Archive for year: 2019

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. Luke 4:1-13

It is for Jesus a time of preparation and discernment before going out to teach, preach, heal, and lead. Part of that preparation, we learn, is a challenge. Can Jesus say NO to the devil’s temptations to follow an easier road? People are looking for a Messiah and a religion that works for them…. feeding their hungers, asserting their superiority over others, and putting God-given miracles at their daily disposal. Can Jesus say NO to the offer of being able to lift His finger and proclaim His number one-ness over everything and prove his equality with God? Can Jesus stay true to and focused on what He has come out of the wilderness having learned…. that God’s offer of one more grand, amazing and grace-filled YES to the world REQUIRED Jesus to be able to say NO?

In this story of the Temptation, Jesus is making it clear to us that when we say YES to following Him we are also clearly saying NO to three alternatives. The way before Jesus is clear and it’s NOT about using power to feed our own appetites or trying to make God respond on our terms and creating some protective, angel bubble around us, or achieving power over others through the use of our faith. It is about a power, Spirit-driven and Spirit-filled, unleashed to serve and feed others, to trust God in all times and in all circumstances, and finally to take our place humbly in His kingdom alongside all those whom God names as His own.

One of the great ironies (and sadnesses) of contemporary American Christianity is that the most rapidly growing segments of the Christian community believe that God exists to address our financial wants and needs through miraculous providence; that God provides a protective bubble around us through prayer and angel visitors; and that assertive use of our majority power to set the agendas for schools, textbooks, and legislation is pleasing to God. Ironically, it is precisely these temptations Jesus resists and the opposite of the life of faith he describes in the Sermon on the Mount. While we can attempt to justify or explain away this conflict by saying that we’re asking for such things from Jesus and not from Satan, I don’t buy it. And the more I see it portrayed by television evangelists and megachurch pastors extending their own kingdoms, the more I am aware of such desires and temptations within me. I do understand the tendency to set aside the essences of Gospel and discipleship because a message of prosperity, protection and superiority has greater appeal. 

Jesus could easily have justified submitting to any one of the three temptations under the claim that He was only doing it for God’s sake. For God’s kingdom. To show God’s power and authority. But he did not. He chose instead to follow the way that the Apostle Paul called “the foolishness of God.” Power with and under people instead of over. Awareness and attention to the greater hungers and cries of humanity instead of the growling in my own belly or the bottom line in my checkbook ledger. Praying for God’s care and providence to assist me in serving others rather than carving out my own preferential treatment through Club Jesus. Laying down my life and loves for the loved one, neighbor and stranger as though laying it down for Him.

That is what Jesus taught and that is how Jesus lived. On His way to the Cross, it proved to be too much for the many who had claimed to be His followers and they deserted Him. Pray, people of God, that the Spirit that drew them back comes again. Pray for the Spirit who brings forgiveness and renewal to blow through our beloved Christian communities today and direct us on the paths of discipleship and a clear proclamation of grace for all. The temptation to follow a different way will surely come. Just say no.

The Joy of Being Found
by Pastor Brenda Legred

My nieces and nephews loved to play hide and seek. They could never get enough of it. “Let’s play again – just one more time!” I asked them why they liked the game so much. Now I would have expected them to say that it’s fun to hide. Instead they said, “Because it’s so exciting to be found!”

The Bible tells us the story of a shepherd who goes in search of a lone, lost sheep. Scripture tells us that heaven rejoices when this sheep is found. I imagine the lone sheep was glad too.

About 30 years ago, I was stranded in the Superior National Forest in a horrible snowstorm. My car was stuck and I had tried to walk as far as I could, but I just couldn’t make it in the storm. This happened before there were cell phones; at least I didn’t have one yet. So I went back to my car and waited there for about 9 hours. A pastor had suggested I take the road I was on as a shortcut. Later I learned that he was new in town and didn’t know the road was closed in the winter. Anyway, no cars went by. I was going to conserve my malted milk balls, but I ate them in the first 10 minutes. When a day had passed, I got out of the car, got down on my knees in the snow and prayed that God would rescue me.

After a few hours, a massive truck came through the woods. Two men who I remember were really good-looking, tall and broad-shouldered, said they were Canadian Mounted Police and gave me their business cards. Rod and Bob tied a rope to my car and towed me to the nearest highway. When I returned to Minneapolis, I called the office number on their business cards so I could thank them. The staff member said,

“We have never had mounted police with those names.” Angels? I believe they were either angels or angelic humans. Some people have said they may have been dangerous people and that I was fortunate. Either way, it was good to be found.

As a community in Christ, we rejoice in being found by the God who considered us so beautiful, so potentially authentic and faithful, that we were worth living in the world and dying for. Amazing grace!

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. John 15:9-17

This weekend we are in our fifth of six weeks exploring the different ways God calls us to love. There is friendship love philia, romantic love eros, family or nation love storge, and sacrificial love agape. There is also the radical love that Jesus calls forth from his followers: love of the stranger and love of the enemy. Our focus will be on agape, the most commonly used word for love in the New Testament and used to describe the love of Jesus and the love that Jesus commanded, and others wrote about for those of us who follow Him. Agape is used over 250 times as a noun or a verb, nearly 5 times as often as the word for friendship love.

I chose this passage from John for a preaching text on agape because of Jesus’ command to ABIDE in this love. This passage is part of a longer piece and follows Jesus’ comparison of their relationship with Him as being like branches being connected to, abiding on, a vine. “I am the Vine, you are the branches.” (John 15:5) Living with Jesus, living in Jesus and Jesus living in us is living in agape love. Living and dwelling and making our home in the love Jesus has offered and gives freely. This passage and the other passage I chose for this weekend from Colossians 3:12-17 describe lives abiding in such love and both are often chosen as texts for weddings. Agape is the type of loving that makes you both strong and vulnerable, it is the most courageous and compassionate of loves, and it is the kind of love that should be the spine of every family, community and congregation. I described it this way once as I concluded one of my wedding sermons:

Side by side, you are pledging to stand with each other in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, for as long as you both shall live. Side by side, you are pledging to run the race and be there to urge each other on wherever the roads may lead. Today, God promises to run that race with you….to bless it and strengthen it and call it sacred. One family, one promise, one joy. 

 We all know that there is no relationship quite like marriage where love matures and is tested, where loyalty and faithfulness is given and returned, where prayers are fashioned around the ordinary struggles of life, and where two individuals become family. There is no place like this love, when you are wounded or weary and longing to be comforted and held. There is no place like the one you stand in together, wherever that may be, when it is a place filled with laughter, playfulness, faith, love and hope. It is a home where husband and wife share their visions, values and dreams, and that Jesus creates a family which will stand the tests of time.

It is towards such a home that we now send you forth. Go in this love. Go, carrying in your hearts the love we have for you. Go, in the grasp of Jesus, towards a love that will bend, but not break; towards a love that will grow stronger, deeper and wider as days become years; towards a love that will enfold you with the arms of God, and not let go.”

This way of loving is powerful, risky, exciting, and Christ-like. This way of loving allows hope to grow where it otherwise might not and allows trust to develop when it seems improbable to imagine. This way of loving and living and abiding together is perhaps the only way we might stretch to those improbable loves towards the enemy and the stranger. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Make your home in my love, Jesus is saying. There is NO place, NO place, like that home.