He’s dead. Her little boy. All she had. She’s a widow. What’s more, she’s a widow who trusted in God. She listened to His prophet Elijah.
Last week, we heard how Elijah came to her in the midst of a famine. She was literally preparing her last supper, her and the little boy. But at the Word of God’s prophet, the jug of oil did not run out, and the jar of flour did not empty. They survived the famine. Only for this to now happen….
Read MoreSt. Matthew’s Gospel ends with well-known words, the so-called Great Commission. Jesus says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations.”
There’s been a tremendous tension in American Christianity for the last half-century or more about the purpose of the church. The tension is sometimes presented as “mission” versus “maintenance.” Some churches and pastors are “missional,” meaning they want to make disciples. “Maintenance” churches and pastors don’t care about that, they just want to exist for themselves. Those are the caricatures.
The mistake in this way of thinking is that being a disciple is a binary thing, either you are or you aren’t. The switch is on or off.
It’s more complicated than that. The words St. Matthew put at the end of his Gospel say a little more: “Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”
Baptism begins the life of the disciple, and it is accompanied by a continual teaching, an ongoing catechesis to observe everything Jesus commanded….
Read MoreIt’s not difficult understanding the Bible, the Bible is clear – but it is very difficult to confess and do what it says. A lot of the extraneous, fanciful theology is finding interpretations around the clear teaching. Men look for some way to explain the Bible in a way that ends up rationalizing our continued unwillingness to just do what the Bible says. Let’s be honest; the first thing we think when we hear a saying like, “Turn the other cheek” is, “But what about this situation? I’m not turning the other cheek for that jerk. I want justice!” But the only footnotes to the Bible are the ones we put there. The only qualifications and rationalizations are the ones we invent, loopholes to subvert and dismiss the clear Word of God.
Read MoreOur minds contemplate grievances and dreams, seeking our own will.
We are called to contemplate Christ and seek to be conformed to His will.
We become what we contemplate. We become what we adore. If we gaze on images of uncleanness, we are conformed to that image. It defiles, and renders us incapable of genuine love.
We become what we contemplate. We become what we adore. So what is occupying your mind? We naturally have many scattered thoughts held in the mind: things to do, things to buy, bills to pay, the needs of the day. We cannot spend the whole day reading Scripture and occupied in formal prayer. Yet the needs of the day will overwhelm us, distract us, conform us to their own image – if they are done separated from the contemplation of Christ….
Read MoreThe history in Europe is of church decline through tyrannical governments.
But the church in America has declined with only mild hostility from the state. What has caused the decline here? Americans view church membership with less loyalty than a gym, supermarket, or airline preference. Convenience and amenities triumph over doctrine. The politics of the community matter more than the confession of faith. In the middle ages, backs were whipped in penance, and we call it darkness. Today votes are whipped, and we call it democracy. This is not reformation.
We cannot celebrate the Reformation today without acknowledging the need for reformation in our own congregation, and for each of us to confess the need for reformation in his own life….
Read MoreThe Bible begins and ends with a wedding: At the beginning, the marriage of our first parents; and at the end, the marriage of Christ and the Church, inaugurating the new creation.
In between these two weddings is the fall, and all the messed-up marriages, with rebellious children and false worship. The joy is gone; the wine seems to have run out, and what’s left isn’t sitting so well inside us.
The wine running out symbolizes the thorns creeping up from the ground, the betrayal of a friend, the death that comes to all in the end….
Read MoreIf we charted the history of the age for admission to communion, you would see it be very low for well over a thousand years, then rise sharply in the ages of rationalism and pietism, until the mid-to-late twentieth century when it begins to come back down. There are a number of factors involved in this, but underlying it all is this question: what makes a person ready to receive the Eucharist? …
Read MoreTemptations are rarely grandiose. On occasion temptation to a front-page-headline kind of sin comes along. Most of our temptations appear as innocuous choices. Small, daily things tempt us to take baby steps away from God’s Word.
Frequently we should pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us there to ask for help: “Lead us not into temptation.” This takes on urgency once we realize we are constantly under spiritual assault….
Read More“And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews.” Six is the number of man, for man was made on the sixth day of creation. Because man—who is identified by the number six—fell into sin, six is also in the Bible a number designating incompleteness/lacking/deficiency. Because of this damaged deficiency, every man needs purification for the sins that he does and the sin that he is, i.e., the sinful nature we all have inherited from Adam. Not out of convenience, then, does the Lord select these six stone waterpots used for the Jewish purification ritual before a meal. The transformation of the water from these waterpots points to the transformation of the entire ritual system of purification – a transformation that culminates in the death of Jesus, where He gives His own blood for wine.
So Jesus answers His mother as He does, and John tells us that this miracle was a sign, so that we won’t miss the most important fact…
Read MoreIt is no mistake that our Lord chooses to perform His first miracle at a wedding. But it is not simply a miracle, a magic show, a spectacular event to wow the crowd or to help His mother save face. St. John calls it a sign, the beginning of signs. A sign does not exist for itself. A sign signifies, points to something greater.
This sign of transforming water into wine is done in the context of Jesus talking about His hour. Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus says repeatedly, “My hour is not yet come.” Then finally, just before Jesus washes the feet of His disciples, the night before His crucifixion, St. John tells us that that great event, the Passion of Jesus, is His hour: “Now before the Feast of the Passover,” John says in ch. 13, “when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
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