The Lead of Life

2:14 Nora Ephron was an award-winning screenwriter. She wrote the screenplays for movies like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally and many others. But she started out as a journalist. And she tells the story of when she was in high school and realized that future vocation. So she's sitting in the first day of class, and the teacher is lecturing on the lead. Do you know what the lead is in a newspaper story? The lead is the first sentence in the story. The lead gives you the essential, vital information that you need to know. Well, the teacher proceeds to give Nora's class a bunch of facts to make sense of. He says, this coming Thursday at Beverly Hills High School, Principal Barker and the entire staff and faculty will be going up to the Capitol in Sacramento, where they'll be attending a workshop. They'll hear from the governor, the president of the local university, and other educational experts in the field.

3:08 These are the facts, the teacher says. Now, write the lead. So, they all get real busy, and some students say that the lead is that this week the faculty is going to be going up to meet the governor, or going to the capital, or meeting several leaders in education, and so on. They all hand in their ideas for the lead, and the teacher quickly looks through them. and then he looks up. He says, every one of you missed the lead. Well, Nora thinks, how could that be? Didn't he give it to us? The Capitol and the conference and the governor and all that? He says, no, no, no. Here's the lead. There will be no school on Thursday.

3:49 See, the lead is getting to the heart of the matter. The lead finds out what is most vital, what is most important and brings it to the forefront. Those high schoolers, those budding journalists, they lost the lead. They missed it. They missed what was most important. And I wish to say that something similar is happening in today's gospel. As you listen to the story, see if you can catch the lead and how it gets lost. Luke chapter 20, verses 27 through 40. There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and died without children, and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward, the woman also died.

4:51 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife. And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. No, he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. Then some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well. For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

5:46 Now, this is a rather curious interaction. We have these characters called the Sadducees who come up to Jesus with an outrageous, mind-bending scenario. They say, okay, Jesus, we've got a question for you. Say a guy and a gal are married and the guy dies. And so his brother, he marries the wife, but then he dies and so on. Seven brothers in all, extremely unfortunate family. They all marry the same wife and then eventually she dies too. And so Jesus, in the resurrection, who will be the husband of this wife? Oh boy, this is a tricky one. How's Jesus going to answer it? Well, we need to back up and give some background about these characters, the Sadducees. If you know your Sunday school songs, you know at least one thing about Sadducees. They are sad, you see. And why is that? Luke himself tells us why. Because they did not believe in the resurrection.

6:39 Now, the Sadducees professed only to believe things written about and taught in the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, also called the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They claimed, there's no resurrection in those five books of Moses, ergo, we don't believe in it. In fact, this meant that there was a lot that the Sadducees didn't believe in. They were sad, you see. So when they come to Jesus with this question, are they genuinely looking for an answer? No. This is what you call a reductio ad absurdum. That's an arguing tactic in which you push something so far with an absurd argument that you try and expose your opponent's position. You attempt to show, see, your position doesn't make any sense. In this case, the Sadducees are trying to show Jesus, look, Jesus, this resurrection thing that you're talking about, it's not biblical.

7:35 It's not true. We can demonstrate it from this one simple thought experiment of the poor seven guys and the one wife. They're trying to push the envelope to get Jesus to say that resurrection is not credible. But here's why they're really sad, you see. Because here they have, right in front of them, the one who is the resurrection and the life. Just think for a minute. If you or I had Jesus in front of us and we could ask him anything, what would you want to ask him? What would you want to know about? There's no end to that list. and yet the Sadducees find themselves with the living Lord of the universe right before them, and all they can do is ask a goofy gotcha question. They are missing the lead. Worse yet, they're trying to bury the lead, to cover up the most obvious, vital fact of all, and they end up mired in things that do not matter.

8:39 Now, I suspect that you and I don't come before the Lord with those sorts of gotcha questions. You come before him with a spirit of trusting humility. You probably don't try to trap God in a prayer, whatever that would mean, or your pastor in a Bible study. You may have questions, but you genuinely want to know more about the truth of God's word and the truth of the gospel. And yet I would submit to you that there's still a way that all of us, even devoted believing Christians can lose the lead, can lose sight of what's most important. C.S. Lewis, the great 20th century novelist and defender of the Christian faith, he once wrote, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.

9:43 That's in his book, The Weight of Glory. You and I can become far too easily pleased with the things of this world. We can find our hearts and lives being engrossed in stuff that is passing away. And in so doing, we lose the lead of what matters most. It can happen to each and every one of us in our own way. For instance, I'm a big sports fan. And when my teams lose, there's part of me that just wants to weep and gnash my teeth. I get so caught up in the outcome of a silly sporting event that my identity gets tied up in wins and losses for a team that I'm not even actually on. And when I do that, I'm losing the lead. I become far too easily pleased. or it can happen to you and me when we get too wrapped up in cable news or social media. You think, this is important. This is breaking news. This is even more breaking than the breaking news from a few minutes ago.

