Parish sermons

Sermon May 31 2009

2009-09-15T15:05:00.000-07:00

Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to your from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Last week, I went to the Memorial Day parade and I, along with many others was given a little American flag. This allowed us to wave the flag and show the pride we feel as Americans. We have an inherent desire to be able to show something for ourselves,; whether it’s having something to be able to show for who we are, or where we are from or what we have accomplished or just about any other aspect in our lives, we embrace the opportunity to be able to show something for ourselves.
And I think part of this is because we just like to be able to express ourselves visually. And that’s why we wave flags at parades, or why we might pick one certain colored car over another, or why we wear t-shirts with writing on them or hats with the logo for our favorite tractor company or any other number of ways that we find to express ourselves. But I think another reason for this is that it’s just not in our nature to take people at their word. You see, this goes beyond a need to express ourselves, it’s also reflective of an inherent need we have to live by sight and not by faith. How many times have you uttered the expression “I’ll believe it when I see it.”?
We need college degrees so we can show employers that indeed we did graduate. We need receipts so we can show that we are the ones who bought some particular piece of merchandise. We need driver’s licenses so we can show that we are capable of driving. Through our inherently self-serving and sinful natures we have created an environment where our first instinct is simply not to trust each other, not to take each other at our word.
And like I said, this can all be traced down to our inherent desire to live by sight and not by faith. And this goes back to the fall when the Serpent said to Eve “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And then it says that when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes.. then she partook of it.
This desire to live by sight is one of the desires that the devil appealed to when presenting Eve with the very temptation that would bring about the fall of humanity. And it’s because our desire to live by sight is so vulnerable to the insidious ploys of sin and the devil that Paul writes in 2 Corinthians that we walk by faith and not by sight.
To live entirely by sight is ultimately to live without hope. For Paul writes in the lesson from Romans this morning that we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? Following Paul’s words we are assured through this same lesson that we can hope for what we do not see in patience.
To live entirely by sight is to live in such a way that you are placing your hope in the futility of this world. This world that we see around us, no matter how appealing it might appear at times, ultimately offers only inward groaning. It offers only futility. It offers only bondage to sin and the devil. And the devil is good at making all of that seem pretty enticing. The devil is good at making that which opposes the perfect and divine and just will of God, seem normal and acceptable, and tolerant, which of course is a virtue praised perhaps more than any other in this temporary world that we live in and see every day.
But as appealing as sin and the devil may appear to be able to make this world seem to be, it will all prove to be only temporary and futile when our Lord Jesus, whose Word we can take returns as He has promised to. When the old is removed and behold all things have been made new, including us, then this old world will be exposed as being what it is; temporary. Those who lived by sight will see all that they placed their hope in as they lived by sight, gone.
And those of us who walk by faith will see that the suffering and pain and hopelessness that this world offer will also disappear; and in light of the glorious eternity that awaits those of us who walk by faith in Christ Jesus, we will realize that everything that we experience in this imperfect and sinful world is but an instant, or a season as some like to say.
And so we wait with patience for the promised return of Christ. We cling to the hope that Paul speaks of. For we as baptized children of God have something much greater and much more glorious than anything that we might be able to see in this temporary, broken and sinful world. We have the pledge of an eternal future and the promised fulfillment of a great and glorious kingdom where all things will be made new.
And we know that we can trust this pledge because it comes from Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God-Who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered the burden of our sin which He took upon Himself and laid down His life for us, paying the penalty for our sin-so that we might be reconciled to God. We know that we can trust this pledge because it comes from Christ Jesus who was sent to us by His Father who raised Christ Jesus from the grave for our salvation.
But still, as they did in the Garden with Adam and Eve sin and the devil will attack and tempt you, trying to tempt you to live by sight. Sin and the devil will try to convict and condemn you to despair. Sin and the devil will try to convince you that this world with all it’s brokenness and despair that you see is all there is. Or perhaps they will take a more insidious route, trying to convince you that you can fashion a god of your own design-trying to convince you that you can live by sight and that you can find God in nature.
You might be tempted to join the ranks of those who say that they find God when they look at the Grand canyon or a sunset or when they take nature-walks. And certainly in nature we see a reflection of God’s creative power, but in nature we also see a reflection of God’s destructive power via disease and storms, and ultimately we are left with the image of a cruel and uncaring God. And so knowing that we needed more than a glimpse and a reflection, God sent His Son not only to show God’s love for us, but to literally be that love for us by laying down His life for us-doing away with the sins of all those who would believe upon Him.
And although He did return to sit at the right-hand of the Father Who sent Him, Christ Jesus sends the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit Who comes doing nothing other than testifying of the One who sent Him-Christ Jesus. This is what the Holy Spirit has been doing since that first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit arrived and testified about God’s deeds of power.
It’s true that at Pentecost, there were people who were speaking in languages they themselves did not understand, but that was so people who spoke those languages could understand. They were not speaking some language that nobody could understand, but the languages that was spoken by all those around them so they could understand clearly the proclamation of God’s deeds of great power-so that they might call on the name of the Lord and be saved.
And that is the work He continues to do today, testifying to God’s great deeds of power by testifying of Christ; by proclaiming that through the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, God has reconciled repentant sinners to Himself. And conversely, He will convict those of the world who insist on living by sight by proving them wrong about sin, because they do not believe in Him.
And without the Holy Spirit, our actions can never displease us. Without the Holy Spirit we can’t tell when we’re living by sight. Without the Holy Spirit we would remain in sin and condemnation. And since Christ has borne the penalty of all the sins of those who believe upon Him, all condemnation comes down to unbelief.
But as He is doing right now through the Words of my mouth, the Spirit of truth comes and testifies of Christ. As He will do in a few minutes, the Holy Spirit will come to you once again in the body and blood of Christ in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, and testify to the sacrifice Christ Jesus made on the cross for you, to do away with your sin. And He does all of this to bring you to faith so that you might call on the name of the Lord and be saved, and to continually and repeatedly time after time as you endure the attacks of sin and the devil, keep you in that faith and preserve you in that faith, so that you will not live by sight but continue to walk in faith. And as you leave here, cleansed of your sin, walking in faith in Christ, remember the Holy Spirit is working through you to testify of Christ to your neighbor-that they might call upon the name of the Lord
Amen

Sermon May 24, 2009

2009-09-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

Seventh Sunday of Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
What are the apostles thinking in the lesson from Acts this morning? I mean here they are, presented with the task of having to select the successor for Judas. This is no insignificant task. They are selecting someone who would go down in history as one of the founding apostles of the historic Christian church.
And how do they go about this task?? They pray and then they cast lots. Casting lots would be similar to flipping a coin, except it would be done with stones. What is important to recognize is that, from a worldly vantage point it would have the appearance of being left totally to chance. It would be a decision that had the appearance of being totally impartial; not affected by politics or nepotism or any type of favoritism.
What were they thinking? How could the apostles possibly think that they could have made a sound decision of such magnitude simply by casting lots and praying?? What about forming a call-committee?? Didn’t they want to read their paperwork?? Certainly there should have been some synodical candidacy process that Joseph and Matthias should have been expected to go through. And when were they going to take it to a congregational vote?? Certainly they couldn’t have been expected to make any decisions as a church without voting on them-without seeking a consensus.
I am sure that most of you have figured by now that I am being extremely sarcastic. I think that the way that the apostles chose to make their decision speaks a great deal of the faith that had been created in them. I think the fact that they essentially put it all entirely in God’s hands shows that they had finally begun to understand the magnitude of what God was doing in His Son Christ Jesus. They finally began to understand that this One whom they had followed for so long, Who had laid down His life for them, was and is the eternal Son of God given to them by God the Father.
They realized that everything that they had witnessed in the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus testified to the fact that not only had Christ been given to God’s people by the Father but that God’s people had been given to Christ Jesus by God the Father. For as we read in the Gospel lesson this morning, as disciples of Christ we belong to God the Father and God the Father gave us to Chris Jesus. We still belong to God the Father, but we also belong to Christ Jesus. And the name of Christ Jesus, and what He has done for us taking upon Himself all of our sin and bearing the penalty of that sin and bringing us salvation through His resurrection, is how God protects us from the attacks of sin, death and the devil that come through the world.
And so the apostles relied on no worldly measures whatsoever when deciding on who should replace Judas. They laid out a simple criteria for who was qualified; that it be someone who was with them and accompanied them during all the time that Christ Jesus was with them, in other words someone who saw and heard the same from Christ Jesus that all the other apostles had. And based on that criteria, the field is narrowed down to two men. And then they put it entirely into God’s hands by going to Him in prayer and casting lots. And thus a pattern is set for us.
Now don’t get me wrong. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with utilizing the gifts and talents and resources that God has made available to us in the world around us. Quite to the contrary, I believe that God blesses people with talent and intelligence in all sorts of areas such as science and medicine and technology for the benefit of our daily lives. But that has to do with this world and the kingdom of this world.
The apostles knew that the decision that they had to make was much bigger than themselves. They knew that the decision that they had to make was much bigger than the kingdom of the world. For they knew that the decision of who should replace Judas had to do with the continued coming forth of the Kingdom of God. They knew that the decision they had to make had to do with the continued proclamation of the promise of forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ Jesus and thus the continued coming forth of the eternal Kingdom of Christ. And so even though they were able to narrow down the choices to two men who believed in the Son of God and thus had the testimony of God in their hearts, the apostles still left the choice up to God.
I think we can look at the apostles making this decision through prayer and casting lots not as irresponsible or reckless, but as acting totally and completely in faith. They were living by faith in Christ and not by sight of the world. And so a pattern and an example is set for us. For you see, even though Judas’ betrayal was propheceid, he was still acting according to his own will.
All of the disciples messed up to be sure. But Judas was never able to realize the magnitude of what he had witnessed in the life and death of Christ Jesus. He acted totally and completely by sight, totally and completely according to the wisdom of the world. He was always worried about money and appearances. Judas was never quite able to see that Christ Jesus was bringing forth an eternal Kingdom much bigger and grander than the one he lived in. And so Judas was never able to move beyond the wisdom of the world into faith in Christ.
And so it is with us. We are every bit as weak as Judas. And so we too struggle with faith. We too give in to the temptation to cling to the wisdom of the world rather than faith in the eternal Word of our Lord. In the methods they chose to select Matthias as Judas’ replacement the apostles have given us a foolproof pattern that, by the grace of God, can be followed when making decisions relating to our faith.
And the pattern is simple, go to God’s Word and go to prayer. But Jesus says something else regarding us His disciples. In the Gospel lesson He says that He has given us His Word and the world has hated us, because we don’t belong to the world. And we don’t. We belong to Christ Jesus and He belongs to us.
But we just can’t handle that the world hates us. We like that Jesus loves us and forgives us and we like that that means that we will be in His eternal kingdom. But we’re not in His eternal kingdom yet. We’re in the world. And the world hates us because of Christ Jesus. The world hates us because we proclaim Christ Jesus as the way the truth and the life and that nobody gets to the Father except through Him. And we don’t like to be hated. Do we?
So we try to convince ourselves that we can have it both ways; that we can belong to Christ and the world at the same time. And so we speak of Jesus saying to those who were about to stone the adulterous woman to death “Let He who is without sin cast the first stone.” But we conveniently forget what soon after that Jesus says to the adulterous woman herself-“Go forth and sin no more.”
Or we love the beatitudes when Jesus speaks of the meek inheriting the earth or God blessing the peacemakers, but we conveniently forget what Jesus says not long after that when He says that looking with lust upon someone is the same as adultery or that getting angry with your brother is the same as murder.
But you see this is nothing but the same living by sight foolishness that led to Judas’ downfall. This is the same foolishness that leads to our arrogantly thinking that we can control the Word of God or the law of God. This is the same foolishness that leads to our arrogantly thinking that we can gain greater insight into God’s Word, by seeking consensus on it or voting on it, rather than actually going to God’s Word.
You see the difference between Peter and Judas, who’s replacement selection Peter was overseeing was not that Judas was a sinner and Peter wasn’t. Far from it, Peter betrayed Jesus also; three times in fact. The difference was that Peter recognized that Jesus was who He said He was and that His coming marked the coming of the eternal Kingdom of God. If Judas had been aware of that He might have responded the same way to his betrayal that Peter did to his. He might have repented and believed upon the Lord Jesus. But right to the end Judas clung to the wisdom of the world, and it led to his suicide. And ultimately this is what trying to belong to the world and Christ at the same time leads to-death.
But I have good news. In the waters of baptism, you have been given to Christ and He has been given to you. He has taken your sin and paid the price for it, and you have been given His eternal righteousness and the promise of eternal life in His kingdom. It’s a done deal. You don’t have to worry about the world hating you. You have been freed to share the Word of Christ with your neighbor. And some will hate you for it, but you need not worry. For where there is a Judas who can’t let go of his love of the world, there might just be a Peter or a Matthias waiting to hear God’s glorious call to repentance and forgiveness of sin in Christ Jesus.
Amen

Sermon Sunday May 17 2009

2009-05-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

Sixth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
I am here this morning to tell you nothing less than that you have been invaded. That’s right, as children of God, you have been invaded. You see, not only is God not a respecter of persons, but He is not a respecter of personal boundaries or personal space, and certainly not a respecter of personal schedules and desires.
And so maybe you’re wondering when all this happened. Maybe you’re wondering how you could have missed such a momentous event as having been invaded. Were you sleeping?? Did it happen in your sleep? Well you might have been. You see what I am referring to of course is your baptism.
Your baptism, as grandiose and pious and joyous, and as focused on you as it might have seemed to be, as you were no doubt all dudded up in your little white baptism outfit; your baptism was nothing less than you having been invaded by Christ Jesus. For in our second lesson for this morning, Christ Jesus is described as coming by water and blood and that in the midst of this, the Spirit is the One that testifies.
The Spirit is the One who testifies in the Word that comes to you in baptism in conjunction with the Water. When you were invaded upon in baptism, you were invaded upon by the Spirit in the Word being proclaimed over you, and that Spirit is truth. And that Spirit came with a Word from the One who Sent Him-the same One who is no respecter of boundaries of time, space, and personal comfort. He doesn’t even wait for you to invite Him or ask Him into your heart or accept Him as your personal Savior. He comes invading you in the waters of baptism.
And the Word of your invader Christ Jesus that was proclaimed over you that you know you can believe because it was brought not simply by a Spirit of truth, but by the Spirit who is defined as truth in itself; this Word is simply that you belong to this invader-Christ Jesus. This Word is that as the Father loves you, so Christ Jesus has loved you. This Word that was proclaimed over you in your baptism means that the cleansing you received in baptism was not merely a sign or not merely an external cleansing, but a purification from the inward pollution that comes from your having been born into sin, freeing you from an evil conscience, bringing you forgiveness of sin and a good conscience.
And this forgiveness of sin that you receive in the invasion that took place at your baptism is brought forth not through anything that you brought to baptism but through the innocent suffering and death of Christ Jesus who took upon Himself all of your sin. In fact this One who had no sin, Christ Jesus, literally became sin on the cross for you. He had to invade you so that He could take upon Himself all of your sin. And the blood that He shed on the cross He shed for you and it is that blood that frees you from sin, death, and the devil.
This is why John writes in our second lesson for this morning that Christ Jesus has come by water and blood-not any blood mind you, but the holy and precious blood of Christ Jesus. You see the Word of promise that was proclaimed over you at your baptism is the very means by which Christ reigns in the world. This Word imparts to you the effective power of the blood of Christ shed on the cross for you. It literally brings you the forgiveness of your sin. In your baptism you experienced nothing short of being cleansed by the blood of Christ.
But Christ Jesus didn’t stop there because, as we read in 1st Peter 3:21, baptism saves you not as a removal of dirt from your body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Christ Jesus. What this means is that Christ Jesus did not stop at cleansing you in baptism, but now, knowing that you have been cleansed He is at the right hand of His Father appealing to Him on your behalf.
This passage is not, as some are prone to suggest, referring to a human appeal to God, which is dependent upon our sincerity- but rather Christ Jesus declaring to His Father that He has done what He was sent to do in your baptism; that He has cleansed you of your sin and that you have been joined with Christ in a death like His, having put to death the sinful old creature in you, so that you would certainly be joined with Christ in a resurrection like His-having been brought forth as a new creation in Christ-born of God.
So maybe you’re thinking, “Wait a minute. I didn’t grow up Lutheran or in one of these other traditions where baptism plays such a big part. I’ve never even been baptized. Have I somehow been spared from this invasion?” Oh no, for as I said earlier, Christ reigns on earth through the preaching of His Word. The water in baptism is dependent upon this Word, but the Word in baptism is not dependent upon the water.
What this means is that this invasion continues right now through the words of my mouth. Every time the Holy Spirit brings forth the Gospel through the words of a broken and sinful preacher in your midst for you to hear, you are subject to this same invasion. For this is what we see in the first lesson for today from Acts. Peter spoke and the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the Word. Peter realized that the Holy Spirit had come upon them when he saw them speaking in tongues.
Now the point is not that they spoke in tongues. And of course neither is that insignificant. But what the fact that these gentiles had begun speaking in tongues showed to Peter is that the Word that he had proclaimed to these gentiles had created faith in them. And so in light of this all he could say was “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
And so I say to you if you have never been baptized, as you are confronted with the very Word of Christ which creates faith in the minds and hearts of repentant hearers “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing you?” You are being invaded right now by Christ Jesus through the Word that creates faith. Faith is being created, nurtured and sustained in you right now.
And you see none of this is your doing, for as we read in the Gospel lesson for this morning you did not choose Christ Jesus but rather He chose you. And because He chose you, He invades you through His Word. He invades you through His sacraments. He invades you through the Body of Christ. He invades you so that He can cleanse you of all your sin and claim you as His own.
And so what are you to do in the face of this invasion that is taking place? Surrender. Wave the white flag. Let go of all of your self-deluded attempts to climb to God on your own terms. Let the Word of Christ do what it does; create faith in you, cleanse you, bring you the forgiveness of sin, making of you a new creation born of God.
For as John writes “….whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.” Your faith in this One who gave all of Himself for you conquers the world. The world is not conquered through your personal prosperity, or your piety or your good works. The world is conquered through the faith that is created in you by the invading Christ Jesus.
Now, make no mistake about it, sin, death, and the devil are not going to take this lying down. They will continue to attack the faith that attacks and destroys them. And so you will continue to struggle with sin and despair. There will be misfortune. There will be doubt. There will be uncertainty. There will be dysfunctional relationships. There will be struggles in your relationships. There will be health problems and unhealthy habits. And death, there will be death. And in the midst of all this sin, death and the devil will continue their assaults on the faith that conquers them.
And Christ Jesus knows that on your own you are defenseless to these attacks from sin, death and the devil. So for this reason He continues to invade you in Word and sacrament creating, nurturing and sustaining in you the faith that conquers sin, death and the devil. In a few minutes you will come forward and receive once again the body and blood of your Lord Jesus in the bread and the wine. You will receive the good gifts of faith and forgiveness, and once again the world, sin, death and the devil will be conquered. And you will once again be made a conqueror so that you can go forth from here and share with your neighbor the forgiveness of your sins and the faith that has been created in you through God’s Word so that the invasion will continue through you.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday May 10 2009

