Monthly Archives: January 2018
Are All Our Works Filthy Rags?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
5 You welcome those who gladly do good, who follow godly ways. But you have been very angry with us, for we are not godly. We are constant sinners; how can people like us be saved? 6 We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind. 7 Yet no one calls on your name or pleads with you for mercy. Therefore, you have turned away from us and turned us over to our sins. Isaiah 64:5-7 (NLT)
193 To disparage works like the confession of doctrine, afflictions, works of charity, and the mortification of the flesh would be to disparage the outward administration of Christ’s rule among men. Let us add a word here about reward and merit.
194 We teach that rewards have been offered and promised to the works of the faithful. We teach that good works are meritorious—not for the forgiveness of sins, grace, or justification (for we obtain these only by faith) but for other physical and spiritual rewards in this life and in that which is to come, as Paul says (1 Cor. 3:8), “Each shall receive his wages according to his labor.” Therefore there will be different rewards for different labors.
In the middle of the quote from Isaiah I underlined and italicized a “popular” verse.
Popular for those who abuse it, as they use it to call people to convert, or to repent. Some will wax on with great eloquence about how wrong EVERYTHING we do is, how even our best words are nothing more than filthy rags, or as the ESV says, “polluted garments”, those things made unclean because of blood or other bodily fluids. SOme, trying to get the gut check factor in, will assume that the blood is from a female’s menstrual cycle. But the idea is that everything we do is horrid, unclean, unable to please God.
I have heard this used as well, by good meaning pastors who are trying to properly distinguish between law and gospel, saying that all our works, even after God has baptized and cleansed us, are still nothing more than filthy rags, that we will never be able to fulfill the “Law”, and therefore we shouldn’t encourage people to try and keep the Law, or even try to apply it to our lives, lived in Christ Jesus. (In Lutheran theology, we would refer to this as denying the Third Use of the Law)
Theologically, that isn’t the Lutheran position, as you can see in the quote in green above, from the Lutheran confessional document known as the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. It clearly states there that we cannot disparage works of man that demonstrate Christ’s rule, His benevolent work in and through men and women. It even talks there of mortification of the flesh, the work that Paul talked of in 1 Corinthians 9. The confessions do quickly remind us that these works don’t merit salvation, but they do merit a reward from God, Even if that reward is simply hearing Him say, “well done. my good and faithful servant!” (that comment alone would bring me joy that would last an eternity, as I assume it would for any Christian!)
I would draw your attention to the very passage the quote about filthy rags comes from in the first place. This is not a theological passage by literary style. It is a narrative, the words of the prophet, repentant and contrite, pleading with God. Pleading with God to rip open the divide between heaven and earth, to come into our midst, and save us. To come and mold is, to do the very work Paul will describe in Phil. 2:10 – where we are described as God’s poiema – His masterpiece, as we are led to do the works God has prepared for us. Isaiah’s pleading is one of repentance, one of praying that God would reconcile and restore us. That God would come and save us, bearing our sin, and suffering that we would be healed and restored. This section about filthy rags was hoping for Jesus to come and die on the cross, and for us to be reborn with Him.
And that my dear friend, has surely happened.
No wonder the Lutheran first generation talked of denigrating the work of God’s people as denigrating the very work, the very ministry of God!
So be careful how you fling around this passage, and the doctrines you create or try to sustain it. For teaching, those things to people will give them the wrong idea, and you will liable for trying to paralyze the people of God.
Know that God works through His people, all His people, as He walks with them, and will do amazing things! And proclaim this and encourage it, as God renews and revitalizes the church!
AMEN!
G., ed. The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959. Print.
Can We Recognize The Brokenness, so We can Recognize that We are part of God’s answer to it?
God, Have mercy on us!
Devotional Thought of the Day
18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 (NLT)
669 The co-redeeming—eternal!—efficacy of our lives can only become real with humility, passing unnoticed, so that others can discover Him.
