In the Dark

Life begins in darkness. For about 9 months, each human being is “in the dark.” Coming into the light must be a frightening thing – strangers with masks on, bright lights shining directly on you, lots of noise. But then the warmth of a mother’s arms, soft words of love and comfort, life in the light is very different than how it began in the dark.

This holds true throughout our lives. Many Christians talk about a “dark night of the soul” and life can be like that sometimes. Going through periods of darkness – depression, terror, the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, and so on.

This seems to be the natural way of things. God even tells us, in His Word, that, “weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5 ESV).

I was reading a book by Frank Viola called “Revise Us Again” and in it, I learned a truth that I had overlooked all these years. The truth that God begins our lives, begins all our blessings, in the dark and not in the light!

In the first chapter of Genesis, it is made very clear that each day begins in the evening – at sundown and not in the morning at sunrise.

Jesus Christ was born at night. He died when darkness covered the land. He rose from the dead early on the first day of the week while it was still dark.

“It is in the hidden hours of the night that God does His deepest work of transformation. The night, the evening, and the darkness are all promises of a new day.

If you can hold this in your heart, it will change your life” (Revise Us Again, p 115).

If you are going through a “dark night of the soul” then keep this in mind!

If it feels like your life is ending, think about this: “What we call the end, God calls the beginning. God takes away to establish, and what He establishes is always better. As high as God is going to elevate you is as deep as He digs to lay the foundation” (p 115).

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Thank a Vet

Note: This is a traditional "repost" from a couple of years ago. An update, Daniel Brown died last month. I was humbled and honored to preach at his funeral. 

Stephen Ambrose, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have done a great service to my generation and those younger in that they remind us why we are free to blog, make movies, vote, travel, and live as we do.

Their books, movies, and TV series bring to life the men and women who fought, bled, and some who died, to keep us free. Band of Brothers, the Pacific, Citizen Soldiers, etc. all tell a story - a true story - that needs to be told to us and our children.

But I also thank another author by the name of Marcus Brotherton. He has brought to the forefront some of the men that didn't make it to the forefront of those other men's stories. Brotherton tells the stories of Shifty Powers, Ed Pepping, Earl "One Lung" McLung, Forest Guth and others. They were just as much heroes as Richard Winters, Bill Guarnere, and Buck Compton - and Winters, Guarnere and Compton would be the first to tell you that.

Recently I met another hero of World War II - my word, not his. In fact, he seems to think his service to be no big deal. I'm sure no one would ever write a book or make a movie about his war exploits. But what he did was no less important than anyone else's contribution to the war effort.

His name is Daniel Brown. As far as I know he never fired a rifle in combat, never even saw a battle. Brown served in the Army Air Force as a mechanic - specifically responsible for B-29's. When not serving in the States, he was stationed in Panama. No battles were fought there. But of course, the Panama Canal was of vital strategic importance.

Dan Brown left his wife Betty and all his family to serve in the Army Air Force. He knew that going into battle was a distinct possibility. But go he did because our country needed defending. He put aside his own comforts and dreams - for a time - to do the job that needed doing. That is what a leader does. Dan Brown continues to lead today and is teaching me what it means to be a leader and a true man.

"Doc" Brown and all those who served -whether in battle, in support, or in the states - deserve our recognition and thanks. I love spending an hour or two with him and his wife, Betty, as they tell stories of the war years and after. "Doc" Brown came home to his wife, started a family, lived his life in the freedom that he served to protect.  He went on to become a cop and later a chiropractor. Betty was a dancer and musician. Both were - and are, today - active in their church and share the love of Jesus Christ with everyone they meet.

Just two of the wonderful people we should all thank on this Veterans Day.

So stop a vet today, tell him or her thanks. After all, you owe them a lot!

Happy Birthday, United States Marines!

Note: I wrote this a few years ago and traditionally repost it each November 10.

Edward Schiffmann Wear joined the United States Marines during World War II and was sent to the Pacific Theater. He was the brother of Irene Wear – my grandmother. He died during the Battle of Iwo Jima. The story is told in my family that as he died, he was praying the Lord’s Prayer with a chaplain.

Achieving the rank of Corporal in the 9^th Marines Regiment, my great uncle answered the call of his country to defend her freedom against an aggressor nation.

He was one of the 6,812 Americans killed or missing on Iwo Jima.

A man I never met who died long ago and far away continues to have a tremendous impact on my life. My mother still talks about him to this day. She has been sharing stories of her memories of him with me the last couple of days. Yet, I still hardly know anything about him. I don’t know what his favorite food was. I don’t know what he thought of being the youngest to three sisters. I don’t know how he felt about living in the city of Chicago but spending his summers on Long Lake.

