Christianity is for when the world is going to hell.

This morning I watched the brain being cut out of a child with a beating heart by a charity with the word “parenthood” in its name.  I’m told it’s more important to talk about making sure condoms are readily available.  I can’t, for the life of me, understand why the two have to go hand in hand.  I can’t ever unsee that.  My heart is broken.

Last month my heart broke when a group called ISIS crucified teenagers and decapitated men for being a different religion, then posted it on the internet.

Last year ebola killed thousands of the world’s poorest. Before that it was child soldiers, forced to commit atrocities by a warlord.  Don’t forget

the latest natural disaster that destroyed lives.  I can’t even keep track of how many tragedies I missed in between.  The world is going to hell.

It’s easier not to think about it. My kids are 1 and 3.  I’d rather stick my head in the sand.  Every time I peek up, it just looks worse.  What kind of world will they grow up in?

Enter the church.  Every fiber of my being wants to wall ourselves off here. I want to say this is a place where none of those evil sinners can enter.  This is a place terrorism can’t touch.  This is a place free from sickness.  This is a place tornadoes can’t knock down.  Except not.  The mighty fortress is built in the middle of a sinful broken world.  The church is next to the gates of hades.  Inside our walls are sinners burdened by guilt and shame and coping with suffering and sickness and death.  They’re hurting and they’re scared and every day they become more and more aware that hell is hot.   

It would be easier to pretend otherwise.  It would be easier to sing camp songs about Jesus and not think too hard about how little they talk about what we’re actually going through.  It would be easier to give boring sermons about a vague morality laid out in step by step programs that promise to undo the very concept of entropy.  If you just follow these steps, you can fix yourself, and even the rest of the world too.  It’s all based on a lie that if we try hard enough, everything will just be ok.  Then I don’t have to tell the truth.  I’m really, really scared too. 

I know you want answers.  You want to know how to fix this.  You want to know how to stay safe.  The world is going to hell, and instead of giving out details, Jesus just tells us, over and over again, “Do not be afraid.”  Even of a world going to hell. That’s because we have a God who has already descended into hell.  We say it all the time. 

[I believe in] Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.  He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead.  He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God th Father Almighty.  From thense He will come to judge the living and the dead.  

The apostle’s creed. The teachings of men martyred for the faith, likely penned before Christianity was a legal religion. They insisted Christ descended into hell. It was a core part of their faith.

It wasn’t to fight. Jesus didn’t drop down to hell to wrestle with the devil.  It was to declare His victory.  By the time Jesus descended into hell, satan already lost.  Christ was already crucified. 

That means He has already redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.  This is most certainly true.

Christ already won.  So thorough is His victory that even death can’t hold Him anymore.  He is risen!  If the world is going to hell, fine.  Christ has conquered hell too. We cling to His promise. His victory is our victory.  He will save us.

That victory is still proclaimed here, and even more, we participate in it.  Jesus actually shows up on Sunday in a meaningful way.  Not a generic “God is everywhere” way that can’t explain why bad things happen.  In a meaningful way with an explicit promise.  We call it communion.  Eat, drink, this is the very body and blood of Jesus that won you back from hell.  It’s here. It’s for you.  Eat, drink, and know that forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are yours.  For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.  All the fire in hell can’t change the fact that God is present and active in His Supper for you. 

That’s a way that’s meant to help us when bad things do happen, Because God will not throw us out when we fail to stop atrocities. He won’t even throw us out when we commit them.  He forgives sinners. He saves you.   He will not abandon those He has bled for. He will dwell among us, in word and sacrament, granting comfort to those in pain, forgiveness to the ashamed, and the sure and certain promise that whatever this world can throw at us, He will bring us through it to the very same resurrection we saw on Easter morning.  We will rise too.

In the meanwhile, we’ll gather around His gifts. We’ll sing hymns that speak of His promises. We’ll be baptized.  We’ll eat and drink to our salvation. We’ll hear sermons that promise the victory is already ours, because Christ has already won it and even already delivered it.

That’s enough.  That’s enough that I can even know joy in the middle of this broken world. I can hold my kids and know they’re baptized. I can laugh with them.  They’re children of God. God takes care of His kids.  I can pray with a broken heart for those suffering and then smile at the sunset.  My God saves. Even me.  Even you.  He has descended into hell. Nothing can change that.  Know joy.

forgiveness means never having to play "what if..."

