The World, Rest,

and the Body of Christ!

It’s hard to believe that we are already celebrating the resurrection of our Lord, again! It really seems like we just went through the whole season of Lent and the Resurrection, and now here we are again.

With as blessed as we have been at St. Paul’s this past year, we have certainly had our fair share of struggles, loss, disappointments, and health issues.

Of course, God has been with us, and we have been blessed with a sense of his presence in all of it. He has truly seen us through and even blessed us with some growth…

…in numbers, sure, but more importantly, in our spirituality.

With Debbie’s health challenges and with it looking like we weren’t going to do a newsletter this month (while we tried to figure out and re-organize who will be picking up the slack in our various ministries,) I was honestly a bit relieved to not have to come up with one-more-thing to write about. Honestly, this entire season has felt like I am sitting in front of a computer surrounded by books while the world outside keeps moving, and my to-do-list around the house just keeps growing.

But you know… I think that I would be derelict in my duty to not say something during the start

of the Easter season.

It’s really easy for me to forget about the world outside when the majority of my attention is focused on trying to apply what we read in our lectionary to our lives, and still somehow find its way back to the cross… week after week.

The sense of upheaval going on in the world is palpable, and I hear it from people a lot.

It seems that nobody knows what the truth is anymore, and no one has any real confidence in anything. Decisions that politicians are making, violent crime rates being exacerbated by judges releasing multiple violent offenders, open hostility toward Christ and his Church from the secular world and the various anti-Christian religions alike, have people exhausted and stressed.

And I get it. Truly.

This is not the world that most of us grew up in at all, and it’s certainly not the world that we hoped our kids and grandkids would inherit. But it is no mistake that our Lord has put us here at this specific time. He’s God.

The truth is, no one can share his hope and reflect his love, his glory, and proclaim his Gospel… like you can.

That’s why you are here in this particular place, at this particular time.

Consider the world that the apostles faced in the first century. It was a world that was hostile to new ideas, and freedom of speech didn’t exist. It was unsafe to travel, food was not easy to come by, every flavor of paganism was firmly entrenched in every culture, and all of them were hostile to the message of the Gospel. All of them.

And just for the cherry on top, the Emperor of Rome demanded that he be worshiped as a God… even if that only meant publicly putting a pinch of incense on an altar for the emperor’s “glory.” This was the world that the Gospel exploded into.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we look at the first century, and just because they apparently had it worse, that we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and pretend like our struggles aren’t real. They are very real. And depending on where you are in the world, they are just as real as what the apostles faced.

But what I am suggesting is that they, and every generation of Christian after, has had struggles that have been identical, somewhere in the world, and it’s because of what happened early that Sunday morning that every generation of Christian has had the courage and the  power to persevere in a world that Jesus promised would hate us.

Jesus stood before the most powerful governor appointed by Rome in the region and told him to his face…that he himself is truth.

He’d spent a few years revealing the kingdom of God, straightening out bad theology, and preparing people for an empty tomb and peace with God through him… and then he was raised from the dead proving to everyone that not only was everything that he taught true, but that his sacrifice of himself was accepted by the Father!

As a result, we are now free through our faith in him. We are no longer under law, we are under grace, which means we are free to be imperfect.

You see, legalism causes paralysis, grace produces freedom.

Legalism forces us to retreat into ourselves, which is always the worst place that we can be without the cross. Grace forces us to live the way that 90% of the Christian life is intended to be lived… outside of ourselves.

It truly breaks my heart like nothing else can when I see mixed up priorities. It crushes me when I see professing believers treating Christ as an option rather than an umbilical cord, and it seems to be a spiritual epidemic in our culture today. Of course they would never say it in those words, but that is how it plays out with feet, isn’t it?

Christ on my terms, rather than on his, etc.

Or when I see people hitting a struggle, depression, health and family issues, or various other speed bumps in life, retreating into themselves rather than fleeing and clinging to the means of grace… which includes other spirit-filled believers and the gathering of the faithful. “Deconstruction” seems to be trending, and it’s sad, because it’s very avoidable. Ahh comfort…that dreaded enemy of the Church of Christ!

I say it as often as I can find a way to squeeze it into whatever I preach. No, this is not a creative way to try to guilt people about church attendance. I’m not all that shy when it comes to that, and if I thought it was a serious issue, I would say it directly.

What I’m talking about is a frame of mind. It is not a mortal sin to miss church, regardless of what Rome might try to sell you.

But I wonder how many of us actually believe that by merely being present, your spirit is being encouraged and strengthened? I’m not talking about feelings…you need to ignore those. They are too easily tampered with by the enemy, after all.

I wonder how many of us are looking at the gathering of the faithful and the fellowship of the saints as being work, rather than rest?

Sure, in a congregation our size most of us have some part to play in the workings of what is going on in the building, which can be work, I suppose.

But here’s the thing, if it is work, it is work that gets us outside of ourselves and it puts us into a place of blessing. That’s rest. That’s peace. That’s grace. That’s the very picture of unmerited favor!