In spite of this I still feel tremendously proud, and humbled at the same time, that I am part of his family.

The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the most important battles in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. It has become iconic of the sacrifice, determination and leadership that United States Marines personify in today’s world.

Called by some the “Greatest Generation,” most of the men and women who answered their country’s call to fight in World War II did so not for glory or fame, but to do a job that needed to be done. They came from all walks of life. Some, like my great uncle, from humble beginnings. Many, again like my great uncle, went to war never to return to the United States alive.

But as far as I am concerned, they did not die in vain. They died, in part, for me. They died for you and for all Americans as well as for all peace- and freedom-loving people around the world. They made the ultimate sacrifice so that I could be free to worship, work, play, and live as I choose.

In this way, they are a lot like Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ laid down His life so that others – the world, in fact – could be free from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Jesus Christ personifies the United States Marines motto – Semper Fidelis – “Always Faithful.”

United States Marines have been protecting these freedoms longer than there has been a United States. Formed on November 10, 1775 in Philadelphia, men and women who served as U.S. Marines have been making sure that the United States is protected from those who would take our freedom away.

Happy Birthday, United States Marines. May God always bless and protect you as you are always faithful to corps and country.

Here I Am

About 10 years ago, I attended a theological symposium at my alma mater Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

I remember feeling that as I walked among the buildings that held so much promise for me when I was student in the early 1990’s, that there was so much more ahead of me. As I walked among the buildings with fallen leaves crunching under my feet, I reminisced about the past. At first I felt a sense of loss. Ten years after graduation, was I really where I thought I would be?

This was not the first time I had walked among those buildings with a sense of loss. Two years after arriving on the campus, fresh out of college, I didn’t have much hope for the future. Classes weren’t going well and I was distracted from my studies. I was thinking of giving up becoming a pastor. I felt that I missed something along the way. My life wasn’t turning out the way I had thought it would. But my life soon changed dramatically!

Ten years later, as I walked among the buildings again, I realized my life turned out better than I had hoped it would. It is vastly different from what I thought it would be, but it is so much better that I spend very little time now thinking about how my life could have been had this happened or that not happened.

This morning, as I walked over to the church office from the parsonage, the leaves crunching beneath my feet as they did so long ago on my walk across the campus of Concordia Seminary, I found myself dreaming again. It has been 27 years since I first arrived at seminary. During the seven years I lived and studied among those buildings, I had dreams live and die. At the end of my time there, God gave me a new dream – one I would share with my new wife.

It has been a dream of what God could actually do with my (our) life. But it had taken almost 10 years for that dream to come into focus.

And as soon as that dream came into focus God revealed to me a new dream.

What do I want to do with my life? What is it that I want to do in God’s kingdom? I’ve been a pastor for 19 years. I’ve preached nearly 1000 sermons, led over 1500 Bible classes. I’ve taught Luther’s Small Catechism to 19 classes of children. God has used me to touch so many lives. I know I’ve messed up a lot along the way, but I have faith in God that He is the Almighty who can work through my messes.

I remember talking with a friend of mine about 10 years ago and he said that he felt that there was a momentous change coming in his life. He felt that God was going to be doing something in his life very soon. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know if it would involve a move away from where he was at the time or not (it did and not very long after that conversation). He only knew that God was going to do something dramatic in his life very soon.

That’s sort of like how I feel now. God has been preparing me for something. He’s brought me to this place in His kingdom. He has used me as His instrument of change. I feel that God is going to do it again – possibly soon but I’m not sure. I can see things working in my life, preparing me for something. Something that God will use to bring transformation to this world. Maybe not the whole world, but maybe the parts of the world that I come into contact with.

In the Bible, these kinds of moments often included God calling a person by name.

“Abraham….”

“Samuel….”

“Ananias….”

And when any of these people were called by God, they all initially responded in the same way.

“Here I am.”

Never, “Who are you?” “Here I am,” takes faith. And that same faith is given to each of us through God’s means of Grace – the Holy Scripture, Holy Baptism – and strengthened through Holy Scripture and Holy Communion.

I believe God has called each one of us to be in this place “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

He’s calling you and  I by name.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, let us answer, “Here I am.”

Smell

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. – Ephesians 5:1-2

Do you smell it? It is the smell of bacon frying. It is the smell of coffee percolating. It is Sunday morning. Worship starts in 3 hours. I amble through the kitchen toward these smells to start my day of worship. Somehow, it just wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t smell these things.

