The silence of Joe’s empty apartment was suffocating, amplifying the question that had plagued him for years. Does God truly exist? At 55-years-old, he thought he would have a clearer answer by now, but each night as he lay alone with his thoughts, doubt crept in like a persistent itch. In this moment, Joe couldn’t decide which was scarier—the idea of a higher power or the possibility of being completely alone in the universe. He supposed that’s why so many people opt out for aliens when they discount God’s existence.
Lost in his contemplation, Joe rises from his chair and walks toward the kitchen, craving the solace of a late-night snack. Distracted by his thoughts, he misjudges the distance and smashes his pinky toe hard against the wooden leg of the couch.
Pain shoots up his foot as he curses loudly, “Jesus Christ!”
“Yes, Joe?” a calm voice answers from behind him.
Joe spins around, eyes wide with shock. There, standing casually in his living room, is Jesus. His presence radiates an indescribable peace, yet His eyes hold a deep, knowing gaze.
Joe’s mind races, struggling to comprehend what he’s seeing. “You’re real?” he finally stammers.
Jesus grins gently, “As real as that pain in your toe.”
Joe blinks, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Why are You here?”
Jesus spreads His arms, as if inviting him. “You invoked My name, did you not?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean it!”
“It sure sounded like you did.”
After a moment’s pause, Jesus says, “What can I do for you?”
Joe hesitates. Joe hesitates. He had always been a firm believer in the idea that seeing is believing, but as he stood there witnessing this unbelievable situation unfold before his eyes, he couldn’t help but question everything he thought he knew. A part of him wanted to accept it as reality, but another part refused to believe what was happening. It was a conflicted battle within his mind, leaving him unsure and uncertain of how to react.
“Can I ask You a few questions?” he asks.
Jesus nods. “Ask away, Joe.”
With a deep breath, Joe plunges headfirst into the inner turmoil he has always enjoyed stirring up among Christians online.
“If You’re so good,” he says with an accusatory tone, “why is there suffering and evil? Either You can stop it but You won’t, so You’re really just evil. Or You can’t, so You’re not really all-powerful.”
Jesus looks amused, though not unkindly. “Because I care for you. But there’s a problem, Joe.”
“Um, what is it?”
“Mankind chose the devil over Me. You do too. Every time you choose greed, anger, envy, hatred, and other vices, you choose that vile serpent as your taskmaster. Thus, you fell into the bondage of your own corruption. You’ve seen it in the world, even in yourself. What do you suppose a king has the right to do when his subjects rebel against him and destroy everything he’s built?”
“Destroy them?”
“Yes, but that is not what I have chosen to do, for I am merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Joe says with vexation.
“You want Me to destroy all evil. I despise it too, and the day will come when I do destroy it, for I am coming soon. Yet evil also presents a problem because it cannot dwell in the fullness of My majesty, so I took on human flesh so you would not perish in My presence. If I destroyed all evil right now, you would be destroyed too, but I relent because My desire is not that you should perish but that you live and have eternal life. Evil, and therefore you, persist because of My mercy. By asking Me to destroy all evil, You are asking for your own destruction as well, yet I relent a little longer because I am merciful and longsuffering.”
Joe frowns, shaking his head. “I’m not evil! I’m a good person!”
Jesus’ eyes twinkle with a mix of challenge and compassion. “Do good people steal baseball cards?”
Joe’s face pales as a long-buried memory materializes. He had stolen baseball cards from Target when he was eight, cleverly holding on to a packet while perusing the store for a few minutes, then going into the bathroom to open them and keep the contents.
“I was eight!” he retorts. “Kids are innocent!”
“But you knew even then that it was wrong,” Jesus contests.
“I was innocent,” Joe repeats stupidly, desperation creeping into his voice.
Jesus’ tone is firm but sorrowful. “Innocent people don’t die.”
Joe feels the ground shift beneath his feet. “Okay, so I may have done some bad things, but I always try to do good to make up for it.”
Jesus’ gaze seems to pierce through him. “Does a good man have sex with multiple women and then ghost them?”
Joe’s fear grows, his defenses crumbling. “I’ve… still, I think I do more good than I do evil, so You can’t necessarily say I’m an evil person.”
With a stern sadness, Jesus says, “Does a good person drive drunk and run over a child playing in the street?”
This question strikes Joe like a blow to the gut. He collapses to his knees, his façade of righteousness shattered. How does He know these things? he wonders. He’s God, of course. He knows everything. The hit-and-run was 25 years ago. He served his 15-year sentence. He even gave up drinking. He didn’t need AA meetings; it was easy for him to give it up because of his guilt.
Neither did he need “a higher power,” or so he thought, because the guilt was still eating at him all these years. It was a festering wound that had never fully healed—a heavy beast that clung to his conscience with sharp claws, relentless and unforgiving.
As the weight of this guilt finally becomes too much for him to bear, all he can do is beg, “Have mercy on me.”
Jesus moves closer to him and places His hand gently on his head. “I forgive you all your sins.”
When Joe looks up, Jesus is gone. He’s alone, but at the same time he no longer feels alone as a profound sense of peace lingers.
The following Sunday, Joe walks into Holy Spirit Lutheran Church. As he steps into the sanctuary, the overpowering beauty of stained-glass windows and intricately carved wooden pews and altar overwhelm him. The air is heavy with the scent of incense, the members sitting sporadically throughout the sanctuary. The sound of the hymns from the organ and the assembly’s voice fill him with a sense of tranquility.