There is nothing else that we can do in life where we are more like Christ and closer to his presence than when we are forgiving others, and when we are serving. And yes, just your face being present is most certainly an encouragement and a blessing to others. It is actively working for the betterment of the body that we profess to love, isn’t it?

Again, (unfortunately I feel like I need to over emphasize this,) this is not about trying to guilt anyone into being at church more often or into volunteering for things.

Again, it’s Rome that uses phrases like, “Sunday obligation,” not us.

With us, the Lord’s Day is supposed to be about rest and refreshment.

With us, it’s about your perseverance and strengthening in the faith.

This is also about my office, and in my trying to lead you where the food and the safety is. I am honestly not concerned all that much about things like bulletins, newsletters, volunteers for greeting visitors, counting, ushering, or the distribution of the elements at Communion.

Much to our own counsel’s frustration, I’m often very unconcerned about the business of church. You have appointed people into those positions that are good at what they do. Praise God!

But none of those things matter to me on the big scheme like you do. I am not going to have to answer for those things when I’m standing in front of our God like I’m going to have to answer for you.

I will have to answer the questions,

did I show them Christ,

did I feed them,

did I try to protect them… even from themselves and from each other?

I intend to be able to answer those questions boldly. Souls matter to me. The health of your souls’ matter to me, because it directly affects how brightly you reflect the glory of Christ, and he matters to me above all things.

So with the new life that Jesus has given us through his perfect life, death, and resurrection, I want to encourage you to retrain your brain, if it’s not already there, to start seeing the Lord’s Day as a place of rest, not as a burden and a duty.

Be intentional about seeing the body of Christ,(your faithful brothers and sisters in the pews,) as fellow saints that are there for your encouragement, rather than a bunch of folks that you feel like you need to put on a mask for.

My dear friends, it’s okay to not be okay sometimes.

Remember what I say about the church being the place where we get to practice learning to love the unlovable so that when we go out from the narthex, we are not insufferable monsters to the world around us?

The church is rest.

The church is peace.

The church is supposed to slow us down and reset us from a world that is constantly pushing and trying to get more from us. That is one of the reasons we stick with the traditional hymns (primarily) rather than the contemporary music and laser show thing.

We shouldn’t try to compete with the world on the worlds terms. I believe that we are to stand in stark contrast to it. And yes… it may seem dreadfully boring to the newcomer until they acclimate. That’s what we should be telling people when we invite them in, and we should be inviting them in, right?

No, you will not be judged if you are just too emotionally exhausted to sing, although I assure you that it will pull you out of the funk that you’re in if you do. And no, you will not be judged if you don’t take part in the Lutheran calisthenics… stand up, sit down, stand up sit down. It’s okay for you to just be in the presence of God, in the vehicle of the liturgy, and let your face be an encouragement for your family in Christ, while their faces are an encouragement to you.

Here’s the thing, other believers are a gift to you, even when they don’t feel like it. (Eww, there goes those feelings again!)

The same as the bread and the wine and the word of God are all gifts to you, so is the rest of the body. And I honestly believe that until we can own that fact, and truly get it into our bloodstream, and truly speak it out into the world of complacency, we will struggle, and we will continually see the gathering of the faithful as being a work, or as a box to be checked, rather than the extension of the loving arms of our Lord who is constantly calling us …to come to him.

After all, isn’t that really the implication (in part) of the empty tomb and the establishment of his Church? Didn’t Jesus say that it was HIMSELF that Saul was persecuting, not just random people? So then…wouldn’t that also mean that it’s HIM that we’re “despising” (neglecting) when we neglect his body, not just random people? Tell ya what, just ask him yourself and be prepared to receive an honest answer. Of course, the flip side is that all of us need to be ready to receive each other, just as Jesus receives you…warts and all! And now again, after all that Law, I will remind you that the Gospel here, is that Jesus has already done perfectly what you can’t. So rest in Him…with us.

He is risen! He has broken the silence and the darkness and the death and the coldness of the grave, and he has exploded into the hearts of the millions of us saints that reflect his glory!

We are all tasked with echoing his call to come to him, not only to a world that hates him, but to the rest of the body that is often discouraged and exhausted by the world.

My dear friends, his burden is truly light.

And he doesn’t just love you from heaven, he loves you through every spirit-filled believer in existence. I know because I’m one of them, and your face encourages me as well.

I pray, that as greasy as mine can often be, my face is still an encouragement to you!

By the way, I heard from very few of you about celebrating Communion weekly, and those that I had heard from tally up to a draw.

So (as a trial) I want to try to celebrate Communion weekly during the Easter season until the Ascension. So as long as someone is available to get it together, with the exception of April 19th (since Moses will filling in for me,) May 17th will be the first Sunday that we will not be celebrating Communion.

We will be back on our regular schedule of the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Sundays after May 17th unless enough of us want to keep it weekly, at that point.

I pray with everything in me that you all have a very blessed Resurrection season, and that you continue to reflect Christ’s love and Christ’s peace to this world that so desperately needs it.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Your servant

M+