Fifth Wednesday in Lent 3/20/13

Midweek of Lent 5 Date: 3/20/13 Text Amos 7:14 Title: Lion Alert! When I was attending Concordia Seminary 11 years ago Penny and I visited the “Big Cat Country,” exhibit in St. Louis Zoo. There we saw what I am sure is one of the biggest lions in captivity, maybe even in the wild. His name was Oba. That’s O-B-A. There is no doubt that you would not want to face this lion in the wild. He must have weighed 500 lbs., had a huge mane, and paws that were bigger than my head. If all that was not enough his teeth along with his roar would put the fear of God in you. While there is no doubt that he should have been running free back in his native country I would not want to be living near him. It was good to have a big moat between him and me. No personal face to face meeting for me. OBA needs to stay forever in his cage. In a sense that is what was going on with Amaziah, the priest at Bethel. He built a career around keeping the Lion in his cage. Only his case the lion was not named OBA, this Lion’s name is the LORD or in Hebrew “Yahweh.” In Amos 1:2 the prophet announces, “The LORD roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem!” The last thing Amaziah wants to see is a loose lion.” So whatever the cost, whatever the compromise, this Lion Yahweh must never, ever roar in Israel. Amaziah’s policy toward any prophet that lets the Lion Yahweh loose Israel, he must leave the country and take the Lion with him. Amos, a Judean cattleman and farmer from Tekoa enters crying out, “For three sins of Israel and for four, I will not turn back My wrath” “Lion alert! Lion alert! Call 911!” Amaziah must begin his play it safe, keep the church safe policy, for Amos’ God is saying to Israel. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins. Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD; it will be a day of darkness and not light. I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Woe to you who are at ease in Zion who do not grieve over Joseph’s ruin.” This is no still, small voice, as when God spoke to Elijah. This is no gentle Jesus meek and mild. And this is no tame, purring kitten. This is, as Amos said, “The lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken, who can but prophesy?” That proclamation does not work with Amaziah’s safe church policy, so he tells Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.” What he is saying to Amos is “Amos, this temple isn’t big enough for the two of us. So get out of my face you prophet wannabe! You don’t fit into my definition of church, for my motto is toleration, let sleeping dogs lie. I long to cooperate, to you, all I have to say is “goodbye and don’t let the gate hit you on the backside on your way out!” The priest Amaziah is an expert in image building, marketing techniques, public relations, and salesmanship. In fact, in Amos 7:11, when he reports to his boss the king Jeroboam be Joash what the prophet is preaching, Amaziah conveniently avoids the sticky issues of syncretistic, that is all religions are of value, so it is okay to worship together, poverty, oppression, and social injustice. Amaziah knows that he will not be in the king’s favor if he were speaking what Amos is saying. He has to do what he can to protect his religious organization at Bethel. The church is growing, making money, and everyone is happy. What a deal! Do not be deceived! What was going on in Amos’ day there is going on today. There are powerful forces in our lives, in the church, and in our world shouting to us, “Be an Amaziah clone! Be content with religious clichés and jargon instead of blazing, burning truth! Sit satisfied in church with the motto, “Come all. Be happy. No worry.” We live in a culture that systematically wants to de-fang and de-claw the Lion Yahweh. We should not be surprised for we are told in 2 Timothy 3 “There will be terrible times in the last days . . . people will have the form of godliness but deny its power.” Amos replies to Amaziah; I am paraphrasing, “I am not a religious professional, paid to make pious pronouncements on public platforms. I will not be bought, compromised, deterred, diluted, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I won’t give up, back up, or let up until my time is up.” We should not be surprised with his stick-to-it-ness. For Moses confronted Pharaoh with the LORD’S thunderous, “Let my people go.” Nathan courageously puts his life on the line when he summons David with the words, “You are the man.” Elijah takes the heat from Ahab, who calls him “the troubler in Israel.” Jeremiah daringly rewrites God’s word after king Jehoiakim sliced it, diced it, and burned it. And Daniel’s dream at night shattered Nebuchadnezzar’s illusion of the day in Daniel 4. Following in their footsteps while also fulfilling their prophecies in himself, is the greatest prophet of all time, Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. He made a whip and then used it to cleanse his Father’s house. Another time he looked the religious leaders of his day straight in the eye and said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones.” But this Lion Jesus is also the Lamb, and his mighty power is made perfect in weakness. Jesus allows soldiers to march him along the Via Dolorosa which means “The Way of Grief” while carries the cross stained already with his blood from his butchered back. Jesus lets his executioners to strip him naked, shove him to the ground, and pin him to wood with their tools of torture. And Jesus absorbs the spit and the insults without asking his Father to dispense twelve legions of angels. Societies don’t execute get-along people. They destroy people who shake their religious establishments to the very core. “There,” they said on that Friday afternoon, “There is no more Lion alert. He’s crucified, dead, and buried!” But, coming forth from the tomb, the Lion roars! We are told in Revelation 5:5, “See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, He has triumphed!” There is nothing dead about our Jesus! His is no syrupy, sentimental love. But His fierce love for you is driven by nails, marked with scars, and crowned with thorns. The Lion roars with the words, “It is finished.” Receive and rejoice in that forgiveness, I speak to you as God’s spokesman, “I forgive you of all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Rejoice and be glad in the Lord. Amen.