I wonder, on average, about 5 times a day why any higher power would ever let me reproduce, roughly 12 times a week why any woman would put up with me, somewhere around 4 times a month what would happen to me if I ever just quit and got a "normal job", and, more often than I'm willing to admit, what would happen if I could just start over.

I'm not alone.  We all play "what if".  We daydream about a perfect life if only we did something different.  We look back and imagine what could have been.  We build larger and more elaborate fantasy worlds where life is better.

What if I didn't ever go to seminary?    What if we never had kids?  What if you weren't married, or at least weren't married to him?

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if my life was different because I've fallen so short of what a father should be, a husband should do, and a pastor should embody.  Sometimes I play because I'm so tired of being hurt that I just want things to be different.  Underneath all the excuses and details, the motive to play "what if" is always sin.  It's the sins I commit that make me want to quit since I can't do it right.  It's the sins that are committed against me that make me want to take my ball and go home because I don't think I deserve this.  All of it hurts.  So we escape into our own little worlds we've built out of "what ifs". 

The problem with playing "what if"  isn't just spending all day gazing at greener grass on the other side of the fence. I throw rocks at hypothetical hornets' nests.  I stir up angst and envy and jealousy and greed. I rouse discontent.  I dwell on sin. The more you dwell on sin, the more you play "what if", the harder it is to look someone in the eye.  Sometimes that someone is your God. Sometimes it's your spouse, your kids, or your friends. Each time you play it that little voice that you don't want to acknowledge gets a tiny bit louder.

Just run.  Quit.  It's not worth salvaging. It's too broken to fix. Just run.  

Running's easy.  It's not looking back that's hard.  "What if" can only look back - on sins, on ruin, on what you wish was different.  But you can never run so far that you can escape the "what ifs" and start looking forward.  If you could just stop looking back, you'd never have been playing "what if" in the first place.  "What if" is a deadly game.

Forgiveness means never having to play "what if".  Forgiveness means all those sins that brought pain and regret are gone.  Forgiveness means that when you look back, all you see is a cross where Jesus took everything you did, everything you should have done, and everything done to you, and bore them Himself, along with all of the ruin these sins brought.  It is finished. You are forgiven.

You don't need to play "what if" anymore, because there is nothing left to regret. There's nothing left to run from.  Jesus died for all of it. Jesus died for you.  You can stop fantasizing about what a perfect life would look like, because God has already declared you perfect and without sin, without fault, without blemish.  He meant it.

The shame that you want to erase by playing "what if" has been erased by the cross. The peace that we want to build in a fantasy world has been given by a risen Lord. You can look forward now.

Instead of playing "what if", make the sign of the cross and remember that you are baptized, that every single day God will drown the old Adam who wishes for something different and daily raise up the new man to live in righteousness and purity forever.  Know that you are already baptized into Christ's resurrection, free of guilt and shame.  There's nothing better to wish for.

please, pour contempt on all my pride

I love my pride because it keeps me going long past when any sane person would quit. It keeps me focused in a world full of distractions. It’s my pair of pliers.  It’s my mixing spoon.  It’s my way with words.  It’s the most useful tool I have, so I use it a lot.  Practice makes perfect, after all.  So when I do well, my pride goes to my head.  Pretty soon my pride lives up there and has its own key. 

But if pride moves into my head and redecorates when I do well, it changes the locks and throws everything else out on the lawn when I mess up.  Pride makes me open my mouth when I shouldn’t and shut up when I should talk.

That’s why I love my pride. When I think of how happy I could be if I just swallowed it, I fall in love with it all over again, because it reminds me how much better it is to prove a point.

I dig my heels in.  I double down. I prove a point. I write epic screenplays where I rehash past battles and title them things like “What I Wish I Said” and “FINE” when they really should be called “How To Make Mountains Out Of Mole Hills” or maybe just “Well, That Didn’t Work”.

I love my pride too much to ever surrender it to a higher power.  So when a scrawny beaten man gets nailed to a cross and says it’s because of me and my beloved pride, I grumble. The cross mocks my pride, defies my ego, and part of me would honestly rather do away with it…or maybe just take that bloody Jesus off of there.  Then, I can turn it into just a symbol for me to wear around to remind everyone else that I’m Christian enough to be proud of it.  I really do love my pride.

