Let this mind be in you: Meditations on Philippians 2

St. Paul’s short and very personal letter to the church at Philippi, is an exhortation to the people of Christ, to maintain the mind of Christ.  And as he says elsewhere in this letter, to write of such basic and fundamental things is not burdensome for him, but for his hearers, it is safe.  Rather than using his great intellect and education to craft masterpieces of systematic theology, St. Paul prefers to guide the people back to the simplicity of Christ crucified for them.  The central and present reality of Christ for His people, is what blossoms into the life of the Christian—a life of common faith, common hope, and common love, binding each Christian together into Christ as one body, with one mind.

But oh, what a mess we make of such simple designs.  For those of you who have been around a while, I doubt you’ve ever experienced a congregation that is “of one mind,” or purely exhibits the “mind of Christ.”  And if congregations can’t execute this goal, it is certainly true that church beauracracies and denominational constructs certainly can’t.  When we get frustrated with the divisions, controversies, and general confusion coming from our churches at local, regional, national, or even international levels, we often angrily curse the “politics” that bring such things to be.  But what is it that we’re really seeing, when the church fails to live up to St. Paul’s commendation, to have the mind of Christ?

What we are seeing is individual sin, brought together in corporate structures.  The sinful nature that we each bear, is certainly present with us, even when we’re alone.  But when we bring our individual sinful natures together into communities of sinful people, the sparks begin to fly quickly.  Your pride will interfere with my pride.  Your lust will compete with my lust.  Your covetousness will maneuver against my covetousness.  Your greed and love of power will wrestle with my greed and love of power.  Since the church is entirely populated with sinners, every gathering of Christians will be marked by sinners whose sinful nature clashes against the sinful nature of others.  We will grow irritated, tired, frustrated, angry, and mean.  We will say things about our neighbors that should never cross our lips, let alone spring from our hearts.  If we are wronged, we will demand an eye for an eye—if we are the one who does the wrong, we will demand justification and that we not be judged.  Like all sinners with twisted and corrupted natures, we will seek our own self gratification at the expense of others.  We will act out our inner wickedness, as we seek to be our own gods.

Is it any wonder, then, that the churches are as dysfunctional as we find them?  They are a reflection of who we are as individuals, written ever larger as more of us gather together.  While the old axiom is often true for individuals, that power corrupts, it is also true that masses of corrupt people seek power to further their corrupt desires.  We do not become any more clean or noble by our association with each other.  Rather, our self idolatry comes into endless variations of conflict with every other person’s self idolatry.  It is our own sin that gives rise to the divisions and controversies that divide our churches, our congregations, and our families; the scandal and intrigue of the churches, is simply a mirror of who we are at the lowest common level.

But it is for this reason, that Christ has come.  For this reason He humbled Himself, taking our human flesh—the Creator, taking a created human nature.  For this reason, Jesus submits Himself to the rancorous evil of His own nation, laying down His life upon the cruel Cross.  For this reason our Savior suffers and dies, descends into hell, and rises victorious on the third day.  It is for our sin, and our own inability to function either alone or in community, that Christ comes to give us a heavenly community, a blessed communion, and a new mind.

So, while our human enterprises continue to reflect our fallen nature, Christ gives to us a new nature that can strive for something more.  By the power of His Spirit working through His Word, He gives to us a faith that can receive His grace, forgiveness, and life.  He puts His own life inside of us, that we might burst out with His fruits of love, and mercy, and compassion.  He gives to us His own merit and righteousness, renews our minds, and calls us to be one with Him, even as He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  He calls together in Himself all who will hear His voice, binds them together as One Body, builds them upon His Vicarious Atonement, and becomes at once our Chief Corner Stone, and the universal Head of His Body.

And as His people, saved by His grace and enlivened with His life, we are called to emulate our Savior.  We are called to let Christ’s humility drown our pride, His sacrifice to subdue our avarice, and His wisdom to bury our sophistry.  Here St. Paul reminds us, that as the baptized people of God, buried and raised in Christ Jesus, that we are called to live into the image of our Lord—no longer judging God and our world by the things that we see through our own sinful eyes, but rather to submit to the judgment and Word of God, as it pours out upon us both His Holy Law and His everlasting Gospel.

