Author: Rev. Donavon Riley

Rev. Donavon Riley is the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, Minnesota.

Categories
Higher Homilies

That’s Some God…

Rev. Donavon Riley

If only God had a limp, he’d be easier to chase down. It always seems like he’s ten feet away, just out of reach, and backing away. So you begin to edge near him, arms out, hands held palms up, ready to clutch at him. You’re going to get what you want from him, even if you have to chase him out of the county. You want what you’ve asked for and you’re going to have it even if you have to chase him out of the state. You can see it now. Walking through the front door, an overstuffed bag on each arm. “Where’d you get all that stuff,” they’ll ask. “I asked God for it,” you say. “It took some convincing, but he finally made good. I had to tear after him straight out into the open for half an acre. I lost him in some woods, but when he darted out again I went after him. I ripped my shirt and the sleeves going under a fence, and my face and arms got all scratched up,” you say. But nobody is listening, because you’re standing in the doorway with two overstuffed bags of answered prayers.

For you, I’ve got a good nights sleep. For you two, no more arguing. For you, early release from prison. For you, I’ve got a pantry full of food. For you, no more guilt about the abortions. For your family, the truth about his drinking. For you, the confession we’ve been waiting for for forty years. For you, the leukemia’s gone. For you, your little boy raised from death. And for all of us, no more chasing after God. I caught him. God. Good Father, good God. Our Father who art in heaven, take that sucker.

And we’ll have a good laugh. All that chasing amounted to something. Then we’ll go play pool, and smoke cigarettes behind the church, and sneak in after twelve-thirty on Saturday nights, but we can do that now. We asked God and he answered our prayers. He had to give us his blessing. He can’t fight us anymore. We’ve got him. He’s ours and he’s going to love us no matter what. No more talk about sin and Satan, and walking in his tracks. No more weeping. Real men don’t weep anyway. No more grinding your teeth or making an ugly face.

You want to drink? Get stinky drunk. It’s okay, I asked God. Want to steal from your neighbors? We can do that. I prayed for it. God can’t stick anything in our face anymore that we didn’t ask for, and he’s not going to make us chase after stuff all afternoon anymore either. Just grip your hands, bend your knees, and say, “Good Lord, Jesus God, give us this day our daily sign. Send us a preacher to tell us Sunday’s are optional. Thank you that things aren’t as bad as they used to be.” And don’t worry, if things go bad again, just ask God. He’ll turn something up for you.

“That’s some God,” people will say. “How do I get a God like that, who’ll give me whatever I ask for in his name?” “You can’t,” you’ll say. “I captured him, and he’s one of a kind. If you want something you’ve got to run it through me. I’ll ask him for you, if I have time. But I have to go now, I’m in a hurry.”

And when you look back you see that they’re following you. “God, you’re so wonderful,” you think. “Look at all those people who want to ask me to ask you for something. I’m so thankful that you answer me, I want to do something for you. I wish there was somebody begging right now. I’d give him all the change in my pocket.” So you pray, “Please, Lord, send me a beggar.” And you know for a fact God will send you one. You asked him for one. “Maybe I’ll ask for a whole bunch of money,” you think, “then I can take care of all the beggars.” “I’ll build houses for all of the beggars, and buy food for them, and give each of them a new car. That’d be good,” you say. “But why stop there? Why stop there, when I can stop death? I can ask God to stop death, then we’ll never have to worry about anything bad ever again.”

Then the crowd catches up with you. They tell you they don’t need your prayers anymore. They hunted up God on their own and captured him. Now he’s got to give them what they want. They don’t need to wait for you to pray for them anymore. In fact, they may just ask God to punish you for ignoring them, and making them wait.

So you cry out to God, “Why are you doing this to me? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go. You said ask for whatever I want. You have to give me whatever I ask for.” But instead of an answer God sends Jesus, who says, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” “Well, what does that mean,” you ask. “It means you pray in my name the prayer I prayed to my Father.” “And what’s that,” you ask. “Father, take this cup from me… But not my will, but your will be done.” “Thy will be done,” is what it means to pray in my name. “Not your will, but his.” “And what is his will,” you ask. “That you pass with me through suffering and death into new life. For in this new life you will be shown that all things are given to you as gift from his fatherly hand. Before you asked, everything was already given to you on account of what I’ve done for you.” All Jesus. All gift. Heavenly joy.

Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23-24)

Pastor Donavon L. Riley is pastor at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Webster MN. He can be reached atelleon713@gmail.com.

