace of forgiveness, life, and salvation which He gives them through His Cross.  Some will have their perspective restored by the only One whose perspective is greater than any created philosopher, politician, scientist, activist, or self proclaimed prophet.  Some will come to see that nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and that despite how it may look down here in a dark and dangerous world, the one who abides in the Word of Christ never really tastes death.  Some will come to understand by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, because He is the only begotten Son of the Father, who alone takes away the sin and death of the world.  Some will believe, and live forever.

Today, the Holy Trinity comes to you in the Person of Jesus Christ, whose Word is always accompanied by His Holy Spirit, that you might be reconciled to the Father by His grace through faith in Him.  This One God, now and forever, speaks His saving Word to you, that like Abraham you might live to see His Day with rejoicing and endless gladness.  Hear Him.  Believe, and live.  Amen.

I Will Pour Out My Spirit: A Meditation on Acts 2 for the Sunday of Pentecost

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God,

I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh:

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams:

And on my servants and on my handmaidens

I will pour out in those days of my Spirit;

And they shall prophesy:

And I will shew wonders in heaven above,

and signs in the earth beneath;

blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:

The sun shall be turned into darkness,

and the moon into blood,

before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call

 on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Signs and wonders are peculiar things.  As modern people, many of us passed through an education system that taught us to look for natural explanations for everything around us.  The philosophers and political thinkers of the Enlightenment bequeathed to modernity an inheritance of naturalism where only matter and energy had any relevance.  God, if He existed, was not significant to such thinkers, because the world as we experienced it through our senses and our reason was all that we could count on.  This era of Post-modernity in which we now find ourselves has taken this experiential naturalism into new frontiers, making the existential angst of the individual’s encounter with matter and energy supreme.  We abide now in a philosophical world propped up by the proclamations of Freud, Nietzsche, and Darwin:  that we are individuals who are animals without meaning, in a world which is accidental and uncaring, set within a universe which is mindlessly pressing toward its own distant extinction.  Having taken their scalpel of atheistic naturalism to man, creation, and God, they have taught us to ignore or defame anything which might show itself as super-natural or transcendent, discard any meaning in life, and cut away the very foundations of truth, beauty, and love.

Humanity is a strange creature, though.  Made in the image of God, he resists the spiritual and mental lobotomy of atheistic naturalism or secular humanism, because something deep inside him needs to acknowledge truth, beauty, and love.  He rebels against the notion that he is a meaningless animal driven only to satiate his passing lusts.  He yearns for beauty in the face of all that is twisted and perverse.  He steps out into the world hoping for the consistency of truth as he pursues his life, rather than the soulless fortunes of blind chaotic chance.  The witness of truth, beauty, and love deep within him allow him to keep drawing breath, keep rising out of bed, keep standing and walking and working in the world he now finds so dark and frightening.  If ever he loses that internal witness, there is nothing to keep his pessimistic depression from sliding into suicidal or homicidal despair.  The suffocating fumes of atheism, naturalism, and humanism work like an unholy trinity to press the hope and life out of every human breast, like a vast carcinogenic cloud oppressing our whole human race.  It blinds our eyes, deafens our ears, dulls our hearts, and left untreated will rot away our lives, our dignity, our families, and our societies.  While there are so many dangerous thoughts and ideas in the world, there is nothing quite so sinister and unlivable as this dark monstrosity wafting through our times.

To persevere, many people just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and try to ignore the consequences of the philosophy they have embraced.  One more week at work, one more vacation, one more decade, one more retirement, one more hospital trip… one more frivolity or tragedy or vanity after the other, until they can finally die to escape the hopelessness of their worthless lives and devolved societies.  This is not the fullness of life, but a fleeting shadow—a curse rather than a blessing.  Life becomes a problem to be solved or endured, and death a solution to our problems to release us from our endurance.  This blinded, deafened, dulled existence enslaved to caustic atheism, naturalism, and humanism is a calamity before heaven and all creation.  This is not why man was created, and not what His Creator intended for him.  Ours is not the first age to be suffocating under the morbid lies of such evil, but our age is certainly the most recent of examples where the purveyors of death rise up in great vehemence to crush out the light of life.

So, from time to time, the Author of Life breaks into our gloomy prison to dispel the darkness of our deadly enslavement.  Such a day was Pentecost, over 1900 years ago.  As people of every tribe and race had pressed into Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, so they were also gathered in the darkness and despair of their times.  They lived under pagan oppressors and political tyrants; corrupt religious leaders and false prophets; social philosophers who promoted hedonistic satisfaction as the only balm for their meaningless lives of toil and pain.  Into that darkness the Lord of Glory broke through with His signs and wonders, disturbing the rhythm of matter and energy and passion and pain, and shone forth the liberating Truth once again.  Great rushing winds, tongues of flame, and gifts of diverse languages—signs in heaven above and on the earth beneath—were used to shake the enslaved masses out of their stupor.  Healings of body and mind, the casting out of devils, and even raising the dead were soon to follow in the Apostolic train, all empowered by the Holy Spirit given to them on this great day of Pentecost.  God saw the plight of His creation under the sway of the evil one, and came to pierce their darkness and break their chains.