In this we are reminded, that the Church is always called to focus Her eyes on Jesus.  With our eyes on Him, we will be conformed to His image, made to reflect His light and life into the world.  With our eyes of faith upon Jesus, His mind will become our mind by His grace, transforming us, and our communities, to places of mercy, humility, love, reconciliation, and peace.  With Christ’s fee gift of forgiveness and grace, we become reflections of His forgiveness and grace, where sin and evil is swallowed up in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord.  May His mind be ever formed in you, as He holds you to Himself forever.  Amen.

Lazarus: A Meditation on John 11

Death is not something most people look forward to.  For many, death is something we delude ourselves into thinking isn’t on our horizon, so that we may live frivolously and care free in the present moment.  When people start thinking about death, or talking about death, we often think there is something wrong with them, and avoid them if possible.  We find them morbid and morose, and they tend to pop the bubble we create around ourselves as we pretend death doesn’t exist.

In our Gospel lesson for this week, the subject of death is front and center.  Lazarus was a friend of Jesus, as were his sister and family.  They seem to have known each other well, and shared a fondness for each other beyond polite pleasantries.  While Jesus was a day’s journey or so away, Lazarus became very ill.  He was so ill in fact, that the family sent a messenger to Jesus, hoping that He would come quickly to save Lazarus from death.

In an age like ours, with medicine and doctors so abundant and near at hand, we might lose sight of the urgency of illness in the ancient world.  While some piecemeal experiments in vaccination go back a few hundred years, the real science of using vaccines to protect against disease didn’t blossom until less than 100 years ago.  Likewise with antibiotics, and the discovery of living bacteria, the use of this as medicine also blooms in the 20^th century.  Before this time, if you caught a bad bug, you were largely on your own to fight it off.  Either your immune system would be victorious and you’d live, or the bug would be victorious and you’d die.  And even with all our medicine today, there are still bugs out there that make our medical science blanch—such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa happening now, with a high rate of transmission, and over 90% fatality rate.

Knowing the brutal reality of disease, and watching Lazarus’ body losing the fight against whatever bug he had, his family reaches out to Jesus, who they know can cure him miraculously.  In the timeline we’re given, someone goes to find Jesus while Lazarus is still alive, and Jesus intentionally waits another two days before he begins His journey to meet him.  By the time Jesus gets to Mary and Martha, we learn that Lazarus has been dead for four days… oddly enough, probably just before the messenger reached Jesus with the plea for help.  Knowing Lazarus is already dead, Jesus does not make haste to get back—He allows his friend to remain dead four days.

And what, you may ask, could lead Jesus to do such a thing?  Since the text only tells us, that Jesus is glad He was not there, so that the people might believe in the miracle He was about to perform (and His corresponding teaching, that He is the Resurrection and the Life,) we can’t know much more of His motivation beyond this.  However, we do know some things that might prompt people not to believe Jesus’ miracle of resurrection.  For example, it was a common ancient belief that the soul of a dead person, tended to hang around the body for three days, before departing to the place of the dead (in more modern funeral rites, one might observe the practice of a wake, having similar roots—waiting to make sure the person is really dead, and not coming back.)  For the people who might have held this idea, Jesus’ work of resurrection would be that much more convincing, having been done on the fourth day.

But we’re still stuck with the problem of Jesus allowing His dear friend to suffer with a horrible disease, until it finally wore him down and killed him… all for a teaching moment.  What could Jesus possibly think is so important to teach us, that He would let someone scratch out their last feeble breaths, just to make His point?  Doesn’t this make Jesus seem cruel?

Well, it would, if we didn’t understand what He was teaching us.  Lazarus’ death, like our own eventual death, is the wage we have earned—it is the fate we cannot escape, due to our own fallen and evil nature.  We die, because we are evil.  Whether your life is taken from you by an accident, an illness, or a homicidal maniac, death comes to the whole human race because the whole human race is fallen and evil.  Death is where we’re all headed, whether we be great or small, rich or poor, wise or foolish.  Death is the fate of sinful man, and no man shall avoid it.  Not even friends of Jesus.

But there is a greater truth than that of our death as a just consequence of our sin and rebellion.  That truth, is that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life for all who will believe in Him.  He is the resurrection and the life that is victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil.  His creative Word of Life calls to us, shattering the hold of death’s icy grip, and raises us up to a life that will never die again.  Jesus was there to teach the people, that if they remained in Him by grace through faith, their life would be hidden in Him forever.  He taught the people, even His closest friends, that even though we die, we shall live by His infinite power and grace.

