“Immeasurable Greatness” (Luke 24:44-55; Ephesians 1:15-23)

Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-55

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Pastor Tom Johnson, May 24, 2020

Our reading from Ephesians chapter one is a prayer. It’s Paul’s prayer for believers. His prayer is that the “eyes of our hearts” will be enlightened—that we would see and know the power of God in our lives—that we will experience God’s power. Paul calls it “the immeasurable greatness of his power.” This is the mind-blowing power of the Holy Spirit that brought the eternal Son of God from heaven to earth to be born a human child—the wonder of the Word made flesh. This is the divine power through Jesus Christ that healed the sick, encouraged the downcast, and confronted the abuse of human power. This is the unfathomable power that raised Jesus from the dead. This is the limitless power of the disciples who witness Jesus ascend back to the Father where he reigns over heaven and earth. This power is “immeasurable,” unquantifiable. There is no measuring stick large enough. We are unable with our human minds to intellectually grasp God’s power.

Solomon has a similar vision of God’s power in his prayer when he dedicates the newly constructed Temple in Jerusalem: He prays, “O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath…But will you, O God, indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:23,27). God is not bound by the laws of physics. His greatness exceeds that of the universe itself. He is Creator of everything visible and invisible. In Isaiah 55, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Paul’s prayer is that we would know what is beyond knowing—that we will come to this realization and awe—to savor the wonder of God’s power—the immeasurable power at work in Christ that is also at work in us. Paul names three things that happen when we are enlightened by the Holy Spirit: we grow in hope, we discover our wealth in Christ, and we experience God’s immeasurable power. This is a prayer that God’s power will not escape our notice—that we will not underestimate his power at work in our lives.

There is a reason why so many in this world are overcome by despair, greed, and willful ignorance—we have yet to be awestruck by the power of Christ that raised him from the dead in the resurrection and back to his heavenly throne in the ascension. When our imaginations are limited to the power and pride of human beings—when our minds are bound by the natural forces of the universe—when we are paralyzed even by the fear of the rapid and deadly spread of a virus—we live in hopelessness. We need something greater. We need Someone mightier. We need a vision of God’s power that superabounds—that transcends human understanding so that we taste and see that the Lord is good. Hope is born into our lives by his Word and Spirit. When our wealth is measured by the weight of gold, the abundance of material possessions, or the number in our bank accounts and investments, we will never understand the surpassing riches we have in Jesus Christ.

We have Someone more priceless. There is no price tag on forgiveness and eternal life. We cannot purchase our salvation or the unconditional love of the Creator of the universe. It is all gift—even the faith that grows in our hearts. Our hearts and minds fill with gratitude for the incalculable wealth that we have in Jesus Christ. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead and back to his heavenly throne is the same power that works to elevate you and me. Through this prayer, the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit, God reaches out to each of us. By that same power, he lifts us out of our despair, hopelessness, ingratitude, greed, and ignorance.

Now is the perfect time for us as the people of God to share the treasure we have through the power of the risen and ascended Christ. We don’t need to explain everything away nor have an easy answer for every question. We get to share our hopeful hearts. We get to be a people known by our gratitude for all God’s gifts. We have the privilege to humbly tell others that we don’t have God figured out—no one does—but that we live our lives in awe of him. We love him because he first loved us. And we have only just begun to experience what “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).

To our lives of wanton wand’ring
Send your Spirit, promised guide;
Through our lives of fear and failure
With your pow’r and love abide;
Welcome us, as You were welcomed,
To an endless Eastertide.
          (“Up through Endless Ranks of Angels,” LSB 491, v. 3)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

“Into your hands” (Psalm 31:5)

Psalm 31:1-5,15-16
Acts 7:55-60
John 14:1-14

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Pastor Tom Johnson, May 10, 2020

“Good Shepherd” by Bernhard Plockhorst (1825-1907)

“Into your hands I commend my spirit.” This is the prayer of Psalm 31 that we sang earlier. David prayerfully surrenders his breath, life, and spirit to God. He calls God his rock, his refuge, his castle to keep him safe, his crag, his stronghold. God is his tower of strength. There is no safer place—there is no more loving place than to be in the hands of the Lord, our God of truth. This Psalm is a prayer of distress. But it is also a prayer that strengthens our confidence and trust in God. I don’t know about you, but when I saw the readings appointed for today, I thought, “This is exactly what I need to hear.” God is faithful. He may not give us what we always want; but he gives us what we need.

