Author: nfuller

Jesus Meets Us In A Far Country

Posted on by nfuller

Yesterday the church read in worship the Parable of the Prodigal son from Luke chapter 15 .  This brilliant parable Jesus told is perhaps one of the best illustrations in all of scripture of the gospel- God’s perfect love and forgiveness brought to us through Jesus.   There are many aspects of the parable that could be a singular focus for our spiritual growth between the younger son, the older son, and the father.  During this season of Lent I have elected to focus on the younger brother and the meaning of his journey to a far away country.     

A number of years ago a theologian named Kenneth Bailey set out on a venture to further elaborate the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son. He visited  small villages in several continents seeking to find the closest equivalent cultural parallel to the village Jesus had in mind in telling the parable of the prodigal son.

Bailey asked people of the villages he visited if they had any knowledge in their oral tradition or collective memory of anyone ever asking for their inheritance from a father.  The answer was the same everywhere he went.

Never! Unheard of! Nobody would dare ask this question of their father. Bailey asked why? To ask for an inheritance is to wish for your father to be dead.  This is the question that Jesus began the parable with. “Father give me my share of the inheritance that is coming to me.” 

Jesus was painting a picture of not just a young man hungry for adventure, but a young man who despised and rejected everything he ever received in life, including the love of his father.  A young man so self centered and selfish that he despised the very God who created him.   

It is hard to imagine a more offensive action than taken by the son in this parable to demand his inheritance ahead of time and then leave to a far away country. Leaving his family behind as if they were dead to him, never to be heard from again.

In the parable, when the younger son demands such unthinkable luxuries and considerations from his father, he is not met with resistance. Certainly we can imagine the other family members and people in the village looking down at this young man who is threatening the order of society by his selfish and destructive example.

Just picture other parents pointing him out to their children as he left town on a wagon loaded with all of the riches of his inheritance.  “Don’t ever be like this boy, look what he is doing to his family, look at how shameful he is.”  But the father lets him go freely. He does not begrudgingly give his inheritance to the young man.

This parable is very fitting for the season of Lent.  The discipline of Lent is recognizing by the correction of God’s Word the depths and extent to which we have departed to a far away country in our lives, and seeing that the Father is waiting for our return with an open embrace.

We are allowed to go by our Heavenly Father. When we make bad choices there are no lightning bolts or signs from the heavens trying to turn us back. Our heavenly Father lets us go in love, trusting that we will come back more able to understand and receive His love than ever before.

This departure could be as simple as losing touch with reading God’s Word in your daily life. Perhaps you experience being in the far away land when you struggle with contentment and live in a land of coveting material possessions and worldly markers of distinction and honor. Perhaps at other times a faraway land is arrived at through strife and conflict with others in your life, quarrelling and arguing to get your own way, as you give a little more allowance to your pride than at another time.

Henri Nouwen in writing about the parable of the prodigal son makes the distinction between the needs we have for family and friends and a home, and the needs we have for knowing the one true God personally.  In this way we can be in a far country even when we are right at home, whenever we are preoccupied with the comforts of home and family without a connection with Jesus. 

In another context in the book of Genesis, Abraham was asked to leave his people and travel to a far away land.  “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to  the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.’   For Abram a far away country was not leaving God, but leaving the idolatry of his homeland and family.  Abram was called by God to leave.

In the parable of the Prodigal son, the younger son left to a far away  country to escape living according to the moral order of his homeland. He was not called by God to leave, he summoned within himself the mandate and purpose to leave.  He was running away from God by running away from family.  

For us running away from God could mean staying with the values of family and home- in the case where home is characterized by the idolatry of economic prosperity, happiness above faithfulness, or family pride above justice. 

Jesus comes to us in the far away land that we dwell in and brings us back to him.  Jesus is able to bring us back because he journeyed out of love for us to the far away country of betrayal, arrest, scourging, and crucifixion.  As he took on the sin of the whole world Jesus was forsaken and separated from God- a rift in the very essence of the Trinity. 

By his resurrection Jesus was restored back home within the community of the Trinity and Jesus brought us home again.  He brought us home from the long exile that we chose for ourselves beginning with the Fall into sin. Where Adam and Eve were exiled from the paradise of Eden, Jesus has opened the door of eternity to us.

And though we were away in a far country for so long, the Father was waiting for us all along:  Quick prepare a robe for him and kill the fattened calf, for this my son of mine who was dead is alive, he was lost and now is found.  In the parable the son was given a ring on his finger, with the family seal. Showing that he is just as much a part of the family now as ever before- as if he never had left.  The fattened calf was kept waiting all along- suggesting that the father never gave up and was preparing for his son’s return.

