Robert Smith – Page 35 – What Does This Mean?

Sunday School Zacchaeus

The Jews hated the Romans because they believed that God wanted them to rule themselves. In addition, the Romans were pagans, who worshipped idols, and lived in ways often directly against God’s Law. The saw Zacchaeus and Matthew as traitors who kept the Romans in power. The Pharisees mentioned them in the same breath as sinners — people who lived as they liked and ignored God’s laws completely. The feeling was often mutual. So tax collectors would often live like Romans do, cheat the people and live at their expense. Zacchaeus was like that. He was a tax farmer — a collector who employed other tax collectors. He would add a hefty surcharge to all he collected and think nothing of putting his thumb on the scales.

Zacchaeus was curious. He likely had heard all about this Rabbi, a descendant of David, who taught in a very direct way, healed the sick and loved people the Pharisees shunned. Being a short man, he climbed a sycamore tree to get a good look. The Rabbi surprised him. Jesus called him out by name, told him to come down because he had to stay in his house.

The tax collector was moved because Jesus did the unthinkable. He spoke to the tax collector. Even more, he stayed in his home and received his fellowship. This was unthinkable for a Rabbi. It would be like a pastor staying in a prostitute’s home to us today. Yet Jesus loved Zacchaeus. This love moved the tax collector to change his life and become His disciple. The tax collector was amazed. He had left God, but God had not left him.

Jesus explained why he was doing this to the crowd. In Jesus, God himself had come to this lost Son of Abraham. This was because God had sent his Son to seek and save the lost.

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Sunday School Jesus, the Pharisees and the Paralytic

One day when Jesus was at home in Capernaum, the friends of a paralyzed man brought him to to Jesus to be healed. The word about Jesus’ teaching and ability to heal was spreading throughout the area. His reputation had reached the scribes, biblical scholars of the time, and they were present to hear what the new rabbi had to say. The crowds were so big that the friends could not bring the paralytic to him through the front door. So they climbed up on the roof.

In the time of Jesus, towns like his built flat roofs made of branches, dried plant material and mud. The friends of the disabled man had a brilliant idea — they dug a hole in the roof over where Jesus was sitting and lowered him down to the teacher. Jesus recognized their love for the man and their faith in God. So, he forgave the man his sins.

While that sounds like an odd thing to do for us, it didn’t to Jesus’ audience. The Pharisees and other people believed that God punished especially bad sins with sickness and disaster. They thought that the blind, the paralyzed, lepers and others like them must have done something very wrong. Sins are ultimately all committed against God. So, if a person’s sins are forgiven, there is no longer a reason for the illness.

The people also believed that only God could forgive these sins and make the person well. By forgiving the man his sin, Jesus showed that He had the authority to forgive sins and to heal. Both are impossible for man, but not so for God. To say, “your sins are forgiven” or to say “get up a walk” are just as easy to say since both should be impossible — unless you’re God. And Jesus is God in the flesh. The people missed the point. They thought it meant that people also could forgive sins.

Because Jesus took all our sins to the cross and die to pay the price for them, he has the authority forgive them all. Which he does. He also tells pastors to forgive the sins of those who repent of them.

So, Jesus wants his people to do both today. He wants us to forgive sins and to have compassion on the sick and disabled. He wants us to pray for them and to do whatever we can to care for them. In the end, it is Jesus himself who does the forgiving — right here, right now and forever.

Blog Post Series

Sunday School The Good Samaritan

Encore Post: Three thousand years ago, ten tribes of Israel broke away from King Solomon’s son and formed a new kingdom north of Jerusalem. The kings of the northern tribes built a capital, called Samaria about forty miles north of Jerusalem. When the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom, they deported many of the Israelites and resettled people from far away places. The Samaritan people were born when Israelites married their captors. The Jewish people considered them as traitors and hated them. The Samaritans hated them in return, especially when Jewish armies destroyed their temple and their city. At the time of Jesus, Jews wanted nothing to do with them. They would avoid even traveling through Samaria, even to go to Jerusalem. The worst thing one Jew could call another was a Samaritan.

One day, an expert in God’s law asked Jesus a traditional question posed to Rabbis: which is the greatest of all commandments? Jesus turned the question around to him. The expert replied with the commandments to love God and to love neighbor as yourself. Jesus agreed and told him to do these and he would inherit eternal life. So, the expert asked Jesus who is our neighbor. Jesus’ answer was the story we call the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25-37)

In this story, the two kinds of people you would expect would help you were priests and Levites. They led worship in the temple, where God showed His love for His people by forgiving their sins. They did not want to become unclean by touching a dead person. So they did not help the injured man. But the Samaritan felt very sorry for him, cared for him and paid a lot of money to see that he was cared for until the day he recovered.

Jesus asked the expert which of these three was a neighbor to the injured man. He answered, “The one who showed mercy.” Jesus told him to do the same. As sinners, we will fail to do this perfectly. Yet as Christians, the church responds to the love of God in Christ, has reached out in mercy to those who suffer with countless needs over two thousand years. We remember that Jesus responded to our greatest need by suffering and dying that we might be saved and inherit eternal life. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we reach out to care for those who need us the most to show them the mercy God showed us.