The signs, however, were not what saved the people.  No matter how great the miracle or wonder, such things only serve to awaken or jostle people to attention.  The Holy Spirit who descended upon the Apostles came to bear witness to what actually would save the people:  Jesus Christ.  The signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit were never to bring honor or attention to Himself, nor to the person through whom He worked.  Rather, the Holy Spirit came to bear witness to Christ Jesus, His saving blood spilled for all mankind upon His Cross, His resurrection from the dead, His promised gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation.  The Holy Spirit worked miracles and wonders so that the people might be freed from their demonic enslavement to deadly lies, and live instead by grace through faith in Christ alone.  The Apostles knew this directly, stepping out in humility and faith as the Holy Spirit worked in them to make them powerful witnesses of the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

It is certainly true that our days are dark, and the mortal slavery of the devil hangs heavy on the shoulders of our people, clouding their minds and weakening their spirits as he leads them in chains toward the fires of hell.  But our God is a Saving God, a Redeeming God—the only One and True God.  He is the Lord of Hosts, the Light of Life, the Alpha and the Omega, the great and holy King of the Universe.  Our God does not leave His people enslaved without a witness to His saving Word, to His Only Begotten Son, who has given His life to ransom the whole world.  Our God is not silent, nor does He sleep in ignorance of the plight of His creation, nor of the workings of the evil one.  Our God reigns forever over His whole Kingdom, and presses His Kingdom into our time and place by His Spirit working through His Word to draw all men to saving faith in Jesus Christ.  His Gospel proceeds forth from His witnesses, and by His Holy Spirit works wonders to shake dead sinners into life-giving faith and repentance.  Our God lives, and His Word abides forever—even as His Spirit abides in and with us to both bind us to Christ, and to bear witness to Him everywhere we go.

Hear the Word of Christ calling to you.  Let His Word and Spirit give new sight to your darkened eyes, fresh hearing to your deafened ears, and new hope with tenderness to your despairing heart.  Hear His eternal Truth which dispels the lying darkness all around you.  See His unfathomable Beauty of everlasting life and forgiveness.  Feel His sacrificial Love pour over and through you, that you might be a giver of His love to all people.  Now awakened, risen, forgiven, and loved unto all eternity, never doubt His wonder working power to save any and all by His Eternal Word and Holy Spirit.  Stand straight with eyes fixed upon your Savior, that through Him you may see your neighbor in suffering, enslavement, and need—then speak boldly to the darkness in the power of His Word and Spirit, that the evil one might flee in terror before His omnipotence shown forth in you, and your neighbor may be made free from his demonic shackles.  Pentecost has come, and we are sent in the power of Christ by His Word and Spirit to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.  Let the darkness hear and tremble—and let the people hear, and live.  Amen.

The Love that Unites Us: A Meditation on John 17

Neither pray I for these alone, 

but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 

that they also may be one in us:

 that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; 

that they may be one, even as we are one:

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; 

and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, 

and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Unity is at the same time one of the most beautiful and most frightening concepts given to Christ's people, and His Church meditates on the Words of His great priestly prayer in John 17 with a certain amount of trepidation.  Jesus does not offer this great prayer lightly before His Passion, and neither should we take His Words lightly as we read them in our time and place.  This plea for love and unity among His disciples He specifically extends to all who will hear and believe in Him through His disciples' testimony, and so that means that His prayer is for us directly to love one another and be united in Him.

If one hears Christ's plea for love and unity with fear, that is to be expected:  human beings do love and unity really badly, and we have millennia of history to document our failures.  At the national level, countries appeal to their citizens for unity and love to amass political power and manipulate the people toward their ends.  How many nation's leaders throughout history have charismatically lead their people toward great atrocities, as they invaded, looted, and massacred their way across the countryside?  If distant history is too easily forgotten, the horrors of 20th century Atheistic Communism and Fascism should be fresh in our collective memories, their mass genocidal graves and battlefields still marking the deaths of tens of millions of people.  Today, nations do the same things, as various tribal factions throughout Africa unite to slaughter their neighbor tribes, or ISIS unites Muslims to slaughter and subjugate all others across the globe.  Americans are so leery of political unity and the fecklessness of populist affections, that we built into our Constitutional Republic very intentional separations of powers so that unity was always maintained in the plurality of checks and balances.  Humanity's works of political love and unity are far too often works of horror and terror, and rightly give us dread; especially as our own nation's election cycle seems to be generating presumptive presidential candidates whose lust for power approaches megalomaniacal sociopathy and demonstrable scorn for the rule of law, even as their political parties call for love and unity within their ranks.  We have every right to shudder when we hear politicians call for love and unity, because we know what inspires the hearts of politicians in every age.