It is the smell of crunching leaves that have changed color and fallen. Of pumpkin pie spices and burning leaves. These are the smells of autumn (at least for me).

The smell of peanuts and stale beer. These are the smells of baseball, of a big-league ballpark.

The smell of pine and apple-cinnamon and mint. These are the smells of Christmas.

The smell of wine and freshly cut flowers. These are the smells of worship. This is what I smell as I stand at the altar preparing it for Holy Communion.

Smells are very powerful. They invoke feelings of seasons and events. The invoke memories (a whole episode of M*A*S*H was dedicated to this).

Smells are also part of our relationship with God. Starting in Exodus 25, God instructs his people to build a place of worship. There are specific items that are dedicated to smells. The Altar of Incense and various forms of incense would be used. Partly, I think, to have a distinctive smell associated with the worship of God. Partly to cover up the smell of all the sacrifices that would be made. But there is one more reason.

Our sin must raise a stink in God’s nose. The filth of our evil deeds. Our thoughts, our actions, must raise an awful stench to him.

How do we clean ourselves of this smell? I’m afraid it just isn’t possible for us to do this. No soap is strong enough to clean us of our sin. Oh, we certainly try. We apologize to those we wrong. Sometimes, if we’re guilty enough we will give money to the church or some charity to try to ease our conscience. But the smell lingers like smoke on your clothes after sitting around a campfire.

How can we get rid of the smell of sin in our lives? Sin has to be removed. It would be the love of Jesus Christ who “gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:2)

As we head into the autumn and holiday season with all its distinctive smells, remember that we smell pretty good to God because of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection for us. The next time you walk into a kitchen to smell the good smells there, thank God that Jesus takes away your stinking sin and makes you smell good with his righteousness.

Growing Up

I have spoken with many former church members and not-a-few former Christians.

Many of them have told me that they left the Church or left the Christian faith when they were younger – teenagers or early 20’s. When I ask them what it was that caused them to decide to leave, the same kind of story is told.

They had a question about God, they asked the pastor, and didn’t get the answer they were expecting (or wanted).

Steve Jobs was one such person. I never met or talked with Steve Jobs, but this story is documented in Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography.

The soon-to-be founder of Apple computers rejected Christianity because of one incident he had with a Lutheran pastor. Walter Isaacson tells the story:

“Even though they were not fervent about their [own] faith, Steve Job’s parents wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him to the Lutheran church most Sundays. That came to an end when he was thirteen. In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. ‘If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?’

The pastor answered, ‘Yes, God knows everything.’

Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, ‘Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to those children?’

‘Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.’

Jobs announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshipping such a God, and he never went back to church.” [Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, pp 14-15, Simon & Schuster, 2011]

There are many supposedly enlightened people whose rejection of religion rests on just such a flimsy foundation. They are still living as adults on the basis of a rejection of a kindergarten version of the Christian Faith which they probably misunderstood in the first place.

When I was 13, I had some specific ideas about the world, my place in this world, and how I should live my life.

As I am now 36 years removed from those ideas, I certainly don’t live by many – if any – of them.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV).

It is sad if a person continues to think about the Church, God, and life in general, based on something that happened when they were younger.

The Good News is that God still loves each one of us with an unconditional love. He is ready and willing to welcome us back to Himself.

God’s love for us is the same today as it was when we were children. Jesus Christ still forgives all our sins, the Holy Spirit still prompts repentance, and the Father is ready to welcome us into His strong and loving arms.

Come back to church. God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life. Join a Bible study.

And pray for those who, at one time, decided to leave. Pray that the Holy Spirit can use you to help them see that God still loves them and wants them to be a part of a fellowship of believers.

From Ground Zero to Holy Ground - A 9/11 Remembrance (repost)

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. (Jeremiah 29:11-14)

How can the tragic attacks of September 11 be used for good? How could God allow this to happen? On the other hand, does September 11 really mean anything different for us? Have we really be effected by it? Has life really changed all that much? My question is, “How do we get from ground zero to holy ground?”

In the movie It’s A Wonderful Life one scene refers to the end of World War II. The narration says that people wept and prayed on VE Day and VJ Day and you see scenes of people flocking to a church. When I talked with my clergy friends about 911 we thought that something like this would happen again. With such devastating attacks, we all made our churches available for people to come and pray. At my church at the time we had a prayer service. And at first, it did look like people would flock back to church to find answers to questions. But looking back now, it seems that America was more interested in getting back to the regular season of football and baseball. That was important. To “get back to normal living.” The jury is still out whether we can “get back to normal” post-911.