At the height of World War II, Pastor Dietrich Bonnhoeffer published his book The Psalms: the Prayerbook of the Bible. It went to print in a time of great distress. The Nazi’s stopped print when they realized he published a book that praised Jewish poetry—right under their noses. Bonnhoeffer said of the Psalms, “The Psalter gives us ample instruction in how to come before God in a proper way, bearing the frequent suffering which this world brings upon us.” “Serious illness and severe loneliness before God and people, threat, persecution, imprisonment, whatever conceivable peril there is on earth are known by the Psalms.”

“Into your hands, I commend my spirit”—my breath, my life, my body and soul and all things. “My times are in your hands,” this prayer says. Every moment, every day, every season, and every generation are all in God’s hands. “He’s got the whole world in his hands”—“you and me sister”—“you and me brother.” We are in a time of shared distress—the troubled time of a city, state, nation. We are all threatened as global humanity. And it is times like these when we need to unload our anxieties, fears, and frustrations.  We are in deep trouble when we do not pour out our troubled spirits upon God. This is what Bonhoeffer refers to as the agony of prayerlessness. We are cutting ourselves off from the great comfort and assurance of God’s grace and presence. It strikes me that when we don’t commend our times and our spirits and all things to the hands of God, we lash out at each other. Yes, someone else’s wickedness or  negligence may have caused the problems we face.
But unleashing our anger, blame, frustration, anxiety, and fears upon each other will only intensify our agony, despair, and loneliness.

David poured out his heart and spirit upon God. He placed his worries into the hands of almighty God. It is not surprising that this prayer contains the last words of Jesus upon the cross (Luke 23:46). “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” our Lord prays before he breathes his last. He is the eternal Son of God who took on our humanity. He took on human flesh. He took on David’s prayer to show us the way to pray through our greatest times of suffering and trial. Jesus entrusted himself—his body, his breath, his life, his spirit to God his and our heavenly Father. These are words of great confidence and assurance that Jesus did not perish but went home to the Father—into the fold of his loving hands and arms. When Stephen is stoned to death. He does not glare at his murderers. He gazes into the Kingdom that transcends heaven and earth. He looks to Jesus and his strong, nail-scarred hands and says, “receive my spirit.” He forgives his killers as he dies by quoting Jesus again, “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

And so Jesus invites us to do the same when he said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” In other words, do not lose spirit—do not be overwhelmed with the anxiety of this world. Trust God. Trust Jesus. This is Jesus’ invitation to see his nail-scarred hands reaching out to you. He spread them wide on the Cross of Calvary to not only forgive us of our sins but also to deliver us from evil—even the evil of anxiety and the agony of prayerlessness.

David was not alone in his distress. Jesus was not abandoned the cross. Stephen was not deserted under a heap of bloody stones. They commended themselves to God our heavenly Father—their bodies, their souls, their spirits, and all things. It is not only a beautiful prayer of surrender to the capable and strong care of God but also a beautiful testimony of their faith and confidence in God and assurance that our home is ultimately in the arms of our heavenly Father. The German Reformer Martin Luther taught his disciples to pray those same words every morning when we wake up and every night before we go to sleep: “Into your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things.”

We commend ourselves into the surest place, the care of Him who gave himself for us on the cross. No thoughtful recitation of this prayer will escape thoughts about the Cross of Calvary nor the work accomplished that makes our prayer possible. We commend ourselves to Jesus’ nail-scarred hands. They are the hands that hold us—not just in our time of departure from this world—but especially now. We  entrust ourselves to the only true and capable source of refuge: Christ our Rock.