10:40 And you can start to feel that outrage or even despair rising up in your heart and you begin to find yourself losing the lead, too easily pleased. Now, I want to say that these things aren't necessarily bad or unimportant, but they're not things that we can hang our heart on at the end of the day. They aren't the lead of life. So what is it for you? What are the mud puddles that you find yourself messing around in? What causes you to lose the lead and to forget what matters most? Every single one of us is guilty at times of losing the lead, of failing to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, of placing our trust and confidence in other things. We too can be sad, you see. So how does Jesus respond?

11:34 Does he have a word that speaks to the Sadducees and to us? Jesus responds with scripture. Now, if you're speaking to folks who are doubting that we will rise from the dead, who are questioning this promise, there's plenty of places in the Bible that you could go to in order to establish the truth of the resurrection. But Jesus plays by the Sadducees' own rules, and he sticks with the books of Moses, the Torah. And in so doing, he goes to one of the most unlikely and unexpected places. He goes to the story of the burning bush. The story is in Exodus chapter 3. Maybe you remember it from Sunday school. Moses would become a great leader of God's people, bringing them out of Egypt. But at first, he was just a shepherd. And one day he's walking along and all of a sudden he sees this bush that is burning, but not burning up. And out of that incredible sight, as he draws near, God himself speaks to him.

12:30 God gives to Moses this remarkable command and commission. You are going to lead my people Israel out of Egypt. That's a fascinating, wondrous story. But what's the lead? Oh, that's easy, you think. God speaks to man out of bush, right? Or bush burns, but does not burn up. There's so many different details that you could go to and say, this is the lead right here. This is what's most important. But Jesus says, here's the lead. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus, that's significant, but how is it the most important detail here? Because the key is in the verb tense, the present tense. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, they are still alive to me, he's saying. These great patriarchs and leaders of the faith who have seemingly been dead and gone for years, decades, centuries, not so in God's sight.

13:33 In God's sight, they are alive now, and they will live forevermore because he is not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living. This is the promise for you and me too. This is the lead. Christ Jesus is risen from the dead, and he is the Lord of life for you. People tried to bury the lead, still do. And for a time, our Savior's life was muffled and muzzled, like a truth that you just don't want to hear. But he could not, would not stay buried. For ours is not the God of the dead, but of the living. This is the promise that God makes to you and me in his word. He promises that in holy baptism, he joins you to himself. He promises that though you and I may pass away from this mortal life, you do not die forever. He promises that a day is coming, perhaps today, when Christ Jesus will come again and transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body.

14:37 For ours is not the God of the dead, but of the living. and he promises that nothing will separate you from his love. Despite all the ways that we lose sight of him, lose track of what's most important, he never has and he never will. He ever and always keeps a laser-like focus on making you his own. Neither life nor death nor anything in creation will separate you from his love. For ours is not the God of the dead, but of the living. This is the lead that by the power of the Holy Spirit we believe. And it transforms how we live in the here and now until our living Lord comes again. I've seen it in the life of a friend of mine, whom I'll call Freddy. When I first met him, he was in his 50s.

15:31 And Freddy would be the first one to tell you that for a good part of his life, he had lost the lead. He had fallen into patterns of behavior that were distracting and even destructive. He'd been messing around in mud puddles. But then, by the grace of God, Freddie had the most successful New Year's resolution ever. He felt the pull to go to church, and the Lutheran church where I was serving happened to have a high steeple and a welcoming front door. He thought, this is as good a place as any. Freddie came one Sunday, the first Sunday of the New Year. And then he came another, and then another. He couldn't get enough of hearing these precious promises from the Lord of Life. Don't get me wrong, there was still plenty of stumbling along the way. But Freddie's priorities changed. He began attending Bible study. He started volunteering in the neighborhood. At one point, he even led the effort to raise money for a car for a young mother who was in need in our community.

16:25 Freddie said to me one day, If it weren't for Jesus, I might be dead in a ditch somewhere. But he found me, and he pulled me out. Of course he did. For ours is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Friends, as often as we miss this lead and lose sight of what matters most, the Lord is always bringing you back. And one day, He will finally bring you back from the grave. See, amid all the mud puddles of this world, don't lose this lead. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.

17:35 for sticking around to talk with us Ryan happy to thanks Ryan I really appreciated the way you landed the sermon with the story about Freddie. His example is not what you would normally call ambitious, but faithful. So what was it that led you, led your mind to share about Freddie? I think that's part of why I appreciate examples and stories like that, because they are not so big and grand. And when the rest of us hear about how this person suddenly moved to Africa and started an orphanage and rescued a whole village, we feel, how could I in my little life actually make a difference like that. But within every congregation across America, within all sorts of Christian communities, you will meet folks like Freddie, who I like to think of as quiet saints, people who in small ways are able to make a big difference through the power of the Holy Spirit, God's Word working in them. You have a book coming out that I've heard you talk about. It's called The Quiet Ambition. Is that right? And the subtitle is?