2009-05-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

Fifth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The great Lutheran theologian Francis Pieper once wrote that there are only two religions in the world; religion of the Gospel and religion of the law. And between these two groups there really is no common understanding of the word ‘religion.’
We speak of religion today as if there really isn’t that big a difference between various religions, and that ultimately it doesn’t really matter what religion we ascribe to. But when you break religions down to religion of the Gospel and religion of the law and you take a good, honest, objective look at scripture, then you would see that, when it comes to our very salvation, to being reconciled to God, when it comes to the forgiveness of our sin-God’s Word tells us otherwise. God’s Word tells us that it does matter.
For you see, what religion means to those who ascribe to religion of law is completely different from what it means to those who ascribe to religion of the Gospel. Those who ascribe to religion of law do not really know the Gospel, but do have some knowledge of the law, for the law is written on all of our hearts. So for them, religion is simply the means for humanity to appease God through their own best-efforts-be it good works, worship, social-justice causes, moralism or whatever.
But religion of the Gospel is completely different from religion of the law. For those who ascribe to religion of the Gospel-religion is simply this-faith in the Gospel. It is not a vague, nebulous non-descript faith that says, “…it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you believe something.” No, religion of the Gospel is simply what it says it is-faith in the Gospel-faith in the glorious promise that through the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been reconciled to God-faith in the promise that Paul writes in Galatians-that we are not justified by works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ and that in that faith we obtain the forgiveness of sins.
And our Lord Jesus comes to us today in the Gospel lesson telling us, quite simply, what it means to be of the religion of the Gospel. For you see the religion of the Gospel has as it’s very origin-the Almighty God, Creator of the universe, and so we know the religion of the Gospel is true and bursting with new-life and God’s promises. Whereas the religion of the law originates with humans, and as such is doomed to failure and ultimately leads only to death and condemnation.
Christ Jesus comes to you in the Gospel lesson this morning telling you that He is the Vine and you are the branches-that you are cleansed by the Word spoken over you in the waters of baptism. He is the Vine who abides in you so that when you abide in Him you will bear fruit, but apart from Him you can do nothing. And so to be of the religion of the Gospel is nothing other than to abide in Christ Jesus as He abides in you so that you will bear fruit.
But the temptation of sin and the devil are still around and still try to lure you back to religion of the law. Religion of the law is what our sinful nature just naturally gravitates us toward. We actually like the religion of the law because it is inherently human-centered. We like it because it gives us the illusion that we are the ones in control. We like religion of the law because we fool ourselves into thinking that it gives us a way to live by sight rather than by faith.
But in spite of our best efforts to make the religion of the law palatable and workable for us, we inevitably end up running into the complete and utter futility of the religion of the law. For to live by this is to abide in oneself and to abide in things of this world, this broken and sinful world. And to put your hope in or abide in anything of this world only leads to despair; be it despair from financial struggles related to job lay-offs or from continued health problems related to Cancer or some other disease that you can’t seem to get a grip of, or maybe problems in your marriage or some of your other relationships or any other struggles that this world throws at you.
When you embrace religion which can be boiled down to nothing more than your efforts to appease God through your good works and receive what you perceive as your due rewards, you are going to be vastly disappointed, and you will fall into despair. And so when things don’t go quite the way you were hoping in your quest to control the law; sin, death and the devil will come in and seek to convince you that all of the struggles that this world throws at you are your fault, or that they are evidence that God has abandoned you, or that your faith must not be strong enough-otherwise you surely wouldn’t be going through these struggles. Or maybe you’ll be left thinking that perhaps God doesn’t exist.
And our Lord Jesus tells us this morning that this can have deadly results for He says that those who do not abide in Him are thrown away like a branch and withers, and that these branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned.
But that is not what you Father in Heaven wants, and so He sends His Son so that you would know He does exist and does love you and does care for you and He has not abandoned you, and He does not want you to be thrown away into the fire and so the Spirit comes to you and tells you again to abide in God’s only Son Christ Jesus. And Christ Jesus Himself has a role in this. He does not leave this up to you, for He promises in this passage that you have been cleansed already by His Word. It’s done.
Not even your faith is your work. For Christ Jesus calls you to abide in Him and He does the very thing that brings forth faith in people-laying down His life for you, and in doing this God shows His love for you, for John writes in the second lesson that it was in that way, through God sending His Son into the world to be the atoning sacrifice for your sins, that God’s love was revealed among us. And this was done so that we might live through Him. And the new life we receive in Him which gives us hope and promise beyond this broken and sinful world, we receive through faith. Ultimately faith is the fruit that He produces in us-and frees us to please God by loving and serving our neighbor.
Christ Jesus wants nothing less for you than for you to abide in Him that He may continue to abide in you, so that your place with Him in His eternal Kingdom will be preserved. And on your own this could not happen. On your own you would continue to wallow in the despair of religion of the law. On your own you are merely lost and condemned under the accusations of sin, death and the devil.
And for this reason, it was absolutely necessary that Christ Jesus come into the world and place Himself into the very hands of His enemies and betrayers so that in laying down His life for you, God’s love would be revealed as your sins were atoned for, and so that in His resurrection a new world, beyond this broken and sinful world that offers only despair, hopelessness and condemnation-that a new world would be opened up for you, a new world bursting forth with promises and hope beyond the despair of this world.
And so as you find yourself perhaps searching and clinging for hope, searching for answers, the One who abides in you so that you might abide in Him comes to you in a Word proclaimed to you through the Words of my mouth, calling you to abide in Him.
This is the case of the Ethiopian eunuch from the lesson from Acts who found himself reading the words of the prophet Isaiah not really knowing what to make of them. And so a preacher is sent to Him so that He would come to the knowledge of the truth of the Gospel-for it says that Phillip started with the scripture from Isaiah; and so we can assume that Phillip revealed to him that all of scripture testifies of Christ Jesus. And Phillip proclaimed to him the good news, and so this Ethiopian eunuch was freed from the shackles of religion of the law that leads only to death and despair, and called into the glorious freedom and eternal life that comes from religion of the Gospel.
And so it is for you today, as Christ Jesus comes to you declaring again that He is the Vine and that you are the branches, and that He is abiding in you that you will abide in Him-that He is the Vine Who sustains you and nourishes you, with His glorious promises and His good gifts of faith-comforting you, strengthening you, forgiving you when you are troubled and in despair, because it is His will that you would not be cast aside, but that you would live with Him in His eternal Kingdom.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday May 3, 2009

2009-05-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Fourth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Today in this morning’s Gospel lesson our Lord Jesus brings to us an image of what it means to be a baptized child of God that largely flies in the face of the independence and individualism that our culture and our society and really our country as a whole, going back even to the country’s founding fathers, see as virtuous. Indeed our country was founded upon principles rooted largely in freedom from tyranny and personal autonomy. Much of what is cherished about our country and culture is rooted in the personal freedoms that we have. In our country, individualism and independence are largely seen as virtuous.
Even the US Army has gotten in on this. In all branches of the military one of the first things that one experiences in their respective branch of service is having their hair cut nearly completely bald and giving up their civilian clothes and being issued uniforms. And one of the main reasons they do this is so you look like everyone else. The first thing you experience is the attempted curtailing of your individualism. But within the last few years, the Army began a recruiting campaign rooted in the slogan: “An Army of one.” The US Army began a recruiting campaign rooted in individualism. Certainly you can see the irony in that.
Or what about when you are young and we are nervous about doing an oral report, or meeting someone new, or even going out on your first date-what is the advice that parents will often give? “Just be yourself.” And yet in spite of our natural human tendency to embrace individualism and independence Jesus comes to us this morning in His Word telling us that we are to understand ourselves to be like sheep.
Sheep are not independent. Sheep are not individualists. In fact it’s not uncommon to hear the term “sheep” used in a derogatory manner; such as hearing someone say something like “Don’t be such a sheep think for yourself.” But in this morning’s Gospel lesson, Jesus refers to Himself as the good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. But you see, the type of sheep that Jesus is speaking of here, is actually quite different from the type that is often looked down upon in our culture.
You see, in our culture when someone uses the word “sheep” derogitorally referring to a person, what they are usually saying is that the person just kind of follows the crowd and bases their life-choices on what other people think. And indeed Jesus does not want us to be ruled by popular opinion, or social and political correctness.
But you see, the difference is in the alternatives. The alternative that the world offers is to follow ourselves and our own sinful desires. But the alternative that Jesus offers is Himself-the voice of the Good Shepherd who is Christ Jesus our Savior. When Jesus speaks of sheep, He is not speaking of their inability to think for themselves or their tendency to follow the crowd, He is speaking of their complete and utter dependency on their shepherd.
He is speaking of sheep heeding the voice of their shepherd and nobody else. He is speaking of sheep realizing that without the shepherd they are helpless and so they rely purely on the voice of their shepherd to lead them and guide them and to give them help when they are in trouble. He is speaking of sheep realizing that they are incapable of healing themselves and guarding themselves from the danger of the wolf, and are completely dependent upon others and upon the shepherd-and so they know to always keep close to the shepherd and to look to Him and to Him alone for help.
And so it is with us. For without the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for us we are helpless. We are weak, poor and helpless sinners who can do nothing to free ourselves from the sin that we are in bondage to. We are in bondage to sin, and the most powerful way that this bondage reveals itself to us, is not in the external acts of sin that we commit, although that is part of it, but the most crippling effect of the bondage to sin that we all experience, that we are all born into is in our inability to recognize the bondage that we are in bondage.
Oh there might be moments when we’re feeling down on ourselves and it might feel like we’re acknowledging that we are but poor, miserable sinners; but then we’ll see someone who, for whatever reason, seems to be much worse than we are-maybe they struggle with more addictions than you, they struggle with their weight more than you, or maybe they just seem to have a general disdain and distaste for everyone and everything around them. And we see people like that and we think “Well at least I am not as bad as they are.” And so the self-delusion begins anew.
And without the Good Shepherd this is the vicious cycle that we would always be trapped in. Without the Good Shepherd we would be left at the mercy of the wolves of this world of sin and doubt and despair. Without the voice of the Good Shepherd we would be left with the voice of our sinful self leading us into paths of despair that would ultimately lead only to the grave.
But Christ Jesus is the Good Shepherd in Whom alone we can trust. Christ Jesus is the Good Shepherd Who saves us from the wolves of sin, death and the devil by placing Himself into the hands of those very wolves, and lays down His life for us-taking upon Himself all of our sin, and going deep into the valley of death for us, and in exchange giving us righteousness and new-life.
And so, in spite of the world’s objections to the notion of being a sheep, we are called to be sheep. But it is not sheep who merely follow the pattern of the culture around us, tossed about by our culture’s wavering and groundless definition of righteousness and justice and faithfulness. No, the Good Shepherd who gave everything of Himself for us on the cross so that in Him we could receive the forgiveness of our sins and was raised for our salvation, now sits at the right hand of His Father who loves Him and us-and He extends His voice to us and calls us into true righteousness and true faithfulness and true justice.
And so as His sheep we heed the call He extends to us to love one another in truth and action. And it is the truth that produces and brings forth the action. The action is the fruit of our clinging to and believing in the truth. For the Good Shepherd comes to us and brings us the divine Word of the law that brings us the truth of who we are-we are sheep-poor and miserable sinners, completely dependent upon our Shepherd to release us from our bondage to sin.
And so He calls and gathers us to repentance-to see that there is only one voice in Whom we can trust-that following our inner voice which we delude ourselves into believing leads us to the path independence, actually leads us to bondage to our sinful self-and that in following the voice of popular opinion and the crowd-actually leads only to bondage to sin and the devil-and they both lead only to the grave.
And so there is only one voice to follow; the voice of the Good Shepherd Who comes to us in the preaching of His Word and partaking of Holy Communion. He comes to you, as He came to the people of Israel in the lesson from Acts-through Peter who, filled with the Holy Spirit proclaimed to the people that they crucified Christ Jesus and in so doing rejected the stone that would become the Cornerstone. But then Peter proclaimed to them that it was in the name of Christ Jesus and Him alone that there was salvation.
For this is how the sheep are fed-with the truth of who we are; poor, miserable sinners-and the truth of what Christ Jesus the Good Shepherd has done for us His Sheep and is doing for us-freeing us from sin, death and the devil-forgiving us, giving us new and eternal life-calling us, gathering us, enlightening us and sanctifying us in the truth and keeping us in His flock, always making sure we are fed with the truth, always vigilant, always protecting us from the wolves.
Amen

Sunday, April 26 2009

2009-05-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I first read the lesson from Acts for this morning which begins with verse 12 from chapter 3, my instinct was to think well we gotta read the first eleven verses of Acts 3. The passage opens with the words “When Peter saw it, he addressed the people.” But the problem is that the ‘it’ that the passage refers to takes place in the first eleven verses. What is the ‘it’ that Peter refers to?
The passage continues with Peter saying to this crowd “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” There the picture becomes a little more clear. Peter appears to be talking about some sort of miracle healing, but still it’s not included in the lesson, so you’re not getting the whole context.
Plus they leave out this wonderful event of this crippled man who was miraculously made able to walk through Peter commanding him to walk in the name of Jesus.
But actually, Peter and the testimony that he bears in this lesson is the result of an even greater miracle. For it was not long before this that Peter was hiding for fear of the Jews. And it was not long before that, that Peter had denied Jesus three times in the courtyard.
Within the course of probably a few hours Peter had gone from claiming he would never deny Jesus to denying Him three times. And then even after he had been told by the women who saw the risen Jesus that Jesus had risen from the dead, he still goes and hides in his doubt and despair. And then in this morning’s Gospel lesson, there is Peter once again with the rest of the disciples hiding out once again, still not quite convinced apparently.
And so Jesus appears among Peter and the rest of the disciples and says to them “Peace be with you.” And how do they respond? They are terrified. In fact, Luke writes that they thought that they were seeing a ghost. I mean what do you think was going through Jesus’ mind at this point?? You almost expect Him to say something like; “A ghost?? Really?? Is that what you’re thinking?? I told you I was going to do this.”
But He doesn’t. He doesn’t scold them. He says “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” And then He tells them to look at and touch His hands and His feet to see that it is Him. A ghost does not have flesh and bones. And then to really kind of drive home that He was not a ghost but their real and risen Savior He eats in front of them.
And then Jesus tells them that everything that He told them while He was with them, which would have included telling them of His death and resurrection, was the fulfillment of everything that had been written about Him in the scriptures; in the prophets, the law of Moses, in the psalms-all of it. And it wasn’t until the disciples understood this, we read that their minds had been opened.
Their minds were opened for the very purpose of understanding that all the scriptures testify of Jesus-specifically that the Messiah had to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations-and that they, the disciples, were witnesses of those very things. And this witness went bursting forth from the upper-room to all nations not long after this when the Holy Spirit-who binds Himself to the witness of Christ Jesus-arrived at Pentecost.
And so from this it becomes a little more clear as to why it’s not necessary to include in the reading from Acts-the miraculous healing that takes place before verse 12. For as I said, Peter’s bold testimony is the result of an ever greater miracle than the healing of a crippled man. Peter’s bold testimony that we see in the lesson from Acts is the fruit of the miracle that we see in the Gospel lesson-the miracle that our Lord Jesus did not leave Peter and the disciples in their unbelief and despair.
Christ Jesus came to them in their unbelief and gave them faith. And He opened their minds so that they would finally be able to connect the dots and see that all of scripture testifies of Jesus. Finally they were able to see that this Holy and Righteous One Whom they had denied and abandoned was the One Whom the prophets of their ancestors said would bring forth a new covenant; finally they could see that He is the suffering Servant by Whose stripes we are healed. Finally they could see that He is the One that John the Baptist himself had told them about-the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world-through the blood that He shed on the cross for you.
And so you see, today you will witness more fruit of this miracle taking place among you. Today on confirmation Sunday you will witness seven young people standing before you and affirming their baptism, professing their faith, declaring to you that they too are witnesses of all these things. Today you will see seven young people stand before you and declare unto you that they have heard the Word of Christ-the Messiah who suffered and died for your forgiveness and was raised for your salvation as the prophets foretold and they believe it-faith has come to them. Faith has come to them and will take hold of them and repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name will be proclaimed in them through the Holy Spirit.
But in spite of all the hoopla and the pomp and splendor connected to confirmation Sunday-there really is nothing unique about today. What you see today is really nothing more than the acknowledgment of what we experience daily-the miracle of Christ Jesus coming to us daily and giving us faith an nurturing and sustaining us in that faith.
And so by His grace through the Holy Spirit-Christ Jesus comes to you once again today. For you see the only real difference between how Christ Jesus finds us daily and how He found those disciples in the upper room is time. Sure were not hiding out in an upper-room like they were, but were also not being actively persecuted by authorities. But the truth is, in many ways we are locked away for fear of an inconvenient understanding of our Lord. For the truth is all of us have failed to understand who God is and what He has come to do for us, among us and is doing for us.
We reduce Jesus into a new law-giver whom we follow in our hopes of achieving a better life now, or simply to live holier lives, or to somehow overcome our shortcomings through our own best efforts and good-works. Or we have reduced Jesus to merely an example of love and compassion to emulate.
But Christ Jesus is much more than that. He is the One who took our sin upon Himself for us on the cross so that in exchange we would receive the righteousness of Christ for our salvation. And daily Christ Jesus comes to us in Word and sacrament and in fellowship with each other and brings us back to that eternal hope that we have in Christ Jesus and in Christ Jesus alone-and away from the false hope and deception of sin and the devil and the false images of Christ Jesus that we create.
Confirmation is not about some big transformative Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues moment where everything is suddenly clear and makes sense. It’s about the Holy Spirit- but it’s about the Holy Spirit doing what He does for you on a daily basis; calling, you, gathering you, enlightening you with His gifts and sanctifying you and keeping you in the true faith-in Christ alone. It’s about the Holy Spirit doing what the Holy Spirit does-testifying to Christ and Christ alone.
And this doesn’t begin and end at confirmation. It’s daily. So Kayla, Collin, Corey, Cassidy, Josh, Tyler, and Alex, if you don’t feel any different today than you did yesterday, that’s no big deal. Now, that also means today is not a graduation or an ending. Today is simply the continuation of the Holy Spirit keeping you united with the whole Christian church on earth and keeping you united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith-just as He did for you yesterday and the day before and will do for you tomorrow and the day after that on and on and on.
These gowns that you are wearing are white to symbolize the righteousness of Christ that you received in baptism. You will be taking these gowns off at the end of the service, but you cannot remove the righteousness that they symbolize. You are God’s children, and because of what Christ Jesus has done for you on the cross, and is doing for you daily uniting you with Him and His church in faith-your Heavenly Father will always see you robed in righteousness. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Amen