Even in the far away country we can never be truly separated from God.  We cannot imagine what it would be to be completely separated from God in this life- for that would be the suffering of hell.  Instead Jesus is with us throughout our life, so that no matter how alone we feel we may know that we are not alone.   When you feel God is far away, when the chances and changes of this life make you feel alone, May you know that God is with you even when we are not aware of it. May you know that Jesus has paid it all so that we would never be alone- so that we would rest securely in his family the church.  Amen.

The church is the Pearl of Great Price, which Jesus gave all he had to obtain

Posted on by nfuller

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Matthew 13:44-46

In the past the church often assumed that the pearl of great value represents Jesus, and we as believers give up everything we have in order to obtain Him. Recognizing that He is worth more than anything else in the world.  In a basic sense it is true that God’s kingdom is worth more than anything else we could have or desire.

But nowhere else in the scripture is it the case that people can make a financial transaction to possess God. God is not our possession. We are God’s beloved possession.  Instead the rest of scripture indicates that Jesus sold all he had to buy us. He paid for us with his precious blood. Jesus did not hesitate, out of love for us, the pearl of great price he gave up his life on the cross.

We as the church are the treasure that is buried in the field and purchased with eager marvelous joy.  We are hidden among the world, we are the wheat hidden among the weeds.

As a child I like to collect things. Baseball cards, comic books, action figures. A common wishful thinking daydream of mine was that I would some day find an old crate or lock box in a dusty attic somewhere, maybe left behind from a previous owner of a home, maybe somewhere else. In my daydream that box would contain old baseball cards from say the 1920s or 30s, and maybe some old valuable comic books.

Now as an adult I realize that finding such a treasure would only be of limited value to me, and would only bring temporary joy.  Now I know the real treasures of this world are not what we can find, but instead true treasure is God finding us and showing us His perfect love.

God knows how precious we are.  Because of God’s love we have become a treasure, beloved for eternity.

The small daughter of a famous artist was once asked which child was her mother’s favorite.  The little girl replied: “She loves Jimmy the best because he’s the oldest, and she loves Johnny the best because he’s the youngest. And she loves me best because I am the only girl.”

Parents have their own imperfect way of loving each child best. Even more so, God loves us personally, no matter what our life experience is or what we have accomplished in life.  Jesus wants us to recognize that we are all precious in His sight, all the pearl of great worth. 

But Jesus also wants us to know that the entire church is the pearl of great price, not just me. Jesus did not die on the cross so that I could go on about my life secure in my salvation without any further thought about my life in God’s kingdom.  As Luther writes in the explanation of the 2nd article of the Apostles Creed about Jesus purchasing us with his blood:

All this he did that I should be his own, and live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, just as he has risen from death and lives and rules eternally. This is most certainly true.

The church is the pearl of great price because being his own people means receiving the gifts of Jesus through the means he intended- gathering for the divine service as one body in Christ and receiving his gifts.

When you know someone loves you, it makes you feel your worth so much more. Even more so we feel our worth knowing that we have such worth in God’s eyes as the church, His spotless and perfect bride.

If young men and women in our churches could understand what great worth they have as individuals and as part of the church, how different might the decisions be that our youth make. If youth were properly taught what a treasure they are to Jesus, how much less would be the temptations of the treasures of popularity with peers, material pursuits and pursuits of vanity.

If parents understood the worth they are to God, how much more confidently and joyfully might they raise their children in the faith!  How sad that the joy of God’s kingdom is so often hidden among us through our failing to see how precious we are to God and what an unsurpassed gift of grace we have in the church. May God grant many more to see the big picture of following Jesus, who has paid with his life for us the pearl of great price.

Our Savior, our emotions

Posted on by nfuller

It is often said by Lutherans that we are not driven by emotions.  We are not on a regular basis depending on transcendent emotional experiences to sustain us and encourage us in our faith.  We are not a church body that struggles with highs and lows of transcendent faith experiences where people fluctuate form feeling God is present in every aspect of life- to feeling forsaken or abandoned by God. Ours is a type of practice of faith based on the sure promises of God’s Word and the good news of the gospel.

For all of these strengths in putting our faith fixed in God’s Word outside of our varying emotional swings- we might almost come to believe that our emotions have no place in our faith. 

This is a question that often comes up in my conversation with other Lutherans, what about emotions, what role do they play?  The answer is they play a big role. They play a big role because Jesus took on our human nature and demonstrated to us a range of emotions all centered around the truth that God is love. 

Throughout the scripture we see the passion Jesus felt about our human condition after the fall.  We see Jesus with compassion for those who are sick, those who are in need, those with diseases of body and those who suffer diseases of the mind. At the feeding of the five thousand the scripture notes how Jesus felt deep gut wrenching compassion for the people he was teaching- observing that they are like sheep without a shepherd.