18:34 Scripture's Surprising Antidote to Our Restless Lives. Okay, so it's not out yet, but it's coming out in a week or so. How else does Freddie, for you, illustrate that kind of life in response to Jesus, this quiet ambition? Inspiration for that title comes from this little verse in 1 Thessalonians 4, make it your ambition to live quietly, tend your own business, and work with your hands so that you might walk gracefully toward outsiders and have need of nothing. And with Freddie also, I think of somebody who works with his hands. He's more of a manual labor type person. He goes about his business. He tends his own business. He's not so concerned with meddling in other people's affairs, but it's like, who are the people whom God has put before me? How can I, in my Christian vocations, serve them, do good work, help my neighbor? That's what it means to be a quiet saint. And again, it's in these small and easy to overlook sorts of ways, but we can have confidence that those little things make a big difference because of the fact that, back to the message of the sermon, Jesus is risen from the dead.

19:40 And in him, our labor is not in vain. And so you mentioned how he helps raise some money for a young mother in need. And was that, it was a woman in your congregation? Tell us about how that came about. It wasn't a woman from our congregation. It was somebody from the community. And actually, Freddie was on his way to church. And as he was driving down the highway, he saw her walking. And he stopped and said, hey, why are you walking? Where are you going? And she explained how she was trying to get to work, but didn't have a ride to get there. And so that's where it sprang out of. It was just an attentiveness to the outsiders. And that too goes along with that quiet ambition and attentiveness to the outsiders, to those who are in need, people in our community who may or may not know the Lord. And when you have that mindset, you start to recognize all sorts of opportunities for service and compassion that abound each and every day. Paul tells us in that first Thessalonians passage, tend to your own affairs, mind your own business. That doesn't mean just zeroing in and not paying attention to what's around you, but see all the opportunities within that realm. No, that's a great question because there is a way of understanding that. And like you say, the way that colloquially or in the culture, people say, mind your own business, or sometimes my kids, the siblings might fight with one another. Hey, mind your own business. Mind your beeswax. Yeah, Yeah, that's right. And that's not what Paul's talking about here. Rather, it's a sense of slotting into what's your business? What's the good work that God has put before you?

21:08 Ephesians 2.10 says that God has prepared good works in advance for us to walk into. That's the business that we ought to attend to. But on the flip side, let God do his business. So God is the one who's in the business of redeeming and reconciling the world to himself. He's the one who finally is the judge, and he's the one whom we can entrust our cares and concerns and anxieties to, rather than what we so often see in our world today, people taking to the Internet or even sadly taking into their communities, taking things into their own hands that are beyond their own business through anger and through frustration and even through violence, rather than saying, you know what? God has given me good work, good business to tend to myself. I'll let him take care of his own business. You see someone on the side of the road on your way to church, can you help? Is there something small? That's right. And you think of the parable of the Good Samaritan and how that could factor into it. Because the first two characters who come through, you can imagine them saying, hey, listen.

22:07 It's not my business. It's not my business. Whereas then finally the Samaritan sees, no, actually, God has put somebody in my path here, as the Lord is telling us the story. This is what it looks like to be a good neighbor, to attend to those who are there in need right before you. In the subtitle of the book, you mentioned there's this restlessness or this temptation to live a clamorous or noisy ambition. Why is this wisdom from 1 Thessalonians so helpful today? To tie it back to our Lord's resurrection, if Jesus is risen from the dead, then we know that our lives matter. matter. Because on the last day, he will raise us from the grave as well. And our lives are not in vain. There's a lot of restlessness that can happen if we think that it's up to us. It depends on us to make our lives matter. If we need to make a difference, if we need to make a mark by doing grand gestures, big things, then we're naturally going to fall into that kind of restlessness.

23:06 Or on the flip side, people might tap out entirely and say, the world is too big. I'm so small. How could I possibly make a difference? And you see a lot of this today too, folks just resigning from life. You hear about things like quiet quitting or the great resignation, the stuff that's happened in the last five years. I think that that is indicative of people who are just kind of resigning. So whether it's through resignation or restlessness, those are two answers to this question of how can I be confident that my little life makes a difference? For us as Christians, because we know that Jesus has risen from the dead and we are joined to him by faith, then we can have that confidence that actually every little thing matters. And then that gives us the assurance in our vocations, in our day-to-day life, to attend to the little and the last and the overlooked and the lost and know that he is going to use that for the benefit of his kingdom, for the blessing of the world. Thank you for joining us today.

24:03 If you're interested, the book, it's titled The Quiet Ambition. It's going to come out in a week or so by Pastor Ryan Tenetti. Thanks. Thank you. The Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. With joy will you draw waters from the bowels of salvation. And you will say in that day Give thanks to the Lord Call upon his name Reclone his tears among our peoples Proclaim that his name is exalted O Lord God is my slave and my son, and he has become my salvation.

25:16 Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let his be made known in all the earth. Shout and sing for joy, O impermanence of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

25:46 O Lord God is my strength and my song, that we must become my salvation.