1 Peter 3:18
Sixth Sunday of Easter
27 April 2008
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Here is today’s question of the faith: “We know Jesus died to forgive our sins – yet we hear we will be held accountable for our sins – how does this actually “work” or do we know?”
That’s a great question!
At the very heart of that question are a couple of powerful Scripture passages:
“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” [1 Peter 3:18].
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast” [Ephesians 2:8-9].
God’s Holy Word – from beginning to end – is very clear. God is righteous. God is holy. God is perfect. God demands the same from us. He has no time and no desire for the unrighteous, for the unholy, for the imperfect. And unrighteous, unholy and imperfect is exactly what we are.
Those two facts create a fundamental problem. It’s like oil and water. They just don’t mix. No matter how long you allow them to try to absorb each other, they just never will.
Imagine God’s position. His desire was to create a perfect creation, a creation that exactly mirrored His own image. But when Adam and Eve sinned and also inflicted all their offspring with sin, God knew deep down inside He could no longer have anything to do with His creation because they were no longer like Him. They were no longer righteous, holy and perfect. That broke God’s heart.
God created the “Gospel,” the “Good News.” Even young children know what’s called “The Gospel in a Nutshell:” “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” [John 3:16]. That eternal life comes to us through faith as a complete gift. There is nothing we have – nothing we ever will have – that can buy eternal life. There is nothing we have that we could use as a bargaining tool to convince God that we are even worthy of His consideration. The fact that we can call ourselves the redeemed children of God is totally because of God’s grace and mercy, because Jesus suffered and died and rose again to forgive our sins, to erase the dark, imperfect blot in our lives that kept us from relationship with God, to give to us His own righteousness that enables us to stand in the presence of God.
While none of that seems to be in question in our question today, all of that is a good foundational review. What’s really in question, it seems, is if all that is true, why are there other Scripture passages that say things like this:
“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account” [Hebrews 4:13].
“So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God” [Romans 14:12].
[The Words of Jesus]: “But I tell you that men will have to give an account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken, for by your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned” [Matthew 12:37].
Those passages – and others like them – can certainly confuse people into believing that our lives here on earth play at least a small role in earning for us eternal life. But we know that if that were the case, if we stood any chance of even potentially putting anything on the bargaining table on the Last Day, there would have been no need for God to go to the elaborate means He did in sending Jesus to be the atonement – the “at-one-ment” for our sins.
But we know that’s not the purpose of that accounting. Think instead of that accounting as being a prepaid credit card. Let’s even be bold and call it an unlimited balance prepaid credit card that was given to us as a gift. It’s been completely paid for by someone else and we get to reap the benefits at no cost to ourselves. Every time we go to the grocery store, every bill we receive in the mail, everything we could ever desire is able to get charged to that card and we essentially get it for free. You can be sure, though, that even though the monthly bill is not coming to your mailbox, somewhere, somehow, there is an accounting for that unlimited balance prepaid credit card. If nothing else, the executives at the credit card company know what’s been charged on that card. They know that by that accounting, by getting a list of charges. Even if we’re not being held accountable for the charges on that card, someone somewhere needs to have an accounting.
I hope it’s not too much of a stretch to use that human illustration to demonstrate a Divine truth.
Permit me to share a couple more Scripture passages:
“For He [God] has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed” [Acts 17:31].
“And He [God] has given Him [Jesus] authority to judge because He is the Son of Man” [John 5:27].
Jesus spoke of a day [Matthew 25:31ff] when He will come in glory with all His angels and He will sit down on His Throne. All nations will be gathered before Him and He will separate them like sheep and goats. To some, He will extend welcome into His Kingdom. To others, He will speak a word of judgment and condemnation. What’s most important in that parable are the words Jesus used in welcoming people into His Kingdom, “Come, you who are blessed by My Father. Take your inheritance, the Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” [Matthew 25:34].