When Jesus came to the location in which his friend Lazarus was buried, Jesus wept in the presence of all of the people.  ‘See how he loved him.’ the crowds said.  We see indeed how he loves Lazarus, and we see how he loved all those he encountered in the days of his public ministry through miracles of healing and miracles of freedom and restoration. Behind all of these acts of kindness was His steadfast and immovable compassion for all people.

We see this in a particularly intense way in our gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent in Luke chapter 13 as we hear Jesus lament:  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Jesus is weeping for the lack of faith in a place where there should be faith- Jerusalem, where God’s House has been established.  It is without doubt cause for sorrow when little chicks refuse to be gathered up and protected by the wings of a mother hen- opting instead for a future of certain destruction.

Perhaps the strongest form of love we can practice in our life as followers of Jesus is to care about the spiritual well being of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  If Jesus laments those who have rejected God, we should also lament the stubborn disobedience of unbelieving mankind.   We should be willing to sacrifice in our lives for the sake of those who do not obey God’s Word.  It is appropriate for us to mourn and lament over the unbelief of so many.  In this sense our emotions are very important in our faith.

Jesus is without sin, so his emotions of compassion and distress to those who resist him does not turn to emotions of anger and resentment.  Instead Jesus remains faithful in loving those who do not believe- even to the point of his time on the cross:

How deep were the emotions as Jesus prayed, Father forgive them, they know not what they do!” Up to the hours on the cross- and just the same in his resurrection, Jesus remains long suffering with compassion and love to those who are wayward- longing to welcome them into His embrace.

 How about you, can you see those who are without faith in Christ as baby chicks in which we long to gather under our wings?  Can you see the hurt and precariousness in which people live apart from faith in Christ?  Can you feel the love in the pit of our stomach that makes us want to do all we can to share the love of Christ to our community?  

This feeling of compassion does not come out of thin air, but instead is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as we continue to hear God’s Word and hear the truth that God wants all people to be saved.

The hymn of the day for the Second Sunday in Lent is packed with Emotion:  Part of the first verse celebrates what it means to consider all things a loss but for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord.  “Earth has no pleasure I would share, yea heaven and earth were void and bare if Thou O Lord were not near me.”

 In the closing verse we hear a confession of faith in the resurrection that you just can’t sing without a certain awe and trembling: “Lord let at last thine angels come, to Abram’s bosom bear me home, that I may die unfearing, and in it’s narrow chamber keep my body safe in peaceful sleep until thy reappearing.  And then from death awaken me that these mine eyes with joy may see, O Son of God thy glorious face, my Savior and my fount of grace, Lord Jesus Christ my prayer attend my prayer attend and I will praise thee without end.”

What a wonderful way God chooses to gather us in under his care as the church! Jesus is relentless in his care for us.  He feeds us with the finest nourishment in the world, His Word and his very presence with us in the Lord’s Supper. 

He blesses us with not just a faith that is basic and shallow- but instead a faith that is deep through all of the ways in which His mercy is made known to us, all of the ways through which his great love and passion strengthen us in body mind and soul. Amen. 

-Pastor Nicholas Fuller


The easy way and the hard way

Posted on by nfuller

Brother or Sister in Christ, if you are reading this blog- this message is for you. It is based on a sermon I gave this past Sunday, but is now condensed into blog form to fit an appropriate reader context. I hope you will find this message edifying to your Christian jouney- and if you do not have a church home, consider worshiping with us at Christ Lutheran Irvington.

We are on a journey.  We are fellow travelers, who can agree that there is a hard way and an easy way to undertake the journey.  Following His baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus was on a journey.  Led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was on a journey of faith.  Forty days and nights in the wilderness without food, and under the whim of temptation by Satan. 

Satan tempted Jesus with an easy route through the journey.  Satan’s temptation was a fiercely shrewd attack. It was the same method that worked so effectively with Adam and Eve, “Is this way God commanded you really the way you should go? If God really loves you, wouldn’t he want you to have your heart’s desire? Satan tempted Jesus to replace fasting hunger with satiation, to replace his humble state in life with all of the riches and power of this world. 

Jesus came to the world to redeem all of the world, and here Satan, who has been the prince of our fallen world ever since the Fall into sin, here Satan was offering it all to Jesus- if Jesus would only bow down to him. If you want to save the world what better way than to enlist the master of all of the world. Don’t the ends justify the means?

In our faith journey we have an easy way before us. It is the way of convenience, fast solutions, and a way of trusting in our own inventions and provisions instead of those of God.  It is the way where the ends justify the means.   The hard way before us is God’s way. This is a way that goes through the cross. It is the only way that we can actually travel the journey. 