So for Lazarus, Mary, Martha, and all the disciples, the lesson to be learned was not really about Jesus’ delay, or His weeping with the mourners, or His ability to work miracles great and small.  He was teaching them the greatest truth that any and every human being can know—that Jesus is Life Everlasting.  His sacrifice for the sins of the world continues to be the Means by which He pours out forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who will repent and believe.  He is the Life that death cannot defeat, the Truth that the devil cannot twist, and the Way which hell cannot breach.  He is the love of God made manifest, and the call to salvation for the whole human race.

So also for you.  Should the Lord tarry in His return to this earth, each of us will taste death, as is the consequence of our sin.  But for each and every one of us who live by grace through faith in Christ alone, even though we die, we shall live forever in Him.  Be of good comfort, for death no longer has any grip on you, the devil is chained under your feet, and hell is irrevocably broken.  You live, because Jesus is the Life of the World, and His life has become your life, even as He took your death upon Himself.  Your life is hidden in Christ, and there is no power in heaven or earth or under the earth, that can separate you from His love, and mercy, and life.  Be of good cheer—for though you shall die, even so, you shall live, for Christ’s sake.  Amen.

Persecution in the Church: Meditation on John 9

There are few times in the life of the Christian which are more troubling, than when the leadership of their Church becomes an instrument of persecution to the faithful.  While this is not always prevalent, it does occur throughout the history of God’s people, and the story St. John recounts in chapter nine of his Gospel is one such event.

John paints a vignette of a man, blind from birth, whom Jesus heals.  It starts out enigmatically, as people ask Jesus, whether the sin of this man in particular or of his parents, has resulted in his affliction.  Jesus takes the opportunity to correct their poor theological assumptions, and tells them this affliction has come upon this man, not specifically because of anyone’s sin, but so that the glory of God might be revealed—which Jesus accomplishes, by giving him sight.

The miracle is notable for many reasons, not least of which are that it was witnessed by many; the man was old enough to be previously known by many more; and the man’s parents were still alive to attest to his having been blind since birth.  There was no way to sweep this miracle under the proverbial rug, or to deny its veracity.  It was a brilliant sign that pointed to Jesus, and verified Him as the Messiah He claimed to be.  The miracle made the reality of Jesus impossible to ignore.

But like so many times when Jesus presents Himself undeniably, the hearts of sinful people rebel in irrational ways.  The Pharisees call him in for questioning before their council of leaders, and drill him with questions about what happened and how.  They look for weaknesses in the story, and any attempt to discredit the people and event.  But they can’t find any.  The man speaks the same simple story.  The parents confirm his blindness at birth.  Finding themselves without rational or legitimate grounds to discredit the miracle, the people involved, or Jesus, they eventually demand that the man repudiate Jesus through bearing false witness.

The man refuses—and points out to the teachers of the Law, that God does not hear the prayers of the wicked.  Jesus had healed him, and this point was incontestable, no matter how that disrupted the plans and perceptions of the leaders.  Eventually, unable to contest or break this man, the council repudiates him and throws him out—ostensibly excommunicating him from the visible church community.

But of course, Jesus finds him, and calls the man to Himself by faith.  In this moment, Jesus teaches the people a very important lesson about the nature of His Church.  Though religious leaders (pastors, bishops, presidents, councils, synods, seminaries, etc.,) should not abuse their God-given office as under-shepherds to the Chief Shepherd, evil leaders cannot separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  If one pastor or lay board acts the tyrant in a local congregation, or one bishop acts the tyrant in a whole region… or if a large number of evil leaders gather themselves into councils and synods and conventions to embrace the devil and repudiate the Word of Christ, they cannot break the fellowship of the humble and faithful soul with their Savior.  Jesus reminds us, that even if the pastors and leaders of the Church turn their back on Him and His Word, He will always keep those who cling to Him by grace through faith.

In our day, many people find themselves in congregations, synods, churches, or other ecclesiastical constructs, where the leaders persecute the faithful.  The Word of God is under assault by the very leaders called to guard and preach it.  When God raises up witnesses to His Word in these places, the fate of those witnesses may well be excommunication or expulsion from the leaders’ political constructs.  Whether your local, regional, or national church community is plagued by false doctrine and unbelief of a thousand different stripes, from full blown apostasy and heresy to fanaticism and confusion, there is a word of the Lord for you.