As a church member helps guide him through their hymnal, his heart is deeply struck by one of the hymns they sang:
O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ;
O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
that takest away the sin of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Thou that takest away the sin of the world,
receive our prayer.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father,
have mercy upon us.
For Thou only art holy;
Thou only art the Lord.
Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost,
art most high in the glory of God the Father.
Amen.
Tears flood his eyes, blurring his vision, yet everything becomes so clear to him. My debt has been paid. He has deposited His righteousness into my heart’s account. I was deeply in the red, but He has paid the price in full.
After the service, the same member who helped him with the hymnal introduces him to Pastor Steve.
“It’s good to see a new face here,” Pastor Steve says as he shakes his hand.
“Thanks,” Joe responds shyly. “Uh, I don’t know exactly how to go about this, but I recently had this… encounter with Jesus. I’ve driven by your church countless times, so I thought I’d see what it was like. The service was… beautiful. I’ve never heard anything like it—the organ, the chanting, the hymns, and what you said in your sermon about Baptism. Everything sounds so different than everything else in the world that I found it extremely relieving. I was wondering if I could maybe become a member here?”
Pastor Steve gives him a thoughtful smile. “Definitely. Before we do that, however, we have this little process called catechesis where I take you through the Small Catechism so you understand what we believe before you join. We can meet one-on-one for private catechesis if that interests you.”
“Yeah,” Joe says with excitement.
Pastor Steve pulls out his wallet and gives him a business card. “Just call the office and my secretary will let you know what times I’m available.”
Pastor Steve started taking Joe through the Small Catechism the following week, beginning with the Ten Commandments—that they teach us how to love God and neighbor; the Apostles’ Creed the second week, where we confess who God is; and the Lord’s Prayer the third week, where Jesus teaches us how to pray.
As Joe enters his fourth week of catechesis, he begins to grasp the concept of the sacrament of Baptism. “So, what this is saying is that it’s not the water, per se, that gives me forgiveness of sins and makes me a child of God, but the Word of God?”
“Yes,” Pastor Steve says. “The same Word of God that created everything simply by speaking is the same Word of God that calls you His own when you are baptized.”
“I don’t want to sound rude, but that sounds a bit like magic.”
Pastor Steve laughs. “Magic, no. Miraculous, yes.”
Two weeks later, when discussing the Lord’s Supper, Joe says, “So, the benefits of the eating and drinking—that the bread and wine actually become Jesus’ body and blood and they forgive my sins—is essentially the same as Baptism? That it’s the power of Christ’s Word that makes them do what He says it does?”
“Precisely,” Pastor Steve answers. “We don’t claim to understand how this happens with fancy words like transubstantiation or even consubstantiation, which you’ll learn about later. We simply confess that Jesus does what He says. Again, just like Baptism, when God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, so when Jesus says, ‘This is My body, this is My blood,’ it becomes His body and blood. How? I dunno. How did God create the universe by speaking?”
Joe leans back in his chair in Pastor Steve’s office. “You know, that’s… surprisingly easy to understand, which just makes it so much more…”
“Comforting?” Pastor Steve suggests.
“Yeah. But there’s something I don’t quite get. If I can ask God to forgive my sins just by praying to Him, why do I need Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Confession? Why the redundancy? Why give us three sacraments rather than keeping it simple by just simply leaving it at prayer?”
Pastor Steve grins and folds his hands in his lap. “That’s a good question. The truth is, we don’t know why Christ gave us multiple ways to receive His forgiveness. All we know is that Christ instituted the sacraments for the forgiveness of sins, so we administer them because Christ commanded them, and they distribute His grace. I like to call it God’s superfluous grace. According to His rich mercy, God was not content to just leave us with one Means of Grace.”
“Superfluous grace. I like that.”
“The other thing is,” Pastor Steve continues, “what do you do when your conscience works against you? Can you receive God’s forgiveness simply by asking? Of course! But what do you do when you begin to feel like you’re not forgiven? When the devil whispers in your conscience that God couldn’t possibly forgive you for that sin, or brings you to question if you really meant it when you repented?”
Joe remains silent, not sure how to answer.
“That’s why the sacraments are so wonderful,” Pastor Steve answers for him. “God is omniscient, right? He knows the weakness of our conscience and how the devil likes to use it against us. Satan is insidious like that. So, knowing this, I think Christ instituted the sacraments so we can have the corporeal certainty that He has done what He said He’s done—that when you feel like you’re not forgiven, you literally taste the Lord’s sweet and savory forgiveness with your own tongue; that when you feel like God can’t or won’t forgive you, you remember God’s Word physically washed over you for the redemption of your sins (as an adult, you will have the advantage of being able to recall that memory); and when you feel like your sin is too great for Jesus to forgive, you hear His words of forgiveness in your physical ears in Confession and Absolution.”
This brings Joe to remember what Jesus said to him that night, “I forgive you all your sins.”
“So, you might not feel forgiven,” Pastor Steve was finishing, “but you know it doesn’t matter because you literally ingested Christ’s forgiveness, you were washed in His purity, and you’ve heard it with your own ears.”
Suddenly, Joe feels elated. “Then why wait? I want to be baptized!”
The following Sunday, Joe stands with his head over the church’s baptismal font, Pastor Steve pouring water over his head in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A profound transformation occurs in him. The weight of his past is lifted—like a heavy yoke was lifted from his shoulders, replaced by a light and easy yoke called grace.
Joe stands upright, a member of Christ’s Church, his heart filled with peace that surpasses all understanding. His journey of faith begins, and he knows he will never walk it alone in the communion of the saints with Christ at his right hand.
The Lutheran Column 