You see, on that Last Day, there will have to be an accounting. We will stand before Jesus and tell Him all the hungry we fed, all the thirsty we watered, all the strangers we welcomed, all the naked we clothed, all the sick and imprisoned we visited [Matthew 25:35-36]. As admirable as may be our list of accomplishments, they will still fall short of perfection. They will not entitle us even to eat a crumb that falls from the Heavenly banquet table. Jesus will shake His head, again ask our name, check His books, then come back with Good News: “My Friend, all your good actions are like filthy rags in My sight, and your misdeeds, well, when I again checked your records, I find that you have a prepaid entrance into Heaven, compliments of My Father Who did not count your sins against you, but rather has credited you with My righteousness. Enter the Kingdom prepared for you.”
“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” [1 Peter 3:18].
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena
ALTAR FLOWERS are given to the glory of God by Phyllis Price in celebration of the birthday of her sister, Judy Barnett, on 30 April. Flowers are also given by Michealene Melus and Carol Schlichting in honor of their mothers, Winnie Melus and Lois Schlichting, for upcoming Mothers’ Day 2008.
A REMINDER OF GOD’S PROVISION AND LOVE The extra bouquet of roses on the altar are from the 140+ roses around our church campus. They are a reminder of God’s eternal love for us.
START THINKING! As part of our year-long process of identifying our core values and setting goals for the future, you will shortly be asked to submit what you believe are the passions that motivate us in mission and ministry. Please start thinking about those now.
NEXT SUNDAY Come and participate as we examine our youth confirmands during worship.
TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY! Celebrate Mothers’ Day and Confirmation Sunday at Historic First Lutheran!
DEFINING PASTOR’S JOB There seems to be a misperception that the “office hours” listed in the newsletter calendar are the hours that Pastor Schaar is in the office. Those hours are rather the hours that the office is staffed by our secretary. Pastor may or may not be in the office during office hours. While he has much administrative work that requires him to be in the office frequently, Pastor Schaar also has a home office. In addition, he regularly is out of the office for meetings and visits to hospitals, nursing homes and member homes. If Pastor is not in the office when you’re trying to reach him, please leave a message and be assured he will get back to you promptly.
THIS SATURDAY IS THE WOMEN’S RALLY! Don’t forget this coming Saturday morning when we host the Lutheran women from the churches in our area. We will have a continental breakfast, Bible study and information on Lutheran women’s activities throughout California and Arizona. Also remember Laura’s Bus Bench Ministry and bring items you are not using any longer – clothing, shoes for both men and women and hotel samples of shampoo, conditioner, etc. See you at 8:30 a.m. There will also be displays and items for sale at the boutique.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED Our Financial Secretary, Marilyn Plummer, is looking for teams of people willing to help count the weekly contributions. The task takes approximately 1 ½ hours after worship. You will be trained. Please speak to Marilyn Plummer or Carol Numrich.
DON’T FORGET! If you miss a Sunday, please remember that extra copies of bulletins and copies of Pastor Schaar’s sermons are generally available from The Information Rack in the Narthex. In addition, cassette tape copies of the services are available for $2.00 by order from the Church Administrative Center.
USHERS TAKE NOTE Next week’s service will involve Usher Team #3 – Chris Baker, Asunta Barnes, Michael Dickens and Rudy Melinat.
April 27 – Matthew 12
April 28 – Matthew 13
April 29 – Matthew 14
April 30 – Matthew 15
May 1 – Matthew 16
May 2 – Matthew 17
May 3 – Matthew 18
Sunday 27 April – Thank God that Jesus died to forgive your sins!
Monday 28 April – Pray for friends celebrating birthdays and anniversaries this week: Daniel Hendry (27); Denise & Greg Norden (28); Eunice & Dr. Lee Settgast (29); Donna Shimer (30); Elouise & Oliver Smith (4/1).
Tuesday 29 April – Pray today for 5 fellow members of Historic First Lutheran.
Wednesday 30 April – Thank God for His blessings of this month now past.
Thursday 1 May – Ask God to guide you during this new month ahead.
Friday 2 May – Pray today for one person you don’t know.
Saturday 3 May – Ask God to shower down His presence and blessings upon today’s LWML Rally.
Luke 24:13-35
Third Sunday of Easter
6 April 2008
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Yesterday was for me a day of discovery, a day of uncovering. I was up at my cabin. Last November, I had covered my 12 roses, my two lavender and my two salvia with cedar chips to better protect them against the winter weather. With the harsh, snowy winter we had I sure am glad I did that. Anyway, yesterday was discovery day. Yesterday was uncovering day. I went to each pile of cedar chips and carefully pulled them away from the hidden treasure underneath.