But that Jesus who stares down at me from His cross can’t come down from there.  He’s wearing my pride as a crown of thorns.  He’s become my sin.  It wasn’t just my pride that nailed Him to the cross. My pride was nailed to the cross. My pride and all my other sins were named Jesus, and they were punished.  The Father poured contempt on all my pride.  The Father gave His only Son.

This Jesus who knew no sin became sin, and it was for me.  But where my pride would have protested, Jesus didn’t.  Where my pride would have been stone faced, He said “Father, forgive them”. 

When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died, cool water is poured on my pride.  Holy words are spoken.  “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  I’m baptized into that cross with living water, welling up to eternal life. 

Every single day it drowns my pride along with all sins and evil desires so that a new man may daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.  This living water will quench my pride. Every. Single. Day.

And that’s the secret. Every day my pride comes back. Every day I drown it in baptism. Every day the new man rises again.  Every bit of it comes from that wondrous cross where my Lord spoke forgiveness to a sinner like me. I don't tame my pride. Jesus forgives it.

That’s real forgiveness that springs up like a fountain and pries open stubborn jaws to say “I’m sorry” and knots prideful tongues that need the last word.  That’s real forgiveness that I hang on to every single day because my soul and my life and my all aren’t enough to slay my pride, but His are.  

Dear 18 year old me, however things work out, it will be ok.

Dear 18 year old me,

You’ll be graduating High School in a couple weeks.  I don’t want to give too much away, but since you’re a nominally Jewish kid heading to Purdue to study Computer Science and I’m a Lutheran Pastor, I think I can say things won’t always work out the way you plan. 

This isn’t an “keep chasing your dreams until you catch them” letter.  Honestly, I don’t know how it all ends yet. I still haven’t heard from 50 year old us.  I’m not sure whether that’s an ominous sign or if that guy’s just a huge procrastinator.  

I won’t give you stupid yearbook cliché’s.  I won’t tell you that if I could go back in time, I’d intentionally make every single mistake all over again because they lead me to this moment.   There will be dark days full of pain as you haven’t felt yet.  But there will also be amazing days full of more joy and happiness than you’ve ever known or dared even to imagine. 

I know you want a roadmap of which mistakes to avoid, which streets not to walk down, and a few winning lottery numbers.  Sorry.  I wasn’t smart enough to write down the powerball back then, but hopefully 50 year old us has it covered and I’ll hear from him soon.

I’m not going to tell you about our mistakes either.  Honestly, there’s something more important you need to know.  It’s something you’ve wondered about a lot.  There really is a God.  He’s very real.  I know His book hasn’t yielded answers for you the way you expected, but when you finally wander into a Lutheran Church, you’ll meet a guy who’ll teach you what it means. 

God didn’t use His book to lay out every mistake you’ll ever make.  There’s no chapter and verse that gives the answers to every important choice and directions for every fork in the road.  That might seem like an oversight, or maybe just a obnoxious move, but He uses His word to tell you something even more important - something that gives answer to the unknowns.

The point of the whole bible is that God became man for us.  He was called Jesus.  This Jesus didn’t give out winning lotto tickets then either.  Instead, He acted on a plan that was in place from before there was such a thing as time.  Before the foundation of the world He knew you (because He’s God and He knows everything) and He loved you.  He saw the good days and He saw the bad days.  He also saw the mistakes and the things you did on purpose that wrought havoc on everyone and everything around you.  So He saved us from ourself.

This Jesus, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, died for us on a cross. He died to bear the punishment we deserved for all of it.  Then He rose from the dead.  He’s alive, and He makes you a part of that life through something called baptism.  It is finished.  You’re saved. Even from death. 

The reason God doesn’t lay out the map to every fork in the road is because the book isn’t about how to not mess up.  It’s about how you’re forgiven when you do.  There is nothing you can ever do, no mistake you can ever make that will make God stop loving you.  There is nothing you can do to make Him abandon you.

So as you head out, I don’t need write you warnings.  You don’t need to know because there isn’t a choice you can make that will undo this truth. Jesus died for you to save you.  He will take care of you in the meanwhile too. If He loved you enough to die for you, do you really think He’ll forget about you afterwards?  Even when it feels like you’re freefalling and all you can see is the ground coming up fast, He will be with you. He will be working. However this ends, I know where we end up.  We’ll rise with our God.  Nothing can change that.

However things work out, whatever you're facing, it will be ok. 

