1517 Blogcast

He came in thinking he would be locked up and eventually deported. But when he walked out of the courtroom, the man was met by his wife and three little girls who could not stop hugging him. However, his status before the law in other matters had not changed: he was still an illegal resident, deportable at any time for violating immigration laws. The joy and celebration could be very short lived.

Most of us know the satisfaction of crossing something off the to-do list. We look back on a neatly mown lawn, freshly folded laundry, finally filed paperwork, or some other completed task and contentedly sigh. It’s done. We’ve done it. Now we can rest or move on to the next thing.

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea” (Mark 9:42). To get a good visual image of what millstones can do, watch the film, Amistad. In this movie, hundreds of pounds of stones are tied around passengers and then thrown off the ship dragging the people overboard and into the ocean.

Recently, Francis Chan made headlines for stepping down from leading his very large church.  To explain his decision he wrote a book, A Letter to the Churches, where he makes some very good critiques of American Christianity.  Perhaps a driving critique can be summed up with his comment to an interviewer, "Too often we add in our own voices, thinking that if we just offer just the right services or package the gospel in just the right way so no one gets offended, we can convince people to stay. By catering our worship to the worshipers and not to the Object of our worship, I fear we have created human-centered churches.

When we walk into a church, what do we think? Do we think we deserve to be here? Do we deserve what's about to come at us? Do we comprehend what the Church is all about? Or are we humbled by the reality that we don't deserve to be here?

Suffering and sin are realities of life. By rightly understanding these realities in light of God’s word, we can come to hear the most joyous and comforting good news. The good news that our sure and certain hope, our salvation from suffering and sin, is Jesus and His work for us.

First, the reality of suffering. One struggle in understanding suffering begins with the misconception that the words pain and suffering are interchangeable and mean essentially the same thing.

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Theology of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation written by Steve Paulson and edited by Kelsi Klembara and Caleb Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018).

Someone once called patience “the beggar’s virtue.” A beggar waits. He waits and waits until some kind soul comes along. Sure, he can try to look pathetic and come up with creative lines to win compassion, but, ultimately, his fate lies with the philanthropist, the kind soul who takes note of his need. As Luther commented just before his death, “We’re all beggars.” We approach God as men, women, and children with nothing to offer Him. We come only to receive, pleading His kindness and not our worthiness.

For in Berry’s estimation, individuals are interesting, important, and even worthy of recording in story; but it is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human. The man who belongs to others and to a world bigger than himself is a rich man - a man truly alive in the midst of a people truly alive.

Since they grumble about Him healing a man on the Sabbath, Jesus asks the religious leaders, "Is it easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?" (Matt. 9:5) He asks these men who find it easier to physically walk than walk in forgiveness, whether it's easier to walk in forgiveness or to walk physically.