“I will fear no evil” (Psalm 23; John 10:1-10)

Psalm 23
John 10:1-10

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Pastor Tom Johnson, May 3, 2020

King David is the author of Psalm 23. It’s packed with imagery from his personal experience as a shepherd. When Samuel came to his father Jesse’s home to find the next king of Israel, David was out tending sheep in the fields (1 Sam 16). When Goliath of Gath boasted about his height, strength, and all the Israelites he was about to kill, David drew confidence from his skills as a shepherd. He said, 

“…whenever a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb from its mouth; and if it turned against me, I would catch it by the jaw, strike it down, and kill it. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God” (1 Sam 17). 

David then slays Goliath with one small stone. David’s confidence is not merely in his own skills as a sling and stone marksman. He draws a connection between his vocation as a shepherd of sheep to his higher vocation as a sheep under the care of the Lord, the Good Shepherd. His trust is in the Lord. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” David sees the connection between his passion and skill to protect the sheep and God’s even greater passion and greater ability to take care of us, God’s people: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

David led his sheep from green pasture to quiet waters. He satisfied their hunger and thirst to make them lie down contentedly. But it was not all bucolic serenity. It was not all a bed of spring greens and flowing streams. Between the pasture and flowing streams, there were dark valleys. There were thorns, cliffs, and predators lurking in the shadows. Lions, bears, wolves, and thieves who would kill and poach. David speaks of the shadow of death. These are the dark corners of our journey where the threat hides under the cover of darkness. Think of the reflected light from the retinas of the predators—those pairs of twinkling, hungry eyes staring us down wanting to have us and our sheep for breakfast. Or the sound of the hireling and thief sharpening his knife for the kill.

I’ve never led a flock of sheep through the wilderness, but I do have several experiences hiking territory ruled by bears and mountain lions. Once I was hiking with a friend and we saw huge mountain lion prints join the dusty path we were walking on. It was a windy day. So the prints were fresh. It was unnerving. The only defense we had were clawless fists and kicks and cries for help with our fangless mouths. We constantly heard rustling in the brush and trees. Not once but twice deer jumped out of the shadows presumably from the predator whose tracks we saw. We finished the hike and were walking down and away from the mountain. My friend calmly said, “Tom, turn around. I did. And there on a cliff high above us was a huge mountain lion pacing back and forth looking at us as if to say, “I wouldn’t come back or trespass my hunting ground again if I were you.” 

As collective humanity we have always struggled against many invisible foes—whether a virus or the powers and principalities of this present darkness, our own sin, or palpable evil. We cannot always see what is in the shadows of this world or in the hardened hearts and calloused minds of others—or even ourselves! As the prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is desperately wicked. Who can understand it?” We cannot lean on our own understanding or rely on own strength. Our only hope is to rely on the Good Shepherd: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” David sees himself as a vulnerable sheep whose only option is to shelter himself under the skillful rod, sling and stone of the Shepherd Lord and the guiding staff of the Word of God. David puts himself into the place of the sheep God cares for.

Jesus turns Psalm 23 beautifully upside down. He sees himself as the one who will care for his sheep: “I am the gate for the sheep.” “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” Jesus himself is the hedge of protection that surrounds us. He is the one through whom we find a shelter and rest during troubling, dangerous, and exhausting times. He knows full well what hides in the shadows. He alone knows how to overcome adversity and evil. And he has already wielded his rod and his staff. Our safety and security are found under the care of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. He laid down his life for the sheep. He was scourged by the rod and crucified to the wooden beams of the Cross. It appeared that injustice and evil prevail. But at early morning light on the third day, he rises from the dead. He proves that he has victory over the Goliath of sin, stopped the roaring and prowling of Satan, and dealt a death blow to death itself. Though for a little while the threat lurks in the shadows, we walk by faith not sight. One day, the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls will bring final defeat and an end to all our enemies. His grace assures us: “I have come into the world that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” His presence assures us. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” 

In the meantime, I will not let fear but the Lord get the best of me. Even though for a short while we walk beneath the shadows, we will refuse to let fear paralyze us.  Not the terror in the night but trust in the Lord will rule over our hearts and minds. Fear will not rob us of his peace and joy. For the Good Shepherd is risen indeed.

We are the sheep; he is our shepherd. He says, “You got this. Because I got this.”