Sunday, April 19 2009

2009-05-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

Second Sunday of Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Maybe you are wondering why I used a different slightly different translation than the NRSV. Well it really only comes down to one verse-verse 27-where Jesus says to Thomas after Thomas places his hand in Jesus’ side and in the nail mark in Jesus’ hand-“Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
The NRSV has Jesus saying “Do not doubt but believe.” Now perhaps you think that I am just being a little nit-pickey. Maybe you think that I am making a big deal out of nothing. But at the end of the Gospel lesson Jesus says that it is through believing that we have life in His name.
And so by that we know that by not believing in the atoning work of Jesus we remain in death. Paul says the wages of sin is death. And so if in believing we receive new-life in Christ, then through unbelief we are in death. And from this we can see that all sin basically comes down to unbelief. And so, in that light the difference between doubt and unbelief is huge.
If Thomas is merely doubting then Jesus is just coming along and offering Thomas a word of encouragement; as if to say “Oh Thomas stop being such a fuddy-duddy. Get on board with the new thing that God is doing.” If Thomas was merely in doubt, then Jesus was merely showing up to clarify things for Thomas; to tie up some loose ends, before Jesus ascended to His Father.
But Thomas was not merely in doubt, he was in disbelief. The Greek word that the English Standard Version (ESV) rightly translates as ‘disbelieve’ and the NRSV wrongly translates as ‘doubt’ is pronounced apistis. The King James Version actually translates it as faithless. Both ‘faithless’ and ‘unbelieving’ are pretty much accurate summations of the definition of apistis, and so both would work very effectively as English translations of this word. “Disbelieve” as the ESV has it, also works very well.
But “doubt” does not work. From this we can see that to refer to this as the “doubting Thomas” lesson doesn’t quite cut it. It doesn’t have quite the same intensity as what was really going on. Thomas was not merely in doubt, he was faithless, he was unbelieving. And so Jesus was not showing up in that house where Thomas and the rest of the disciples were hiding out, merely to offer words of encouragement, or merely to clarify Thomas’ confusion.
In his unbelief Thomas had actually cut himself off from the apostolic ministry. For those eight days in between when Thomas refused to believe the testimony of the disciples and when Jesus showed Himself to Thomas, Thomas was basically not a disciple. He was unbelieving. He was faithless. And so he was subject to the wages of sin that are death; not just physical death, but eternal death-eternal separation from God.
And so, in that light we can see that when Jesus appeared in the house where Thomas and the disciples were hiding, He was actually showing up to call Thomas back to faith. He was calling Thomas back to the fold of the apostolic ministry. He was calling Thomas from death in unbelief and faithlessness to life in faith in Christ Jesus.
Dr Nestingen speaks of how being justified is to be properly aligned with God; to be put in a proper relationship with God-and that is what was going on in this passage. Jesus was justifying Thomas by bringing him back into a proper relationship with God through faith in Christ Jesus.
And don’t think that the other disciples were doing any better. They had also been told of Jesus’ resurrection. In John’s account of the resurrection, he records Mary Magdalene encountering the empty tomb and then seeing the risen Lord Jesus who tells her to go tell ‘His brothers’ or the rest of the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead. The next time we see the disciples that Mary went to tell is when they were hiding in their house for fear of the Jews. It appears that they weren’t so quick to believe without actually seeing either.
In this account of what should probably be referred to as the unbelieving or faithless disciples we see that when Christ Jesus withdraws Himself from us we are truly helpless. Jesus told them that He would be raised after three days. They had heard from the women that Jesus had done just that-that He had been raised from the dead. They had seen Jesus confirm everything He said about Himself through great miracles of healing performed on the blind and the lame and lepers. They had seen Jesus cast out demons. They had seen Him raise the dead. But still, until they saw Him in the flesh raised from the dead, they were mired in their unbelief and despair.
So what does this mean for us? Does this mean that because we have come generations after the apostles and do not have the good fortune of having been able to see the risen Jesus in the flesh that we are then left in our unbelief and despair? Well, if faith were up to us. If it were up to us to muster our own faith through our own best and most sincere efforts, then essentially yes.
But Jesus does not leave that peace that He brings to Thomas and the rest of the disciples in that house from this morning’s Gospel lesson in that house. He does not leave it in that period of time centuries ago. He acknowledges that Thomas and the other unbelieving disciples finally did believe that Jesus had risen from the dead because they had seen Him risen from the dead. But then He says blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
Jesus is making a promise there. He is not trying to give some extra motivation for those who would not have the good fortune of knowing Jesus in the flesh to believe. He is promising that in spite of the unbelief of the disciples, that the good news of salvation through faith in His perfect life, death and resurrection would continue to be proclaimed and would continue to be believed.
For John writes that these events that took place within the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were written down so that we would come to believe that He is the Messiah, the Son of God and that through believing in Him and what He has done for us; laying down His life for us and atoning for our sin- for our forgiveness and rising from the dead -for our salvation, that we would have eternal life in His name.
Through these simple words we can know that, just as He did not leave the disciples alone in their despair and unbelief, He does not leave us alone in our despair and unbelief. He comes to us in His Word proclaimed. He comes to us in the sacraments; He will come to us in a few minutes in His body and blood in bread and the wine of Holy Communion. And because through these means of grace, He fills us with faith and forgiveness then He comes to us through each other also. He comes to us and He brings us peace-the peace that surpasses all understanding. He re-aligns us. He justifies us.
And so we can hear the words of John from the 2nd lesson that they, these disciples declare to us what was from the beginning, what they have heard, what they have seen with their eyes, what they have looked at and touched with their hands, concerning the word of life-that we may have fellowship with them-and that along with the disciples our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ-whose blood cleanses us from all our sin.
And so we need not fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t have sin. We can face the reality that our unbelief is unbelief. We don’t need to reduce it to doubt. We can go to Christ Jesus and confess our sins of unbelief and despair’ knowing that He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and will give us faith by coming to us as He came to Thomas and the rest of the unbelieving and faithless disciples and bringing us peace and justifying us, through His Word and sacraments.
Amen

Sunday, April 12 2009

2009-05-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ is risen, He is risen indeed!!! This is what we celebrate today. That just three days after Christ Jesus laid down His life for you, atoning for all of your sin, and was placed in the tomb, that the tomb was empty and that the stone was rolled away. And that stone being rolled away is a result of the greatest news that we, as the church can bring to the world, to our neighbor. For the stone being rolled away, the tomb being empty means that Christ Jesus has risen from the grave-that sin, death and the devil have been defeated for you-that your salvation has been won.
So I ask you this morning, do you believe this?? It is not an easy message to believe in a 21st century post-modern culture. Ever since it happened, the devil has worked through skeptics and doubters to try to cast doubt upon this great and glorious event upon which we base our faith.
It wasn’t long at all before people were spreading rumors that somebody had merely stole Jesus’ body from the tomb. And some actually were convinced by this preposterous theory and some are probably convinced to this day. And maybe you are among the doubters. Maybe the idea of someone stealing the body does not seem preposterous to you.
I mean this with the most sincere love and compassion; if you are among the doubters and skeptics and believe someone did steal the body, then there are some questions that need to be addressed. First, if someone stole it then who?? If it was the apostles then the New Testament would be much shorter. Robbing a grave that bore Pilate’s seal would have been a crime against Caesar punishable by death. The first chapter of Acts would have been limited to a summary of the executions of the 11 remaining apostles.
Some say that Jesus’ enemies stole it. That makes no sense either. Why would Jesus’ enemies steal it? If they were trying to discredit Jesus, they wouldn’t want people to think the tomb was empty. Quite to the contrary, if there was a body in the tomb, Jesus’ opponents would have done their level-best to make sure people saw it. Theories like this have been coming up for 2000 years and time after time they are refuted. Often they have led to the reverse of their intended purpose; skeptics being convinced of the truth of the Gospel. Time after time, we are left with no body and an empty tomb.
Time after time we are left with Christ Jesus actually being who He says He is and who John the Baptist proclaimed Him to be, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Savior of all, the firstborn of the inheritors of eternal life, in whose inheritance those who repent and believe upon Him will share.
But these arguments that have come and gone and will continue to come and go, have led to a new false spirit which has also tried to cast doubt upon this glorious event. This more recent development does not focus so much on trying to cast doubt on the truth of the event of the resurrection but rather on whether or not it matters that we believe that it happened, and in that sense argues whether or not it matters that it did happen.
The argument goes “It doesn’t really matter whether or not the resurrection took place. If believing it did gives you comfort and peace then you should believe it.” On the other hand, the argument goes “If you believe that doing good-works and being a good person saves you then you should believe that.” It doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.
Well lets look at this morning’s lessons in light of this theory. In the Gospel we have Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James going to the tomb so that they can anoint the body of Jesus with spices. Both of these women had placed great faith in Jesus.
If they had found Jesus’ dead body in the tomb then they would have never been amazed at the good news of the resurrection, which is how the end of this lesson describes their reaction to receiving the news of Jesus’ resurrection. They would have not been told to go tell the disciples, and Jesus would have never met the disciples in Galilee so that they could see that He had risen from the dead.
In the account of this scene from the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is actually weeping outside of the tomb. If she had never encountered the risen Lord Jesus, then she would have simply remained in her despair. All of the faith and hope that she had placed in this One who had meant so much to her would have been in vain.
And then we have Peter, who we see in the lesson from Acts, who in spite of all of his slip-ups; denying Jesus three times, worrying about who would be the greatest in God’s Kingdom, failing to stay awake for even one hour when Jesus asked him to stay awake; in spite of all of these slip-ups, Peter still had put his faith in Jesus. But if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, Peter’s last memory of Jesus would have been denying Jesus three times before the rooster crowed. Peter was in perhaps greater misery than even the two Marys.
Peter was hiding in the upper-room, presumably from the Jewish authorities, but perhaps he was also hiding from Jesus. Imagine Peter’s despair; the emotional let-down of wondering if this One in Whom He had put so much trust in, had let him down. But imagine also the despair and guilt of his own denial, and perhaps wondering how Jesus might react to Peter’s denial if He saw Peter again, in case He really was able to rise from the dead.. You see it wasn’t until after the resurrection that Peter really began to understand who Christ Jesus is and what His life, death and resurrection means.
And then of course there is Paul whom we encounter, as we so often do, in our second lesson. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, Paul would never have even written this lesson, because he never would have been converted on the road to Damascus. He never would have encountered the risen Christ. In fact he probably would have been one of the most vicious persecutors of Christ’s followers till the day he died.
But Paul’s conversion shows us not only does it matter that the resurrection happened but that you believe in it and that you believe that it was for you. Paul’s conversion shows that it matters who our faith is in.
For Paul was a very faithful Jew. He believed that his good works earned him favor with God. And he would have continued to believe this had he never been converted. And so nearly half of the New Testament would have not been written.
That the resurrection happened matters. And that you believe in it and that it was for you matters. Paul knows this for certain and he wrote this in today’s lesson where he speaks of passing on to the church in Corinth that which was of first importance; that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, also known as Peter.
And indeed He did appear to Peter and He declared unto Peter the entire forgiveness of all of his sins, even the denials. And Peter, having finally begun to understand Jesus would proclaim, as we read in today’s lesson from Acts that he understands that God shows no partiality. In light of his past mistakes this sounds like a confession of repentance as much as a bold confession of faith. That Christ is risen, and that you believe that it happened for you matters. Paul later says that if Christ is not risen from the dead our faith is futile. But it happened and you can rejoice that it happened for it means that the price has been paid for your sins, the sacrifice has been made on your behalf. It means that God loved you enough to take upon Himself the burden of your sin. And the devil and the world will continue to try to tempt you to believe that it doesn’t matter, but through the continuous and repeated hearing of this good news, the receiving of the sacraments, and fellowship with each other you are armed for battle as your faith is strengthened.
On this morning we celebrate nothing short of the triumph over death itself. And it is not some story that we hold to to make us feel better, it is real. There is only one name under Heaven through Which you can receive the faith, hope and promise which sustained Peter, Paul and the two Marys. It is name of Christ Jesus-the One, praise God, who’s glorious resurrection led to the stone being rolled away and the tomb being empty.
The resurrection happened and it matters that it happened. For when you hear it’s call through Word and sacrament and believe that it happened for your salvation from sin and the devil, you are able to bask in the light of the empty tomb knowing that because death could not contain Christ it will not contain you either, and that you are no longer moving from life to death, but from death to life-the death of your sin to the glorious eternal life that awaits all of us in our Lord’s eternal Kingdom. He is risen!! He is risen indeed!!
Amen

Sunday, April 5, 2009

2009-05-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

Palm Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pontius Pilate asks this crowd that has been gathered in front of him “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” This is the crowd that just days before had welcomed Jesus with open arms as they shouted and proclaimed of Christ Jesus “Hosanna!! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David! Hosanna in the highest!”
But now, after some prodding from the chief-priests, this same crowd, these same people are demanding that Pilate release the murdering insurrectionist Barabbas, and that Pilate would condemn Christ Jesus to death.
This crowd that upon Jesus’ arrival seemed so devoted and so enamored, now reveal themselves to be every bit as fickle as, well us. They loved Jesus when He was the latest fad, when it was cool to follow Jesus, but as soon as He fell out of favor, they wanted nothing to do with Him. And we would have been right there with them demanding the release of Barabbas, and the crucifixion of Jesus.
The crowd’s actions are evidence that Christ Jesus was a huge disappointment for them. Just days before they had been proclaiming Him to be the One who comes in the name of the Lord, bringing forth the kingdom of God. With that kind of buildup, how could they not have high expectations? How could they not have expected action? This Jesus is the One who comes bringing forth the Kingdom of God, what else would they expect but instant transformation and instant action?
And is that what they are seeing in Jesus as He stands in front of Pilate? No. Jesus is almost completely silent as He stands in front of Pilate. If you have a Bible that puts the words of Jesus in red letters, when you look in the sections and chapters that lead up to this moment where Jesus is standing in front of Pilate, you see many red-letter words; sentences and paragraphs, almost entire chapters all in red. But as the story gets to this point, the red-letter words almost completely disappear.
Jesus is not saying anything. He is not doing anything. He is not defending Himself. The only time Jesus says something in front of Pilate is when Pilate asks Him if He is the King of the Jews, to which Jesus says “You say so.”
At least Barabbas was a man of action. He was a revolutionary. This is how completely antithetical Jesus is to the hopes and desires that Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem had created in the hearts and minds of those crowds of people who had welcomed Him. He was such a disappointment, their dreams were so shattered that their demand for Jesus’ death was a bitter response to how Jesus had let them down.
Jesus was such a disappointment for this crowd that they had allowed themselves to be manipulated by the chief-priests to demand the release of a revolutionary. Jesus conforms so little to the popular expectations for a deliverer that the Jewish authorities find themselves making an alliance with the very type of person that posed a threat to those in authority-a revolutionary. When war was finally declared on Rome and the temple overthrown, the priestly class was overthrown by revolutionary leaders, like Barabbas.
But this crowd and the chief-priests looked at Barabbas, thinking that in him they saw life, but in reality the revolutionary behavior that he represented and signified merely led to death. But this is the case with us also. Jesus is just as much a stumbling block and foolishness for us today as He was for those crowds back then.
You see even though Jesus says very little in His encounter with Pontius Pilate, what He says completely exposes just how lost the crowds and chief-priests and Pilate were. The one thing that the chief-priests and the crowd and Pontius Pilate had in common was that for various reasons, they rejected Jesus’ answer to Pilate’s question. They rejected Jesus’ declaration, subtle as it was, that He is the King of the Jews and that He is the Messiah and the Son of God.
And that is what unites us with them. For on our own, we cannot recognize Jesus for who He is. On our own we would continue to reject and despise Jesus. As Luther says in the catechism, we cannot believe in Jesus or come to Him by our own power.
But as foolish at it may have appeared to those around Him, Christ Jesus was following the path that was laid out for Him and which God revealed through the prophet Isaiah centuries before Jesus had arrived; Here is our Lord giving His back to those who struck Him and His cheeks to those who pulled out His beard, setting His face like flint, knowing that in spite of what many will perceive to be a shameful appearance-His Father will not allow Him to be put to shame.
And Jesus does this by stepping out in faith. The entire life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus was an obedient act of going forth in faith. Paul writes in the second lesson for this morning that Christ Jesus was born in human likeness. Paul here is giving no doubt that Christ Jesus experienced everything on a human level-all the pain and suffering that comes with being human. Though He was in the form of God and could have utilized that to escape pain and suffering, He didn’t because He did not regard His equality with God as anything to be exploited.
And so in faith, Christ Jesus came among us, and He became One of us. This is the faith that took Him up to this encounter with Pontius Pilate. And it is in this same faith that He was able to remain so silent and obedient in the face of Pilate’s interrogation, never once wavering in the direction of exploiting His equality with God-showing that perfect faithful obedience even unto death, even death on a cross.
You see when Pilate asked that question to the crowd “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” he had the mistaken notion that he was the one in control. In fact in John’s account of this, Jesus tells Pilate that the only authority that Pilate has, has come from God.
Pilate may have thought that he had Jesus under wraps and that by sending Jesus to His death, He was eliminating Jesus as a problem and a threat. And why not?? He was sentencing Him to death.
But what Pilate didn’t know was that by sending Jesus to His death, Pilate was in fact releasing Jesus to the people. He was releasing Him to the moment that Jesus knew was coming; the moment when He would lay down His life, taking upon Himself all of the sins of the world; Pontius Pilate’s, all those in the crowd, the chief-priests, mine and your’s, and bearing the punishment for them all-giving you the gift of righteousness before God, through the laying down of His life-and the gift of your salvation through His resurrection-making of death, the gateway to eternal life.
And the fruits of this faithful act of sacrifice and obedience could be seen immediately after Jesus breathed His last and we hear the centurion say “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
Faith was already being created, even prior to the resurrection. And indeed it would continue after the resurrection as the testimony of what Christ had done for all God’s people was brought forth and countless people were brought into the church of Christ, having repented and believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ; and now He comes to you giving you the faith that the chief-priests and Pontius Pilate and the crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion did not have. He has come to you through the Holy Spirit in His Word and revealed to you the glory of that moment that seemed so shameful.
He comes to you in His Word, opening your ear so that you will not be rebellious, so that you will not turn backward but rather turn to Him in repentance and receive the forgiveness of your sin in Word and sacrament, and that you will believe in Christ Jesus and see Him for who He is. The Word of Christ which you hear and is coming to you through the Words of my mouth-is filling you with the mind of Christ, keeping you among His own preserving you until that day when every knee, in heaven and earth and on earth and under the earth will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord-and you will be welcomed home to His glorious and eternal kingdom.
Amen