Today begins a sermon series that will attempt to do exactly the same thing, not with roses and lavender and salvia, but with our spiritual lives. Today begins a sermon series called “Our Questions of Faith.” These sermons will be molded and shaped by you, by questions of faith that maybe you’ve wrestled with for many years. This will be a series of discovery, a series of uncovering.
Today’s question that was submitted last week is “Where Do We Find Jesus?”
In answering that question, allow me to ask another question: “Wouldn’t it be great if life were perfect?” Of course it’s not. I didn’t have to tell you that. You already know that as well as I do. That second question, though – “Wouldn’t it be nice if life were perfect?” – is a question that is going to be able to be asked during each and every week of this series. We live in a fallen world. We live in a broken world. We live in a world that only very faintly – if even at all – resembles God’s original plan. In asking “Our Questions of Faith,” we’re dealing with that brokenness. We’re dealing with that fallenness. We’re dealing with that lack of perfection. We’re dealing with living and operating outside God’s original plan for us and for our world.
That’s the only thing that can explain what happened on the evening of Christ’s Resurrection some 2,000 years ago. Two followers of Jesus were returning home after an eventful week. They had traveled the seven miles up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They had likely gotten caught up in the festivities of Palm Sunday, with the palm branches and the cloaks spread on the ground, and the shouting of “Hosanna,” and the animals and Jesus riding into town on a donkey. They had followed the news of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas and His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. They had perhaps witnessed Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate. They had heard the death sentence. They had stood at Jesus’ Cross. They had watched Jesus die. They had seen His body hurriedly taken off the tree and laid in a new tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. Then they, along with the other followers of Jesus and every other Jew in Jerusalem, excused themselves from the events of the world and celebrated the Passover Sabbath from sun fall on Friday through Sunday morning.
On Sunday morning, they had been found with the other followers of Jesus, perhaps in that same upper room where Jesus had just three days earlier taken bread and broke it and said, “This is My Body” and taken that cup of wine and said, “This is My Blood poured out for you.” The news of the early morning women visitors to the tomb reached their ears, “Jesus is not there! Jesus is risen!” Perhaps they, along with Peter and John, had run to the tomb and found it just as the Marys had told them. But as St. John himself testified, “They still did not understand from the Scriptures that Jesus had to rise from the dead” [John 20:9]. They next did what was considered to be the normal next step. They packed up their bags and they heading for home. Work was waiting for them the next day. On the walk home, they tried to console themselves, “We had hoped that Jesus was the Messiah, but, once again, our hopes have been dashed. We sure are foolish men who got duped!”
Suddenly a “stranger” joined them on their journey. Though He looked like one of them and sounded like one of them, he must have been a visitor from afar since He knew nothing of Jesus. He knew nothing about what their entire lives had revolved about for the past week. Could anyone really be that ignorant? Since the eventide was falling, they had extended to this “stranger” the gift of hospitality, inviting Him to abide with them. He sat at their table. He took bread. He gave thanks. He broke the bread and handed it to them.
They had found Jesus! And as soon as they had found Him, He was gone from their sight. Only then did they say to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
There, my friends, is the two-fold answer to “Our Question of Faith” today”: “Where Do We Find Jesus?”
We find Jesus just as did those two disciples on the evening of His Resurrection 2,000 years ago. We find Jesus in the Scriptures, in His Holy Word. We find Jesus in His Sacraments of Baptism and The Lord’s Supper.
In the fallen, broken world in which we live, our tendency is often to turn for help to just about everything else in time of trouble. We turn to self-help books. We turn to self-help groups. We turn to New Age and Eastern philosophies of thought and meditation and crystals. We become adherents of karma. We turn to friends. We turn to drugs and sex and alcohol, seeking and imploring an escape from reality. We turn to counselors. In many and various ways, we just simply try to extricate ourselves from the situations that have caused us pain and grief and brokenness. We ache for wholeness. We yearn for healing. We desire happy times be here again.
