Through The Valley To A New Life of Service and Excitement

My final Sunday as Interim Pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Tomball, TX. is next Sunday, May 24. That afternoon the congregation will accept Pastor Chris Hull from Illinois as their new shepherd.  He will be installed into office at a special service that afternoon. He is scheduled to arrive with his wife and family the middle of this week. He will preach his first sermon on May 31, Holy Trinity Sunday.

These past two weeks I've received a few friendly comments about my returning to retirement. My usual response has been that I can find no mention of retirement in the Bible. However, upon reflection, I may have to take back that statement. It does occur to me that for one reason or another some of the primary personages in the Bible did indeed retire—at least for a time. Here, for example, I'm thinking about Moses. When Moses impulsively killed an Egyptian who was beating one of Moses' people, he fled—retired if you will, because the Egyptian Pharaoh wanted to kill him.

"But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.  .  ." - Exo 2:15 ESV

Midian was on the other side of the Red Sea. Life changed radically for Moses in that land. He married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, the priest of Midian, and retired from the luxurious life of a prince of Egypt to the relatively quiet one of a shepherd. Later, in his 80's, the LORD God confronted him in a "burning bush that was not consumed by fire" on Mount Horeb. And so began the well known story of his being sent to lead the exodus of the children of Israel.

I've reflected often upon that story during these past 20 months while serving Zion. Like Moses, I was 80 years old when I received and accepted God's new Call to serve again as a public minister of His Word. By God's grace I have not been asked to serve for 40 years in the wilderness, however. My 20 months of service come now to an end. What awaits ahead I do not yet know.

The simple point I make is that each of us has a call to follow Christ, the Good Shepherd, who leads us through a sometimes bewildering journey to the Father's house. He leads. We follow. He feeds and provides. We lie down in His green pastures. We take comfort knowing that He watches over us with His rod and staff. One day soon He will lead me and all who follow Him safely home.

Then will begin an eternal retirement from the darkness of this world's valley. Meanwhile I can hardly wait for the joy and excitement of that new phase of my life eternal with Him.

Some Hard Words Of Jesus

If you're familiar with Bible stories at all, you've heard about Manna, that strange bread that the Children of Israel found on the ground each morning during their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai peninsula. But what was it? And that's the very point. We don't know what it was. In fact, that's is what the Hebrew word Manna means, what is it?

Of course there are many speculations and attempts to find some kind of natural explanation for what was going on. Here's what the Bible says about it.

And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" (Hebrew man hu) For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. . . When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. ... 

Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 

Moses said, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.'" And Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations." As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. 

The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. - Exd 16:14-15, 31-35 ESV

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium (resin). The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. - Num 11:7-8 ESV

And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. - Jos 5:12 ESV

The Wikipedia article offers scholarly attempts to provide a natural explanation for Manna.

Some scholars have proposed that manna is cognate with the Egyptian term mennu, meaning "food".[13] At the turn of the twentieth century, Arabs of the Sinai Peninsula were selling resin from the tamarisk tree as man es-simma, roughly meaning "heavenly manna".[12] Tamarisk trees (particularly Tamarix gallica) were once comparatively extensive throughout the southern Sinai, and their resin is similar to wax, melts in the sun, is sweet and aromatic (like honey), and has a dirty-yellow color, fitting somewhat with the Biblical descriptions of manna.[14][15] However, this resin is mostly composed from sugar, so it would be unlikely to provide sufficient nutrition for a population to survive over long periods of time,[14] and it would be very difficult for it to have been compacted to become cakes.[15]

So back to Jesus' argument with the people who followed him after he had provided bread for thousands out in the wilderness north of the Sea of Galilee as recorded in John 6. They pointed to the Manna provided to the people of the Exodus. Jesus' response:

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." - Jhn 6:48-51 ESV

When the people heard him say this they took it literally and began to dispute among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" - Jhn 6:52 ESV. Jesus made no attempt to correct their understanding. He simply said

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven,not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." - Jhn 6:53-58 ESV

So there it is—right in the face of the people who followed Jesus to Capernaum after the sign he had provided by feeding thousands. Did he literally feed thousands with five loaves of bread and two small fish from a little boy's lunch? There was no natural explanation for it, even though many unbelievers have suggested such silly things as that he gave them an example and so encouraged people to share their lunches with one another. Those who came after him to Capernaum knew otherwise. They did not dispute the wonder. They had witnessed it and wanted Jesus to do it again and again. The feeding had literally happened.