Sunday Mar 29, 2009

2009-05-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

Fifth Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus reacts pretty strangely to these Greeks who wanted to meet Him. The use of the word Greek can generally be understood in the same manner as the word Gentile is used in the Bible. Greeks are always presented in contrast to Jews, so a reference to Greeks is a reference to Gentiles. What’s important to recognize by the arrival of these two Greeks is that now there are people outside of the bounds of Judaism seeking to know Jesus.
And when Andrew and Phillip tell Jesus that these Greeks would like to meet Him, Jesus reacts strangely. In fact a superficial reading of this might come to the conclusion that Jesus was kind of blowing them off. Jesus’ response almost seems to suggest that He doesn’t even hear them. Jesus says “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge what He has just been told.
But the truth is, Jesus responds the way He does because of these gentiles. The extremely contemporary translation of the Bible, called “The Message” has Jesus saying, in response to the news about these Greeks, “Time’s up. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Now, I am not a big fan of these overly contemporary translations, but I like the inclusion of the phrase ‘Times up.’ It underscores the truth that the event of these Gentiles seeking to know Jesus is significant. The arrival of these Greeks is nothing less than a prelude of the Kingdom of God which is about to burst forth and to no longer be constrained by the boundaries of geographic Israel and Judaism.
The Gentiles are at the gates and they are desiring a share of the Kingdom, and to that Jesus says “Times up!! Time for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus does not stick around and chat with these men. Instead He proclaims truth for all generations to come. Christ Jesus knows that with the arrival of these Gentiles the time has come for Him to fulfill His calling and His role as the High Priest in the order of Melchizedek. Jesus knows that with the arrival of these Greek Gentiles, the time has come for Him to be made the perfect source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.
But Jesus’ explanation for how this is going to happen flies in the face of what the disciples, these Gentiles, and every one of us if we were there, would have been expecting. The time has come for Jesus to be glorified. So when you think of someone being glorified, what do you think of??
Maybe you think of throngs of people surrounding someone in adoration. Maybe you think of people having great regard and esteem for someone to such a degree that they leave their homes and families to follow this person and tell others about Him. And Jesus had experienced much of that prior to this. But now the time had come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Now things were going to change.
On His way to being glorified, Jesus would see the ones who were waiting with baited breath to hear His next Word, one-by-one deny Him in one way or the other. He would see the people in these very same crowds that once adored Him as the blessed One who comes in the name of the Lord, soon would be calling for His crucifixion, and the release of a murderer named Barrabbas.
This is what our Lord is talking about when He says that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds. The glorification that Christ Jesus was preparing to enter into is a glorification that would come through His suffering and death. And His suffering and death would bring forth much fruit, especially among the Gentiles. It is through suffering and death, that He fulfills His role as our High Priest, becoming the source of our salvation.
And it is through the suffering and death of Christ Jesus, on our behalf, that the new covenant is brought forth. It is through Christ’s suffering and death that He will draw people to Himself, Jew and Gentile alike. What will look to the world like a moment of despair and sadness for Jesus, as He is dying on the cross, is actually the moment of His glorification and the continuing work of God to bring forth His new Kingdom. We see a foretaste of this with the arrival of King David when he united the two separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
And now with the arrival of the Gentiles, Jesus knows that the hour of His glorification has come. The time has come for the bursting forth of the New Covenant. But this will be about much more than simply bringing together two Kingdoms, or even bringing the Gentiles into God’s Kingdom. For the fulfillment of the New Covenant in Christ Jesus is not just about the bringing together of two earthly kingdoms, but the coming together of God and man. It is about the restoring of the relationship between God and man that we destroyed with our sin.
And this covenant is not limited to geographic Israel or Judaism. In fact it has little to do with a place or a religion. This has to do with our Lord calling His people to Himself through His perfect life, death and resurrection. It is about a new Kingdom and a new creation, created and brought forth by the Gospel of our Lord. It is about our Lord making all things new by laying down His life on the cross, fulfilling all righteousness for you, bearing the punishment of your sin.
The glorification of our Lord Jesus is the continuation of the coming forth of His Kingdom, which is not of this World; which is not defined by geography or religion but faith; faith that began with Christ Jesus’ perfect faith that took Him to the cross, even as His heart troubled Him, because He knew that it was for that very hour of His glorification that He came; faith that led to God the Father acknowledging that the faithful obedience of Christ was in fact glorifying God’s name. And this continues with the faith that you receive in baptism.
With the new covenant comes a new Kingdom and your place in this Kingdom is not built upon your being born into the right earthly family or your ability to follow the law. It is built upon your Lord Christ Jesus coming to you in the waters of baptism and claiming you as His own. It is built upon the perfect obedience of Christ Jesus, your High Priest, going into death for you so to become your perfect source of salvation, calling you to Him and producing in you seeds of faith, and nurturing and cultivating those seeds of faith through the hearing of His holy Word and the receiving of the sacraments.
And so now that you have been called to the foot of the cross; now that the Holy Spirit has called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified you in the faith and you have been filled with faith, now you are told that you are to hate your life in this world. But, as a new covenant has been established and a new kingdom has been brought forth, know that this is not the type of hatred that one experiences in the temporal old Kingdom of the flesh. It’s simply the comfort of knowing the promise of Christ- that you belong to Christ and that He has prepared a place for you in His Kingdom, and that nothing will snatch you out of His hands, and knowing that nothing in this world can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus your Lord.
But you still must contend with the old Kingdom and the old creation in you, and Satan. As we read in this lesson, the prince of this world, or Satan has been driven out. This is to say that ultimately Satan has no power. But he is still at work in this world. We know that he has been defeated, and when Christ returns, Satan will be permanently removed from our presence. But we must still contend with him. And nothing scares the old sinner more than dying. And death and the fear of death is one of Satan’s most fearsome weapons, and he uses it on us whenever he can-tempting us to cling not to the cross of Christ, but to the temporary things of this world, to our money, our cars, our homes etc.
And so the One who was glorified by laying down His life on the cross for you, continues to call you to Himself in Word and sacrament; clinging to you, holding onto you when you are tempted to cling to this dying old world. And this ultimately is the answer that Jesus gives to these Gentiles who want to see Him-that a New covenant was being established and it would begin with His glorification on the cross, upon which He would call them and you to Him, as He is doing right now, for He is your High Priest and your perfect source of salvation, and you are included in His new covenant and He promises to keep you in this new covenant.

Sermon Sunday, Mar 22 2009

2009-03-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

Fourth Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus comes to us today with a harsh Word. He comes to us with a judgment. In fact in verse 19 of the Gospel lesson, John writes “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” John says that all who do evil, hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
Well there is no doubting that the exposing of evil deeds can have devastating effects on the way we live our lives. Just look at the economy. In the midst of the current economic crisis we have seen the light creeping into the crevices and hidden areas of some of our largest financial institutions and it has revealed predatory lending, negligent oversight and outright embezzlement.
But this light that creeps into the darkness and exposes evil, sin, and wrong-doing does not shine only on wall-street billionaires. It shines on all of us. The judgment is that we all love the darkness, and that we hate the light and do not come to the light. But perhaps you think “Wait a minute. I don’t walk in the darkness. I am here in church.”
And granted you are here in church. You are receiving God’s Word. Your Lord is coming to you once again in the proclamation of His Good news. Your faith is being enriched, nurtured and sustained in you. But what of when you leave here? Will you keep your faith to yourself? Will church be just that thing that you do on Sunday for an hour or so? Will you bring this faith home; to your family-to your kids, to your spouse, to your neighbor?
The Light has come into the world but people loved darkness. So do we love this light that exposes us for the sinners that we are? Do we love this light that confronts us with the reality that by ourselves we are simply wandering around in the dark. Or do we love this dark world that says to us “You keep that light to yourself?” Do we fear rejection and possible embarrassment from this world of darkness more than we love the Light of God?
But those things that we fear-those things that we cling to that keep us in the darkness really just scrape the surface. The things that we fear in this world; whether it be the loss of our financial stability through an economic crisis or simply the fear of rejection and embarrassment from our friends and neighbors or whatever worldly matters we allow to have rule over our lives; it all just amounts to nothing in light of the real crisis that is at hand in our wandering around in the dark.
For the real crisis is in the fact that what is ultimately at stake is God’s judgment. Our love of the darkness leads us away from God and into unbelief and idolatry. And it’s even worse because it’s not just us doing this to ourselves. Paul writes of this state of walking in darkness in the lesson from Ephesians, and he gets right down to the real terror of what it means to walk in darkness.
Paul refers to this state of walking in darkness as a state of following the course of this world and following the ruler of the power of the air-the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. So it is not just our own inherent disobedience that leads to us wandering around in the dark, but it is the temptation that the devil and this sinful world throw our way. Our hearts are ruled by the passions of our flesh and the empty promises and threats of Satan.
And we are powerless to this. We know that we are powerless to this because in this passage from Ephesians our Lord tells us that left on our own, walking in darkness, bound to the passions of our flesh, we are dead through our trespasses and sins. The wages of sin is death, Paul tells us in Romans, and that is the state that this darkness that we love leaves us in.
And so as we cling to this darkness that we love too much we are already dead, we are destined for wrath and condemnation. Dead through our trespasses and sins, we are as good as declared guilty at the judgment to come. It seems there is no hope for us, for we are dead. Dead people cannot save themselves. It’s going to take someone to intervene on our behalf. It’s going to take someone pulling us out of our darkness of sin and despair. Radical intervention is what it takes to bring dead sinners back to life.
But we have a God who is willing to intervene on our behalf. He has shown this throughout history. He intervened on behalf of the Israelites when they were in their own darkness. But just as today, the light had to enter into the darkness of their sin and despair. The Israelites were wandering around in the darkness of their own grumbling and despair, wanting to actually return back to their bondage and slavery in Egypt. And then God sent to the Israelites a light of judgment in the form of poisonous serpents and their sin and bondage was exposed to them, as many of them were bitten by the serpents and died.
And in repentance they appeal to Moses to pray to God to take away the serpents. And God tells Moses to take a poisonous serpent and put it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at the serpent and live. And so Moses does as he is told and sure enough when someone looked upon the serpent upon the pole they were healed. The very thing that was killing them was now healing them.
And so the very Light of Christ that comes to us, revealing our sins to us and exposing us as the dead sinners that we are, now comes to you making you alive together with Christ. For when you look up at the cross and see Christ Jesus, laying down His life for you, you are seeing the wages of your sin; the very thing that was killing you, being paid for.
When you see His holy and precious blood dripping from His hands and feet you are seeing God’s great and glorious mercy being extended out to you, out of the love with which your Lord loves you. When you look to Christ Jesus on the cross you see your Lord coming to you when you were dead in your trespasses and making you alive together with Christ Jesus.
And so today He continues to come to you in Word and sacrament; through the proclamation of the Good news, through the confession and absolution, through the eating and the drinking of the body and blood of your Lord Christ Jesus in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion and in the waters of baptism-in all of this the Light of Christ continues to come in the darkness of the passions of our flesh, as we follow the desires of our flesh and senses- the Light comes exposing our sins to us-exposing that we fear the wrath of embarrassment and rejection from our neighbor and the world, more than we fear the wrath of our Creator.
And He calls you to look upon Christ Jesus in repentance and believe upon Him and what He has done for you and is doing for you. Through the Word being proclaimed to you in the words of my mouth Christ is assuring you of your forgiveness, that the blood He shed on the cross was for you and your justification and that His resurrection was for your salvation. He is daily raising you up with Him in the heavenly places.
And so, having been freed from the darkness of sin, death and the devil-the darkness of the passions of the flesh-through faith in Christ Jesus you no longer need to fear the wrath of God. You don’t even need to fear the wrath of embarrassment or rejection from your neighbor. You are no longer dead through your trespasses and sin, you are alive with Christ. You have been rescued from the darkness and placed in the light. So go forth from here walking in the Light, spilling forth with that Light to your neighbor and doing in faith and freedom the good works prepared beforehand for you-hearing in faith the call of your Lord as He keeps you in the Light of eternal life in the heavenly places with Him.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday March 15 2009

2009-03-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What are we to make of this angry Jesus who confronts us in this morning’s Gospel lesson? Or perhaps more to the point; “What is Jesus making of us, with the anger that He displays in this morning’s Gospel lesson?” And this is not simply one of those “That’s a lot of anger for Jesus” moments. This is a lot of anger for anyone to display.
He comes into the temple and He sees that the temple is filled with people selling all sorts of livestock. There are money-changers which would indicate that the temple had been turned into a marketplace as Jesus would say later. In response Jesus pours out all the change, overturns the tables, makes a whip of chords, He doesn’t use it to actually whip anybody but to get their attention and to drive them out of the temple.
This flies in the face of the contemplative, sorrowful, merciful and compassionate image of Jesus that we seem to so often limit our understanding of Jesus to. Jesus is angry here. Jesus, a circumcised and faithful Jew, comes to Jerusalem on the dawn of Passover; the holiest day of the year for Jews; and He sees nothing but contempt and disregard for all holy things.
The reason people were selling livestock around Passover was because, the male members of the Jewish nation were required to come to Jerusalem three times a year; Passover being one of those times. But because of their distant travel they would not have been able to bring their own animals to sacrifice, which would have been a big part of the celebration, so local merchants began selling livestock. It was a profitable business and it had been going on for a long time. Captialism was not the sin here, as some might like to suggest.
You see the problem was the location. The market was in the lower part of the city. Then it had worked it’s way to the gates of the temple. And now it had finally come into the very courts of the sanctuary. Today, it would have been as if, parading around in this very sanctuary there were people selling cows and camels and donkeys and doves. And today, instead of money-changers, we’d probably have credit card machines and ATM’s.
And this would not have been just in the narthex or outside the church. I am talking right here in the sanctuary. And it’s not like any of the money would have been going to the church. Because the people the in temple were all raising money only for themselves. And so, you can see why Jesus would be so angry. And for Jesus this wasn’t simply a sacred place of worship, it was His Father’s house. These people had turned the place where Jesus could go and commune with His Father probably in a way that He couldn’t do anywhere else, into a marketplace and filled it with the stench of these animals. And so Jesus gets mad and makes a scene and turns over some tables, pours out some coins and drives people away with a whip.
And when He is confronted about this by the Jews who ask Him to show a sign that would validate His authority because He had made such a mess, Jesus tells them to destroy the temple and in three days He will raise it up. This is of course a reference to His death and resurrection, but the Jews of course did not understand that. And in fairness, neither really did the disciples until the resurrection.
And with this declaration of His coming death and resurrection, Christ Jesus is saying much more about His death and resurrection than that it would be a validation of His authority as the Son of God although that is part of it. But with this declaration of His death and resurrection, Jesus is declaring that He Himself is the temple.
Christ Jesus is here pronouncing Himself as the great sanctuary for all mankind over all the ages. You see, before Christ Jesus, the temple was considered the holy place because it was the temple. It was where God’s law was heard. It was sacred because it was confessed to be the very house of God, and not just in the folksy way that we say it today about church. They literally believed and confessed that the temple was the house where God lived and God was present there because that was where God’s Word was heard. And so an offense against the temple was considered an offense against the Father. And so in Jesus’ case an offense against the temple was an offense against His Father.
But now Christ Jesus comes, proclaiming Himself to be the temple. And Christ Jesus, being the Word incarnate means that an offense against God’s Word is an offense against Christ Jesus. And so an offense against the Gospel is an offense against Christ Jesus, it is an offense against God. And in this truth, that an offense against the Gospel is an offense against God, in this reality, we see that we are every bit as guilty as those merchants in the temple. We have made just as much a mockery of the holy temple of the Lord as those merchants that our Lord Jesus drove out of the temple.
For our natural inclination is not to embrace the Gospel, but to reject it as foolishness. Don’t believe me? Look all around at the state of American Christianity. All across America the largest and fastest growing churches are churches where the preachers have replaced the biblical Gospel of redemption with a revisionist gospel of pop-psychology and good advice. The Gospel has been reduced in many churches to a message of advice to save us from temporary unpleasantness, as opposed to the biblical Gospel of eternal redemption from God’s eternal damnation. The biblical Gospel of eternal salvation has been reduced to something that needs to be made relevant with trickery and deception, as opposed to the biblical Gospel which is relevant and authoritative unto itself.
But our rejection of the Gospel does not need to be so overt as these examples. For every time we sin we show our natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness. The law was given to expose our sin to us. So every time you hear “You shall have no other Gods before me.” You are reminded of those things that you daily make into other gods. When you hear the 8th commandment you are reminded of your predilection to gossiping. We are commanded also not to covet. Try walking through a new car lot without coveting. Jesus Himself says that by even holding an angry thought against someone you are guilty of murder. Does this sound harsh to you? Well if it does, then once again you are showing your natural inclination to reject the Gospel as foolishness.
For as Paul says in the second lesson “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” And Paul says in Ephesians that we are born dead in our trespasses. And so, on our own, even in our most wise and imaginative moments, we are merely among the perishing for whom the message of the cross in mere foolishness.
But our Lord Jesus, being the temple who redeems us, is true to His Word. And so when it looked like we had destroyed Him with our sin and deceit and prideful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness, Christ Jesus showed Himself true to His Word and the temple that He is was raised for our salvation.
And the price for all the sin that we thrust upon Him in our attempts to destroy the temple that is Christ Jesus with our sinful refusal to hear the Gospel as anything but foolishness has been paid. And in the waters of baptism, He claimed you as His and then brought you, kicking and screaming into your death, and with His word raised you as a new creation. And now the Word that claimed you in baptism and called you to new life in Christ Jesus dwells richly in you, and so you are also a temple. For it is the Word of God that makes something sacred. This pulpit is just a wood structure by itself, but when the Word is preached from it, it is a sacred instrument of God’s grace. The water in that font is merely water, but with God’s Word a means of grace by which sinners are cleansed and claimed for the Body of Christ and made temples. The wine and bread are merely food by themselves, but with God’s Word they are the precious gifts of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus bringing to you His good gifts of faith, forgiveness, redemption and sanctification.
I am merely a sinner, but when the Holy Spirit comes to me in God’s Word and the Word flows through me out to you, I am a preacher and a newly-raised temple. And you, having receivied God’s good gifts in Word and sacrament, have the Word of God flowing through you and you are newly raised temples, and every time you recveive these gifts you are raised anew. And so you have been freed to go forth to your neighbor and bring the temple that you are to them, spilling forth to them, the love, faithfulness, mercy and Word of Christ that creates faith and frees you from your blind rejection of the Gospel as foolishness and opens up to you the truth that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
Amen