How do we know their hearts?  Because they are our own.  Our fallen sinful hearts butcher love and unity in every institution we build, from churches to businesses, fraternities to universities, and even in our own families.  We build unity for the sake of power, that we might use such power for our own sordid interests.  We use love to motivate people toward our ends, or bend them to our will.  Many of our churches have become bureaucratic nightmares where their headquarters are filled with seekers of power and manipulators of popular affections, living sumptuously and presumptuously off the tithes and offerings of the people they fleece.  University administrators across the land reap financial harvests by the millions, while they turn their professors into the working poor, and their students into lifetime debtors.  Even families abuse their power to coerce and harm the people closest to them, creating divisions and abuses which scar generation after generation.  The well documented sociological trend of the last 40 years by younger generations to avoid membership in various organizations and institutions, soured on the abuses of government and academia and even family, are well rooted in our collective failure to love and unite.  Our political structures in every sphere have become grotesque, and even our families leave the wreckage of broken souls across our community landscapes.  We are a fallen people, and when we attempt in our various ways to unite in new efforts to build new Towers of Babel, we find that we build monstrosities which reflect the fallen image within us.  We are right to be trepidatious of human calls to love and unity, because we know what dark and evil hearts will do with such things.

This is where we must set ourselves aside, and read Jesus' Words as He gives them, rather than how we abuse them.  When Jesus prays for love and unity, He is asking the Father to give to His people the love and unity found within the Trinity-- a love and unity which never abuses, never coerces, and never deceives.  The love and unity which Jesus prayers for is to draw all His people of every time and place, into the fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  It is a unity and love which are reflected through His indwelling presence in every believing heart, bringing forth faith and repentance through the power of His Word.  That same Word of Law and Gospel which He used to bring all things into being, to call and gather His people through the ages preceding His Incarnation, to call and transform His disciples into Apostles of His Kingdom of grace, is the same Word He sends to call and gather and transform every soul who will hear and trust in Him until the end of the world.  Jesus as the Word Made Flesh comes to His people through His Word preached and believed, so that He may dwell in us and we in Him, and all of us together in the fellowship of the Most Holy Trinity.  Indwelt by Jesus and indwelling with Jesus, His people are transformed so that they might reflect His love and unity with the Father and the Spirit to everyone around them.  These marks of unity and love flowing forth from the Holy Trinity through His people will be signs of the truth of Jesus and His Word, bearing witness to the veracity of the Gospel before the whole world.  These marks are His works accomplished by His Word in His people, and reflect Him-- not the works of His people reflecting themselves.

We ought not read Jesus' Words of love and unity from our sinful perspective, expecting Him to misuse such things like our fallen politicians, academics, leaders, and even families have far too often done.  Jesus is neither a politician nor a bureaucrat.  He is not an abuser of power for His own glory, but rather a sacrificial Savior who though King of all Creation, comes in humility to seek and to heal and to save.  Though we are rightly nauseated by bureaucratic politics in the church and by churchmen who play the bureaucratic politician, Jesus is not a pope or bishop or president or council or blue ribbon committee.  Jesus is the very Word of God's love and mercy and truth, sent to save a dying, lost, and ever darkening world.  Hear Him as He comes to you, speaking His Words of life and healing into your wounded and tortured soul.  He does not come to manipulate you, to take your money, to endorse His campaign, or to sell His books.  He comes only to seek and to save you, and to give you the forgiveness of your sins which He won for you upon His Cross, and which He offers freely to you by His grace through faith in Him.

Have you been wounded, abused, and broken by the human institutions of this fallen world?  Have you lost hope in politicians, teachers, activists, and bureaucrats of every stripe and vestment?  Jesus calls to you, dear friend, with His Words of healing, restoration, forgiveness, and hope.  While we can count on fallen people to fail us at every turn, far more can we depend on our saving and loving God in whom there is no darkness, no evil, no malice, no corruption, and no manipulation, to be everything He has shown us He is through His Word given through the ages.  He is the essence and ground and fountain of all love and unity, and He calls us to turn from our dark and deadly ways that we might embrace Him in His marvelous light.  There in His fellowship we will find all those who have likewise responded in faith and repentance to His gracious Gospel call, and there we are marked not by the marquees fallen human associations, but by His indwelling and eternal Word.  Hear Him, and with eyes newly sighted find the fellowship you were created to enjoy between God and your neighbor forever-- a fellowship of true unity and true love whose blessedness and communion never end.  Amen.