by The Rev. Mark Buetow
St. John 3:1-17
If people believe in God at all, I think there are generally two ways they think of God. On the one hand, they suppose God is a condemning God. They usually think this because they consider themselves better than others. These are the folks who love to see the glorious God of Isaiah who is ready to smite sinners and burn them to ashes. This God is a punisher, just waiting to destroy anyone who doesn’t get in line, get on board and behave. Those who have such a God live under the delusion that they had better not do anything to make God angry at them!
The other view of God that people have is almost the exact opposite: God is forgiving. He is merciful. In fact, God is so loving and so caring and so nice, that He would never actually condemn anyone for anything. People who believe in that God would never dare say anything is right or wrong. You can’t do anything wrong when God is just going to forgive you. And even if there is right and wrong, it’s OK to do wrong, because God is just going to forgive you anyway. Just because He’s nice that way. Either God is a vicious and mean God who kills sinners, or He is a free love hippy kind of God who lets anything and everything go on.
And it’s funny, too, because if we’re talking about our lives, we usually mean the nice God who approves of how we live. And if it’s other people doing things we don’t like, they get the mean judging God. But I am telling you today, brothers and sisters in Christ, yes, warning you, that if either of those is your God, you will perish eternally. Both of those “Gods” are false gods and believing either way about God will lead you to eternal death.
Jesus says, “The Father did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” With these words, Jesus teaches us repentance and faith, destroys our sins, and saves us for all eternity. Jesus did not come to condemn us. He came to save us. How? He tells Nicodemus, by being lifted up, that is, on the cross. Jesus saves us by taking our sins away. He saves us by suffering and dying for our sins. He saves us by being lifted up as the serpent in the desert.
When the Israelites were bitten by the punishing snakes, they looked at the bronze serpent and lived. When we sin, when we deny and despise God and scorn and hate our neighbor, we look to Christ crucified and we are saved. It is Jesus who takes away our sins, not by simply making them vanish, as if we don’t have sins, but by taking our sins upon Himself and suffering death to rid us of them. Jesus did not come into this world to make a record of our sins, to list our sins, to punish us for our sins, but to show us our sins and then take them upon Himself and carry them to the cross and shed His blood there to wash them away. God the Father doesn’t send the Son to pound the nails deeper into our coffins but to release us from sin and death and set us free. In Christ there is no condemnation from God.
So now we don’t need to worry about our sins, right? Now we don’t have to figure out what our sins are. We don’t have to repent because it’s all taken care of? We can live however we want and do whatever we want? After all, we’re forgiven. No, that’s the second wrong view of God we talked about a minute ago.
There IS condemnation for sinners. It’s just not Jesus who brings it. The Law that God gives, the Commandments, condemn us. They show us clearly and plainly how we should love God and our neighbor. And the Commandments show us clearly that we do neither. And the Commandments judge plainly that we shall die for our sins. Apart from Jesus, God will damn you. Apart from Jesus there is nothing but the Law. And the Law does nothing but condemn you. You can’t try harder to keep the commandments to make up for the ones you’ve broken. And if you live as if your sins aren’t sins, then you despise Christ who died for them and show you would rather be under the Law.
Let me put it to you as simply as I know how: God will deal with your sins in one of two ways. The way of the Law which condemns and punishes. Or the way of Christ who is lifted up for our sins. If you have sins you want to be rid of, then unload them on Jesus. That’s His job: to take them away. If you want to hang on to your sins, say they’re not sins, then go ahead; but you’ll have the Law to answer to. Jesus is teaching us what the world absolutely does not want to hear. In Him, there is no condemnation. Apart from and outside of Jesus, there is nothing but condemnation. No one outside of Christ will survive the judgment against them on account of their sins. No one who is in Christ will suffer the punishment of their sins because it has been taken and laid upon Jesus for your sake.