Sermon, Sun Mar 8, 2009

2009-03-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

Second Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus speaks to the disciples and to you this morning of how completely and utterly unnatural it is to be a disciple of Christ. Being a disciple of Christ does not come natural to us. It goes against every natural inclination that we are born with.
We see this in how our Lord Jesus reacts to Peter when Peter dares to rebuke Jesus for saying that He (Jesus) must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. Jesus responds by rebuking back, to the point of even referring to Peter as Satan. And then condemning Peter for setting His mind on human things and not divine things.
He completely separates human things from divine things. He doesn’t say “Peter, you just haven’t found the divinity within you yet.” In this encounter, it is clear that our sinful will and the divine will of our Creator are completely at odds and antithetical to each other. And this is further articulated in an even more powerful way when Jesus explains to the disciples that if they want to become His followers, they must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Him, and that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for His sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it.
So how are you doing with that? How are you doing with that denying yourself part? Are your losing your life for Christ’s sake and the sake of the Gospel? Now this is not saying that we should all go out and become martyrs. But rather, it is saying that being a disciple of Christ means that every decision we make, every thought we have, every action of ours is to flow from the claim that has been made upon us by Christ Jesus. So how are you doing with that?
The truth is we fail at this daily. Daily we fail keep our minds on divine things and not on human things. This is why we have laws. This is why we have courts and judges. And this is why we have prisons. We all struggle and fail to keep our minds on divine things, and we all fail to deny ourselves. And in prisons you have people who have come face to face with the futility of this reality to a degree that most of us can’t imagine.
When I was on internship in South Dakota I went to a prison worship service in Springfield, South Dakota, and they allowed me to distribute the wine in Communion. It was done by intinction where the worshippers, most of them being prisoners, would dip the wafer into the chalice of wine that as I was holding, and as I said to them “This is the body of Christ shed for you.” And as I looked into their eyes and they heard these wonderful words of promise from our Lord, it was almost as if I could see these prisoners being transformed. But it was not a transformation that came from inside of them or any desires that they had, but rather from outside of them in the Words of promise from our Lord as they partook of His holy and precious blood.
They had seen the futility of clinging to their own ways. They had been completely humbled by God’s alien work of the law, as their sins were exposed to them and they saw that there was no hope there. And so, having seen the futility of human things, all that is left is Christ. And there was Christ coming to them through His word in a promise proclaimed by a bumbling intern and the holy and precious blood of Christ shed upon the cross for them and for you.
And so it is for you, brothers and sisters in Christ. For the struggle of Peter in the Gospel lesson and the struggle of these prisoners and all prisoners is our struggle; the struggle to deny ourselves, as we daily fail to stay focused on divine things and give in to the temptation to focus on human things and away from divine things. Daily we put our trust more in our own human desires and wills, or human organizations and institutions, some of which might even be part of the church, than we do in the One who created us. We daily show that we trust the creation more than the Creator.
But that is why our Lord Jesus said that He must undergo great suffering and die and be raised. Left to our own will we are merely, as Paul writes “dead in our trespasses,” but being rich in mercy God doesn’t leave it in our hands, He sends Christ Jesus to take upon Himself all of our sin and death upon the cross, giving us His righteousness for our sin, His justification for our condemnation, and His life for our death. And because of Christ having been raised three days later, we are made alive with Christ. And this is not the result of any works or effort on your part, but it is purely a radical gift of God’s free grace which continuously come to us in Word and sacrament and gives us faith, nurtures our faith and sustains our faith.
And through that very faith, we are made righteous just as Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Human will focuses on this tired world that leads only to death. But faith, which comes to us when we are claimed by Christ in the waters of baptism, and continues to come to us in Holy Communion and the Word, looks beyond the present reality, whatever it may be, and by God’s glorious grace through this faith, we are able to see that we are no longer sons and daughters of death, but inheritors of an eternal and glorious kingdom.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday Mar 1, 2009

2009-03-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

First Sunday in Lent
Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lent is a time for remembering. Lent is the season when historically we remember the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. But it’s not just the time in the wilderness that we remember, but all of the shame and suffering that Jesus endured on His way to the cross. For many people, this season of Lent is marked by periods of fasting, penance, charity, and other forms of spiritual discipline. And this is all reflective of this notion of dying to ourselves that is prevalent all throughout this Lenten season. We walk through the darkness of Lent right on into that darkest of dark hours, Good Friday so as to underscore the great and glorious light of resurrection Sunday, or Easter.
And so, in this season of remembering, the Genesis passage for this morning seems appropriate and consistent. For in this passage our Lord tells Noah and his sons, whom He had just delivered from the flood, that He is establishing a covenant with them that never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.
But He does not make this covenant only with Noah and his sons, but our Lord makes this covenant with them and all future generations. God extends this covenant not only to Noah and his sons but to all those who would come after them; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Daniel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, into Christ’s apostles and even you. You are among those future generations that are included in this covenant.
But it doesn’t end there. Our Lord knows us. He knows that we are a forgetful people. He knows that we are a “What have you done for me lately” type of people. And so He promises that He will send a sign of this covenant that He has established with us. He says that He has set His bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between He and the earth. Our Lord of course is talking about a rainbow here. And even though He doesn’t say it is so we will remember Him, it’s still pretty clear that the rainbow is given to us to remind us of the covenant that God established with us after the flood.
But what is really remarkable about this is that our Lord says that the rainbow will serve as a reminder for Him also. He says that when the rainbow is seen in the clouds that He will remember the everlasting covenant that He made with every living creature spanning all generations. What this basically means is that when you see a rainbow, it is not just a sign of something that God did for you in the past but something that He is doing for you right now. When you see a rainbow, our Lord promises that He is remembering the covenant He made with you after the flood. So when you see a rainbow, you know that God is remembering you. He is thinking about you. The rainbow reminds you that you are on God’s mind, that God remembers you.
But still even with this bold and remarkable sign of our Lord’s faithfulness, we forget that we are remembered by our Lord. It was not long after this covenant before God’s people were once again forgetting the One who remembers them. Even Abraham would show that he simply could not take God at His word when He promised Abraham that his wife Sara would bear him a son, so Abraham had a child with his servant Hagar.
Jacob was a swindler who cheated his brother out of his birthright. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon formed alliances with pagan and corrupt nations. The history of God’s people is one of us continually and repeatedly showing our tendency to forget or at least ignore the fact that we are always remembered by our Lord. It is a history of rebelling against our Lord that began with Adam and Eve and has never ceased.
But our Lord is faithful. He promises that He will never again send a flood to destroy all flesh, and so He doesn’t. But still He cannot sit idly by and do nothing in the face our continuous and impetuous attempts to escape Him. Try as we might to forget our Lord He refuses to be forgotten.
And so even though we had given Him every reason to change His mind and go ahead and send another flood, He does not. And so not only does He stay faithful to the promise He made to us after the flood, but He comes to us in fragile, human flesh. Even though we had given Him every reason to cut us off from His eternal kingdom, He brings His kingdom to us in the form of His perfect and sinless Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.
And in the Gospel lesson from Mark it is made immediately clear that the arrival of Christ Jesus bursting upon the scene means that something radically different is happening. Jesus shows up in the Jordan and He is baptized by John the Baptist. And it says that as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.
It says that the heavens were torn apart. The use of the word “torn” is very strong there. It doesn’t just say that the heavens are opened but that they are torn. When we say that something has been opened then all one has to do to restore it back to it’s original state is close it. A door opens, then you close it. A window opens, then you close it. A suitcase opens, then you close it.
But when something is torn, there is some irreparable damage done. Even if you can put something that is torn back together, it is never quite the same. No longer would God’s revelation be limited to a rainbow appearing in the sky, for those skies had been torn by the Spirit descending like a dove upon Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh. Barriers between God and man were being broken. And we hear the voice of God saying to Christ Jesus “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And then the Spirit drives Christ Jesus into the wilderness where for 40 days He is tempted by Satan. But then after His 40 days in the wilderness, after enduring the temptations of Satan He goes back to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near: repent and believe in the good news.”
And indeed some of us did. Some of us did heed our Lord’s gracious calling by repenting and believing upon Him. But most of us continued to run from Him. Most of us continued to reject Him. Most of us continued to reject Him until eventually it ended up leading to this One whose arrival upon the scene brought forth the tearing of the heavens, laying down His life for us, taking upon Himself all of our sin, and bearing all of our punishment. And make no mistake even among those who repented and believed upon Him, they all also, in one way or another rejected Him.
Paul writes in Romans that “…while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” And in that moment, that darkest of moments, that we thought that we had finally gotten rid of Him, when we thought we would no longer be bothered by God, He shows that His coming into this world means that, try as we might, we can no longer keep ourselves away from our God or keep Him from us.
For Peter writes that Christ suffered for sins, once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. And He did this to bring you to God. Death, the final barrier between you and your Lord, has been knocked down. And so finally we see that the covenant that our Lord made with us after the flood was actually pointing to something even bigger and more radical. It was pointing to the baptism that saves you. When Christ went into death it meant the death of your death, and the defeat of sin and the devil for you. And Christ Jesus, coming through death having been made alive in the Spirit and resurrected for your salvation, now through His resurrection is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to Him, appealing to His Father on your behalf, remembering you.
And it is through this very means, that baptism saves you. For, in baptism, having been united with Christ in a death like His you will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. So you may as well stop running from Him, for He has claimed you as His own. And He’s going to keep coming after you in His Word and sacraments. So you may as well simply receive the good gifts that He is bringing you, such as the forgiveness of your sins in His body and blood when we partake once again in His Supper in a few minutes, and the nurturing and sustaining of your faith in the Word proclaimed. And then go forth from here brimming with His good gifts of faith, forgiveness and salvation so that they might burst forth from you to your neighbor.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday Feb 15, 2009

2009-03-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So what is the problem with this Namman guy from the Old Testament lesson?? Here he is this, great military leader and warrior who has been stricken by the plague of leprosy. The Lord had shown Himself to be faithful to Naaman by giving him great victories on the field of battle, and yet Naaman was struck by this crippling and deadly disease.
But then, through this young Israelite girl whom the Arameans had taken captive and had become the servant of Naaman’s wife, Naaman hears about this prophet in Israel who could heal him of his leprosy. And so with the king’s permission and a letter from the king of Aram to the King of Israel, Naaman heads off to Israel so that he might be healed. The King of Israel initially relents, in fact he tears his clothes, because he really doesn’t understand what is going on.
But then Elisha, the man of God asks the king to send Naaman his way. Now understand, Elisha was no little known prophet. This was not some obscure unknown and unaccomplished prophet. He was the heir apparent to Elijah and he inherited a double portion of Elijah’s wonder-working ability. This would have been very well known, as well as the fulfillment of the prophecy that Elisha delivered at Mt Carmel which meant Israel’s relief from great drought and consequently victory over the Moabites.
But Naaman does not appear to be too impressed with this. Elisha sends a messenger to Naaman and tells Naaman to go and wash in the Jordan seven times and his flesh shall be restored. But rather than humbly submitting himself to this word from God’s prophet, he gets angry. He gets angry because Elisha does not come out to greet Naaman personally and simply cure his leprosy right there. And then he doesn’t understand why it would be the Jordan that Naaman would tell him to cleanse himself in. He names two rivers in Damascus and says that they would be better suited for this than all the waters in Israel.
Naaman was so singularly focused on himself that he couldn’t see what was going on right before him. He could not see the almighty God and creator of the universe extending out to him a hand of healing and mercy through the word of the prophet Elisha. And so in his short-sightedness Naaman walks away in a rage.
But to this day we struggle with the same short-sightedness and singular self-centered focus that leads to a gross misunderstanding of God and His redemptive and merciful activity. I watched a Youtube video earlier this week where someone was surveying people on what they believed about both Jesus and Christians.
I had some serious disagreement with answers that were given to both questions, but I was troubled by answers to one question more than the other. The first responses that the video shows are the responses to the questions about what people think of Jesus. Now, as you might imagine they were pretty much universally positive. But most of them fell pretty far short of being reflective of a biblical understanding of who Jesus is. I think there were about 10 people questioned and there were only 2 or 3 who referred to Jesus as Savior but I would be willing to wager that they would struggle to be able to articulate just what He saves us from. The rest of them reduced Jesus to being a rebel or a great teacher or one guy even referred to Jesus as a “pretty cool dude.”
Then came the questions about Christians. And this was pretty much universally negative. People answering this question of what they thought of Christians referred to Christians as being “crazy” and “uneducated” and “Bible-thumpers” and many other less than flattering descriptions.
Now, if you have ever been to Youtube and seen the videos there then you may know that below each video they have where people can comment on the videos. Well I read some of the comments on this video and it was a lot of Christians lamenting over what all the people said about Christians. People were commenting, saying that we as Christians need to be nicer and more welcoming and less judgmental.
And while there is certainly some truth to that, the real tragedy in this video is not what people thought of Christians, but rather what they thought of Christ Jesus. I think both sets of responses reflect a shortcoming of the church, but I think the greater shortcoming is that the church has inadequately confessed who Christ Jesus is and what that means for us. And today we have another example of this for today is “Evolution Sunday..”
The church has failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ as the redeemer of all humanity. We have failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ Jesus as the One who bore the penalty of our sin. We have failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ as the One who’s perfect life, death and resurrection saves us from sin, death and the devil. We have failed to clearly and boldly confess Christ Jesus as the only means through which we are able to receive the forgiveness of our sin.
Instead we reduce Jesus to a moral example or a great teacher or someone who helps us to find purpose or some other excuse or rationale that in the end just turns us inward back to ourselves rather than outside ourselves to Christ Jesus and the redemption and forgiveness that He accomplishes on our behalf through His perfect life, death and resurrection. And so it’s no wonder people have these distorted views of who Christ Jesus is. When we insist on seeing and confessing the name of Jesus through our self-focused, inward-turned lens then we very likely end up leaving ourselves and certainly our neighbors in the confusion that Naaman struggled with.
But as Naaman’s story continues we see that God does not desire that we should be left in our confusion and in our misperceptions of who He is and what He has done and is doing for us. For God placed around Naaman, servants who were faithful enough to their Lord to tell their earthly master Naaman that he was in fact mistaken in his perceptions about the word that the Lord had brought to him through the prophet Elisha. The servants simply made it clear that through the word delivered to them by the prophet Elisha the Lord God was reaching out to Naaman with a merciful word of healing, even though on his own Naaman could not see it.
And our gracious God has seen fit to surround you with and surround you around servants also; servants in the form of parents, friends, fellow members of the Body of Christ, pastors, spouses, neighbors all of whom you all called to boldly and clearly confess who Christ is and whose clear and bold confession of Christ you are called to hear and listen to. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus and what He has done for us; dying on the cross for our justification, rising from the dead for our salvation, making of us new creations in Christ. And we receive this through faith, and Paul tells us in Romans that faith comes through hearing and that hearing comes through the Word of Christ.
It is not our Lord’s will that we should walk around in self-focused confusion like Naaman, but rather that we would have the same bold faith that we see in the leper in the Gospel lesson. This leper had true faith. He was not afraid to recognize and acknowledge his impurity. This leper saw Christ Jesus for who He truly is, pure and merciful goodness of God. The leper looked not to his own good works and his own idea of what seemed logical like Naaman did, he looked purely upon Christ and saw Him for what He is. He didn’t even have to ask Jesus if He could make him clean, he boldly said to Jesus “If you choose you could make me clean.”
The fact that he seems to ignore or perhaps didn’t even hear Jesus’ admonition not to tell others about this, is not reason for us to condemn the now former leper. He simply could not hold himself back. He had been freed from anything holding him back in his proclamation of the mercy extended to him in Christ. We see this in Naaman also, for after he finally relents and receives the cleansing Elisha had told him about in the Jordan he can not hold himself back from returning to Elisha and boldly confessing his faith in the one true God.
This is what faith does for you; the faith that you receive in the preaching of the Word and receiving of the sacraments. It enables you to see your Lord Christ Jesus for who He really is; the One who has freed you from the burden of the law, and has saved you from sin, death and the devil. And you have been freed to cast aside whatever holds you back, you don’t have to worry about what people think of you, you have been freed to focus on Christ, and freed to follow the example of the former leper proclaiming freely what Christ has done for you, spilling forth to your neighbor the same faith you have received and continue to receive, freeing them from confusion and misperceptions of who Christ is.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday Feb 8 2009

