Afraid of Jesus?

Luke 8:26-39

Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.  –Luke 8:37

A few years ago, my wife was asked to rehab an injured, young blue heron.  Herons are large, beautiful birds with long sharp bills and lots of attitude.  She put the bird in our guest bathroom tub and set to work caring for the bird.  The bird didn’t realize she was trying to help.  She had to wear a protective mask to keep the bird from poking out an eye.  It reacted in fear whenever she tried to take care of it.  But her love overpowered the bird’s fear and, eventually, she returned the bird to the wild.  (This is a picture of release day)

This week, I’ve been struck by the attitude of the Gerasenes to Jesus’ healing (the Greek literally says, “saving”) of one of their own.  One would have thought they would be grateful for Jesus’ saving act which both freed the man from his torment, and the community from their need to try to control him.  Instead, like my wife’s blue heron, they react with fear.  Rather than thank Jesus – they ask him to leave.   

In pondering all this, I wonder, are there times when we, like the Garasenes, are afraid of Jesus and his power?  Of his power to transform us through the renewing of our minds? Of his power to change us.  Of his power to save us?  Change can be a scary thing, and Jesus’ love can change us!

It’s easy, I think, to turn Jesus into a sweet guy who we can call on when we need him; to see him only as a kindly comforter.  But, that’s not the Jesus we meet in the New Testament. Jesus embodies God’s love and compassion, yes.  But Jesus also wields God’s awe-full and overwhelming power.  He calms stormy seas with a word.  He overcomes legions of demons.  He defeats the power of death itself.  And that kind of power can upset the apple carts of our lives, run our precious herds off the sides of cliffs, and knock over our sacred cows.  Jesus’ teachings can challenge us, and sometimes, yes, even terrify us, especially when we are comfortable with the status quo -– as unsavory as that status quo may be.  

Sometimes Jesus’ love and grace for us can feel like law to us, especially when his love for us challenges us to love in new and not-so-easy ways.  Sometimes Jesus’ love and grace comes as Gospel, as good news for our weary, tormented souls. Often times, it comes as a little bit of both!

When we feel challenged by Jesus’ teachings, we might be tempted to ask Jesus to leave.  Or, we might just look for another church where they preach a less uncomfortable Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t occasionally strike fear in our hearts.

We can be a lot like blue herons.  But the good news is that Jesus just keeps on loving us, and saving us and healing us, and sending us out to declare how much God in Christ has done for us. 

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.  Pray for those who are tormented to be comforted, and for all of us to be challenged by the powerful, life changing love of our Lord.

The Assault on Truth

John 16:12-15

[The Spirit of truth] will guide you into all the truth.  –John 16:13

“What is truth?”  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, asks Jesus this question during Jesus’ trial before his execution.  It’s a question being asked a lot these days.  In recent years, the whole idea of “truth” has been under assault.  There is, it seems to me, an emerging cultural belief that each of us has the right and responsibility to define our own “truth;” that “truth” is a relative thing tethered to our own personal experience.  In the era of “fake news” and media spin and our tendency to read and watch and listen only what we happen to agree with, this relativism divides us into rigid camps of certainty and, at the same time, leaves us feeling like we are walking on glare ice much of the time. 

Against the backdrop of this relativistic assault on the whole concept of “truth,” how do we hear Jesus’ promise that the “Spirit of truth will guide us into all the truth”?  “Truth” is a key concept in the Gospel of John. In John, Jesus himself defines the truth because of his relationship with the Father who is the source and basis of all truth.  According to John, God’s Word is truth and Jesus is that Word made flesh.  It is the Spirit of truth which opens our hearts and minds to see the truth that Jesus embodies.  As disciples of Jesus, we do not define our own truth, Jesus does.  As disciples of Jesus, it is not our personal experiences that create our truth, but our trust that, in Christ, we come to know the Truth that is God.

That’s heady stuff. But, if we are to find a solid place to stand in the whirling world of relative truth, it gives us a place to start.  And, that place is found in teaching and way Jesus himself.   It is found in the life, death and resurrection of the one who came to show us the depth of God’s great love for the world – the whole world – no exceptions. It is found in the one who says to Pilate that his “kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36) who transforms the world by defeating sin, death and the devil, freeing us from fear so that we might love others (yes, even our enemies) as he loved us.