So the question is, do we want to try to deal with God directly or in and through Jesus? Obviously, if we will be saved, there is no dealing with the Father apart from the Son. So then, how do we get to God? How do we deal with the Son? Does it take special knowledge? Special skills? Special religious piety? Nicodemus thought so. That’s why he comes at night to figure out from Jesus what the secret knowledge is that he has to know to get “in” with God. Nick figures that Jesus knows the right stuff to teach him to do to get on God’s good side. Nick’s got the condemning God going on and needs to figure out how to get past the front door!
But Jesus doesn’t play that game. He simply tells Nick that the only way into the Lord’s kingdom is to be born again, from above. Nick has no idea what Jesus is talking about because Nick is all about Nick.
Jesus, in telling Nicodemus he has to be born again, is teaching Nicodemus and us, that to be saved from our sins means being born from above, by water and the Spirit. That’s right, Holy Baptism. New birth. The womb of the font as we heard last week. A washing of water and the Word by which the Spirit gives us new life, spirit born of the Holy Spirit. It’s not something Nick or we can do for ourselves, it’s something that must be done to us and given to us by the Spirit.
Which way do you want the Lord to deal with yours sins? If you want the way of the Law, then give it your best shot of thinking that your sins aren’t so bad and you aren’t doomed by them. The Law, of course, will condemn you. That’s the way they live who don’t want to repent, who don’t want to live in their baptism, who have no reason to be absolved and who don’t want Jesus’ body and blood. They can keep their sins. On the Last Day the Law of God will be their condemnation. Born of flesh, their flesh will die.
But in Christ, where He is, is no condemnation, but salvation. Form the font, the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit has rescued you. Absolution declares that you do not stand condemned for yours sins. The gift of the Supper says that Jesus’ body and blood are given for forgiveness. With these gifts, you have the Spirit giving you Jesus and He brings you to the Father. Apart from Christ, there is no love of God, no grace, no mercy. Only sin and death. In Christ, where Christ is, in His church, by His gifts, there is no sin and death, only forgiveness, life and salvation.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, either the mysterious and almighty Holy Trinity is for you or He is against you. Outside of Jesus, He can be nothing but your enemy, the one Whose holy Law condemns to eternal death. But the Father sent the Son and the Son did not come to condemn but to give life. In Jesus, that Holy Trinity is all for you. The Father who sends the Son; the Son who becomes man to be lifted up and take away your sin; the Spirit who pours out His gifts upon you in the church.
If your sins are no big deal, then the God of the Law is waiting to show you otherwise. But if your sins terrify you and would condemn you, then the God who is in the flesh in Jesus Christ has already taken care of them. He has been lifted up on the cross and that means the condemnation has passed from you to Him. He has taken all your sins.
And now, filled with the Spirit, you are a son of God – the very God who is once again your Father. If there’s ever a doubt, ever a question, just look to the font and your doubts will be answered: Hear again the divine name put upon you: “In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.” All in and by and through and because of Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus, death. In Jesus, life and salvation. Amen.
The Rev. Mark Buetow is pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church in DuQuoin, IL, and the Internet Services Executive for Higher Things. He edits the Daily Reflections. He is married and father of three.
The current Chronicles of Narnia movie series began with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 2005. As of May 16, 2008, Prince Caspian, the second movie, is gracing a big screen near you! As the first words in the 
One of the main themes throughout the movie is time. One year has passed for Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, but hundreds of years have passed in Narnia. One of Peter’s first lines question how long it would be before Aslan brought them back to Narnia. We continually question the timing of God in our daily lives. We question when or even if he will answer our prayers. All Christians since apostolic times have questioned when Christ will return. We get bored when He seems to come to us for too long in Pastors’ sermons. Or we even try to make bargains with God in order to have something we want happen faster. In the end God always works in His own time, just as Aslan works in His.
When we are children we are blessed with the necessary, saving faith in the waters of Baptism. As we grow up, our knowledge and understanding of God increase. We understand some things more as we study them. Relying on our own study and increased knowledge can be deadly for our faith, as trust in our own intellect or “believing in our belief” will create new idols. Yet the Holy Spirit is working on us. The faith given to us at any age is continually being strengthened through Word and Sacrament.
