Is it just me, or does it seem that this particular political campaign season has gotten rather nasty?  Innuendo, name-calling, half-truths and out-right lies being told about this candidate or that one – it’s more than a little off-putting, isn’t it?  Of course, it’s less important that I am bothered by that than it is that God doesn’t like it.  Nor does he excuse it because “it’s just the way it is” in politics.  The Eighth Commandment is perfectly clear:  “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”  Martin Luther – as he usually did – had the meaning of that dialed in to sharp focus:  “We should fear and love God that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, or give him a bad name, but defend him, speak well of him, and take his words and actions in the kindest possible way.”  Wouldn’t it be awesome if every person who ran for elected office sat down with his or her campaign staff and said, “This is your core value statement for running this campaign.  Policy differences are fair game, but we are NOT going to be breaking the Eighth Commandment.”  I would imagine that campaigns would be more positive in tone , less personal in attacks, and more clearly focused on policy.  But that’s not always what we hear from those candidates, is it?

And that’s not always what we do, either.  It isn’t just presidential candidates who run afoul of the Eight Commandment.  I do, too.  I catch myself repeating things I’ve heard about a candidate when I have no certain knowledge that it is so.  That’s gossip at best and lying at worst.  I hear myself saying some very disrespectful things about those who are leaders, never mind Paul’s injunction regarding my attitude and actions toward those in government:  “Give to everyone what you owe him:  If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”  (Romans 13:7)  Am I only talking about myself here, or does this describe you, too?  Yes, we are a republic and we have a democratic process for electing our leaders, but that does not make the Eight Commandment an elective.  It is still required by God that all people respect it and obey it.

Every day I need to caucus  with my heart and with the Word.  Every day I need to have God call me on this stuff and call me to repentance.  Every day I need to drop the excuses for my sin and the excuses for not doing as God requires and just call it what it is:  sin.  But then I need to caucus with my Savior and hear his reassuring word:  “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord.  ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’”  (Isaiah 1:18) Lent is the perfect time to travel with Jesus to the cross and see where he put that gracious policy of forgiveness into effect. 

“After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2 With a mighty voice he shouted: ‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’”  (Revelation 18:1-2a)

It’s Lent.  The story of Jesus’ passion is rife with people who opposed him, his message, and eventually his Church.  Around the world we see that opposition continue in some horrifying ways. Here in the U.S. we take some heat for what we believe, too.  And it isn’t always from those who openly reject Jesus and his Word.  Sometimes it is from voices who claim to be in the Church but who find fault with those who hold to all of the Bible because it is God’s Word.  This is nothing new, but what’s to become of us who follow Jesus?

When John recorded that vision in the verses above it was in the first century A.D. Babylon had already fallen.  Everyone knew that.  It had happened six centuries earlier.  That mighty kingdom had fallen which once held sway over the fertile crescent, swept over Judah and carried God’s people off into a seventy-year captivity.  She had fallen to the Medes and Persians, to the Greeks and then to the Romans.  Why announce it as if it were news?  It was ancient history. 

And that was precisely Jesus’ point.  Did you notice the certainty of the verb Jesus chose to use in those verses?  Babylon is fallen.  There is no maybe, there is no doubt in God’s rule.  When God acts on behalf of his people, things happen his way.

What a comforting message for us to hear, especially in these times of moral decay at home and geopolitical turmoil abroad.  None of that is easy for the church to cope with, is it?  God’s people in every age have faced formidable forces arrayed against the church.  Sometimes merely vexing and other times vicious, those forces have opposed God’s kingdom, thrown hindrances in the way of the gospel, and discouraged believers.  First century believers living under Roman rule were experiencing some of that, and there was more to come.  But it would not last.  It can’t.  Just as Babylon had fallen, so will all those who oppose God and his gospel.  Kings can take their stand against the Lord and nations can rage against the gospel, but when all is said and done their opposition will be in vain.  That is God’s promise.  If the gates of hell itself will not prevail against his church, what can mere human forces do against it?  Trust that the same God who loved you so much that he sent his Son into the world to be your Champion and Victor over sin, death and the devil still rules the world.  The God of grace is still the Lord of history.  Luther had it exactly right when he said, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times. This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and with all creatures.” (LW, Vol. 35, pp. 370-31)

Dear Lord, rule over the nations for the benefit of your church.  Amen.

This coming Sunday is Valentine’s Day.   Valentine card sales are up.  If you’ll be buying one, don’t wait too long – the selection gets a bit thin by the weekend.  Flower sales will be through the roof by the end of the week, but don’t buy those too soon or they will be past their prime by the end of the week.  Apparently, this day is an economic stimulus.  I found a graphic that indicated how much Americans spent on Valentine’s Day in 2012.  Given that the economy was not great in 2012, I can’t imagine that that graphic would look much different today.

And what is at the heart of this day?  Love, of course.  I am a bit of romantic, so I am going to assume that the expressions of love on Valentine’s Day are all genuine.  We talk about love in so many strange ways: we talk about finding it and losing it, about falling into it and falling out of it, about looking for it in all the wrong places, and about making it.  We love pizza, we love our friends, we love our motorcycle, and we love our spouses.  In English, one word covers a lot of territory, doesn’t it?   No wonder we get so confused by love.  But I know a thing or two about the nature of love, and some of it I learned from the ancient Greeks.  They liked precision in language.   That’s why they had different words for different kinds of love.  There was one word for the love that is given because it is an obligation – like with family.  It’s like the old saying goes, “You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family.”  Those old Greeks used a completely different word for the love that we have for people who enhance our life by bringing something we enjoy to it.  That’s what friends do.  There was yet another word for the physical attraction kind of love. 

But as much as those ancient Greeks knew about love, the apostle Paul found it necessary to explain another kind, and used still another Greek word to do it.  We find one of the best-known definitions of that love in 1 Corinthians 13:  4 ”Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  8 Love never fails.”  That’s the very same word and definition Paul used when he tells husbands to love their wives, when Jesus tells all of us to love our enemies, and when the Scriptures tell Christians to love each other.  It is an other-focused, intentional, and active love that seeks the benefit of the other without regard for whether or not it is deserved.  Where did Paul get that idea?

He got from Jesus himself.  He understood that those words in 1 Corinthians will mean nothing to our model if we don’t hear them first as a beautifully accurate description of God’s love for us in Christ.  Every thing he said in those verses I quoted above describe the way God loves us because of Jesus, in Jesus, and through Jesus.  Paul clearly understood that, because he also wrote this:  “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  (Romans 5:8).  Jesus did not die for us because he was obligated to do that because we were God’s children by birth.  We weren’t and we never could have been without Jesus redeeming us first.  Jesus did not die for us because there was something about us that he just couldn’t live without.  We were sinners – every one of us.  Physical attraction had nothing to do with it, either.  Jesus died for us because he wanted to and because his Father wanted him to.  He died for us because he loved with us with a hold-nothing-back and whatever-it-takes kind of love of the highest order.  He died for us because God knew the only way we would ever be qualified to be in his family and in his heaven would be if all that disqualifies us was washed way with Jesus’ blood and all that qualifies us was supplied by Jesus’ perfect obedience to God as our substitute.  And so he loved us by giving his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

That love came to earth at Bethlehem and came to its highest expression at Calvary.  From that perspective, we might consider the season of lent culminating on Good Friday as the ultimate valentine.  Want to give someone you love the best Valentine’s Day gift ever?  Get to know Jesus better.  If you do, you will not only learn how to love better, you will also find the strength only God gives to love more like him.