2009-03-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
OK, you are really going to want to listen to me this morning. I mean, I always want you to listen to me, especially when I am preaching the Good news, but today I have something to tell you that very likely you have been wondering about for a long time. Maybe you have been taking different classes, reading different books, or just hoping that one day soon, maybe just maybe you would be able to figure this out. Well, worry no more, for today, through the words of my mouth, you are going to hear your purpose. You are going to hear the very reason why you are here in this old world.
Now, to do this of course we will go to God's Word. We will look to our Lord Jesus and see how things unfold in this morning's Gospel lesson, and in this, Christ Jesus will come to you once again and He will reveal to you, your purpose. And so we go to this morning’s lesson, and we see Jesus and the disciples, right on the heels of Jesus rescuing a man from an unclean spirit, which we read about in last week's Gospel lesson.
And now they enter into the home of Simon's mother-in-law who is in bed with a fever. Jesus takes her by the hand and the fever leaves her and upon receiving this good and miraculous gift of healing from Christ Jesus, she could do no other than to serve Jesus and the disciples.
And what we read next is very interesting, for it says that evening they brought to Jesus all who were sick or possessed with demons. The whole city was gathered around the door. He cured many diseases, cast our many demons, would not allow the demons to speak, because the demons knew His name, and Jesus knew that they would try to misuse His name just as the unclean spirit in the synagogue from last week's lesson tried to do.
And then it says in the morning Jesus leaves. Now what's interesting about that is that Jesus appears to have been doing these healings and casting out of demons all night. These people are brought to Him at sundown and we don't read about Him doing anything other than healing and casting out demons until morning, when He goes to a deserted place and prays. And then Jesus leaves even though He is told by Simon and the other disciples that everyone was searching for Him. These people are looking for Jesus, but He leaves.
He leaves so that He can go to the neighboring towns so that He can proclaim His message there also, for that is what He came to do. He had not come merely to heal the sick. He had not come merely to cast out demons. He came to proclaim His message. And how radical this message must have been for it to have taken precedence over healing the sick and casting away demons.
The disciples would have been just fine with sticking around town and continuing to blow people’s minds with the healings and the casting out of demons. For these were things that they could see. These were moments that they could touch. They could see and touch Simon’s mother-in-law after she had been healed. They could see and touch all those who had demons that had been cast out of them.
And the short-sightedness of the disciples is reflected and even continues today in your own short-sightedness. You are much more comfortable holding on to a temporary solution to a temporary problem that only has meaning in this temporary, broken and sin-filled world, than you are trusting an eternal promise that comes to you through a Word proclaimed to you that you hear through the proclamation of the Holy Spirit coming to you through the words of a sinful preacher.
Jesus’ promised return in glory sounds good, but you want something now, that you can see, taste touch and feel. And so you look to Jesus to give you your best life right now. But this is not what it means to be in Christ.
For this One who came healing and casting out demons, left because He has much bigger things in mind for His people. Christ Jesus does not come merely to renew your life or even merely to transform your life. He comes to give you new life. And it is new life that comes not through a new law or through better and improved moral precepts. It does not come through good advice. It comes through death.
For as surely as, in baptism you have been buried with Christ in a death like His, when He laid down His life for you, bearing all of your sin and death and weakness, you will be raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so that you too will walk in the newness of life. And it’s a newness of life that comes to you today, not by sight but by faith; by faith delivered to you through the preaching of God’s Word and the receiving of the sacraments.
And so your purpose, is simply this, to be free. For freedom, Christ has set you free. He has set you free from finding hope in things of this world. He has set you free from the bondage of having to live by sight, and freed you to live by faith. He has freed you to know that it is not in earthly power, wealth and splendor that His strength is revealed. No, quite to the contrary, His strength is made perfect in weakness. Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians, no matter what the world throws at you, His grace is sufficient for you.
Your best efforts at adhering to the law do nothing to add to what Christ Jesus has already done for you. Christ Jesus has borne the burden of the law for you and any attempt to take that burden upon yourself is nothing other than attempting to reject the freedom which Christ Jesus has already won for you.
And so, in spite of your short-sightedness and your attempts to run from the purpose of freedom that you have been given, Christ Jesus continues to come to you bringing to you the same radical message, the same hope that He brought to those neighboring towns that He had set out for. And it is nothing other than the announcement of the arrival of His kingdom; the Kingdom that comes to you today not in anything of this world that you can see, for Christ Himself says that His kingdom is not of this broken, sinful world.
No, He brings you His Kingdom through a word and a promise that you hear and through which the Holy Spirit brings you faith. He brings you this faith, and nurtures and sustains this faith in you. And this is the kind of faith that frees you to look forward with real hope to a real future with real promise in a real Messiah and real Savior.
Hear the words of Isaiah from the first lesson, this One who frees you gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. For it is not those who live in the burden of sight trying to find a Savior on their own terms that they can see and touch, but rather you who live in the freedom of faith, listening and hearing a word of promise and waiting for the Lord who renews your strength and who shall mount up with wings like eagles and run and not be weary and shall walk and not faint.
And so now, that you know that your purpose is to be free from the burden of sin, death, the devil and the law, what are you to do with your freedom? Well if we take Paul at his word in this weeks 2nd lesson then, in our freedom we are to make ourselves slaves to all, so that we might win more of them. But we also must remember what Paul says at the beginning of this week’s lesson “That if we proclaim the Gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!”
In other words we have been freed to be slaves to the Gospel. We have been freed to go forth and continue to proclaim the radical message that Jesus set out to bring to those neighboring towns; the announcement of the coming near of His Kingdom, the announcement of the forgiveness of sin through Christ Jesus laying down His life for us, and the announcement of our salvation through His resurrection. And in this also, we live by faith and not by sight. Having been grasped by the Gospel and given saving faith in the Gospel through the Holy Spirit, you have been freed to go forth proclaiming the radical message of the Gospel, looking forward to the hope that lies in the future, not looking for visible signs but trusting the Word, trusting the Holy Spirit to create, nurture and sustain faith, and continue to free people for the very purpose of their freedom in the Gospel, the freedom for which Christ has set them free.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday Feb 1, 2009

2009-03-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning speaks of Jesus entering into this synagogue and teaching. And it says that the people in the synagogue were astounded at His teaching because He taught them as One having authority, and not as the scribes.
The scribes were generally understood as being those who were called upon to teach from the scriptures. But the teaching of the scribes had basically just become a discourse in borrowing from one fallible source after another, one scribe quoting another scribe, maybe asking a few questions with little to no deference to scripture. One resource that I use in studying the texts described the teaching of the scribes as “…trying to draw water from a broken cistern.” They were trying to deliver the Word of God from human authorities.
But Jesus drew from Himself, the fountain of living waters, as it says in Jeremiah 2:13. Not only did His teaching have the authority that the scribes lacked but He was the authority. Jesus didn’t come merely speculating and philosophizing, He came teaching with authority, bringing a Word that cut right to the heart.
It’s no wonder that they were astounded at His teaching. For many of them, it was probably the first time they had ever heard the Word of God as it is revealed in scripture, and for those who had heard it before, certainly they had never heard it presented to them with anywhere near the same authority and clarity. Jesus came with the authoritative Word of God that convicts us of our sin, and comforts us with the Gospel.
And then, we see this man with an unclean spirit, crying out to Jesus “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Something very interesting about this is that Mark writes “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” It doesn’t say, “Just then a man with an unclean spirit came into the synagogue.” It says that he was already there. This unclean spirit had already been there and been exposed to the teaching of the scribes, for who knows how long, and it didn’t phase him.
But then along comes One who not only teaches with authority from God, but is the manifestation of that authority, He is God incarnate and the Word of God made flesh. He comes bringing the Kingdom and new life.
And now, the unclean spirit knows that this One who has burst upon the scene, teaching with authority poses a threat to what he is trying to do. As long as the scribes continued to drone on and on with their man-made precepts and rules and pointless speculation, then the unclean spirit was fine and wasn’t going to make waves. But when he was confronted with teaching that was validated by authority from God and not merely human knowledge, then the unclean spirit had to attack.
And so the unclean spirit tries to cast doubt on the authority with which Jesus teaches by saying “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” He tries to present Jesus as a threat who has come to destroy them. But, Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit by telling him first to be silent, and then He tells the unclean spirit to leave the man.
This shows just how completely powerless we are to the deception of sin and the devil, without Christ Jesus. Even the unclean spirit knew who Jesus was, while the people in the synagogue did not appear to know who He was. They were astonished by the Word that Jesus brought them, but it was only the unclean spirit who was able to identify Jesus for who He is; the Holy One of God. But it proved to be his undoing because Jesus recognized the unclean spirit also and so He silenced him and then ordered him out of the person whom he had possessed.
But the attacks of sin and the devil continue today. The fact that the unclean spirit sat idly by for who knows how long shows us that the devil is not looking to try to get people to worship him, but rather he is simply looking to get people to not repent and believe upon Jesus, and specifically what He has done for you in His perfect life, death, and resurrection. The devil only wants to attack your faith, if your faith is in Christ Jesus.
And so the attacks continue. To this day, the name of Jesus is portrayed as being one that destroys and divides. And His promise of salvation is cast aside for matters of social justice. The attacks of sin and the devil continue as the gospel of salvation by faith in Christ alone is replaced by a more “relevant” gospel of being purpose-driven, or having your best-life now.
And it’s delusion and deception that we are all willing to buy into; because it’s more convenient. It’s more convenient because it takes our focus off of the very thing that Christ Jesus came to free us from; the bondage to sin that we are all born into. It’s delusion and deception that seem to free us, not only from having to confront our own sin, but the sin of our neighbor.
There is a scene in the biographical movie about Martin Luther that came out a few years ago called Luther that really reflects what’s going in today’s gospel lesson. It’s pretty early on in the film. Luther is still a monk at this point and is convinced that if he works hard enough he can actually be perfectly obedient to God’s law. But what happens is actually quite the opposite. The harder he works at it, the more he realizes just what a sinner he is. In other words, the more he relies on God’s law, the more he is just driven further and further into despair until finally all he can do is cry out to his mentor Johann Staupitz “Where can I find a gracious God?”
And does Staupitz reply with a bunch of questions for Luther to reflect on? Does he give him seven steps to figuring this out? Does he tell him first he has to find his purpose? No, he takes off a cross that he was wearing around his neck, gives it to Luther and tells him “Look to Christ.” That is how you find a gracious God, look to Christ.
You see, the problem with making the gospel about purpose or, social justice, or advice for daily living or anything other than our salvation coming through the perfect life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, is that ultimately that just turns us back to ourselves. And that is just law. It may not be hell-fire and brimstone but it has the same effect in that it gets us looking not to Christ but to our best efforts, and our good works which scripture tells us are as filthy rags. For no amount of purpose or social justice from your best efforts can overcome the power of sin and death in your life.
And so we look outside of ourselves to the Triune God of scripture, as the apostle Paul tells the people of Corinth to do in the second lesson; God the Father from whom all things are made and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. And now as we remember the Sabbath, once again Christ Jesus comes to you through the Holy Spirit bringing to you an authoritative Word of promise, bringing not a bunch of questions but real hope, real forgiveness of real sin, real redemption from real guilt, real salvation from real death. And in a few moments you will come forward and receive the real and bodily presence of Christ Jesus in the bread and the wine; His real body given for you, His real blood shed for you, saving you from the very real sin, death and the devil.
For you see, the same Christ Jesus who appeared in that synagogue and commanded the unclean spirit to be silent and come out of the one whom he had possessed, comes to you with His Word spoken over you at your baptism, silencing the devil and relinquishing any claim that the devil ever had on you. And it’s nothing short of that going on as Christ Jesus comes to you daily in Word and sacrament.
And so you have been freed from the burden of having to fumble around looking for purpose or your best-life now. You are free to focus not on yourself but on Christ and your neighbor, loving and serving them in Word and deed, taking care that this liberty of your’s does not become a stumbling block to the weak, but a means to share with them the good news that this Christ Jesus commands even the unclean spirits and they obey Him.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday January 25, 2009

2009-03-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news. This is what Jesus comes proclaiming to the people of Galilee in this morning’s Gospel lesson. And indeed this week, there has been much suggestion that now, with the inauguration of President Barack Obama we are entering a new day, filled with a new hope and change we can believe in.
Over the past several months we have heard much about the troubled state of our nation’s economy. We have heard how our national debt has grown to a degree, the likes of which we have never seen. We have seen the inauguration, we have seen the celebrations. We have seen all of the celebrities supporting our new president. We have seen and even perhaps heard iconic music artists performing at the inauguration and some of the parties connected to it. Yeah, we seem to be entering some sort of new day filled with hope.
Jesus announces the coming of the kingdom of God. And it seems this week we sort of welcomed a new “king.” Could this ‘new day’ that we are entering be a sign of the kingdom of God?? Judging by some of the coverage and reaction to this event, some may think so. But, when we look at the lesson from 1st Corinthians this morning we see that through the words of Paul, our Lord gives us reason to not be so quick to think so.
Now I am not trying to rain on anybody’s parade or downplay the historical significance of the first African-American president. And I am not trying to display any sort of partisanship. I hope and pray, and am cautiously optimistic that President Obama will do well and bring positive and fruitful change to our nation.
But again, in our second lesson, our Lord comes to us with a Word that tells us that the final fulfillment of the coming of the kingdom of God, the day when Christ returns and the old will be done away with and all things will be made new will be marked by events that actually look quite a bit different from all the pomp and splendor that we have seen this past week.
For Paul says that the day of the Lord, when Christ returns will be a day when those who deal with the world should live as though they had no dealings with it. Paul says that the present form of this world is passing away.
This is how the kingdom of God comes among us; not with great pomp and splendor, not with earthly power and earthly glory, not with great celebration. No, the coming of the kingdom of God is marked by the present form of this world passing away. The kingdom of God does not come merely to improve the world we live in, it does not come to boost our economy, or to fix our health care crisis, or to end what some politicians might describe as ‘torture.’
The kingdom of God does not come merely to fix this world. The kingdom of God comes, quite literally to replace this world. The kingdom of God comes, to make all things new. The complete fulfillment of the kingdom of God is the all things new that we wait for. The kingdom of God is among us today when we are gathered together in faith around God’s Word and sacrament, but we also await it’s complete fulfillment when the old will be done away with and all things will be made new.
This is what some refer to as living in the now and the not yet. The kingdom is here when God’s people are gathered in faith around God’s Word and sacraments, but we also still live in the old world, in the midst of sin and the devil. Yes, we still live in the midst of sin and the devil. When you wake up in the morning, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. When you go to work, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. When you have lunch, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. When you go to sleep at night, it’s right there with you; sin and the devil. And even in the midst of all the hope and splendor of a new president, who has rightly called on us to do our part, but still has promised to improve the lives of so many people, even in the midst of all the hope a new president; it’s right there with us, sin and the devil.
And so our Lord continually calls us to Himself, so as to constantly keep us focused on Him as we still live in the midst of the attacks of sin and the devil, and as we daily give in to the temptations that sin and the devil throw our way. Still our Lord constantly call us back to Himself.
This is what our Lord was doing for the Ninevites through the Word that he brought to them through the prophetic message delivered to them through Jonah. He was calling them to repent by warning them that in forty days more Nineveh would be overthrown. And, much to the surprise of the stubborn Jonah, they repented.
They repented. It says that they proclaimed a fast and everyone put on sackcloth. By the way, anytime you hear about someone, in the Old Testament, putting on sackcloth, more than likely that refers to someone repenting. In verse 8, it says that they turned from their evil ways and the violence that was in their hands. But, most importantly, the first thing it says that they did, is that they believed.
They believed the word delivered to them by God through the prophet Jonah. They believed that God was angry at them. They believed that God would overthrow Nineveh. They didn’t worry about how politically incorrect what Jonah was saying to them sounded. They didn’t argue with Jonah that he was presenting to them an image of God that didn’t jive with their pre-conceived notions of God. They simply believed the word of condemnation, as harsh is it may have seemed to them, that Jonah was delivering to them. The Ninevites recognized and acknowledged that they had sinned against God, and so they repented.
They repented and God changed His mind about the calamity that He was going to bring upon them. There is no embarrassment to the Old Testament that it says that God changed His mind. God was simply being faithful to His nature and His promise. He was simply staying true to who He is; the Almighty Creator of the universe who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He is simply showing the mercy and grace that He promises to show to those who would repent and believe upon Him.
And we see the ultimate revelation of this grace and mercy, not in the great political leaders that God would put into power over the years, not through economic prosperity, but through the forgiveness of our sin in Christ Jesus our Lord, when He laid down His life for us on the cross and took upon Himself all of our sin, paying the price that we could not pay.
And so, like He called the Ninevites to repentance through a very stubborn and sinful Jonah, our Lord calls you to repentance, today through the words of my mouth and daily also through the Holy Spirit in God’s Word.
But where the Ninevites repented in hopes of God’s mercy, we are called to repent in the promise of God’s mercy and forgiveness fulfilled for us in Christ Jesus. We repent, not to our good works, but to our knees at the foot of cross where we see God’s mercy and the forgiveness of our sin. Right there on the cross, we see the present form of earthly power and earthly glory passing away, so as to make way for God’s glory in mercy and forgiveness.
And so we know that God is faithful and keeps His promises as He did in the arrival of Christ Jesus and the forgiveness of our sin and our justification that comes through His perfect life, death and resurrection. Christ Jesus’ arrival marked the coming near of the kingdom of God. And so through His faithfulness already fulfilled we know that we can trust that He will faithfully fulfill His promised return when the present form of this world will pass away, and all things will be made new and the Kingdom of God will be completely fulfilled and we will have a place in it for all eternity.
And so, having been redeemed and forgiven He comes to us daily calling us to repentance and forgiveness. And so all we can do is live our lives focused first on the cross of Christ, where in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross for us, we find our life and forgiveness, and then having been freed to take the focus away from our needs we are freed to focus on the needs of our neighbor, bringing to them the hope and forgiveness in word and deed that we have in the real One, Christ Jesus who has made us new by bringing us faith in Him and what He has done for us and who will make all things new in the midst of the passing away of the present form of this old world.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday January 18, 2009