God always works through means. He never just does stuff “out of the blue.” He always deals with us and comes to us and blesses us through earthly things that have His Word and promises and gifts attached. One of the ways in which this is most obvious is that of mothers. Many of you are mothers. All of you have a mother. It is through your Mom that God gives you life and brings you into this world. Babies don’t just fall out of the sky. Moms have to give birth! And when you get hurt playing at the park, God doesn’t just thunder an “It’ll be OK” at you from the clouds. It is through Moms that cuts and scrapes are taken care of. When you need clothes, does God just drop you a pair of pants from the sky? No, it is through Mom’s hard at work that God provides for us our clothing and food and so on. Sometimes, of course, Moms don’t do their job. But the Lord still takes care of us with Grandmothers who take over the job of Mom. Sometimes, when Dad’s don’t do their job, Mom takes over that job, too. In any case, it is through Moms that the Lord accomplishes a whole lot in our lives. So take the time to celebrate your Mom today. But not for her own sake. Let her know that you recognize that she is the one that God Himself gives in His place to raise and care for you. And Moms, don’t just indulge that you get a day for yourself, learn and believe that you are in the place of God Himself as the one who is given for the care and nurture of your children. You see? God works through means.
But the means don’t stop there. Jesus tells His disciples that the Comforter will come and will remind them of all things that He said to them. This is fulfilled today on Pentecost when the Spirit it poured out on those Apostles. And what do they do? They preach Jesus. They speak God’s Word. Again, rushing wind and tongues of fire are all neat and exciting, but what is the end result? That through the voice of His chosen men, the Spirit speaks Christ’s Word of salvation and forgiveness to sinners. This is the Christian Church: in which the Spirit is at work through means, preaching the Gospel and giving new birth to sinners. In fact, it is by this new birth of water and the Spirit that sinners become God’s children. That is why we call the Church our Mother. It is from her womb, the font, that we are born again, born from above. Just as the Spirit hovered over the waters on the day of creation, just as He breathed into wet dirt to make man a living being, just as He came with the angel Gabriel’s Word to Mary, so the Spirit comes to us through our Mother, the church. Just as your heavenly Father gives you an earthly mother to give birth to you, comfort you and feed you, so your heavenly mother, the Church, gives birth to you by water and the Word and the Spirit. She comforts you against the nightmares of the devil with the holy words of absolution. She feeds you with the pure milk of the Word and as you grow up gives you the strong and sustaining food of Jesus body and blood. This is Pentecost, dear Christians, when the Spirit comes upon Christ’s church and by His holy gifts gives us life! You see? God works through means continually today, in His church, giving us Jesus by water, word, body and blood.
But just like the kid who gets mad at his mother and so he packs his suitcase and runs away, the world doesn’t want the Church as a Mother. The world doesn’t want God and His gifts. The world wants to make its own way and do its own thing. And so it despises Christ and His Word. Just as some people laughed at the apostles on Pentecost, so the world laughs at the Church and the preaching of Christ. It mocks the Good News that we don’t have to try to save ourselves because we have a Savior in Jesus Christ. It jokes and makes fun of those who believe their only hope and confidence is Christ and what He has done for us and gives us. Just as the child who runs away and can’t provide for itself, so the world runs from the gifts God gives through His church and starves to death apart from God’s grace. On the other hand, just like some mothers don’t want to stand in God’s place to care for their children and may even abandon them, so the world is full of churches who don’t want to stand in God’s place and give His gifts, but abuse their children by feeding them junk food all the time and not showing that they are there to give God’s gifts. These are churches in which Jesus is not to be found in His Word and Sacraments but only in hearts if you look hard enough or in a person’s outward piety or “walk” with Jesus. These churches deny that they are true spiritual mothers because all they have is self help and self-deceit and not the pure milk of God’s Word and the food of Christ’s body and blood. Beware of such preaching and teaching! Hear Christ’s promise that the Spirit comes to remind us of all that He said and did. And run from any preacher or church or religious idea that isn’t about delivering Jesus to you.