If you are one, caught up in the errors and evils of this wicked time, whether you are a leader or a member at large:  Repent!  Return to the Lord and His Word, which alone is your salvation, and alone the Means of Grace that bind you to Him in His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  Do not deceive yourself into believing your humanly constructed political association will save you.  Only Christ saves, and only by grace through faith in Him and His Word.  Turn, before your destruction overtakes you, as it did the Pharisees in 70 AD, when God sent the Romans to utterly destroy Jerusalem.  Repent, that you may be forgiven, and live.

If you are one persecuted for the Word of God, take comfort:  for there is no one, be they king or pauper, who can take you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  There is no power of hell or earth that can overcome the love of Christ for you, and none can deny the reality and the power of His Holy Cross.  If they cast you out and revile you, be of good cheer—for here, Jesus will meet you, as he has met his faithful people in ages in past, who cling to Him by grace through faith.

And though it may seem that so much of the world’s political constructs, both inside and outside the Church, are united against the Lord and His Christ, He has always maintained for Himself a faithful remnant.  In this time of Lenten preparation and repentance, we hear the Word of the Lord once more call us to faith.  May the ears of all be opened, the hearts of all be broken, the eyes of all be brightened, that faith and repentance may once more mark the gatherings of Christians in this and every land.  Amen.

While we were yet sinners: Meditations on Romans 5

St. Paul makes many points in his Letter to the Romans, and few have the impact that this one does:

But God commendeth his love toward us,

in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

When we think of those for whom we would give our lives, the list is usually pretty short.  Some might be willing to die for a spouse, or children—some perhaps even for a good friend.  Some might be willing to die to save the life of any imperiled child, or in coming to the aid of a persecuted or attacked person.  Some make a commitment that they are willing to die in the line of their duty, to protect the population at large, such as police, firemen, and military.  But even in these examples, dying for others isn’t something we want to do, but may be willing to do, if the need and opportunity arises.  As General Patton was often quoted as saying to his soldiers, ““The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.”

Compare that with how Jesus gives His life.  We were not His friends when He died for us, but rather, we were enemies of God.  We were completely absorbed in our own pride, avarice, and self idolatry, and much more in harmony with the devil.  Mankind, having fallen and deformed the divine image we were given, were condemned rightly under the weight of our evil desires and deeds.  Jesus does not come to die for His friends and family, or even for the citizens of heaven, but rather comes to die for enemy rebels of His beloved Father.  He lays down His life willingly, for the sake of us… the ones who wanted nothing more, than to kill Him.

And while this certainly should give us pause during Lent, to repent of our sinfulness in all its forms, to deny ourselves daily, and to take up our cross to follow Jesus, it has a still greater purpose.  As bad as you think you are, you cannot be so wicked that Jesus didn’t die for you.  As far as you think you have fallen, you cannot fall so far that Jesus cannot reach you.  No matter how mired in sin and evil you are, you cannot be so foul that the Blood of Christ cannot wash you clean.  There is no length to which He has not gone to reclaim you, and there is no one for whom He has not died.

If you are one who has never known Christ or His Word, never given Him a second thought, and lived your life entirely for yourself—He has come for you.  If you are one who rails against God, despises Him, curses Him, and tries with all your might to destroy all that He has made—He has died to save you.  If you are wounded by others, with your faith fleeting and your love grown cold, angry at God for the life He has given you—He has pursued you in all your pain.  If you are one who has known Him, and yet continually fall in your sinful weakness to evils you despise, loathing your own miserable wretchedness—He has come to rescue you.

And all this, He does out of the only motivation that could impel anyone to do such a marvelous work:  love.  No one could compel God to love you, and God had no need to save you.  His only desire, is to love you.  And in this love that transcends all of time and space, He came into your flesh and bones, that in your humanity, the divinity might suffer and die in your place.  For He so loves you, that He would pay the great price of your sin, bearing it all upon Himself, that you might live with Him forever.  This is the great comfort of His Holy Gospel:  not that you loved Him and sought Him out, but that while we were yet sinners, Jesus loved you and sought you out, giving His life that you might have life forever.

In this season of repentance, while you rightly take up disciplines to control your sinful flesh and mind, to drown your old nature and rise up in the new nature given to you by the Holy Spirit, never lose sight of the love of God for you.  For while you were yet lost in your sins, Christ died for you.  And if His love pursued you into the depths of your sin, it will not abandon you as you struggle to live in Him by faith and repentance.  Be of good cheer, even in your struggles, for God loves you, and He has left His Holy Cross as the eternal sign of that love he bears for you, and for the whole world.  Amen.