The funny thing – funny in a very sad way – is that in our search for wholeness, healing and happiness, we often ignore God’s way for wholeness, healing and happiness. We often cut ourselves off from the family into which God has placed us, the family known as “The Church.” Like those disciples 2,000 years ago, we pack up our bags and go it on our own. We commiserate with ourselves, “We had hoped ...” When we’re not in the family, in the Church, we’re often not in the Scriptures. Our hearts don’t burn within us. When we’re not in the family, in the Church, we’re not receiving the forgiveness of our own sinfulness through The Lord’s Supper. Our eyes don’t see Jesus in our midst.
Do you get what I am saying? If you get what I am saying, turn to your neighbor and poke him and say, “I get it!”
We find Jesus not in the ways we humanly expect. We find Jesus not in the human ways that we have cleverly invented under the guise of providing us wholeness and healing and happiness. We find Jesus not in running away from His family. We find Jesus in His Holy Scriptures that make our hearts burn within us. We find Jesus in His Supper as He says to us the words, “This is My Body, broken for you. This is My Blood, shed for you.” Then our eyes are opened and we realize that Jesus has been among us. He’s been alongside us in our grief and pain and loss and troubles. He’s walked with us. He’s talked with us. He’s told us that we are His own and that He will NEVER leave us nor forsake us. Give me Jesus!
Since His Ascension back into Heaven, Jesus has entrusted His gift of Holy Scripture and His twin sacramental blessings of Baptism and The Lord’s Supper to His disciples, to His family, to His Church. That’s why my answer to people who ask “Where Do We Find Jesus?” is always, “You find Jesus exactly where He has promised to be found. Wherever even two or three are gathered in His Name [Matthew 18:20], You find Jesus in the Church where His Word is proclaimed and where His Sacraments are administered. There you find a burning heart and open eyes. There you find Jesus.
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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena
ALTAR FLOWERS are given to the glory of God by Michealene Melus and Carol Schlichting in thanksgiving to God for His many blessings and in celebration of the birthday of Carol’s nephew and Michealene’s godchild, Brett.
A REMINDER OF GOD’S PROVISION AND LOVE The extra bouquet of roses on the altar are from the 140+ roses around our church campus. They are a reminder of God’s eternal love for us.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS’ MEETING NEXT SUNDAY AFTER WORSHIP! Advance packets are available for Board Members from the Table in the Narthex.
WITNESSING BRACELETS Fewer people are still wearing their colorful witnessing bracelets. Have you lost yours? Have you given yours away? Free replacements are available from Pastor Schaar.
LUTHERHOSTEL 2008 Concordia Arrowhead Lutheran Camp announces its “Lutherhostel” for adults age 50 and over, 16-22 June. Our own Pastor Schaar will serve as Bible Study leader for this event and is hosting a wine and cheese mixer at his cabin. Information and registration forms can be found in the Information Rack in the Narthex.
HAVE A CARE OR CONCERN? Historic First Lutheran sponsors a 30 minute prayer service every Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. If you are unable to attend, please communicate your need for prayer to Pastor Schaar.
USHERS TAKE NOTE Next week’s service will involve Usher Team #8 – Gerald Freeny, Rudy Melinat, Michealene Melus and Carol Schlichting.
April 6 – Zechariah 9
April 7 – Zechariah 10
April 8 – Zechariah 11
April 9– Zechariah 12
April 10 – Zechariah 13
April 11 – Zechariah 14
April 12 – Malachi 1
We believe in the healing power of prayer. Therefore we bring the following requests to God’s Throne of Grace:
Sunday 6 April – “Give thanks with a grateful heart!”
Monday 7 April – Pray for friends celebrating birthdays and anniversaries this week: Eunice Jordan (7); Carmen Files (9); Lynne & Fred Carter (10); Gerald Freeny (11); Lillian Greenlee (12); Dr. Beverly Halliday (12); Arthur Urdiales (12).
Tuesday 8 April – Ask God to continue to guide us as a congregation.
Wednesday 9 April – Pray today for your pastors and church staff.
Thursday 10 April – Ask God’s Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see Jesus around you daily.
Friday 11 April – Pray that our “Good Friday” Youth Outreach continue to impact our neighborhood.
Saturday 12 April – Pray for the world-wide ministry of “The Lutheran Hour” and for its speaker, Dr. Ken Klaus.