Our earthly mothers are sinners. They make mistakes. They don’t always do right by their children and they often exasperate and embarrass their kids. Yet nevertheless, the Lord commands us to “Honor your father and your mother” anyway. That is His command. Kids, you have no cause whatsoever to back talk or disagree with your parents. Your Mom is your Mom because God made her so. There is no such thing as “that’s not fair” or “you never let me” or “I hate you!” There is no place for such things. Children, if you would give your Moms a true Mother’s Day, then not just today, but every day, ask yourself, “What must I do today to put a smile on Mom’s face and to make her glad I’m her kid?” Likewise Moms, you aren’t called to be your kid’s friend or pal but their Mother. To provide for them and care for them and most of all, to show them that God works through means. To teach your kids that you stand in God’s place to provide for them. But more than that, to see that they learn to love their spiritual mother, the Church. To learn with them how God works through means. You see, if the church is our mother, then we all have much to learn as to how to treat Mom. In Christ, you have been given a heavenly Father and a spiritual mother. Rejoice in her gifts! Learn all that she does for you. And again, not for the Church’s sake, but so that you learn to glorify God the Father who has given us the Spirit that we might be reminded of all that Jesus said and did for our salvation.
Pentecost. It is the Israelite Festival of Weeks – a “week” of weeks since the Passover. Pentecost is when God was thanked for the gift of processed grain. Yet now it took on a whole new meaning.
No longer does the Holy Spirit land on your shoulder like a dove at Baptism. Nor does He enter the church nave with a rushing wind or tongues of fire or the speaking of foreign languages. Instead, He quietly brings Christ to us, and with our Lord, His saving forgiveness, life, and salvation.
The most important thing we can learn about our Lord’s Ascension is that even though He has ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, He IS NOT GONE. Most people seem to think that after Jesus’ ascension, He’s not around anymore. He’s far away. Wherever the “right hand of God” is, it’s not nearby. People suppose that Jesus is gone and that they’re just sort of on their own, maybe with some help from the Spirit, until He comes back. But this is exactly what the Scriptures do NOT teach.
“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” So by the preaching of the Gospel and the water and the Word, the Spirit makes disciples out of sinners in the world. And just as the world knows nothing about what the Gospel is, so also the world knows nothing about faith. When Jesus says “whoever believes,” He doesn’t mean that we have some knowledge about things He did or that we can recite some names and dates about His life. He means a trust that clings to Him and to His gifts. The Bible says that when the Lord went on high, He gave gifts to men. These are the gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation, given through the preaching of the Word, the water of the font, the words of absolution and the body and blood of the Supper. To believe means to trust that you have nothing going for you but Jesus and those gifts which give you Jesus. To a world that is dead in trespasses and sins, Jesus doesn’t just send some knowledge about a far away God, He actually delivers repentance and the forgiveness of sins through His preachers.
On this day, forty days after Easter, Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. That doesn’t mean He’s gone. It just means we don’t see Him with our eyes. But He’s right here, where His Gospel is preached, where water and the Spirit are poured, where His body and blood are given to eat and drink. And with these gifts, Jesus makes us His own, raises us from the death of sin, seats us in the heavenly places and works all things for our good until He returns again, the same way He went on this day. Jesus died for you. He rose for you. And His ascension is for you too! We have heard of His Ascension today. Now, like His disciples, who went to the Temple, praising and glorifying Jesus, we too come to His house, full of joy and to receive His good gifts in which He is right here with us again. Amen.