2009-03-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

Second Sunday after Epiphany
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today I would like to dispel for you a myth that has been perpetuated at least since the earliest days of the Church and probably long before that also. And this is the myth that the God of the Bible, the God who created the universe, the God who sent His Son to lay down His life for us and take upon Himself the burden of all of our sins is not inclusive. Now it is somewhat timely that I bring this up with the presidential inauguration coming up this week.
I am sure that some, if not all of you have heard about the controversy surrounding soon to be President Barrack Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. If any of you are not familiar with Rick Warren, he is the pastor of a very large megachurch in southern California and the author of a very successful book called The Purpose-Driven Life. Initially it was member’s of the homosexual community who were primarily upset at the selection of Warren because of Warren’s support of proposition 8 in California which upheld the traditional, and biblical understanding of marriage.
But now, atheists are getting in on the act. And they are not upset so much that Warren was selected but that there should be an invocation, which is basically an opening prayer. But, conceding that there is going to be an invocation, the atheists are now saying “Well he better not mention Jesus’ name.” Because they believe that if he did, then anyone who did not consider themselves a Christian would be left out in the cold or would be excluded.
And there you have it. There is one of the lies and myths that sin and the devil have been trying to fool people into believing for centuries; and that is the myth that the name of Jesus, the name above all names invokes exclusivism or is not inclusive. And actually nothing could be further from the truth. For you see the problem is not that the love of Christ excludes itself from anyone, but rather that we exclude ourselves from the love of Christ.
The truth is that this God whom we run from every day in sin, has been coming after us, seeking to include us in his great and glorious Kingdom since before even the foundation of the world. For the words that the psalmist spoke are true of all of God’s creation; He is acquainted with all our ways, even before a word is on our tongue, He knows it completely, He made each and every one of us, forming our inward parts and knitting us together in our mother’s womb.
We were made in His glorious image and He wanted nothing less for us than His perfect righteousness, and for us to be a part of His glorious kingdom. But we wouldn’t have it. Right from the beginning we showed ourselves to want nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. For being a part of a Kingdom involves submitting oneself to the will of the King, and that is just not something that we are inclined to do.
This One who has searched us and knows us better than we even know ourselves and whose knowledge is far too wonderful for us is the One who we run from every day with even the most seemingly obscure or harmless sinful thought or action. This One whose knowledge is far too vast for us to even begin to try to wrap our minds around is the One whom we show that we think we know better than as we continually and repeatedly try to re-mold and re-fashion His perfect image and His perfect will so as to better accommodate our self-serving desires. And it began when the devil, in the form of a serpent appeared to us and asked “Did God say ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” This is the question which, since the dawn of creation, we have sought to come up with reasons to answer with an emphatic ‘no.’
Even Eli, the teacher and mentor of Samuel who would be one of the great prophets in the history of God’s people, fell short and ignored the iniquity of his sons and so God brought punishment upon the house of Eli. And yet even in the face of the declaration of this judgment as it was pronounced to Eli through the words of Samuel, we see Eli submitting himself to God’s will when he says “It is the Lord; let Him do what seems good to Him.”
And although, as we see in the lesson from Samuel there were times when the Word of the Lord would seem rare, God would not abandon His people. Our Lord would continue to come after us, calling us to Himself, looking to include us in His great and glorious Kingdom.
He would continue to come after us with a Word all the while pointing to the fullness of time when the Word would come to us not merely through the proclamation of a sinful prophet, but incarnate in the flesh, born of a virgin in a manger.
He would come among us, be among us, live among us, live the perfect and sinless life among us and then, though sinless this incarnate One, the Son of God, Christ Jesus would take upon Himself all of our sin born of our desire to be our own gods and reject the One who created us, and He would pay the price for our rejection and rebellion when He laid down His life on the cross for us; not just the rebellion and rejection that we had inflicted upon Him up to that point, but also including the rejection that we inflict upon Him every day, even the rejection of the very ones who persecuted Him.
That is how truly inclusive He is, that as He hung on the cross bleeding and dying He looked down upon those persecutors who rejected Him so violently and offered not a word of condemnation but a word of mercy as He prayed “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
And we get a foreshadowing of this incredible inclusive mercy in today’s Gospel lesson. Nathanael says of Jesus “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael could not believe what Phillip was telling him, that the One whom Moses also wrote about in the law and the prophets, the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, whom Israel was waiting for could possibly come from a backwater town like Nazareth.
But then Jesus sees Nathanael and says of him that he is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael had just questioned whether Jesus was in fact who He said He was, and Jesus says of Nathanael that he is a man in whom there is no deceit. And indeed Nathaneal was simply being honest in his assessment that nothing good can come from Nazareth. And so Jesus doesn’t condemn Nathanael or argue with him or try to wow him to prove that Phillip was in fact right, instead he compliments Nathanel. And in this brief little discourse with Jesus, Nathanael sees that in fact something good has come from Nazareth. Jesus breaks through Nathanael’s exterior and makes him reconsider his assumptions and makes him see Jesus for who Jesus is; the Son of God, the King of Israel.
Christ Jesus is radically inclusive. He meets us where we are at, as we are, but He doesn’t leave us there. Nathanael was not the same after his encounter with Christ Jesus. And, the former persecutor of Christ, Paul was not the same after his encounter with Christ Jesus either. Having had his sin exposed to him, like Nathanael Paul realized that Christ Jesus is in fact the Savior and redeemer His disciples said He was and so the persecutor of Christ became the proclaimer of Christ’s promises.
And so you are changed when you encounter Christ in the waters of baptism and you are claimed by Him and cleansed by Him. And He daily comes to you as He is now, bringing you faith through the proclaiming of the Gospel; as the One who bore the burden of your sin calls you, gathers you, enlightens you, sanctifies you and includes you in the promise of His eternal Kingdom.
And so all that is left for us to do is to respond as Eli did in the Old Testament lesson in faith, believing and trusting that what the Lord has done and is doing for you and to you in Christ is good, and so hear the words of Paul the persecutor turned proclaimer “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” Through faith in Christ, we are included in Christ’s eternal resurrection and have a place in His eternal Kingdom. And it doesn’t get anymore inclusive than that.
Amen

Sunday January 11, 2009

2009-03-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

Baptism of the Lord
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anybody who has ever served in the military as an enlisted person has been to boot-camp, and so knows what it’s like to be woken up in the morning by a screaming and yelling drill instructor, at an hour of the morning when most people are still hours away from waking up. And if you haven’t served in the military then you have perhaps seen it in movies like Full-Metal Jacket or some other military-themed movie. Indeed the image of the hard-as-nails drill instructor bursting upon the scene, and bursting into the lives of his young charges is a fairly iconic figure in our culture.
Well that sort of reality is really probably not that different from what it would have felt like to have been an inhabitant of Jersualem at the time of John that Baptist’s arrival upon the scene. This is not to say that the Jews were not expecting or waiting for something. It had been years since the last prophet. Israel had been living under the oppression of corrupt and pagan Rome for many years. They were waiting and waiting for some kind of sign. They were ready for the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to send someone their way. They just were not expecting him to show up like this.
And so, into the chaotic wilderness of an oppressed Israel John the Baptist was sent. The Jews knew of God’s saving power and they remembered it every year at Passover. But now John comes, not simply recalling for them once again the great Passover story, but he comes splashing around in the water inviting them to now be the players in a new and even more radical Passover. John was not simply proclaiming freedom from earthly bondage, he was proclaiming freedom from bondage to sin, death, and the devil. And the path that would get them there would include, and in the case of those whom John was preaching to, begin with repentance.
Repentance is nothing less than the recognition that the sin that we are in bondage to, the sin that we are born in, is far too deeply rooted to be mastered by any outward changes, or any of our best efforts. Contrary to what some may believe, the Kingdom of God does not come about through human will-power or worship or election of a particular political candidate or any other human-driven effort or institution.
The coming of the Kingdom of God comes about only through the forgiveness of sins. Repentance is indeed a part of it, but repentance in and of itself is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the forgiveness of sin through the perfect life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Repentance is simply the recognition that short of that, there is no hope for us in this world. Repentance is simply the recognition that even on our best day, all of our best efforts amount to nothing more than, as Paul says, filthy rags. Repentance is simply the recognition that we are sinners in need of a Savior.
And this is the difference between the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins that John speaks of and the baptism of the One whom He speaks of who is more powerful than He, Christ Jesus. John’s baptism of repentance was in preparation for the much greater baptism of Christ Jesus who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. John was preparing the way for the coming of the Kingdom. He was announcing the arrival of a radical new royalty.
It has been said that everywhere the queen of England goes she smells fresh paint. In other words whenever the queen decides that she would like to visit a certain community there will always be someone sent to the community ahead of her to announce her intention of visiting and to make sure that all the proper steps are taken to prepare for her arrival. And this will involve cleaning everything up, and making sure everything looks spic and span, which could theoretically and probably involve painting some areas that need to be re-painted, and so everywhere the queen goes she smells fresh paint.
And that is kind of like what John the Baptist is doing. He is announcing the arrival of the new King of Israel. Except in this case, through our best efforts we couldn’t possibly make ourselves clean enough for His arrival. And so all we can do is repent and recognize our need for Him and He comes to us and baptizes us with the Holy Spirit, and He, Christ Jesus makes us clean. He serves us. He makes us new. He gives us new life, by laying down His life for us and taking upon Himself the burden of all of our sin.
And we get a vision of this radical new baptism at the baptism of our Lord Jesus that we read about in this morning’s Gospel lesson. Now it was not necessary for Jesus’ sake that He be baptized, because as the sinless Son of God He was and is righteous. But, as Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew’s recounting of the baptism of our Lord, it was necessary for Jesus to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness, which of course includes the righteousness of the Kingdom of God that comes about through the forgiveness of sins. And because of the precious and holy blood shed upon the Cross and the death that He died for us, we receive in Holy Baptism the same declaration that our Lord Jesus received when the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon the Lord Jesus and the voice of the Lord declared “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The baptism for repentance that John brings comes as an invitation, while the baptism with the Holy Spirit that was ushered in with the baptism of Christ Jesus comes as an invasion of the entire Godhead; the Son Christ Jesus entering into our humanity and submitting Himself to baptism, the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ Jesus and through the Holy Spirit; God the Father declaring His good pleasure in His Son. This is why those disciples in the lesson from Acts had to have Paul lay his hands on them; because they had not yet received the baptism in Christ Jesus. The fact that they spoke in tongues is certainly a sign of the righteousness that they had just received, but it was not the righteousness itself, as some like to suggest.
And today we see God invading us once again as He comes to us through the words proclaimed by me, an imperfect sinner and the water sprinkled over Parker’s head as yet another child of God is claimed for the Kingdom of Christ. But we still await the day when all righteousness will be fulfilled, when all things will be made new and so for that reason our Lord sees fit to surround those whom He claims in the waters of Holy Baptism with parents and sponsors and a congregation.
For the Christian life or baptismal journey or whatever you want to call it is nothing other than one of daily repentance and forgiveness. And so the invasion of God to us that we read about in this morning’s Gospel lesson continues as our Lord comes to us daily through Word and sacrament and this happens in and through those people whom our Lord blesses us with in our lives; parents, sponsors, congregation, the entire Body of Christ.
Everybody loves a good baptism. I do. I’ll admit it. And what’s not to like? You got a baby, you got new parents. You got grandparents and sponsors and family coming in from out of town. It’s a joyous and festive occasion. But I tell you this, there is much more going in baptism than a ceremony. In baptism we see nothing short of the continuation of what we have seen the Almighty God doing since the beginning of time; separating the light from the darkness as we see Him doing in the Old Testament lesson.
For when our Lord Jesus was baptized He was essentially revealed as the light of the world in opposition to the darkness of sin, death and the devil. And so when He comes to us in the waters of baptism He takes us through the darkness of sin and death and brings us into the light of new and eternal life. And so if the call to daily repentance seems jarring ad disturbing, rest easy knowing that it is simply the Lord Christ Jesus rescuing you from the darkness and preserving, nurturing and sustaining you in the eternal light of His glorious Kingdom.
Amen

Semon-Sunday December 14, 2008

2008-12-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

Advent 3
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In reading this week’s Gospel lesson, I caught John the Baptist in a lie. For you see, in this week’s lesson he is asked by the Levites and the priests if he is Elijah, and he says no. He says no, yet four times in the other Gospels John is mentioned as the fulfillment of the return of the prophet Elijah; three times by Jesus, and the other time is by an angel. Now this might seem somewhat insignificant to you, but understand the return of Elijah was a big part of Jewish messianic expectations.
John could have said "Yep I’m Elijah." And the Levites and the priests would have probably bowed down at his feet and done whatever he said. But I don’t think John knew. Or even if he did know, I think maybe he still would have answered the question the way he did. John the Baptist is asked who he is and he describes himself as "the voice of One crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’"
To the question of who he is, John defines himself totally and completely in relation to the claim that had been made upon him in Christ Jesus. John recognized that he was a witness to testify to the light who is Christ Jesus.
There is a Lutheran radio talk show that I listen to called "Issues etc." which by the way I highly recommend. It’s very informative because they will critique things going on in our culture through a confessional Lutheran lens. It’s not on any local radio station, but you can listen to it online at issuesetc.org. Anyway, on this show, they have a slogan that says "It’s not about you, it’s about Christ for you." And that kind of seems to be an echo of what John the Baptist is saying here. He is saying it’s not about him, it’s about the One whom he has been called to testify to.
John is saying that he desires to be understood as nothing other than one who has been sent to testify to the Light sent into this sin-darkened world-namely Christ Jesus, who would take on the burden of your sin and death and despair. John understood that this is a sin-darkened world and that there in only one Light that can contend with the darkness of sin, death, and the devil.
John knew that our nature is not to receive our Lord in the means by which He has decided to reveal Himself to us but rather to try to find God on our own terms. And when we do that, we just continue to stumble around in the darkness of our sin and pride. With every self-focused attempt at defining God on our own terms, we simply move further and further away from the Light of Christ-the means by which our Lord has chosen to reveal Himself to us by entering into our humanity and weakness and becoming Immanuel-God with us.
And so we run from the Light for fear of what the Light might expose about ourselves. We stumble around in the darkness trying to find and define God on our own terms by saying things like "God is love" without really giving much thought to what that means or how that reality reveals itself in God’s Word. We stumble around in the dark deluding ourselves with images of God as being just close enough to be real but far enough away so as not to get in the way of our plans and desires.
We react to things of this world, and those reactions might fill our hearts with hope, love, anxiety, anger, joy, apathy or whatever. But in our heart of hearts, we don’t want God anywhere near close enough to us that His presence would bring about a reaction. And so we continue wandering around in the darkness continually trying to package God in ways that are comfortable and safe for us by reducing Him to a life-coach, or an advice-giver, or a therapist, or a financial counselor.
But in the end, all of that is just our self-focused attempts to wrap this broken, sinful world in a divine package. It is merely a reflection of our desire to not be defined as John defined himself-purely in relation to the Light of Christ Jesus whom he had been sent to testify to.
But the God who has promised to be our God and claimed us as His in the waters of Holy Baptism has shown throughout the history of His people that He just will not leave us alone, even though He had every reason to do just that. And so we find the Almighty God, Creator of the universe in our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah refusing to leave His people in misery and darkness. He comes to His people, bringing them their recompense, making an everlasting covenant with them, not according to Israel’s merit, but rather according to God’s everlasting, unbreakable commitment to His people.
And in the faithfulness of our Lord that we see in the Old Testament lesson, we see a foreshadowing of the even greater, love, mercy and faithfulness still to come. For in the Light of Christ Jesus whom John was sent to testify to, we see our Lord refusing to not be found by us but coming after us revealing Himself to us. Indeed the Light whom John came to testify to refused to be stopped by our attempts to stop Him from entering into our reality and becoming "God with us."
He just would not stop, He kept going, entering into the darkest recesses of this sin-darkened world as we attempted to squash the light that He brought into this world until finally He entered into the deepest and darkest recess of this old broken world-death itself and even death could not stop Him. He took all the suffering and death that this sin-darkened world could throw at Him and the Light that He is and the Light that He brought could not be extinguished.
And so now, having defeated sin, death and the devil for you He continues to refuse to leave you in the dark, coming to you in baptism, claiming you as His and making you righteous, and bringing you faith. He comes to you daily in His Word nurturing you and sustaining you in faith, daily clothing you in the garment of salvation and the robe of righteousness.
You may have noticed that you are no longer getting regular birthday cards from the church but rather baptism birthday cards. I cannot take credit for that idea. It was suggested to me by one of your fellow parishioners. I thought it was a great idea and in looking at it in light of how John identifies himself in front of the Levites and the priests it seems like an even better idea. The suggestion shows that your fellow parishioner who suggested it recognizes the importance of being aware of the identity we have in Christ.
Celebrating our earthly birthdays is fine, but when our earthly life is over the old creature dies and our earthly birthday dies with the old creature. But at the resurrection, when Christ Jesus returns and the new creation that Christ is making of us is fully emerged, that will be a continuation of the re-birth that we experience in baptism. We take our baptism birthdays with us into God’s eternal Kingdom. When we remember our baptism birthday, we are remembering when Christ Jesus cleansed us in the waters of baptism, claimed us as His, brought us into His death and resurrection and we are re-born inheritors of the eternal Kingdom.
And so having been re-born, we are filled with the Light that John the Baptist was sent to testify to. And now the God of peace comes to us in Word and sacrament and sanctifies us and faithfully calls us so that our Spirit and soul and body will be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so, having been filled with the Light of Christ why would we want to identify ourselves according to anything else? As the body of Christ we are the continuation and the echo of John the Baptist. We are now the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. John the Baptist was not lying, he was simply doing all he could do, which was to point to the One for Whom he had been sent to prepare the way for and make straight the paths for and to say of Him "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."
And now, the One who the Baptist pointed to has taken away the darkness of your sin and filled you with the light of forgiveness. But the world we live in is still in darnkness and that is why we are to identify ourselves solely in relation to the claim that has been made upon us by Christ-not just to each other, but to our brothers our sisters our co-workers, our nieces our nephews, our banker, our plumber, our doctor, our dentist, our accountant, in other words our neighbor-so that through the Holy Spirit the light of Christ that we have been filled with will continue to call those lost in the dark, into the Light.
Amen

Sunday December 7, 2008

2008-12-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

Advent 2
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the most dangerous things that we can do with the call from John the Baptist for repentance for the forgiveness of sins is to reduce it to something in the past, to think that it doesn’t apply today is a very dangerous idea. And yet I stand before you this morning, and I tell you that this is an idea that has infected a great deal of contemporary Christianity, certainly American Christianity. We delude ourselves into thinking that the arrival of Christ signaled the end of God’s judgment.
God’s judgment is thought of as something that only happened in the Old Testament. And so we think that now that Jesus has come, then everything in this old world is A-OK. And so whether we are allowing ourselves to be sucked into mass consumerism, or addiction, or pornography, or the secularization of the sacred or whatever other idols we create for ourselves, we pacify ourselves of any guilt associated with that sort of idolatry because we buy into the delusion that because Jesus came and died on the cross and was raised three days later, then that must mean that the time of judgment has come to an end.
And so rather than understanding God as He is described in Scripture; as the ever-present, omnipotent, Almighty creator of the universe who sees our every action and knows our every thought, who loves us but also demands perfect righteousness from us, we reduce God to the loving old Man in the sky who just winks and shakes His head at our little quirks and foibles, because after all God wants us to be happy. God wants us to do what we want to do, so we are happy. Or rather than seeing the God of Scripture as He is described in scripture, calling His people to repentance and faith and forgiveness, we have bought into the false notion that God has moved beyond the Gospel and now He is more interested in boosting our self-esteem, or giving us good advice, or making us more financially prosperous, all of which might be good and well, but do nothing to nurture and sustain us in the faith that saves us.
But all you have to do is to look at the news of the last week or so, whether it be the terrorist activity in India or a person being trampled at a Wal-Mart or just about anything else; You don’t even have to look at the news. Just look at the world around you and you can see that this world is far from being A-OK. Just look around you, and by that I would include taking a good look at ourselves, and you can see that there is still judgment that needs to be made. You can see that, dare I say it there is judgment being made, quite possibly in and through some of these tragedies that we see on the news. I know that goes against so much of the thinking in our culture, but we also know from Romans, that God will when it is necessary, give us up to our own iniquities and, in that, allow us to bring judgment upon ourselves.
Indeed, the call from John the Baptist for repentance for the forgiveness of sin is every bit as important and relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. John preached repentance and called for people to prepare the way of the Lord, and indeed the people on the banks of the Jordan whom he was preaching to were awaiting the coming of Christ. And while they may not have received the forgiveness that John spoke of until Christ Jesus came and laid down His life for them, bearing the burden of their sin, in repentance they were still made followers of Christ.
And indeed John says himself that his baptism is merely with water while Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And so the people on the banks of the Jordan who were baptized by John were baptized in anticipation of the forgiveness of Christ Jesus, while in your baptism the Holy Spirit infused you with faith, brining to you the forgiveness that can only come through faith in Christ Jesus and what He has done for you by taking upon Himself all of your sin and death and despair. But that is not the end of the story.
For while those on the banks of the Jordan were awaiting Christ’s arrival, we await His return. And until His return the call to repentance for the forgiveness of sin, and our need to hear it will remain absolutely necessary. It is necessary for when the call to repentance for the forgiveness of sin is proclaimed and God’s people hear it, then the Holy Spirit works through that very call to knock us down from the idolatrous mountains of sin and despair that we build for ourselves.
While the announcement of the coming of the One for whom the Baptist was not even worthy to untie the thong of His sandals, Christ Jesus in Whom we receive the forgiveness that John speaks of; the announcement of His arrival and the forgiveness that He brings lifts us up from the valleys of despair and guilt and sorrow over our sin.
And so while we have most certainly been brought into God’s mercy and forgiveness, our struggle with sin and the devil still remain until Christ returns and makes all things new. For as Paul tells us in Galatians, what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh. And so, while the flesh and sin and the devil are certainly no match for the Spirit, they will continue to oppose the Spirit and so we need to continually here the call to repentance for the Spirit works through that call to oppose flesh, sin, death, and the devil.
As we read in the lesson from 2nd Peter God does not want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. Repentance is the path to forgiveness in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the means by which we are saved from perishing, and the means by which we are raised from the dead as new creations. Peter writes of the waiting that we experience as we await the day of the Lord when Christ will return. He says that this day will come like a thief and the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Everything will be disclosed. Every thought, desire and action of your’s, not just to God, who already knows it anyway, but to all. It is the day of judgment.
God does not want this day to catch any of you unaware and for this reason, the Holy Spirit daily comes to you in God’s Word, calling you daily to repentance, nurturing you sustaining you in your faith, maintaining the claim that your Lord Jesus made upon you in the waters of baptism.
And so Peter poses the question "What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and Godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?" Does Peter say go out and do as much as you can, or consume as much as you can? Does he say go out and live your best life now or make sure that you are purpose-driven? Does he say go out and do as many good works as you can?
No, Peter says in accordance with Christ’s promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. True righteousness, the righteousness that our Lord demands of us, cannot be found in this old world. True righteousness cannot be found in our best efforts. And so Peter tells us, while we wait for Christ’s return we strive to be found by Christ, not at work, not trying to earn our own righteousness, but we are to be found at peace. And that is why the Baptist’s call to repentance for the forgiveness of our sins is just as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. For in repentance and confession we hear and receive the declaration of the forgiveness of our sins. And in that we are reminded that we belong to Christ, we belong to the One who bore the burden of our sin by laying down His life for us. We belong to the One who will bring a new heavens and a new earth. And it is only in that promise that we find the peace that Peter speaks of, what Paul calls the peace that surpasses all understanding.
And so, good deeds of love and service to our neighbor are wonderful. But they do not bring us peace or righteousness, but rather they are fruits of the Spirit bringing us the peace and righteousness that can only come through faith in Christ Jesus. They are opportunities presented to us by our Lord to show our gratitude to our Lord who has claimed us as His, branded us as His own and saved us from this old world, so that when Christ returns we will not perish, but we will be found at peace as we come into the new heavens and the new earth.
Amen