Fifth Sunday in Lent 3.17/13

Fifth Sunday in Lent 3/17/13 Text: Luke 9-20 Title: Whose Church is it? This Sunday I want us to take a closer look at the gospel reading for today. It shows us what happens when God’s people do not hold the Word of God central to their faith. It is a familiar story; one that I would wager everyone knows. Just before the reading for today we are told that Jesus is drawing large crowds, for as we are told elsewhere in God’s Word, he taught as one having authority and not like the teachers of the law who, for the most part just gave their opinions concerning the readings that they were studying that day in the synagogue. The religious leaders verbally attacked Jesus, as they questioned who had given him the authority to speak so clearly on the scripture he was teaching. Jesus responds to their question of who gave him the authority to speak as he did by telling them the parable that we are looking at today. I am sure that Jesus was not very far into the parable, before they knew who he was talking about; them. They knew that they were repeating Israel’s long history of running off and killing the prophets of God, who by the way the people believed, truly believed, spoke in God’s place when they preached. But they thought, just like the religious leaders of the past, that even though they had done all those things God would never take away their positions. So when Jesus said that the owner of the vineyard would destroy those who were to care for the vineyard and give to others they were horrified. No way. It cannot happen, for after all they were God’s chosen people to care for the people of Israel. It just could not happen. They could not believe it. God couldn’t do that to his chosen people. They were sure of that, for God had formed them himself. He just couldn’t do it. But then Jesus dropped the bombshell and everything changed. “What then is this that is written: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'? 18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” That struck them, for Jesus was claiming that he was the cornerstone and that anyone who rejected him would be broken or worse yet crushed. Whether you were broken or crushed, either way was not good, for as one Rabbi wrote, “If a cup falls on a stone or if the stone falls on a cup, either way the cup ends up broken. They were horrified. If it were not for Jesus’ popularity they would have drug him out of the temple and killed him right then and there. The question is what went wrong with God’s chosen people; the people he had created, who he had rescued time and time again for thousand years? Why had they become such lousy caretakers of God’s vineyard Israel? All questions that need to be answered, so that we can learn from them. The answer is really very simple. They were in trouble because both the religious leaders and the people had forgotten who the head of the church was. God’s pure and infallible Word had been replaced with their own interpretations, their own applications, their own rules, and their own ideas of how to worship God. The Jewish religion had become their religion and not God’s. The Jewish religion was in a sad state. They thought, by the time Jesus was born that the Messiah the prophets had spoken of was going to be an earthly king who would drive out the Romans and restore the nation of Israel to its glory years when everyone lived a peaceful and fulfilling life. They just could not see that the Jesus standing right there before them teaching the Word of God with authority was the Messiah that the prophets of old had spoken about. They did not purposefully change God’s Word. It happened slowly; a little here, a little there, as they put human logic above their faith in God’s Word, as he had given it to them. They had to keep up with the times. God’s Word had to be updated. The old Laws were not good enough. Times had changed. There had to be new laws that better fit the times. And in the process God and the authority of his Word got lost and the Jewish people were crushed by the Romans in 70 AD. In the Bible study we are doing on Sunday morning titled Broken: Seven Christian rules that every Christian should break as often as possible, we have found how easy it is to substitute our human ideas and rules, thinking there Christian rules, but really are not, for God’s ideas and rules, as given to us in the Bible. And in the process God and the authority of his Word have gotten lost just as God and the authority of the Word had gotten lost in Jesus’ day. While there are many examples of what I just said, I think one of the clearest and most dangerous doctrinal changes to our faith has been the acceptance of evolution by Christians. It has far reaching consequences, much more than just saying that what God did not do what he said he did when he created the world and humankind. To believe that we came out of slime, than gradually advanced from simple animals, to monkeys, to a mixture of human and monkey, then to full humanness is to say that God also lied to us when he had put down for us the words of Romans 5:12 were we are told, "12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Think about it. In evolution from the very beginning, long before humankind is said to have walked upright there has been death. There has to be, if for no other reason than the survival of the fittest. But God says there was no death until Adam sinned. That poses a real problem if you believe in evolution, for evolution says there is death before God says there is death. Somebody is wrong; scientists or God. That is just one doctrine of many in God’s Word that has to go away. Either evolution, actually to be accurate I should say macroevolution is right or God’s Word is right. Both cannot be right because they are in conflict with each other. With the science of evolution the old traditions have to go, even though it is through the traditions of the apostles that God is speaking to us in the Bible. The old ways have to go, so that the new ways can be taught. Who wants to hear the old teachings that they are sinners, desperate sinners, who cannot save themselves? That type of teaching is a downer and does nothing for one’s self-esteem. It is much better to teach that God wants you to be happy even if it means that you have to lower God’s standards by changing the meaning of his Word. Sin is not sin, but only human weakness. What we do, we do because of outside influences. We are basically good and given enough time we will solve the problems of life and become, in a sense god’s ourselves. That is what is believed and in the process God and the authority of his Word are lost. That, my dear brothers and sisters is the sad state of Christianity today. We have, as a people, put ourselves above God and in doing so have lost God’s favor. What to do? We must repent, realizing our drive to find god in ourselves, throwing ourselves on his mercy, as we accept his authority as we know in the Word of God. God does not force anyone to love him, for what kind of love is that? Everyone must decide for themselves whether or not they are going to believe God’s Word is the infallible true word of God concerning our salvation. It is simply a matter of faith and human logic cannot be put above faith, for faith trusts that God’s Word is true in all it says. God and his saving work simply can’t be logically figured out because God’s Word comes from the mind of God who is so far above us in our thinking that as God’s Word says in 1 Corinthians 1:25 " For the foolishness (as if he has any which is the point) of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God (as if he is weak) is stronger than men." Left to our own devices we are doomed. But Jesus, the rejected stone, the Son that was killed, conquered sin, death, and the power of the devil with his holy life, his suffering, his death on a cross, and his resurrection from the dead. He is now the living cornerstone for me, for you, and for all who believe. Amen.