Let’s be clear here. My husband is a pastor and I’m a writer. As a children’s author, I have one published work, “Smedley and the Sprinkle Machine.” Right now, I make a small amount on book sales, and an infinitesimal amount on royalties. I make enough to cover the cost of writing and my writing related expenses. But going in we knew that we weren’t going to be making a lot of money with our career choices. We pretty much run every paycheck right down to the wire, and have a very small amount of savings for major emergencies. But every Sunday, I sit down and write our offering check – and I do it joyfully. It doesn’t matter how low our checking account is, how close we’re cutting it, or that we don’t get paid until Tuesday. I have learned to trust God that we will not overdraw on the offering check. I also trust that somehow we will meet all of our essential expenses. And when we’ve been truly desperate, unexpected money came from somewhere. We give of our time and talents too, but on the money front, we don’t have much to give, but like the widow’s mite, it doesn’t matter in God’s eyes.
Giving shouldn’t be a competition. The point of the show is for each competitor to “Give Big or Go Home”. They are given the standard challenges, like in any reality show, and a time limit. Each person tries to give bigger than the other people. Now I’m not saying that they didn’t help people, but there was also a LOT of talk about winning, or giving more, or being better than the other competitors. “I’m the biggest giver”. “No, I’M the biggest giver.” It kind of turned my stomach.
I know the show had in mind to start a pay-it-forward revolution. A lot of people watch Oprah, and she has a lot of clout. But I found out some interesting things while working on this piece. My husband, Pastor Jeffery Grams, made a comment about Oprah’s misguided belief system – which I wasn’t aware of – and I asked him to write about what he told me, as follows:
In a recent interview she praises a quote from Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth” 
Rogate, the name of this Sunday, means “pray!” or “ask!” Comes right out of the Gospel reading where our Lord says: “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full!” But how often is this gracious invitation unheeded? And why? Why is it that people have such a hard time praying?
Because you see, no matter what that old fiery serpent whispers in your ear about how much God is against you, about how He only wants to deprive you of life, to destroy you, to take from you all your freedom, all your fun – the snake on the pole shows that its all a lie. And that the One you’ve been running from, hiding from, not talking to, pretending He wasn’t there even as He kept you alive – and He’s the One who loves you.
We don’t have to wait until the game of hide and seek is over and we stand before the judgment seat. We can stand before the cross itself right now and see the judgment. And the judgment is that God loves us with a love that is unfathomable, unshakeable, and that His desire for us from the beginning has always only been that we share in His eternal love, that we receive from Him the gift of a love that never ends. We can look at the cross and see the judgment of God against all sin – the eternal death that we choose for ourselves when we run from Him and try to find life in the stuff of the creation. It’s all there. All borne. All answered for. All forgiven. And life is being reached us there. Life from the cross – His body and blood, here for you. The forgiveness of sins. The embrace of the Holy One which He gives not to destroy you, but to heal you forever.
Hats off to St. Boniface of Mainz, the eighth-century missionary bishop and martyr, who is commemorated today. It was on the 5th of June in the Year of Our Lord 754 that St. Boniface and his companions were attacked and killed by a band of hostile pagans in what is now the Netherlands. He was pushing 80 years old at that point, but he was still out there on the mission field, preaching the Gospel, teaching the Word of God, and bringing the Church to new frontiers. He was waiting on a group of catechumens, who were to receive the rite of confirmation from him, when he was martyred. He was reading the Scriptures, as I understand it, and had only that book to defend himself against the swords of the enemy. His body was returned, together with that slashed and bloodstained Bible, to the monastery he established in Fulda, where his earthly remains are buried to this day.
St. Boniface was an apt pupil, and he was in turn a popular teacher. Really, throughout his life, he seems to have excelled at whatever he tried; if not immediately, then with persistence. He was driven especially by a missionary zeal for the lost, to which he kept returning over the years. He is known as the Apostle to the Germans, because he was so instrumental in bringing the Gospel and the Church to that part of the world. For that reason, in particular, he ought to be more popular among Lutherans than he is. He also assisted significantly with a reformation of the Frankish Church. Because the Lord blessed so many of his efforts with obvious success, there were numerous opportunities along the way for St. Boniface to sit back, put up his feet, and rest on his laurels, but he was never content to do so. To the end of his life, he kept on preaching.