Recently, the president of the United States was reported to have commented with harsh language about several countries. There is no doubt the phrasing he used was wrong. But there is also no doubt that those countries, much like our own, are broken.
Sin does that, and in some places, the sin is more evident to us, and to others, our sin is much more evident than theirs.
But rather than focus on the brokenness, both those backing our president and those opposing out president focus n the words of the message. I would not say the reason they d this is conscious and deliberate, but in focusing on the President’s phrasing, they are able to forget about the real problems in those countries and our own.
The brokenness, the sin that dominates our culture, whether it is corruption, or theft, or murder.
We would rather get mad, or get defensive about the word order than doing something about it
And these places, (including the USA) continue in their brokenness. And very few do anything about the problems. Which, in and of itself, is just as sinful, just as corrupt, and just as wrong.
St Josemaria wrote about the humility required to become effective, to have a real meaning to our lives. He talks about it from the point of our not caring about the credit we could receive, but rather being satisfied with only one goal, seeing people see God’s love for them. It doesn’t matter if I am the man baptizing them, or whether it is my Catholic priest or Methodist pastor friend. It doesn’t matter if it is my sermon that opens someone eyes to God’s love, or someone else’s.
All that matters is that they know God’s love and mercy. As they do, they will be changed by God, and their little area of the world will be filled with less skubala. (that’s is crap in Greek)
But humility doesn’t start with not caring who gets the credit. If it does, it could just be a nice excuse for apathy, and not working in the ministry God gave us all, the ministry of pleading with people to be reconciled.
Humility is found in our own reconciliation, in realizing the crap that we’ve got ourselves into, and that on Christ can reconcile us with the Father. He saved us from our crappy life, full of sin, and cleaned us up, and gave us life. As he doesn’t in just about every country in this world.
And He does it through us, the people He reconciled.
He shares this incredible work with us and makes it happen.
As we simply point to the cross and the empty tomb and invite people to know that is all for them. For Christ would unity with them there, as He did with us.
This is our hope, this is our joy, this is who we are meant ot be, working with people to see their lives change, and then to rejoice and see that every day. This is what makes our lives and communities a little less crappy…. and will do the same for the world.
The love of God, the power of God that would reconcile everything back to Him.
So rejoice in what God has done and is doing in your life, and pray for those who need reconciliation, and as you can, plead with them to let God do what God does… and then rejoice some more, in awe that God does work, and works through you!
AMEN!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 2460-2462). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Why We Need the People that We Struggle with the Most!
The devotional thought of the day:
14 Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. 15 If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,
” would that make it any less a part of the body? 17 If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? 18 But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. 1 Corinthians 12:14-21 (NLT)
666 You insist on doing your own thing, and so your work is barren. Obey: be docile. Each cog in a machine must be put in its place. If not, the machine stops, or the parts get damaged. It will surely not produce anything, or if it does, then very little. In the same way, a man or a woman outside his or her proper field of action, will be more of a hindrance than an instrument of apostolate.
A long time ago, as I was working at a major university and preparing to leave for my first pastoral position, the president of the university gave me some advice on leadership in ministry.
He told me that among the people I want on my leadership team would be those who opposed me. That the best ideas and advice would come from them, and often, they would stop me from shooting myself in the foot.
This runs a bit contrary to what most management and consultant types will tell you. They will say you want all the people pushing on the same side of the box, sharing the same vision, people who have all bought into the plans.
And while this can be helpful in management or in ministry, you also need that person who will question you, who will keep you humble, who will be there, faithful to the church, faithful enough to say when you’ve messed up.
Of course, you may find this a challenge, having people around who oppose you is never easy. Loving them and caring for them may be difficult, but they are part of the Body of Christ, they are a necessary cog in the machine, and if you would see it, they are a blessing from God.
We can’t just do our own thing, we can’t always get our own way, often we don’t have the knowledge or the wisdom that together are needed to make things work. If we try to be, getting rid of the people that don’t conform to our system, we are the one who is hindering the apostolate, the mission of the church.
