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Mark 16:1-8 - Lectionary for Easter Sunday, Series B

3/29/2018

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3/29/18
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.

I watched a film recently in which one scene reminded me of the events of Mark 16:1-8. A veteran of World War I, who had a history of flashbacks and hallucinations, had been informed that his son, a combatant in World War II, was missing and presumed dead. Not very much later, as he was outside his house, apparently still grieving, his son, quite uninjured, walked up the lane to his home. The son probably had some doubts about the reality of the situation. The father did as well. They knew each other, but were uncertain whether their eyes and minds were playing tricks on them.

When the Marys and Salome went to the tomb to finish the burial customs for Jesus, they realized that they wouldn’t be able to access the tomb. There would be a closed door, and in a cave tomb the door would be a heavy disk of rock rolled down a channel from the side until it blocked the door. To pull it away would require some strong people and a long lever.

They found the tomb open. They found that Jesus, whom they knew to be dead, was not there. They were greeted by an angel who seemed to think everything to be perfectly normal and under control. What should they do? The angel reminded them that Jesus was doing what he had said he was doing, and that they were to go remind the apostles.

I think I’d be overcome with trembling and amazement too. Not one of us would know what to say or what to do. Going outside, based on the accounts of the other Gospels, we might have noticed the guards, who were unconscious.

To make matters more difficult from a literary point of view, the oldest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel end at verse 8. The women don’t even go anywhere and tell anyone, including the disciples. They have heard that Jesus rose from the dead. The narrative seems to end there. The alternative endings of Mark’s Gospel give a little more detail, but not much. It seems that Mark wanted to leave it on the abrupt side. Even if he is the one who wrote the longer ending which we have, maybe some years later, as I think likely, he doesn’t give any too much detail. He begins the gospel abruptly and ends it abruptly. It’s just a chunk of time.

When we are confronted by the power of the risen Christ we also go through a time of shock. We don’t know what to make of him. Are we deceiving ourselves? Is it a dream? A fancy? Maybe even a nightmare? As with the father and son in the film I watched, as with the women who had the angelic encounter, as with the apostles who were later confronted by the risen Lord, it gets worked out in time. May the Lord help us to make some sense of his resurrection and the fact that he values this bodily life so much that he rose, along with a body, and promises the same to us.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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1 Corinthians 15:1-11 - Lectionary for Easter Sunday, Series B

3/28/2018

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3/28/18
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.

In 1 Corinthians 15, often called “the resurrection chapter” of the Bible, the apostle Paul lays out the heart and soul of “the gospel.” Gospel is a word that we don’t use all that much, especially outside of Christian circles. And within Christianity it is often misunderstood. I must admit that I’ve been guilty of using language such as “the Gospel requires that we should…” Still shaking my head about that. But it was a matter of not being adequately articulate. Really. Trust me.

Let’s look at an extreme example. A member of a non-Christian religious organization came to my door some years ago. Normally it didn’t happen, but this person must not have read the map that her group likely had marked as, “This is a tough house, skip them.” I had a few minutes and it was a pleasant day for standing on the porch, so I asked the middle-aged lady what she wanted to tell me about. She was clearly on a mission. As she waved some literature in my general direction, she told me that her church (her word, not mine) wanted to let people in our neighborhood know about how they could live forever. I can go along with that. Forever life is something Christians value! So I asked her how her organization said we could live forever. She said it was by hearing what the Bible and their group’s teachings said so we would be able to obey them well enough that we could live forever. Very well, the Bible does describe itself as God’s Word and says that it offers us eternal life. One problem remains. It’s a problem you have probably latched onto by now. We can’t obey well enough. And the group’s teachings, where they depart from a biblical faith, are not going to do us any good.

I asked the lady if she was familiar with the term “gospel.” She said she was. I asked her if she would describe it to me. She said the first four books of the New Testament are described as “gospels.” She knew the names of the evangelists and even put them in order for me. She opened her Bible and showed me that they were in there. I thanked her. I asked her if she could tell me another meaning for the word “gospel.” She thought for a moment, not very long, and told me that it’s a word the Bible uses for the good news. I asked her what the good news is. She said that if we obey well enough we get to live forever.

In the Lutheran tradition, that’s what we call law, not gospel. In a nutshell, law is what God tells me I need to do, gospel is what God has done for me. I explained to her that I found the demands she made to be very bad news. There was no realistic promise. It was like telling someone to swim across the ocean to claim a reward. I then proceeded to tell her that the Bible describes the truly good news in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. The good news is that Jesus, God the Son, has kept the demands of God’s law for her and for me. Being God, he was able to obey not only for himself, but also for us. The burden of our sins, our failings to keep God’s law perfectly, brought him to his death. He was really dead, really buried, and really rose from the dead on the third day. This is also a matter of gospel. He did it for us. And in his resurrection we see that he is just the firstfruits of the resurrection. If we want to live forever, we believe that we are some of the sinners he died for. We then receive his promise that as he rose from the dead we will be raised in the last day to eternal life. I asked her if she believed this. She said it wasn’t exactly what her group taught. I asked her if she would like to hear more about it. She said maybe she would. I asked her to write down the address where I lived. She put a mark by it on her list and thanked me.