Categories
Catechesis

The First Time I Died

Rev. Donavon Riley

When I was 18, I had planned out my life completely. First, I’d enroll at the local college. Then when my girlfriend finished high school we’d move to the Twin Cities. We’d get married, finish college, land good jobs, and have a baby. We decided his name would be “Christian.” And if I could just find the right lead singer I’d gig with my band on weekends. The next year, a phone call woke me up from my daydreams.

My girlfriend said, “I just want to be free to see other people right now…” After she hung up, I collapsed into bed. I didn’t get up for three weeks. My mother, friends, classmates, professors—no one could coax me out of the emptiness into which I’d fallen. I thought, when I could think, “I will lie here and wait to become nothing. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to drink. I don’t want to talk, to cry, to live. I feel nothing. I am nothing. I will lie here and eventually die.” That was the plan.

Twenty-four years later I try to remember the emotional pain that emptied me of all care for my life, but I can’t. I try to recall what I was thinking to pin all my hopes, all my happiness, on a teenaged girl. But I can’t. I try to picture what it was like to believe I wouldn’t die until I’d seen all my plans completed. I wish I could, but time makes a person’s memory soft and squishy. Some stuff you think you’ll never forget, will just disappear one day. Other stuff you think is unimportant will stick with you for 20 years, like the look on my ex-girlfriend’s face when she learned her grandma died.

I try to imagine the look on her face as I sit here fingering this memorial card. I try, but the card has my attention now. The back of the card reads: “In memory of… the son of… she preceded him in death…was a lifelong farmer…survived by…and other relatives and friends.”

Inside is a poem—one of those poems people who don’t attend church choose because it sounds religious. Services. Clergy officiating. There’s my name. Music. Casket Bearers. Interrment. Arrangement by…Eighty-six years of life summarized on a 4 by 5-inch bi-fold card.

So learn to count, run as fast as you can, scream at the ceiling, get tattooed, sing “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Keep My Body Down,” but if it doesn’t fit on the card, if somebody in your family doesn’t think it’s worthy of inclusion, then it’s cut out to free up space for a poem by “Author Unknown.” As if it never happened.

It’s not really about how you lived and died, anyway. It’s about when you died and began to live.

Despite my previous attempts at suicide, I was 28 years old the first time I finally died. The pastor and my wife were there. My mother and little brother were, too. It was quiet—not reverent silence, but muted tones. The faded yellow walls and red shag carpet dulled everything, even our voices. I remember the quiet, mostly, and the mildewy aroma that pervaded the church. Five people gathered round a baptismal font. It’s an odd thing when the pious and the godless stand round a baptismal font. My past and present relations were summoned to stand witness to a public drowning. June 3, 2008. 3:30pm. My death date.

I was drowned and put to death. Buried with Christ by baptism into death. It was very ordinary. Words were said. Water was poured. Then a smile, a confused glare, resignation, a handshake. Then we walked home, me and my wife. The two of us, justified by grace. Heirs in hope of eternal life.

That night I died again, and the night after, and the night after that, and… Every night since my Baptism I have died. But every morning I awake to a new life. Every day I suffer, I sorrow, I am poured out for my wife, my children, the couple across the street, this little church: I am repented. I am put to death by the crosses God has laid on me. Yet, hidden under that death is a new man, cleansed and made righteous by God’s Spirit. Life overwhelming death in a flood of grace.

Daily I am drowned. Daily I am repented. Daily I am righteoused. A new life, overflowing with the most extraordinary ordinariness. For “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

When I die the little death, if you should happen to attend the funeral, receive the little memorial card offered to you at the door. Turn it over. On the back you will read: “Donavon Riley was baptized into Christ. All the rest was chaff.”

Rev. Donavon Riley was born and raised in Minnesota and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota. Rev. Riley and his wife recently celebrated the birth of their fourth child. He can be reached at elleon713@gmail.com

Categories
Catechesis

Sola Gratia: God’s Gracious Acceptance of Sinners for Christ’s Sake

Rev. Donavon Riley

Grace is God’s promised, free acceptance of sinners because of Christ. That is, as St. Paul writes in Rom. 5[:15]: “How much more the grace of God, and the gift in grace.” By the grace of God, St. Paul means, the reconciliation of sinners with God. By in grace he means, the gift of the Holy Spirit and beginning of eternal life. So, when we speak about grace alone [sola gratia] we mean, “We receive the forgiveness of sins by grace,” that is, “We receive forgiveness of sins freely, because of Christ.“

Grace is free. We contribute nothing to God’s mercy except our sin. Therefore, God’s promises do not depend on how well we manage grace in our daily lives. As St. Paul says in Rom. 9[:15]: Moses pleaded with God to learn how he had managed to receive God’s favor. He wanted to know so that he could find it again when he needed it: “Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people” (Exodus 33:13).