So next time someone gets on your nerves, the next time they question your idea, take a breath, thank God for their presence in your life, and consider what they say.
God’s peace!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 2450-2454). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
When Good Ideas Turn Bad in the Church….(they can be redeemed BTW)
Concordia
Devotional Thought for our day:
15 When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, 16 and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace. 17 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” Mark 11:15-17 (NLT)
612 Wherever you may happen to be, remember that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. Be sure that anyone who wants to follow him cannot attempt to act in any other way.
I suppose, like many good ideas, the selling of animals for sacrifice and the money-changers in the temple area started for the right reasons. Pilgrims came from all over the world, and they didn’t have the temple coin, and bringing livestock and pigeons would have made the journey e
ven more difficult.
Perhaps the inhabitants of Jerusalem entered into these services in order to be hospitable to help out those who had come from longs ways away. But over time it became a commercial venture, a way to make money, and the ministry to others faded in into the background, as profit and costs took over the ministry.
We see this in the church today, as ministries that once developed to serve people now are affected by significant costs. From the tuition of Christian preschools, schools, and universities, to music and books, industries have been formed, including those which support the other industries that directly “serve” our members. Oftentimes, membership becomes confused with the idea of clientele, where the ministry exists to serve them, rather than to equip them to serve others.
And in the meantime, prayer and worship, the adoration of God and giving as freely as we are given disappear, because prayer doesn’t have to line that can be analyzed in black and red terms. These things are the results of people having access to God, and giving them that access is what ministry has to be about. It is why we are called to serve.
We have to find the balance between stewardship and true ministry. We have to run things well, so that prayer and worship aren’t interrupted, that those needed encouragement and discipleship are provided it. Part of that discipleship is helping people learn to serve others, to care for others, to put others needs before their own.
This too is challenging, because many will hear it as a requirement of being a Christian. As the law which they must fulfill or face God’s wrath. It isn’t, for to do something as impossible as being a servant who leads requires only one thing. It requires us to know the Lord is with you! Knowing His presence, knowing His grace and mercy, dwelling in His love, this doesn’t just enable us to serve, it causes us to, as the Spirit transforms us into Christlikeness.
This is our call, this is who we are, leading people into the presence of Christ, and enabling them to know He will hear their prayers
May we serve well, diligently keeping what should be first, first. Lord, Have Mercy!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 2268-2270). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
An Unexpected Call To Cheerfulness (but a needed one)
The church, is always in the midst of a storm… but safe in Him
Devotional Thought of the Day:
1 Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 In grassy meadows he lets me lie. By tranquil streams he leads me 3 to restore my spirit. He guides me in paths of saving justice as befits his name. 4 Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death I should fear no danger, for you are at my side. Your staff and your crook are there to soothe me. 5 You prepare a table for me under the eyes of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup brims over. 6 Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life. I make my home in the house of Yahweh for all time to come. Psalm 23:1-6 (NJB)
520 Christian cheerfulness is not something physiological. Its foundation is supernatural, and it goes deeper than illness or difficulties. Cheerfulness does not mean the jingling of bells, or the gaiety of a dance at the local hall. True cheerfulness is something deeper, something within something that keeps us peaceful and brimming over with joy, though at times our face may be stern.
I sit here this morning, having survived ( I think ) another battle with influenza, only to have my soul troubled by what I read, as stories of the Church divided fill my browser. It is depressing more than the flu, which managed to keep me from celebrating the hope I have in Christ Jesus with my friends and family. For to watch people try to destroy what Christ came to save… is devastating. Especially when such rot comes from within, from people who should know we have the ministry of reconciliation.
Yet in my devotions this morning, St. Josemaria reminds me to be cheerful.
Not the cheerfulness that celebrates freedom from illness or difficulty, the kind of cheerfulness that is found at parties and dances.