I never saw that lady again. I have no idea how much farther she went spreading her false teaching. But there was no gospel there. Maybe she later believed and found herself set free from the crushing demands of the law. Maybe not.

When we mix demands into gospel it ceases to be gospel. It’s something else. It’s law. The resurrection is all about gospel. It’s all about what God has done for us in Christ. The only valid demand is this: If you hear the gospel joyfully, agree with it and believe it. The rest will work out by itself.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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Isaiah 25:6-9 - Lectionary for Easter Sunday, Series B

3/27/2018

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3/27/18
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.

Warfare is an ugly thing. It involves breaking things. Political organizations, buildings, cities, families, lives. There’s more broken in a war than anywhere else. And it’s done on purpose. An ugly thing.

Isaiah 25:6-9 describes God as the warlike God. He is the one who is in charge of breaking things. It’s an unpleasant job. Yet, in God’s providence, it has to be done sometimes. The soul which sins must die. When God works to reconcile people to himself and protect them from evil, something has to happen to the evil and its servants. They are going to face destruction.

What happens in the aftermath of a war? Normally we picture a ravaged wasteland. Bodies and parts of bodies are scattered around. Things may well be on fire. Rubble is in heaps where once beautiful buildings stood. And the surviving participants have been damaged, badly. Their bodies may be broken. Mentally and spiritually they are almost certainly damaged. They have had to participate in actions which are counter to our created nature. It’s going to break things.

How does God work with this broken place? In Isaiah 25, even though we soldiers may well have covered the dead with burial shrouds, covered the remaining structures with blue tarps to contain the destruction, and begun a plan of recovery, God comes to his people. While we are grateful for a drink of clean water and something edible, God lays a table, a feast table, a table so covered with the finest of foods and drinks that it’s creaking and about to collapse.

Who is going to dine at this lavish banquet? Everyone and everything is broken. It’s all covered with burial shrouds. In verse seven that shroud is covering all the people, all the nations. What does God do?

He pulls back the shroud. We don’t want that shroud pulled back. We know what’s under it. Deadness, brokenness, corruption, pollution, stench. Not only does God pull back the shroud, but he destroys it as well.

What’s underneath? Life. Hope. Peace. Eternity. Incorruption. It is in pulling back the shroud of death that God reveals the victory he has won over sin and death. He is the victorious Lord who brings life. Suddenly, we are turned from sorrow and fear to joy and hope.

May the God of life pull back the burial shroud from our world and bring us to his banquet.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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Psalm 16 - Lectionary for Easter Sunday, Series B

3/26/2018

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3/26/18

Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.

This week’s Psalm is Psalm 16. Here we can easily find a case of mistaken identity. It’s so natural for us to think the Psalms are about us. And they are, in a way.

In verse 1, I really do want God to be my refuge. I confess in verse 2 that God is my Lord. But my devotion wavers. Maybe the second part of the verse is a little bit of wishful thinking. In verse 3 and 4 I’m going to have to confess that I will not always delight in people who are holy. And I’m more than a little bit likely, at least momentarily, to capitulate to those false gods or at least to their followers.

As we move on down the remainder of the Psalm, it becomes more and more clear that it’s expressing a steadfast relationship that I don’t naturally have with God. By verse 8 I recognize that I am too easily shaken. In verse 9 I confess that I do doubt God’s preservation of my body. And in verse 10 I realize that i have no hope whatsoever that I will not see decay.

What’s the conclusion? Psalm 16 is not about me and Jesus. It’s about Jesus, God the Son, and his relationship with God the Father. As we walk back through the text again we’ll recognize that the Son knows the Father as the refuge, the only good one. He delights, genuinely, in the holy ones. He never capitulates to the false gods. He knows that his future and his inheritance is in heavenly bliss with the Father, a place he has always occupied in the past. He is unshakable, he has no spiritual or physical fear. He is not even left to see decay, for by the third day he has risen from the dead with a perfect, glorified body.

The great news here is that in Jesus we also can find the eternal joy and pleasure described. He has adopted all who trust in him as His heirs. He is the one who gives us all the forgiveness and reconciliation we need. He is the one who guards his people in the power of the resurrection. All praise belongs to the risen Lord.

If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.

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    About Throwing Inkwells

    When Martin Luther was dealing with struggles in his life he once saw what appeared to be an angelic being. Not trusting that he was going to be informed by someone other than the God revealed in Scripture, he took the appearance to be untrustworthy and hurled his inkwell at it. The chipped place in the plaster wall is still visible at the Wartburg Castle, though apparently the ink stain on the wall has been refreshed periodically by the caretaker.

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