So, is this just one more relativistic “truth” in a world of competing truths?  Perhaps.  But I believe it is something more.  Much more. The Truth which Jesus embodies reflects the deep wisdom that lies at the heart of all creation.  Why?  Because the Truth he reveals is the God who created the heavens and the earth, and you and me, and everything that exists.  He reveals a Truth worth staking our life on because it gives life not just to me, but to everyone else – even those who think and believe and act differently than I do. 

This is why proclaiming the word and witness of Jesus needs to be at the very center of who we are and what we are about as disciples of Christ.  It can’t just be background noise, or subtext or corollary to a life of faith.  It is the Truth which transforms the world, even when we, as is so often the case, fail in our efforts to do so ourselves.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thank-you for reading.   

Between Betrayal and Denial

John 13:31-35

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  -John 13:34

In just a few days’ time, I will be on my way to visit my friends in the Morogoro Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania.  I will be accompanying four women from the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod who are going to Tanzania to begin building relationships between women in our synod and women in the diocese.  This is not a “service trip.”  We are not going to “do for…” the people there.  We are going, quite simply, to get to know one another better, so that we might accompany one another in mission and ministry more effectively in the future.  We offer ourselves.  They offer themselves.  We will give and receive.  They will give and receive.  Together, we will learn from one another in a deeper way what Jesus means when he tells us to love one another as he has loved us.  We will celebrate both the ways we are different and the ways we share a common humanity and faith.

It is striking to me that Jesus’ new commandment to love one another as he loved us (which he demonstrated by washing his disciple’s feet – the master serving the student) is sandwiched in between Judas leaving the upper room to betray Jesus and Jesus telling Peter that he will deny him three times.  Between betrayal and denial, Jesus calls his disciples to a servant-love that will bind them to one another in the dark and painful days that lie immediately ahead of them, and on the challenging and often dangerous journey they will take following the Resurrection and Pentecost.

Learning to love like Jesus loves, means doing the hard work of figuring out how to love one another when we find ourselves living in the tension between betrayal and denial.  No easy task.  

What I hope and pray we will all learn during our time in Tanzania is that Jesus’ love is so powerful that it transcends a world that is fractured by factions and fighting.  I hope we will experience how Jesus’ love binds disciples across cultures and languages and nations and anything else that might divide us.  I pray that Jesus’ love will move us beyond platitudes and paternalism, beyond romantic mushiness and sentimental sweetness, to take seriously those things that divide us, embrace the wonder of our diversity and motivate us to work together for the good of all people.  All people.  

In a world where fleeing immigrants are treated as less than human, where people are attacked in subtle and not-so-subtle ways because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, the religion they practice, their orientation or their gender, learning to love in the way of Jesus is a critical step in learning how to walk together as siblings and as friends.

Sometimes, it takes going half way around the world to figure that out.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Please pray for us as we travel this next week. Look for the next “On the Way” reflection in two weeks.  Thanks for reading!

The Mortality Factor

John 10:22-30

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.”  --John 10:28

I don’t think I fully appreciated my own mortality until my senior year of High School.  Sure, I knew, intellectually, that one day I would die. But, like most seventeen-year-olds, I figured that was a long, long way off.  But then, one of my peers died.  He was in the class after mine.  He was driving home from out of town late one night when his car left the road and crashed. We weren’t close friends, though I knew him and we talked from time to time.  We had talked just a few days before he died.  I remember how hard it was to get my head around the fact that he was gone.  That death had claimed someone my age.  That my youth did not exempt me from dying.  His death forty years ago had a huge impact on me, and I still think about him from time to time.

Today, in the light of school shootings, kids being gunned down in the streets of our cities and the pervasive reality of violence in our world, the fact that the reality of my mortality didn’t sink in until I was seventeen almost seems quaint.  On the other hand, Americans seem bent on doing everything we can to defy life’s ultimate reality, and to push death back back as much as possible.  But, the truth is, death is coming for all of us, and it is no respecter of age, economic status, privilege, power or place.  Our inevitable mortality is a problem that we, on our own, cannot fix.