Something far deeper, something that today I need as I look out on a broken world, on a broken church.
The cheerfulness, the peace that is found in times where brokenness should have dominated. The cheerfulness I have seen wash over a group of people, allowing them to cry and laugh as we remember someone who has passed. Pr when other tragedies occur, leaving us breathless, and for a moment hopeless…..
Then someone starts to read or recite Psalm 23…….
I used the old NJB edition, for that is how I learned it. Yahweh is my Shepherd.
God gave me not only the right to use His name but the assurance with it that He is guiding, that He is providing and caring for me. I hear the song I grew up singing, based on it, Yahweh is my shepherd now, I shall not want, I shall not want…
And on days like this – when the body and soul are wary when the spirit is weak, and hope for the church is dimmed by the Church itself, there are only the promises of God that sustain…. that bring peace, and eventually the ability to smile.
As St Josemaria notes, there is something within something within us at these moments, where we find peace, and hope, and God’s comforting presence, and His promise of eternity.
From here it is possible to write and speak with hope, to point out the presence of God, and to urge everyone to find comfort and peace and yes cheerfulness there.
AMEN!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 1971-1976). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Already Broke Your Resolution? Good! Now you can really change!
Devotional Thought for your new year!
4 “Israel, remember this! The LORD—and the LORD alone—is our God. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (TEV)
14 Their minds, indeed, were closed; and to this very day their minds are covered with the same veil as they read the books of the old covenant. The veil is removed only when a person is joined to Christ. 15 Even today, whenever they read the Law of Moses, the veil still covers their minds. 16 But it can be removed, as the scripture says about Moses: “His veil was removed when he turned to the Lord.” 17 Now, “the Lord” in this passage is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom. 18 All of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same glory, coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit, transforms us into his likeness in an ever greater degree of glory. 2 Corinthians 3:14-18 (TEV)
503 Love Our Lord passionately. Love him madly! Because if there is love— when there is love—I would dare to say that resolutions are not needed. My parents—think of yours—did not need to make any resolutions to love me: and what an effusion of tenderness they showed me, in little details every day! With that same human heart we can and should love God.
In Lutheran thought, most commands are what are known as “Law.” Law has three purposes, The first is to keep civil peace. The second use of the law is to show us that we are guilty of sin and deserving eternal punishment. Knowing that we can be drawn to Christ to receive grace, the merciful forgiveness that restores us, and welcomes us into the presence of God. The third use of the law is simply to show us how to live, now that we are bound to Him, for Christ’s life is the picture of a life lived in full harmony with the law.
But the command following the words of the Lord being our Lord, the phrase known as the Shema, is not Law in the Lutheran sense.
Yes, we may struggle ot love God with everything we are, and if we think about it, this could make us wallow in guilt and shame. Most of us can keep our resolution longer than we can maintain a love for God that includes every part of our life! But if we feel guilty, or if we just ignore our shortcomings, we are missing the incredible, glorious, life-changing words that come before it.
The Lord, and the Lord alone, IS OUR GOD!
This line is why this isn’t Law, it I the purest of Gospel, for it describes what it means for us to have God (using His name YHWH) as our God. Loaded into that phrase is the idea that God takes responsibility for us, provides what we need, loves us. It means His nature of loving mercy (cHesed/Agape) is at work in us, bringing to completion the work began in us.
And as we consider this, as we think it through, there is no need for a resolution, no need for goals to change us. As we think and meditate on God loving us, we love Him, we adore Him, we become more and more hungry to hear of His love, and to share it with others.
So maybe you made a resolution or four to change in this new year. To lose weight, to be more patient with people, to be more determined in your spiritual disciplines. Maybe you already broke one or two.
That’s okay.
Real change in our lives starts with something else.
Being still, and knowing He is our God.
Knowing His passion and love for you…
Just sit there for a moment, and let His love sink in…
and find yourself changed.
Godspeed my friends!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 1920-1925). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