Self-high-fives,
Pastor Goodman

faith isn't fragile.

I lived in Nebraska for about a year before I got my first pair of boots.  I gave way too much thought to them, but they were symbolic of a big change.  The kid from the city was going to be a country pastor.  So I approached this milestone with all of the measured thought that a 7 year old chooses his desert.  Cowboy boots? Work boots? What color? I wanted to fit in, but not look like someone I wasn’t.  Then I found out boots were really expensive, so I settled on a pair from Walmart.  Still, I was proud.  I wore them in front of a mirror.  I said things like “combine” and “preg-check” and other words I had learned over the last year and tried to convince myself that I was doing it right.  But I didn’t wear the boots out in public for a few months.  I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear them out in public to face scrutiny.

I remember the first time I finally wore them in front of anyone.  People noticed.  The guys just smirked.  “What?” I asked.  “Nothin”, someone replied.  I got more nervous than anyone should over shoes.  So I insisted, “No. Really, what?”  So one of the farmers bites and asks me, “New boots?”  I really wanted to appear humble so I did my best impression of what I thought a guffaw was and said, “No, I’ve had them a while.” Apparently that was hilarious.  Everyone started laughing.   In that instant I became terrified that I was accidently wearing lady-boots without realizing it.  I said the only thing I could think of.  “What?” 

One of the kids finally clued me into what was so funny.  He laughed and all but yelled, “They don’t got crap on them.”  My work boots were never used for work.  That’s like buying a TV and keeping it in the box so nothing happens to it. 

Honestly, I think sometimes Christians treat their faith the same way.  It’s just meant to be worn in front of the mirror.  We’ll say a few words to ourselves that go along with it, but we're afraid to take it out in public, and we never let it get dirty.  We shy away from other ideas, other religions, and other perspectives.  If we do engage in them, we make sure our faith is safely up on a shelf for the time being, like something bad might happen to it.  It’s like we're afraid that if someone says “evolution” or “gay” or “atheist” too loud the whole thing will just fall apart. 

If your faith really is that fragile I don't imagine it’s worth having anyway.

Work boots are meant for work.  Faith is meant to shield save you from the devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh.  You don’t need to protect your faith and need stick your head in the sand whenever something opposes what you believe.  Remember who gave that faith to you. 

God doesn’t do shoddy work.  If God creates and sustains faith, it will stand up to the task.  This apostolic faith expressed in the Creed isn't something just a little light shining in my heart that might get blown out if I accidently think about it too hard.  After each article of that creed, we insist that this is most certainly true in our catechism.  This is who our God is.  This is what He does.  The Father really did create us.  The Son really did redeem us.  The Holy Spirit really does sanctify us.  

This Easter we see the reality of it all.  Christ really is risen from the dead.  This is a historical fact.  This is most certainly true. If Christ is risen, our faith is not in vain. If Christ can rise from the dead, then His Word and promises are sure.  Faith can stand up to other ideas because it's true.  

It’s not your job to protect your faith. It’s faith’s job to protect you.  Faith is meant to be knocked around.  It’s meant to end up looking a lot like the very thing it rests on, a battered, muddied, crucified Jesus who is raised from the dead.  A Jesus who bears wounds of His passion but still stands before Thomas despite all the weight of the sin He bore for you and despite the devil and all his schemes.  A Jesus who says “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 

Christ is risen from the dead.  Until someone can show you that Christ has not been raised, your faith is not in vain.  When something challenges this faith, ask, can this un-crucify Christ? Does this un-raise Him? 

If Christ was crucified to take away every last power of the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh and raised again to undo death, can we rest securely? Yes. Take these concerns to God’s Word, to His church, and to His pastors, and seek truth.  Let our risen Christ stand between you and every evil.  He will not falter.  This is most certainly true. 

certainty cuts both ways.

Things you don’t want to hear at a funeral: “I dunno about you…but I think she’s probably in heaven.”  “You just have to…you know…believe whatever makes you happy.” “Well...I mean...I don’t want to get hung up on the details here…”

Lutherans don’t preach that way.  There’s no opinion.  There’s no subjectivity.  Jesus died on a cross for sinners. Jesus rose from the dead. You are baptized into His passion.  You will rise from the dead. There’s no room for anything else.  The Jesus we preach is too big to leave room for hunches or a nice sounding wish designed to placate without offending.  And if you ever have to sit in a pew at the funeral of someone close to you, I pray you hear nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified - the Gospel. 