But God hid has face from Moses in the cleft of the rock and preached his name to Moses instead. I AM the LORD, he says, which means “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.” God’s gracious acceptance of Moses is not an effect of Moses’ trust, it is who God is. It is his name. This is the precious cornerstone and sure foundation which the builders rejected (Ps. 118:22), by whom we’ve received his grace freely through the promise of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the chief cornerstone and our sure foundation.

For Christ’s sake God judges that, although we have and remain in sin all our lives, we are not accused and damned because of them. We are under grace, accepted and pleasing to God because of Christ. We are not pleasing to God because of anything in us, our disobedience to his commands, our greatest accomplishments, or our worst failures.

If we fall back on how we feel, our experiences, or our accomplishments we will never know peace. Left to ourselves sin and death hound us day and night, and the power of sin which is the law rules us like a tyrant. In this experience we don’t feel like God is a faithful, loving, and kind heavenly Father. We experience him as a Judge. Then he seems too distant, too removed from our lives, a spectator who has put us on earth to test us, then judge us by how we have chosen to obey or disobey his holy law.

When we are overwhelmed in this way then sins seem to pile on sins until we cannot even measure them. Death is no longer something we watch happen round us, it is in us. We feel we have become death itself. And where is God in all this? He is not watching this happen to us, he is the one doing it to us. For there “is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one.” “Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit.””The poison of asps is under their lips.” “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.””Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. And the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:9-20).

But where sin abounded grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20). This means that the more we feel our sins the more we understand and receive forgiveness of our sins as gift, because we see in ourselves nothing which causes us to say, “I deserve forgiveness.” “I’ve earned it, so give me what’s owed to me.”

God does not command us to hope in what we have accomplished by obedience to the Ten Commandments or any laws. Instead, “He has given us hope in grace” (2 Thessalonians 2:16). On this account we know God, or rather, we are known by God, and can approach his throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16).

We are not worthy to approach God, sinners that we are, but now Christ Jesus promises us that even though we are unworthy all who call upon God are freely forgiven for his sake. For with the Lord there is mercy (Psalm 130:7). Grace has nothing to do with our worthiness and everything to do with Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Because of Christ we have nothing to fear from God. We can approach him as beloved children approach their dear Father, to accept the gift offered to us by faith.

This is very important for all Christians, that we hold tight to the little word, freely. God’s grace is a gift. He forgives sinners while they are yet sinners for Christ’s sake, “that no one may boast.” God’s grace is free. No strings attached. Without this certainty the Gospel cannot be received and enjoyed as Good News. Without faith that trusts that grace is God’s promised, free acceptance of sinners because of Christ certainty always dangles just out of reach. But with this faith comes a sure and certain hope that all God’s promises are “yes” in Christ. Now we can approach God confidently (Romans 8:34), because of our Christ, “who sits at the right hand of God that he may make intercession for us.”

No one is able to approach God apart from Christ Jesus. He is our Mercy Seat by his blood, our Mediator, our High Priest who brings our prayers to the Father. But how will we call on him whom we do not trust? (Romans 10:14) How will we worship God in Spirit and truth without a confident hope that trusts all God’s promises in Christ are true?

Only God’s free grace reconciles sinners to Him by the forgiveness won for us by Christ. Grace alone restores us to a right relation with God in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Grace alone stills a troubled, terrified conscience. Grace alone freely bestows forgiveness, life, and eternal salvation. Grace alone gives the Holy Spirit and saving faith. By grace alone we are pleasing to God on account of Christ.

Rev. Donavon Riley is Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Weber, MN.

Categories
Catechesis

The Church and State and God’s Gifts

Rev. Riley cautions us against taking Scripture passages that were meant for the Old Testament nation of Israel and applying them to any other nation or time. Learn how such passages, specifically Psalm 85, apply to His people, the Church, no matter where or when they may be. God’s gift of the Gospel has been for His people throughout the ages. For more articles on this topic of Church and State check out the Winter Issue of Higher Things Magazine.

Rev. Donavon Riley

I will hear what God, the LORD, will proclaim
– for He promises peace to His people and to His saints;
Only do not let them fall again into folly.
His Salvation is near to those who fear Him, that glory may dwell in our land.
Faithful loving kindness and Truth will meet together,
Righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Truth will spring out of the earth, and Righteousness will look down from heaven.
The LORD will give every good thing, and our land will again give its increase.
Righteousness will go before Him as he sets out on His Way. (Psalm 85:8-13)

This psalm holds up the great gifts of God. In these six verses we are shown all the spiritual blessings of salvation. First, there is salvation itself. Then there is God’s faithful loving kindness and Truth. Next, righteousness and grace. Finally, glory and prosperity—with the LORD blessing all these gifts by delivering them to us Himself. However, this psalm is not about earthly gifts. This is not a message for use as a patriotic national anthem.