And now Jesus is literally saying, "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."

Is there any indication in John's account of Jesus' words that we should take this in any other manner than literal? The Israelites literally ate Manna, even though they did not know what it was. That bread literally sustained them for all forty years of their journey and it stopped as soon as they crossed the Jordan river. No one, neither the Jews of Capernaum nor Jesus disputed it.

Likewise, nobody argued with Jesus about what he had done. He literally fed thousands and thousands of people with a little boy's lunch. This is why they wanted to make him their king. No more working for food. With Jesus as the head of this new government, all they had to do was line up and accept the daily handout. The miraculous Manna would once again be available. What a deal!

So now when Jesus says that he is the Bread that provides eternal life, where do we find the right to say he's talking symbolically or in picture language? It certainly sounds like he means us to take him literally, like he really does want us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. At least that's how the text reads.

It also appears that this is John's account of Jesus pointing to what was later called the Lord's Supper in which, as Jesus and his disciples were eating the Passover, he took unleavened bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said,

"Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." - Mat 26:26-29 ESV

So we're facing the same dilemma as many of his disciples at Capernaum. When they heard his words, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" - Jhn 6:60 ESV

A hard saying indeed. Who can listen to words that seem literally to say eat my flesh and drink my blood? It just doesn't make sense. There has to be another explanation, a more natural one. Many, many disciples of Jesus right up to the present day try very, very hard to soften his words.

We'll have to pursue these hard words next time.

Biblical Fasting: What It Is and How to Do It

We are currently deep into the season of Lent (the word means springtime, the time when days lengthen). One of the ancient customs among Christians during this season is fasting. Lutherans, following their catechism, have taught that "fasting and bodily preparation are indeed a fine, outward training." However, very few of us--myself included--have ever done much of it. 

In searching the Internet I found a balanced and helpful website you may want to look at in that connection: Biblical Fasting: What It Is and How to Do It. Dennis Rupert, the author writes, "...I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by the thought of going without food for days and days. There are types of fasting that don't involve such a radical commitment. The Bible gives examples of many different kinds of fasting. " He goes on to tell about three types of fasts: 

1. The Normal Fast - One 24 hr. day, from sunset to sunset, based upon the Old Covenant's Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29;23:32). Other than not eating, no details are provided. Drinking water is not forbidden. 

2. The Partial Fast practiced by the famous "three men in the fiery furnace," Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, together with Daniel (Daniel 1:15). They ate only vegetables and water, a healthy diet promoted by many in our day. You may even be a vegetarian yourself and not consider this to be a fast at all. However, for those of us who are not vegetarians, this may indeed be the place to start. 

3. The Radical Fast during which you go without food for an extended period of time. The 40 days of Lent are built around our Lord's 40 day fast at the beginning of his public ministry (Matthew 4:1-11). This was also a re-enactment of the 40 years during which the Children of Israel were tested in the wilderness--and failed (1 Corinthians 10).

Following up on that history, the Apostle Paul wrote that everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial or constructive. That's why Lutherans have not been big on fasting, I suppose. It really isn't the matter of denying yourself food. The issue is that of training yourself to trust the Lord and His Word completely and radically. Interesting is the fact that the Word of God nowhere commands New Testament Christians to fast. Two Bible passages come to mind. 

1 Timothy 4:8 - "For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." The Apostle's point is that godliness and reverence do not come from something you do, including fasting. They are what God does in and through His Word. The Word is the means used by the Holy Spirit to renew the image of God within. 

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 - In this passage the Apostle speaks about how he disciplines his body as athletes do in preparation for the various contests. He follows this comment with a discussion about Israel's wilderness journey in which they fell deep into temptation and lost any rights to the promised land. He ends that discussion with a Gospel promise. You can depend upon God, he says, because he will never allow a temptation greater than you can bear. He will always show a way out. 

If you fast during this Lenten season or at any other time, be aware that the whole discipline can be useful, but it is not a means of grace, a means through which the Holy Spirit works to strengthen and nourish faith and trust. That He always does through His Word and through the visible Words of the Lord's Supper and Holy Baptism.