Jesus’ promise of eternal life stands out in bold relief against the backdrop of this cold reality. It almost seems too good to be true. And, for some, it is.  But for those who believe it, it has the power to change our whole way of looking at, and living our lives.  Knowing that, though we will all die,  death will not have the last word can give us a bold confidence to be who God created us to be, and the courage to face our mortality head on, not avoid, defy or deny it.   But, even more, knowing that, through Christ, our lives have been given to us, allows us to live with gratitude and thankfulness for how ever many days we have been given.  Knowing that our futures are secure and that no one and no thing can snatch us from God’s hand means we don’t have to live fighting for our own survival all the time.  It frees us to live, not for ourselves, but for the sake of sharing the life we have been given with one another and for joining hands and fighting the pervasive reality of death together.

Eternal life is an amazing gift not just for some point down the road, but right here, right now.

This doesn’t mean that Jesus’ sheep don’t have struggles, get sick, suffer and die.  We do.  It just means that we know that we never have to face the valley of the shadow of death alone and that there is always, always life waiting on the other side.  That’s the hope of the Resurrection.  That’s the hope of Easter.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.

Six Minutes of Fear

John 20:19-31

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  --John 20:19

Fear.  Intense.  Paralyzing. Panic-stricken.  Fear.  Totally out of control, not able to do anything.  Nothing.  All my problem solving skills stymied.  Useless. It was just six minutes.  Six minutes.  But it was a long, long, long six minutes.

Fear is different than anxiety.  Anxiety is that vague, untethered sense of dis-ease that something in my life is not quite as it should be.  Fear is focused, located, specific.  Anxiety gnaws at you.  Fear grips you.  Anxiety searches for a place to settle, and doesn’t.  Or does, in all the wrong places.  Fear comes at you head-on, smacks you upside the head and stabs you in the heart.

Today, I am reading this week’s familiar Easter text through a different lens.  Through the lens of six minutes of fear.

For the disciples it had been three days of fear.  Jesus, their master and friend, had been brutally crucified and they knew, just knew, they were next.  Jesus was gone.  A problem that could not be solved.  A change that could not be undone. They didn’t know what to do.  They were paralyzed.  Panic-stricken.  Trapped.

And then, Jesus was there. “Peace be with you.”  He said.  And in what I now believe is probably one of the most understated lines in all of scripture, John tells us, “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” That line can’t possibly capture the unbelievable relief, the release, the liberating joy of that moment.  One cannot even begin to put words on the to-good-to-be-true feeling they must have felt.  Jesus had to say it again, “Peace be with you,” before his words had any chance of sinking in.

In the midst of my six minutes of fear, I couldn’t hear those words either.  You can’t.  Not in that place.  You can pray. Plead.  Beg.  Yearn for God to do something about which you can do nothing.  And I did.  But peace? No.  Peace comes in the seventh minute.  Peace comes when you are sitting on the floor shaking, the imminent danger past. Peace comes when the fear begins to drain away.

And then you realize it. You realize that Jesus is with you. That God was with you all along. That’s when you consider the Good News of Easter: that because Jesus is alive, there truly is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And you believe it.  You have to.  Because, in the face of fear, nothing else makes sense.

“Christ is risen!” The Church proclaims during the seven weeks of the Easter season.  “Christ is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!” It is a desperate prayer in the face of fear.   It is a shout of rejoicing because we too have seen the Living Lord.

Peace be with you.

Bishop Mike.

Thank-you for reading. My prayer of gratitude this week is for first responders and all those who come to help when we are paralyzed by fear.

PS: Next week is Synod Assembly week here in the Arkansas-Oklahoma Synod, so there won’t be an “On the Way.” See you again in two weeks.

From Death to Life

Luke 24:1-12

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen!” –Luke 24:5

There are two things that everyone has in common.  No exceptions.  It doesn’t matter where you come from, or how old or young you are. No matter your gender, your sexual orientation or the color of your skin.  It is true whether you are poor or wealthy, powerless or powerful. There are two things that bind together every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live – and in fact, every living thing that has ever creeped upon the earth.   

And it’s just this:  

Every single one of us was, at some point in the past, born.  And, unless Christ comes again in glory, every single one of us will, one day, die. This path from life to death is one that we all must follow.  No exceptions.

But, during these Holy Days from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday we Christians tell a different story.  As we sit and wait and watch between the darkness of Good Friday and the sunlight of Easter morning we travel a different path: the path from death to life, from the cross of Christ to an empty tomb.  And it is this journey from death to life that makes all the difference to that other journey, the one from life to death, from birth to the grave that we all travel.  