This gospel brings comfort like nothing else.  It is our rock, our refuge, and our shield.  It’s solid. It’s sharp.  It cuts right through doubt and fear.  The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart [Hebrews 4:12].  You can be certain of it, and that matters, because nobody wants to hear anything less than certainty in the face of death. 

We can be so sure because it isn’t about us.  It’s based on something outside of us.  It’s about Jesus.

The gospel is so audacious that it refuses to be limited to something as insignificant as whoever is preaching it.  This lets us stare down death without flinching.  Our confidence is in the sure word of God.  But this certainty is a two edged sword.  The hope that does not put us to shame also makes us say the one word nobody wants to hear. 

No.

The sinner in all of us hates that word.  Believe it or not, your pastor hates saying it.  I have never once thought to myself, “You know what sounds fun? Having my members mad at me!  I hope they’re really disappointed!  It will be great!”  We don’t say “No” because it’s fun.  We say it because there’s too much at stake to say anything else. 

The reason our preaching is filled with hope and joy is because it stakes itself on Christ, our rock.  We sing Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so.  If the bible is true, then it is true.  If we pick it apart to get rid of the bits we don’t like, there’s nothing solid to stand on anymore, and all we’re left with is that list of things you never want to hear at a funeral. 

Certainty cuts both ways.  If we must be sure of God’s Word when it speaks of salvation, then we must be sure of God’s Word when it speaks of sin.  We must cling to God’s Word as truth whether we like it or not.  That’s a tall order, because the rock of our salvation is also a rock of offense. 

So we pray.  Hallowed be Thy name.  We know that God’s name is certainly holy in itself, but we pray in this petition that it may be kept holy among us also.  How is God’s name kept holy? God’s name is kept holy when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it. Help us to do this, dear Father in heaven! But anyone who teaches or lives contrary to God’s Word profanes the name of God among us. Protect us from this, heavenly Father!

We pray that we would see the truth.  Even as God’s Word rebukes sin, in forgives sinners and gives life everlasting.  We pray that when we hear the word "No" to sin, we would cling to the far more important "Yes" to salvation.  We pray Hallowed be Thy name because there’s too much at stake for anything else. 

our worship is done to death

We run trends into the ground.  It’s the same every time. It starts out new and exciting and before long it’s been done to death. It’s boring, unoriginal, and uninteresting, and you can’t help but roll your eyes every time someone tries to beat that dead horse one more time. 

Most of you have been raised in the church.  Here, if anything’s been done to death, it’s worship. We worship the same way, week after week, month after month, and year after year. Most of you haven’t had to look at the hymnal for years. You know what happens, there are no curve balls, and yes, you can even end up bored. Liturgical worship is done to death. 

Yep.  Our worship is done to death, but it’s not our death, and it’s not even the death of excitement. Our worship is done to the death of Jesus. And at the highest point of this worship, when we are blessed to stand in the very real presence of our Lord, when we come to the Lord’s own Table to eat His body and blood, Paul writes, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11).” And we don’t just talk about it, Paul even says we participate in it. Our worship is done to the death of Jesus, and we take part in that week after week for the forgiveness of sins, for life, and for salvation.

When Jesus told us to do this “often”, it wasn’t for our entertainment. It was to give us what we so desperately need in this life. For in this life, there is no end to sin and suffering, or torments by the devil. Here, we regroup; we are given strength to go on, forgiveness for where we fall short, and life everlasting to look forward to because of what Christ has done for us. When Christ gathered His disciples in that upper room during Holy Week, it wasn’t to keep things interesting. The world is already all too “interesting”, as the disciples could attest to over the next few days.  The Lord’s Supper was given for them, and is given for you to keep you steadfast, strong, and safe when life gets too “interesting” for its own good.

I thank God that His church isn’t just set up to run a new trend into the ground and forgotten every few months.  I thank God that we receive the same help from God every week, because there hasn’t been a week that’s gone by where at least one of us hasn’t needed it desperately.  I thank God that our worship is done to death, even if it is boring sometimes, because when we participate in the death of the Son, we also participate in His life. When we worship, we receive from God everything we need to keep us unto death in an all too “interesting” world, and unto life everlasting in the world yet to come. This lent, I hope you join us in participating in the Death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in you.