When St. Boniface first arrived in one part of Germany, he chopped down a sacred oak associated with the pagan god Thor. I like this story better than the one about George Washington and the cherry tree. All the superstitious pagans in those parts were standing around, watching and waiting for a lightning bolt from the blue to strike St. Boniface down. When that didn’t happen, evidently there were a fair number of conversions that followed. And St. Boniface used the wood from that oak to build a church dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle.
You will never see this movie in school, not in High School and especially not in College. It doesn’t matter if you go to a state University or a Christian University or even a Lutheran one…you won’t see this movie.
What you heard in Biology class contradicted what your Pastor taught you in Confirmation, that God created you individually and personally to be a unique and wonderful creature in Him. Furthermore, it contradicted your very senses! How can something so complex and amazing as humanity be by dumb luck? You might have spoken up in that Biology class, even called into question the proposed theory of humanity’s origin and if you did, you were likely told, “I’m not covering creationism in this class.” or “We’re not going to talk about religion, this is science.” You were silenced, shut out and maybe even got into a little bit of trouble for opposing the teacher…and that, is what this movie is about.
The movie equates the suppression of differing ideas in the science world to that of the Berlin wall and he urges everyone to participate in the dismantling of this wall. He shows how Darwinian ideology has influenced some of the atrocities of our time. For example, Nazis extermination of the handicapped, mentally ill, elderly and the Jews is nothing more then an attempt to escalate the process of natural selection – and the Nazis even said so! Or, look at the aborting of babies because they’re genetically predisposed to sickness and disease or even euthanizing the cumbersome and costly elderly. So long Grandpa and Grandma, gotta make room for Darwin as we help natural selection move right along!
The world does not know what truth is. Since the fall into sin, we children of Adam have been trying to strip God of His divine authorship and authority. We strip Him of these things. Then we beat Him and give Him a crown of thorns to wear, because that is exactly what we think of His authorship. Yet, despite our denial and defamation of God, He lets us nail Himself to a cross so that He might re-create what He first created. There is nothing random when something happens twice. God is such an intelligent Designer that He creates us in our mother’s wombs and then re-creates us in the Church’s womb at the font of Holy Baptism!
You will never see this movie in school, not in High School and especially not in College. It doesn’t matter if you go to a state University or a Christian University or even a Lutheran one…you won’t see this movie.
What you heard in Biology class contradicted what your Pastor taught you in Confirmation, that God created you individually and personally to be a unique and wonderful creature in Him. Furthermore, it contradicted your very senses! How can something so complex and amazing as humanity be by dumb luck? You might have spoken up in that Biology class, even called into question the proposed theory of humanity’s origin and if you did, you were likely told, “I’m not covering creationism in this class.” or “We’re not going to talk about religion, this is science.” You were silenced, shut out and maybe even got into a little bit of trouble for opposing the teacher…and that, is what this movie is about.
The movie equates the suppression of differing ideas in the science world to that of the Berlin wall and he urges everyone to participate in the dismantling of this wall. He shows how Darwinian ideology has influenced some of the atrocities of our time. For example, Nazis extermination of the handicapped, mentally ill, elderly and the Jews is nothing more then an attempt to escalate the process of natural selection – and the Nazis even said so! Or, look at the aborting of babies because they’re genetically predisposed to sickness and disease or even euthanizing the cumbersome and costly elderly. So long Grandpa and Grandma, gotta make room for Darwin as we help natural selection move right along!
The world does not know what truth is. Since the fall into sin, we children of Adam have been trying to strip God of His divine authorship and authority. We strip Him of these things. Then we beat Him and give Him a crown of thorns to wear, because that is exactly what we think of His authorship. Yet, despite our denial and defamation of God, He lets us nail Himself to a cross so that He might re-create what He first created. There is nothing random when something happens twice. God is such an intelligent Designer that He creates us in our mother’s wombs and then re-creates us in the Church’s womb at the font of Holy Baptism!