What affect has 911 had on America? So much pain and destruction has to have some affect on us. It has been said that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (C.S. Lewis) I believe God is shouting to us, calling us from ground zero to His Holy Ground.

Like just about everything else man makes, we thought the Twin Towers would stand forever. And all indications were that they would. But in the span of a couple of hours, they were reduced to smoking rubble, burying over 2800 people. That site will forever be known as “Ground Zero.” The pictures from there are a part of who we are as a nation today. Smoking ruins, firefighters searching for people. The one that stands out in my mind is the one of the President of the United States with a bullhorn. It is that picture that gave me the words “From Ground Zero to Holy Ground.” Someone in the crowd yelled “We can’t hear you” as he was making a speech. He called back “But I can hear you!”

Can we hear God? God is calling us. He’s shouting at us. He calls us away from our own self-centeredness and things we make for ourselves to something that will last forever. He is calling us from ground zero and its uncertain stability to His Holy Ground that does not move and will stand forever.

When you hear the stories of 911, what do you think? The eye-witness accounts to show that 911 affected all of us, ordinary people and heads of state. But those stories are not the end. Each story can be followed up by God’s story. For God does have something to say about all this.

God tells us about His peace. It is not peace like the world strives for. So often the world’s peace comes after devastation and the loss of countless lives. But God’s peace came only after one suffered and died, not thousands. God’s peace comes to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even in the midst of tragedy, among the smoking ruins in New York or Washington DC, the peace of Jesus Christ, the Son of God comes through.
Sometimes the Prince of this world – Satan – rears his head in a very public way and motivates people to carry out acts of terror and death. But Jesus Christ overcame Satan when He died on the cross. Satan is a defeated enemy. All these tragic events are but the last gasps of a vanquished foe. In the end they cannot harm us. In fact, they have backfired on Satan. He carries them out to try to defeat us, but the result is that many turn back to God and look for ways to make their relationship stronger with Him!

God also tells us to be ready. When those thousands of people showed up for work on September 11, 2001, or boarded those airplanes, they may not have given any thought that this was to be their last day on earth. But God repeatedly warns us that we do not know when our last day on earth will be. It could be today. In the mean time, God calls to us, shouts to us from ground zero, to be rich toward Him, to begin or strengthen the relationship with Him through Word and Sacrament and Worship. We are rich toward God because Jesus’ death and resurrection gave us the glorious riches of God’s eternal grace. No amount of smoking ruin can take that away from us who have been brought into the Kingdom of God.

A reading from Colossians seems to have been written with 911 in mind. “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you....” That has been true for many, many people. Since that day we have prayed, each time we gather for worship, for those in the midst of this tragedy, for our President, for our military personnel, prayed that the peace and comfort of Jesus Christ may be theirs.

“Patience and endurance.” This is what we have been praying for. God calls us to be faithful to Him and to seek Him at all times, but especially in times of tragedy. It is so hard to be patient when we’re facing such tragedy. We want to know now about a loved one. We want an answer now. We are tempted to give up in the face of such horrible circumstances. But God’s call to us has been to be patient and endure. For a better time is coming. Ground Zero is temporary. Holy Ground is forever!

There have been so many questions in the past 13 years. The biggest one, it seems to me, has been “How could God allow this to happen.” The answer is not easy. God does love us. So much so that He doesn’t want us to take anything for granted. But with prosperity and financial success like we’ve enjoyed in this country, we are tempted to take many things for granted. Young people live life like they will live forever, that nothing can hurt them. But the world isn’t a peaceful place. It is a dangerous place. Nothing should be taken for granted. Least of all God. He is here. He does love us. He allows tragedy to get our attention and call us back to Him.

The call from Ground Zero is a call back to Holy Ground. The stable, rock-solid ground established for us by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On Holy Ground there is no sin, there is no death. There have been many “ground zeros” and I suspect there will be many more. But there is only one Holy Ground. There is only one way to get there. God is calling us. Through the smoke and death and devastation God shouts to us, getting our attention. Now that the smoke and rubble have been cleared, we’re tempted to say that God’s call is gone, too. But God still calls. He is calling you and me. He is calling us away from ground zero and the death that will forever surround it. He is calling us to Holy Ground where there is life and peace in His Son Jesus Christ.

God is calling you. Will you answer? I pray that you will turn from ground zero to God’s Holy Ground, in Jesus’ name. Amen.