Jesus knew the journey to save the world was going to be the hardest of all journey’s.  Fasting for 40 days was only just a taste of the difficulty. He would also be betrayed by his own, praying in the garden of Gethsemane for the cup to be taken away, while his disciples slept.  He would be beaten and flogged and humiliated, stripped naked , and then crucified.

Lent is a journey for us as the church. It is not as difficult a journey as Jesus fasting for 40 days.  We could not handle such a journey ourselves. We cannot overcome the temptation of Satan in the way that Jesus did.  Lent is not about trying to match ourselves what Jesus did for us.  If we could overcome Satan on our own and resist all temptation perfectly we wouldn’t need a Savior.

The specific journey that Lent is for the church, is to focus on repentance, humility, and self denial.  That is why the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has long practiced refraining from singing Alleluia’s, we are putting aside a mood of celebration, we are being honest with ourselves, that in this world we will still have trouble.

But we can receive the gift that Jesus has overcome temptation for us. We can receive this gift and connect ourselves by faith to this gift. That is the journey we take, to leave behind those things that weigh us down and distract us from receiving the gift in our lives.

The journey we take is hard and difficult. It requires everything we have to resist the allure of the easy ways of this world in favor of picking up our cross and following Jesus.   We follow Jesus through the disappointments and trials of life, through peaks and valleys, we hold on in faith to the promise that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We follow Jesus through the promise that in self denial, humility, and even suffering we are closer to Jesus.

We do not take the journey of Lent in order to impress God.  Nor do we take this journey so that we will be considered more worthy in God’s eyes, or so that we are loved more.

Instead we undertake this journey to prepare us to resist the temptations of this world more effectively. We seek to mortify our flesh, as the Book of Concord describes as an essential aspect of our faith. 

In article 26 of the Augsburg confession the reformers refuted the idea that justification by faith, being truly Lutheran means there is no to be for Christians no discipline or mortification of the flesh. “For concerning the cross they have always taught that Christians should endure afflictions. To be disciplined by various afflictions and crucified with Christ is a true and serious, not a simulated mortification.” 

“In addition they teach that all Christians should so train and restrain themselves with bodily discipline, or bodily exercises and labors, that neither over exertion or idleness may lure them into sin. But they do not teach that we merit forgiveness of sins or make satisfaction for them through such exercise.”

This article then illustrates Christ’s command in Luke 21:34:  4 “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.

And in Mark 9:29  6 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

Can you picture some of the applications this article about mortification has for us.  We mortify our flesh, we put to death the selfish and sin motivated aspects of our life so that we are not lured into sin by either complacency and idleness or by over exertion where we become too preoccupied with our own achievements. 

Our calling as Christians can be significantly stalled by our sinful human nature.  We have good intentions in how we live our callings in life, but pit falls surround us on all sides. In some cases we think too little of ourselves where we are paralyzed by depression or anxiety. In other cases we think too highly of ourselves where we commit sins of pride and selfishness.    

With all of these pit falls we need as much of God’s Word in our lives and as little distractions as possible.  I am mindful this season of Lent how I might prevent wasting time in the idleness of reading news headlines, when I could instead take advantage of times of down time meditating on God’s Word. 

Take some moments to think about what calling in life you have struggled to fulfill because of the weight and hindrance of your own idleness, your own self doubts, or even your own pride. What joy awaits you, what blessings to others you could give if through the power of God’s Word you more diligently followed the way of the cross!

The challenge of overcoming our well worn patterns of indifference, selfishness and pride is great, but perhaps instead of complaining or feeling defeated by the challenge we should take counsel in our Lord’s Words that this kind of demon can only come out by fasting and prayer.   The spiritual darkness of this time is thick. But the more we are connected to the truth of God’s Word, the more prepared we are for the challenge.  

Through the cross we walk a hard way.  We would like an easy way where people just came into our lives and said, ‘O what a faithful and loving person, I want to be around her more!’ That is the easy way we wish we had.

We have another way before us, a way that is going to require courage, persistence, hopefulness and long suffering, and above all faith in the teaching of Our Lord that the Cross is the only way of life. 

In Christ, the way of the cross is hard.  Yet the scripture also describes how following Jesus is in essence an easy way because of its complete fulfillment of all of our needs:   28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

From the gospel of John we hear: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

Likewise we hear in 1John the lightness and freedom of following God’s law:  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

The way of following Jesus is light and easy because it is a way free of the sorrows of this world.  The way of the world is heavy and burdensome and difficult for it is a way full of the sorrows of hoping in worldly things that fall through our fingers like sand dropping in a time glass. The way of the world involves some who are rich and some who are poor.

How completely different is the way of God’s kingdom!  We heard in our Epistle reading from Romans that, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  This is the way of God’s Kingdom, an easy and wonderfully simple path to walk. The blessed journey we have been called to.