As Jesus says, “ … this Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). Here the function of the Church and the churches is clearly defined. Yet, many have tried to establish a church that dominates the state. Most of these state churches have crumbled. Why? Because Christ’s kingdom is spiritual and will remain that way. Even when the churches are a blessing to the state, they continue to be distinct from the state. So we decline attempts to translate God’s gifts by earthly definitions of power, glory, success, and so on. Men will never establish a heaven on earth. We cannot build a “Christian nation.” History rolls on toward the resurrection and there’s nothing anybody can do to speed it up or sidetrack it.

This psalm stands out as an example. God had favored His people in past times with His Word and good governance. Now, as the Psalmist writes, He is angry. God has given them over to false preaching in the congregations, wicked counselors surrounding the throne, and the people are grumbling. The Psalmist sees all this, so he prays for the return of God’s favor. These verses are the sum of his prayer: a description of God’s gifts to His believing and faithful people…if they will only listen to Him.

But they won’t listen. They have mixed up heavenly and earthly things: government, peace, authority, the cause of good harvests, even their worship. Therefore, they are afflicted by God. He’s withdrawn His favor. He doesn’t speak to them anymore, because they won’t listen to Him. The affliction and their unfaithfulness hang together.

The Psalmist then prays that God will speak [again] so his people will not fall [again] into destruction. They are impatient, so they blaspheme God’s Name. They are ignorant, so they go searching for other gods to worship. They are upset, so they look for peace, unity, truth, and love elsewhere: the national pulse, homespun wisdom, smooth-talking priests and sweet-talking prophets.

The real issue is that they choose idolatry, which is death, and they rebel against the call to faithfulness: participation in the life of God. There is no third way. Mixing up heavenly and earthly things turns them toward idolatry—the ceaseless attempt to save their life from death by earthly means. They try to carve meaning out of earthly things—food and drink, clothing and life. These are the things which captivate them. With them they dig for a real life which never turns up.

At their root, all of these ideas are mistaken. God sends no prophets to bend the national ear. He is not about to rehabilitate their homes. Patriotic sermons are a sign of faithless preachers. Idol worship is always about God, but never delivers His gifts “for you.” Listen to the words of the Psalmist. He prays his people will turn from their foolishness and be saved. He exhorts them to listen to God’s promises that are always “for you.” Look at God’s holy hill. Look at whom He’s set on the heavenly throne. Listen to what He says to you today:

Therefore, “Kiss the Son so that He will not be angry and you will not be destroyed … because His anger burns easily. Blessed is everyone who takes refuge in Him!” (Psalm 2:12)

The Psalmist points them to the source of all God’s gifts: His holy hill. Calvary. Calvary is for them, from Him—a gift. There, and nowhere else, they are shown all the spiritual blessings of salvation. Therefore, blessed are those who are given eyes to see God’s blessings at Calvary. They are God’s saints, “the poor in spirit” of the first Beatitude. If there is any hope of salvation it can only come from God. The poor in spirit wait on the Lord. His giving to them is not hindered by the false hopes they have crammed together and would use for bargaining.

Blessed are those who are given to by God. Blessed are those who receive gifts, even affliction and death, as a gift from His hands. Nothing slips out of His nail-pierced hands. This is the Good News of the kingdom of the Gospel that stretches through Israel’s history to the present and on to the Last Day. By His affliction and death you are blessed. In affliction and death you are glad.

God’s kingdom is for “the poor in spirit,” “His saints,” and, “those who fear Him.” This is its limitation. Whether a nation is godly in part or wholly ungodly this psalm still applies. Political prosperity doesn’t determine when God’s promises will be fulfilled. History shows wonderful nations who never knew God or feared Him. Their earthly power and greatness was unequaled. God’s saints dwelt in that land, too. They were most often politically insignificant, and far inferior to their neighbors in wealth and power. However, their glory consisted of God’s mercy, truth, righteousness, and peace. Their comfort, then, as it is for Christians today, is that the church does not exist for the sake of glorifying the state. Rather, the state is established by God to hold back His disfavor, and protect the preaching of the Gospel of the kingdom. This is a great gift of God.

Rev. Donavon Riley was born and raised in Minnesota and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota. Rev. Riley and his wife recently celebrated the birth of their fourth child. 
He can be reached at elleon713@gmail.com