It is this journey from death to life that brings us hope, and even joy, as we travel the sometimes, even often times, difficult path we call “life.”  It brings us hope, because the story of Jesus’ journey from death to life reminds us that God travels with us every day of our lives, and even more, that God will carry us through the deaths that will inevitably come to us and on into eternal life.  The Good News of Easter is that God is not only with us, but that God’s steadfast love and enduring mercy and reconciling power is even more powerful than death itself!  

Because of Jesus, we know this is true!

Someone -- I don’t remember who -- once said that the definition of “courage” is not “living without fear,” but the ability to live boldly in the face of fear, and even in spite of the fear.  The truth that God is with us,

And that God’s love, mercy and reconciling power is stronger than death can give us the courage and the strength we need to face the dark days of our lives and the shadow of the valley of death as it descends upon us.  It can give us the courage and strength we need to join God in living out God’s steadfast love, enduring mercy and reconciling power in the context of our own lives. 

There are three things that every one of us has in common.  No exceptions.  Every one of us was, at some time in the past, born.  And every one of us will, at some time in the future, die.  And, because of Easter, we know that every single one of us is loved, deeply loved, by the God who created us, and who walks with us, both now and forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Have a Blessed Easter!

Bishop Mike.

Thanks for reading!

Why Jesus?

Philippians 2:5-11

And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.  –Philippians 2:7-8

During bible study at a congregation council meeting many years ago, one of the council members asked a question that has stayed with me.  “What makes the church different than say, the Rotary Club?”  The simple answer is, of course, “Jesus.”  But (in good Lutheran fashion) the follow up question is “So, what does this mean?”  

As Christians get ready to enter into another Holy Week, I think it is a good time to pause for a moment and ask ourselves again, “Why Jesus?”  and the corollary question, “Why church?”  How does Jesus make the church different than the Rotary (or any other organization for that matter)?   

My answer to that question usually starts with a statement about what the church is not.  In my humble opinion, the Church is not…

…A social club for like-minded people.  The purpose of being a church is not to get together and have a good time with people. Now, don’t get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with getting together, having a good time and building friendships. We humans need community.  But, it is in the community of faith where our faith is shaped, where we hear the Word proclaimed and share in the sacraments and learn the Way of Life that Jesus teaches.  Christian communities form disciples of Jesus, just like Jesus raised up his disciples in community.  

The church is also not…

…A social service agency or political action committee (conservative or liberal).  There are lots of organizations that do both of these things well with no reference to Jesus whatsoever.  Again, don’t get me wrong.  For Christians, loving our neighbors is not an option.  It is a command.  The Church has started many social service agencies and has advocated for justice through its many centuries. But, this work does not set us apart.

So, why Church?   I would say that the Church exists…

…To tell the story of Jesus. I think this is the number one reason God called the Church into being.  The Church’s primary calling is to proclaim the Good News that, through Jesus death has been defeated by the creative power of God’s love and life.  The Rotary doesn’t do that.  The garden club doesn’t do that.  The Red Cross doesn’t do that.  Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party do that.  Only the Church does.

The Church exists…

…To live in the Way of Jesus.  Christians not only proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus, we also strive (imperfectly) to model our lives after the life of Jesus.  Because Jesus loved, we love.  Because Jesus reached out to all people, we reach out to all people (exclusive of none).  Because Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons and fed the hungry multitudes, we work for healing, hope and respond to human need.  When it is at its best, the Church shows the world what the Reign of God looks like;  a Reign which transcends the limits of all our human institutions, organizations, governments and politics.  

The Church exists…

…To invite people into the love and life Jesus offers.  Whether in proclaiming the Good News by telling Jesus’ story, or sharing that Good News through acts of love, and mercy, compassion and kindness, justice and peacemaking, we invite others to join us in this way of life that gives life.

So, why Jesus?  

Jesus embodies the love of God for the whole world, and invites us into that love. 

Jesus accompanies us through the power of the Spirit and shows us, and all people, the way to hope and healing and wholeness.

Jesus opens a way for us through death and into life not only when we die, but as we face the thousands of “little deaths” that shape our lives.  

Sharing the mind of Christ is what distinguishes us from the Rotary, and every other institution, organization or group.

That’s how I would answer the question.  How would you?

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading!  Have a blessed Holy Week!