Author: Higher Things

Rev. Mark Buetow

If you asked most people what they think being a Christian is all about they would likely say “living a good life.” You know, help others. Don’t hurt other people. Always do the right thing, whatever that is. Of course, we know the world’s reaction to that: “Christians are just hypocrites. They talk about doing the right thing and then they don’t do it.” Another popular answer about what it means to be a Christian is that God changes your life. If you were a drunk, now you’re sober. If you had a bad temper, now you’re gentle. The problem with that answer is what happens if you have a relapse? Are you still a Christian? What if your supposed overcoming of sin gets derailed?

The Christian faith isn’t about these things. It’s about Jesus Christ. Jesus once said that He did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. He also told His disciples that He came to give them life. That’s a life not like the world thinks of it, easy and care-free, but life as opposed to death, victory over death. Jesus told His disciples that He would raise them up on the Last Day. In order to do this, Jesus deals with the root cause of our problems: not our behavior, but our sinfulness. Sinners sin because they are sinful. So Jesus deals with sin by making it His own. Do you sin? Do you have idols, false gods in your life? Do you lust? Murder? Hurt others with your words? Steal? Covet? Well, whatever of that you have, it belongs to Jesus. It’s His. He dies for it on the cross of Calvary. He leaves it behind in the grave when He rises again on Easter three days later.

When Christians get confused about what is central, what the Christian faith is really about, it becomes a mess. When Christians think the church is about how we live rather than how Jesus lived and lives for us, then everything gets out of whack. When the emphasis is on our works instead of Jesus’ works, the water is poisoned, the light is blacked out. Worse, when someone accuses Christians of being hypocrites, they’re absolutely right!

When someone tells me, a pastor, that the church is full of hypocrites I reply, “Of course it is! Where else do we preach a particular standard of right and wrong and then spend all day long violating that standard? Of course the church is full of hypocrites.” And that is why the Christian faith is not about the Ten Commandments. It’s not about how you live. It’s not about what you do. It’s about Jesus fulfilling the Law and Commandments. It’s about how Jesus lived for you and still lives for you. It’s about what Jesus has done for you and still does for you. It’s about how Jesus forgives you. All of you. Every sin. Every transgression. Every wrongdoing. And not just for you, if you’re a Christian, but everyone. All of you: reading this and the whole world past, present and future besides.

When the message of the cross is what is central in the Christian church, the whole problem of how we live and hypocrisy and all that is irrelevant. Now, I didn’t just say that it doesn’t matter how you live! It DOES matter. To your neighbor. To those who need you to live to work and help them. What I mean is that how you live is irrelevant to whether or not Jesus is your Savior and God loves you. In fact, the Bible tells us that God loved us while we were yet sinners and while we were still dead in trespasses and sins. In other words, when you want to know how it is with you and the Lord, you don’t ask, “How am I living? Am I doing the right things?” No, you ask, “What did Jesus do? Did He take away my sins? Did He rise from the dead? Am I His baptized child? Has He forgiven my sins?”

Remembering that Jesus is the center of the Christian faith-and that we aren’t-saves us from all sorts of misunderstanding and confusion. It doesn’t mean the world will get it. But it does mean we don’t have to do any mental gymnastics to try to argue our way out of being hypocrites. Rather, we just own up to it and remind whoever is asking that we aren’t the big deal, Jesus Christ is. And in Him, there are no hypocrites, only those redeemed by His blood shed for the whole world. And such a Jesus means we’re also rescued from any despair that we haven’t improved enough or changed enough. In short, when Jesus and His cross and empty tomb are the center of the Christian faith, we aren’t. What a relief! And that makes all the difference in the church and in the world.

by Rev. William M. Cwirla

It’s a tender invitation to pray as a member of the family. Jesus invites you to address His Father as your Father and to say “Our Father,” and to come as a dear, little child coming to his or her dear Father in heaven.

The pious Jews of Jesus’ day would not have been so familiar and forthright in their prayers. They rarely, if ever, addressed God as Father. Instead, they would say, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the great, mighty, and most revered One, the most high God, the Master of all things….” But “Our Father?” Not a chance!

One reason for their reluctance was that God rarely referred to Himself as “Father” in the Old Testament. “Father” had overtones of “Father Baal” and the whole idolatry of Baalism. They didn’t want to go anywhere near that sort of thing.

Another reason was that it seemed just a bit too familiar, which today would be like coming up to the President of the United States and addressing him by his first name.

Still the psalmist could pray, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him (Psalm 103:13). The prophet Isaiah could say, “Yet, O LORD, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work of thy hand.” (Isaiah 64:8). And Jesus, with the same tenderness and compassion, teaches His disciples, “When you pray, say ‘Our Father.’”

Prayer is tender, familiar speech. It’s like a little child coming to his or her dear father and saying, “Daddy, let’s talk about stuff.” The apostle Paul reminds us that we have received the Spirit of adoption in our Baptism, and it’s by that Spirit that we cry “Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). That’s why we pray the Our Father in the rite of Holy Baptism with the pastor’s hand laid on the head of the person being baptized. In Baptism you are made a member of God’s family. You may now say “Our Father” along with us and with our big brother Jesus.

Don’t forget the “our”! Jesus didn’t say “My Father” but “Our Father.” Even when we pray by ourselves in secret, we never pray alone. We pray for and with all baptized believers everywhere. And Jesus prays along with us as our elder Brother.

I heard a great image of prayer from my pastor on vicarage who was a wise man of prayer. He pictured prayer like a long distance phone call (though it actually isn’t “long distance” since God is always very near to us). The Father is in His comfortable easy chair watching the game (you may pick whatever team you wish), and the phone rings in the next room. Jesus picks up the phone and answers it. He brings the phone to the Father and says, “You have to take this call. It’s one of the family.” The words “Our Father” invite us to bother our Father in heaven with our prayers, as children coming to their dear Father in heaven.

This gives us confidence and even boldness. Jesus once compared the life of prayer to a pesky widow who kept coming to a dishonest judge who didn’t want to be bothered with her (Luke 18:1-8). Or to a man who had the audacity to bang on his neighbor’s door at midnight to borrow some bread for out of town guests (Luke 11:5-10). How much more is our loving Father in heaven willing to hear the prayers of His children?

Prayer is an exercise of faith. You can’t pray without faith. Jesus dares us to be big and bold with our prayers and to come the way children come trustingly to a father who loves and cares for us and to talk about anything, trusting that He listens to us and will act on our prayers in the best interests of our salvation.

Sadly, for some people the image of a “Father in heaven” is not a comforting or inviting picture. They have been neglected, harmed or mistreated by their fathers on earth. Some have been hurt deeply. It’s understandable when someone says, “I can’t pray to a Father in heaven because I can’t trust my father on earth.” Our fathers on earth are sinners; some are terribly broken by sin and the sins of fathers have trickled down for three and four generations—alcoholism, abuse, adultery—to name but three of the ways.

Here we must view our Father in heaven, not through our experience with our fathers, but through the cross of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the One who reconciled the world to His Father, who became our sin, who trumps every evil in this world with the good of His suffering, death, and resurrection. And it is this same Jesus, who shed His blood to make you a member of God’s family, in whom you were baptized and born as a child of God, who says to you, “No matter what your father on earth was like, dear child of God, you have nothing to fear of your Father in heaven. I am always with you, praying with you, praying for you. When you pray, be bold and confident and say, ‘Our Father.’”

Rev. William M. Cwirla is the pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, California, and President of Higher Things. He can be reached at wcwirla@gmail.com.