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No place is the Good Place

Our world is an evil place. Full of selfishness, violence, envy and hatred, people kill and torture each other, steal from each other destroy neighborhoods and businesses and ruin the lives of their neighbors. Christians are attacked for their faith and for trying to live life according to God’s word. Don’t you wish that all good, Lutheran Christians could move to a new place, live according to the will of God and love for each other?

We’re not the first Christians to think this way. Some Christians moved to desert areas where they lived more or less by themselves or in communities dedicated to live a pure Christian life. Called Monks (from the latin word for being alone) and Nuns, it worked to a certain degree. But as a project to live sinless lives, it failed every time. It turns out that even the most pious Christian has a sinful nature living in them. No place and be the good place, because there is no one in this world who lives a sinless life.

American history is filled with communities which thought the could achieve an ideal society by inviting only Christians committed to the vision of its founder to settle in it. Sir Thomas More wrote a satire in 1516 he called Utopia (a pun on two Greek words that mean good place and no place) making fun of life in his time. He set it on an imaginary island in America. The Puritans tried such a community in Massachusetts, followed by the Quakers, the Moravians, the Amana Colonies, non-Christian movements such as the Shakers, the Mormons, the Harmonists and others — and even Lutherans in Perry County, Missouri and the Saginaw Valley in Michigan.

The problem was that no place in this life is the good place. The Old Adam and Old Eve live in the hearts of every Christian. Sin will emerge sooner or later. We can’t expect perfection here. Such communities often produce much good but when people put their trust in them and not God, they are bound to be disappointed.

The solution to the evil world is in Christ. He took the sins of the world on himself, bore them to the cross where he died to pay the price for the damage they caused, breaking the power of sin and death forever. On the last day, he will bring an end to evil once and for all, raise us all from the dead, transform our bodies for everlasting life. We will live together with him without sin, death, disease and evil. That is the good place.

So, if pulling out of the world is not a good solution for Christians, how do we cope? As most Christians have done for two thousand years, we continue to live in the world, but live according to the Word of God. We gather with other Christians, receive the gifts God desires to give us: the forgiveness of our sins, the hearing of his word of life, which has the power to change our hearts and the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus, which is food for the journey. We live for the next life, to witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus and to strengthen each other for the journey. Then, before we know it, we will be in that Good Place which lasts not for a lifetime, but forever.

Sunday School: Tower of Babel

Encore Posts: The Egyptians were not the only people that built pyramids. The Mayans, the Aztecs, the Sumerians — and the Babylonians did also. The all had the same purpose. They were meant to be man-made mountains that would be a ladder from Earth to Heaven, where they could visit the gods, sacrifice to them and get what they want from heaven. Most had temples at the very top, where sacrifices were made, some of them human sacrifices.

The people of Babel intended to settle down, build a city and one of these temples. This idea was sinful in two ways. God had commanded them to migrate over the whole Earth and fill it with people. They saw good farmland and decided to stay. They decide to build a great temple to manipulate God so that they could get everything they wanted. In a sense, they worshipped themselves. But God confused their language and scattered them anyway. Their sin resulted in people fearing each other and set one nation against another.

God gave Abraham a glimpse of this on Mount Moriah. Every indication God gave to him was that sacrifice would be just like the way his pagan neighbors practiced it. He demanded what was most precious to him in sacrifice — his own son whom he loved. But God had something else in mind on that mountain. God’s own son — his only son — whom he loved — stopped the sacrifice of Isaac. Later it would be God who would provide himself as the sacrifice for sin.

So Jesus came to be the ultimate sacrifice. His death was not an attempt to manipulate God, but was God of His own free will paying the price for their sins of rebellion. In Jesus, all divisions among people come to an end. The miracle of the Day of Pentecost showed that God can make us one people again — not to serve ourselves, but worship God together. The speaking of tongues on that day showed that God would bring together his people from all times, places, races, peoples, nations and languages.

The Real Presence of the Church

Why are we the loneliest generation? With ever-present devices designed for communication, we can be instantly in contact with every friend we ever had. Social media allows us to do this easily and effortlessly not only by phone, but by computer or by simply speaking to devices we’ve installed throughout our homes. These were lifelines for us during the pandemic of 2020-21, allowing us even to watch worship services and sermons while barred from gathering in person. These blessings tempt us to think we do not need to get together with others or even go to church in person.

Yet study after study tells us what we know deep down. Disembodied communications will do in a pinch, but we really do need each other and not a ghost of each other on a computer screen. The shut down of society resulted in record numbers of suicides, drug overdose deaths and domestic violence. The heart-breaking images on TV news of spouses and children, separated from loved ones as they died haunt us.

None of this should surprise us. God made human beings to be with him and with each other. In the Garden of Eden, God observed “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper fit for him.” (Genesis 2:18) So he made a woman to be with him. He then commanded our first parents to have children and fill the world with their descendents. Because God made humanity in his image, we are made to live with each other, much like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not alone, but live together eternally.

When sin separated God from people and people from each other, God did not leave it that way. God’s Son was sent by the Father to become a flesh-and-blood man, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Through his sufferings and death, he paid the price for our salvation and destroyed the separation between God and his people and the wall of hostility between us all. He calls us together to live with him and each other. When we gather together, he is with us all. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the Lord Jesus himself is with us literally to give us his body to eat and his blood to drink. When we do this, he is really present with us and we are really present with each other.

Since God made us to be with each other, we need to gather together. Each of us brings a different set of gifts and talents to the mix. The truth is that we need each other, no matter how unimportant we might think of ourselves. (1 Corinthian 12:12-30) When we get together, God is present to give us his gifts of the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. We rejoice together in these gifts, share each other’s sufferings and each other’s blessings. We encourage each other to love God and our neighbors. We support each other in doing the good works God calls us to do.(Hebrews 10:19-25)

This is why we gather together, being really present with each other, really present as Christ’s Church and really present with our Lord with whom we will live forever.

Change in What Does this Mean? Blog Links

It is Spring cleaning time at our blog and so, like a good librarian, I’ve moved things around a bit. We used to use URLs (link addresses) that contained the date a post was last made public. We have removed the date from the URL. So, if you have a link to one of our posts and want to re-read it, just delete the date from it and you are good to go.

If you can’t find a post in the near future, this is likely the problem. To find one if you don’t have the link for some reason or another, you can search for it from our home page (whatdoesthismean.blog to from google or another search engine. Just search for this address in th search engine alone with a few of the words from the post title.

Thanks for understanding.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Electronic Resources Librarian
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana
and
Editor
What Does This Mean? Blog

Meet Junker Jörg

In May of 1521, young knight moved into the Castle Wartburg, in a small apartment normally used to house noble prisoners. He was cared for by two young squires and was well cared for by the warden of the castle, who became his friend. From time to time, he would venture out into the town nearby. Once he went hunting with other nobles, but didn’t seem to enjoy the sport. Known as Junker Jörg, (Knight George), he was not the minor noble that he seemed. Lucas Cranach the Younger, renaissance artist, painted his portrait. He was in fact Martin Luther.

Luther lived in the Wartburg for ten months while the politics of Germany settled down in the wake of the Edict of Worms. The secret was well-kept. Even the brother of Elector Frederick, who would be Luther’s ruler in a few years, did not know the reformer was there until he visited the castle in September. Before too long, his friend knew he was alive and well. Luther wrote an amazing number of letters to support and advise them. These letters went from Luther to the Elector’s chancellor and his good friend George Spalatin, who sent them on. Without the duties of a professor, pastor and leader of a movement, Luther was able concentrate on writing and write he did. Excluding the letters, his Wartburg writings fill two full volumes of the Weimar Edition of his works.

Although he eventually became used to life in the Wartburg, Luther was not suited to life as a noble. He went from being a monastic with a frugal diet to the rich foods of the court. He got much less exercise and was cut off from the all the interaction with people. He was ill suited to that kind of life. It would be only a matter of time before he would have to return to Wittenberg publically.

The Edict of Worms

When the negotiations between the Estates of the German Nation and Luther failed to find a solution, Luther left Worms, supposedly for home, but in reality to be taken to safe keeping in the Castle Wartburg, after a staged kidnapping. To the world, it looked like someone had violated Luther’s safe conduct.

In the meantime, Emperor Charles V, announced his intent to take action against Luther and anyone who supported him. He asked for the Estates’ advice. They agreed and asked to have input into its drafting. The pope’s legate, Aleander, was given the task of drafting the document. To his distress, but likely not to his surprise, the imperial court began to make changes to the document in favor of the Emperor and at the expense of the Pope. Even though the printer had begun to set the Latin and German versions in type, the Grand Chancellor informed him it could not be published without getting the consent of the estates.

On May 21st, the Diet approved its recess, set to be on May 25th. Elector Frederick left Worms on May 23rd, complaining of gout. Before he left town, he gained the consent of the Emperor not to publish the Edict in Saxony, in effect, meaning it was not in force in his territories. After the close of the Diet, the Emperor presented the Edict to the Estates still present in Worms. Without discussion, the Elector of Brandenburg judged it approved by the Diet.

The Edict of Worms sought to enforce bull Exsurge Domine . It declared Luther an outlaw and, in effect, was an arrest warrant for him and his supporters. It authorized the seizure of their properties and forbid the printing and distribution of any of Luther’s works.

While the Edict was a powerful tool in the hands of Luther’s opponents, since it confined Luther’s movements to the territories of his supporters, it was largely worked around or ignored. It did not result in the suppression of the reformation, which continued to take root in Germany and later Scandinavia and the Baltic nations.

New Regular Blog Author: Rev. James Peterson

I’m delighted to introduce our newest regular author, Rev. James Peterson. You can learn more about him at his bio page: https://whatdoesthismean.blog/meet-rev-james-peterson/ It may be a little while before his first post appears, but I thought I’d announce his coming so you all can watch for it.

Rev. Robert E. Smith