Sunday November 30, 2008

2008-12-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

Advent 1
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today in our Gospel lesson, our Lord Jesus tells us to keep alert for we do not know when the time of His return in glory will come. Indeed we enter today into the season of Advent in the midst of the Advent we live in every day as we await the promised return of our Lord Jesus. We enter into this time of year when we are awaiting and preparing for Christmas which will come in four weeks, while we also await the return of our Lord in glory, which we don’t know when will get here.
And the fact that we don’t know when Jesus will return is only confirmed for us in the Gospel lesson for today. In fact in our Gospel lesson for today, our Lord Jesus tells us that not only do we not know when Jesus will return but neither do the angels in heaven or even Jesus Himself. The Son of God does not even know the day or the hour of His return. Only the Father in Heaven knows when this will take place.
And we also know that when this happens the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give it’s light and the stars will be falling from Heaven. In other words Jesus is talking about the end of the world here people. He is talking about when the old will be done away with and all things will be made new. We know that this day is coming. We read about it in scripture. We hear sermons about it. Some of us even go to Bible-studies relating to it. We know it’s out there. We know it’s coming. But do we really believe it? Do we take all that end of the world stuff seriously? Or do we just go about our daily lives without so much as giving it a second thought?
Then again, why would we want to spend time talking or thinking about the reality that this world that we have invested so much in, placed so much hope in, and it would seem gotten so much from, is going to come to an end? Why think about the fact that this old world will one day vanish into nothingness and be completely consumed?
I mean that’s too much of a downer, especially this time of year when we should be happy and cheerful all the time. This is when we are supposed to be shopping and putting lights up on our houses. Who wants to think about the world coming to and end??
But such reluctance only leads to the sleep that our Lord Jesus speaks of in the Word He comes to us with this morning. Jesus warns us of the danger of being caught asleep, being caught unaware when He returns and so He urges us to stay awake. But we are all far too susceptible to the attempts of sin, death and the devil to lull us to sleep whether it be through busyness or stress or simply an all together collapsing into unconsciousness where all that is left of our faith is ignored, abandoned or at best we simply go through the motions.
But we must talk and think about and be conscious of the coming end of the world, for this is what it means to be a baptized member of the Body of Christ; that our calling is to prepare for the end of this tired old world. Our calling is to prepare for the promised return of Christ Jesus. We are among the slaves that Jesus speaks of who have been put in charge of our master’s house until He returns. He has put us in charge. He has given us authority to prepare for His return.
And so what kind of authority has He given us? Well in John 1 we are told that we are given the power, or some translations say "right" to be children of God. The Greek word translated as "right", exousia, is actually more often translated as "authority." So it essentially means the same.
Your status as a child of God comes to you completely from outside of you. It is given to you and it has to be given to you, such as with any "right" or "authority." It is not something you can work for or choose. It has to come to you from outside of you. And it does in the waters of baptism, and you are baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ and you are given the authority to say that you are a beloved child of God, you are given the authority to say and know that no matter what this old, dying world throws at you, you are a child of God , you are living in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection still to come.
You would not have this authority if Christ Jesus did not lay down His life for you and take the burden of your sin and death upon Himself and claim you as His in the waters of baptism. You have the authority to live in the knowledge that you are a forgiven sinner. But He doesn’t even leave that entirely up to you.
No, for He knows that you are only too willing to be lulled to sleep by sin, death and the devil so He comes to you in His Word, such as He is doing right now through the Holy Spirit in the words of my mouth, calling you to repentance so you can once again hear the promise of the Gospel of the forgiveness of your sin. He comes to you in Holy Communion bringing you the forgiveness of your sin in His body and blood.
Talking about the end of the world may not be pleasant, may not be sophisticated, may not be cool but we must for it is our calling. We must because, were it not for the authority to be children of God in Christ Jesus we would be every bit as perishable as this world. Without Christ Jesus we would remain as Isaiah says "..like one who is unclean. … We would all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away."
All of this talk of the authority to know that you are a forgiven child of God may sound strange but this old world and the devil will tempt, accuse, delude, deceive and do whatever it can to convince you that you are merely a part of this old, dying world. And on your own you would be defenseless, but your Lord has given you a promise and a Word to fight back. And so in all that the world throws at you, you can look back and say "I am a forgiven child of God and I have been given the authority to know and declare that." And to that, the devil and this old world have no response. And that is how you prepare for the return of Christ in glory or the end of this old, dying world.
And so indeed, in the forgiveness of our sin we have been given much, so indeed we also have much to give. For as Paul says in our second lesson, the testimony of Christ is strengthened among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. For in giving us the authority to know that we are forgiven children of God, our Lord Jesus has also given us the authority to share that forgiveness with those around us.
This is called the ‘office of the keys’ and it is the authority to declare forgiveness to those who repent and withhold it from the unrepentant. It is not we who do the forgiving but God in Christ Jesus, through the laying down of His life.
As we think about the Advent story who was the most prepared for the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem?? Mary was. Joseph was. The shepherds were. One thing that they all have in common is that they all believed God’s Word. Likewise you are prepared for the return of Christ in glory because you have heard the Word of forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and you believe it.
In addition to knowing that you are a child of God forgiven of your sin and given an eternal place in God’s eternal kingdom through the death and resurrection of Christ so that you will be prepared for the return of Christ Jesus, you are also given other responsibilities. The Almighty God has blessed you with the gift of vocation. If you are a parent you are given the authority to raise your children. If you are an employee He gives you the authority to serve your employer. If you are a student He gives you the authority to study and learn. And to all of us He has given the authority to love and serve our neighbor, feed and clothe the hungry and naked. And these and other things are all good and right things to do, and they are good and right things that can be done by believers and non-believers alike.
But none of that, as good as it is will make you any more prepared for the end of the world. If you take lightly the need for repentance and forgiveness, you may just be found sleeping. But because you do believe. Because you daily hear the call to repentance and forgiveness you have the authority to know and believe that you are a forgiven child of God. You are given the authority to be forgiven and set free from sin.
The end will come, Christ Jesus will return in glory, but you are prepared because you are forgiven. You have been freed from the burden of trying to find any hope in this old world, and freed to share the forgiveness you have been given in Christ with your neighbor, that they might be prepared also.
Amen

Thursday November 27 2008

2008-12-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Day
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving services, or in this case, Thanksgiving-eve services have kind of a strange feel. This year, as often happens in the past, Thanksgiving comes in-between Christ the King Sunday and the First Sunday in Advent, meaning that it comes in-between the last Sunday of one church year and the first Sunday of the next church year. But what has always seemed a little strange to me about Thanksgiving services is the reality that, let’s be honest, Thanksgiving is, or at least it has become primarily a civil holiday.
I mean, I don’t think it was ever actually considered a church holiday, but the pilgrims were good God-fearing Puritans. I am sure if we went back to those first few Thanksgiving celebrations, they would have looked quite a bit different from Thanksgiving as it is celebrated today. I am sure there would have been a strong element of thanks and praise to our Lord. My guess when they weren’t eating or preparing the Thanksgiving feast they were probably giving thanks and praise to God. And those were grim and bitter times the likes of which we couldn’t even imagine. But still, it was important that they take time to give thanks.
And now hundreds of years later when we are living in luxury and splendor the likes of which the pilgrims couldn’t have imagined we have turned this day intended to be spent in thanks and praise to our Lord into a celebration of indulgence and excess. What was intended to be a day of honoring the sacred as praise to God has become really a day of chasing idols. We have turned it into a day of focusing on, and consuming the gift, while completely losing sight of the Giver. And inevitably, like with so many gifts of God, we have convinced ourselves that the gifts of God are not so much gifts as they are rights.
We have become like the nine lepers in the Gospel lesson who were healed of their leprosy by Jesus but really didn’t even appear to so much as give a thought to thanking and praising God. These ten lepers were suffering from a crippling and debilitating disease. In addition to that, as if that weren’t bad enough, this disease would have made them outcasts from society. They would have all been in desperate need. And so they cry out to Jesus in their despair. They cry out to Him and He responds.
He sees that they are in need and He responds by simply telling them to go and show themselves to the priest. He tells them to go to the priest because the priest has to confirm someone being cleansed of their leprosy. This is from Leviticus 14 where it says that the leprous person at the time of their cleansing, is to go to the priest and the priest shall make an examination. And so we can see that Jesus was not just addressing the leprosy, but also the social isolation that went with the leprosy.
But then, the ten who were once united in the misery of their leprosy, scatter and disband once they have been healed, and only one of them thinks to come back and thank and praise God for healing him. And what made him go back and give thanks was that he saw that he had been healed. He saw that he had been healed and so he turned back, Luke writes, praising God with a loud voice, and he sat at Jesus’ feet and thanked Him.
Seeing is a big part of this story. The lepers saw Jesus and cried out to Him. Jesus saw the lepers need and responded to it. The one leper saw that he had been healed and gave thanks. But I don’t think the difference between the one leper and the other nine was that he saw that he had been healed and the others didn’t see that they had been healed. I am sure the others saw that they had been healed, but the grateful leper saw his healing for what it was; a gift. And I think with the other nine, perhaps there was a short period of time where they were grateful but then maybe lost sight of the reality that the healing they had received was a gift, as opposed to something they deserved or were entitled to, a right if you will.
And so that brings us back to us. We have lost sight of the reality that everything we have is a gift and a blessing from God. We convince ourselves that the gifts that we receive from God are actually well-deserved rewards for our good works and piety as we seek to live our best life now. We lose sight of the giver, while the gift becomes our god and our taskmaster.
But in John 6 Jesus tells us not to work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life which the Son of Man gives you. For it is on the Son of Man that God the Father has set His seal. When we have perishable idols we are perishable. The nine lepers who walked away give us a sobering reminder of the danger of what we have turned Thanksgiving into; a day of having, desiring, and consuming what is less than God.
But the good news is that the Giver remains present among His despisers. For that is what we see through the whole life, death and resurrection of Jesus. When Jesus entered the village He was doing so knowing that He would soon be among some of His despisers. The nine lepers who lost sight of the reality that the healing they had received was a gift, revealed themselves to be among Jesus’ despisers.
But in the midst of that we see Jesus doing what He does, giving people new life, freeing people from bondage, making them well. For when the Samaritan comes back and gives thanks, Jesus declares unto him that his faith has made him well. That is where we see saving faith, not in the ten who cried out to Jesus in need, but in the one who came back and gave thanks and praise, not because he felt obligated to but because he couldn’t help it. He understood that in his encounter with Jesus, that Jesus was not just some guy who happened to be able to heal leprosy. Heck the fact that there was a precedent for priests confirming people being healed of leprosy way back in Leviticus tells us that there were people being healed of leprosy long before Jesus came around.
No he understood that in Jesus, he had seen much more than a healer. In Jesus he had an encounter with the living God. In Jesus he had an encounter with the One who comes to us in the waters of baptism and claims us as His own and marks us with the cross of Christ. In Jesus he saw the One who saves us not simply from disease and social isolation but from sin, death, and the devil. In Jesus he saw the One who would lay down His life for us and take upon Himself our sin and death and in exchange give us His righteousness and eternal life.
How can we possibly not be grateful for that? As Paul says in the lesson from 2nd Corinthians God is able to provide us with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, we may share abundantly in every good work. In Christ Jesus we are given so much that the very privilege of being able to share the great riches of God’s grace and forgiveness in Christ Jesus is a gift in itself.
Every time I preach on this passage, I always wonder about what happened to the nine lepers who did not come back. Most commentaries that I read in preparing for this sermon, which would be one, seem to assume that they never came back. But I don’t think we can assume that, especially in light of the fact that just two chapters before this Luke gives us the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin and the parable of the prodigal son, all of which are rich in imagery of Jesus as the shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep.
I think the grateful leper went out after the other nine. I think he went out after them seeking to open their eyes to the gift of Whom they had encountered in Christ Jesus. And I think in that we see our calling to our neighbor; to reach out to them in Word and deed, to meet their needs, to feed them when they are hungry, to clothe them when they are naked, but always looking to reveal to them to greatest gift we have been given, the gift for which we are to always be giving thanks and praise for, the gift of our Savior Christ Jesus.
Amen

Sunday November 23, 2008

2008-12-12T18:46:00.000-08:00

Proper 29
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
It might seem to some from this morning’s Gospel lesson, that finally today on the final Sunday of the church year, Christ the King Sunday, finally our Lord Jesus has given us something to do. For in the Word that our Lord comes to us with today we are given a vision of the final judgment, when the sheep will be separated from the goats, and the righteous sheep will be invited into the place that has been prepared for them and the accursed goats will be told to depart from the Lord’s presence and sent into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
And so in this vision, how is it that the Son of Man coming in glory separates the righteous sheep from the unrighteous goats? One thing we can see is that He tells the sheep that what they did for the least of these, who were members of His family, they did for Him. When they reached out to meet the needs of their neighbor, they were doing so for Christ Jesus. And conversely He tells the goats that what they failed to do for the least of these, they failed to do for Him. When they failed to reach out and meet the needs of their neighbor, they failed to do so for Christ Jesus.
And so, one might be tempted to say "If you are reaching out and meeting the needs of your neighbor, then you are in the Kingdom." But if that is what’s going on, then why would the goats question when they are told that they failed to meet Jesus’ needs? They had just seen Jesus tell the sheep that when they had reached out to the least of these in His family, they were doing so for Jesus also, so they knew that when Jesus referred to doing for Him, He was referring to doing for the least of these in His family.
It appears that the goats must have been expecting to be invited into the Kingdom also. And so, like a lot of people who misread this text, the goats thought that Jesus was saying that the sheep were a part of the Kingdom because of their good works of charity. And it would be very easy for me turn this into a simple call for you to pull yourself up by your ethical boot-straps, so you can go out and meet the needs of your neighbor. And of course, seeking to meet the needs of your neighbor is a noble, worthy and yes faithful goal. But there is more than that going on here.
It is not the good works of love and charity of the sheep that get them into the Kingdom. The key distinction between the goats and the sheep is not good works of charity. They were all, goat and sheep alike, doing good works. Jesus could have been talking about any good work, or any commandment. He could have been talking about remembering the Sabbath, or not taking the Lord’s name in vein, or honoring your mother and father, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The goats would have still been goats, and the sheep would have still been sheep.
What separates the goats and the sheep is faith. The sheep are declared righteous in their faith and the goats are declared unrighteous in their lack of faith. And so it is with us. Everyday, in our lack of faith, we are placed right in there among the goats. Jesus tells this story way back, before His suffering, death, and resurrection but even still, what He is doing is giving us a vision of our future. He is giving us a vision of the day when the victory over sin, death, and the devil that was won with His death and resurrection will be fulfilled.
The battle with sin and the devil rages every day and we live in the midst of it, but the victory has already been won for us, when Christ Jesus took upon Himself all of our sin and despair and laid down His life for us.
The victory has already been won, but still, goats that we are, we try to win it ourselves, by keeping tabs and counting our good works, and deluding ourselves that our good works and piety are visible signs of our spiritual progress.
A few months ago, on one of my visits to Bethel nursing home, I went to visit an elderly woman who is a member of this parish. I walked in and saw her in the area where people were getting ready to play Bingo. I thought "Oh I’d better get in there and give her communion quick so I can sneak out of there before Bingo starts." Well I wasn’t quite fast enough. I sat down and greeted the woman and as I was opening the communion kit they began playing Bingo. So I stayed and helped her play Bingo and then gave her communion and stayed and talked with her a little while, and ended up staying quite a bit longer than I had anticipated.
And as I left I caught myself mentally patting myself on the back, complimenting myself for being such a good and faithful servant. There was a good work done in that visit. In that visit, a saint of this parish received the body and blood of our Lord Jesus in Holy Communion, she heard the declaration of the forgiveness of her sin in the absolution, she heard the Gospel of our Lord proclaimed to her and prayers were made on her behalf. But all I brought to that visit was sin and pride and selfishness. I went in wanting to sneak out early, and went out patting myself on the back. There was a good-work done, but it was not mine. All I brought was goat-like behavior.
And we all do it. We all daily try to delude ourselves into thinking that through our best efforts we are earning points with Jesus and making some sort of visible progress in our righteousness. This is why we have employee of the month awards, or humanitarian of the year awards. It’s why we have awards like this, the 2009 Faithfulness in Ministry Cross. This is from The Story, which is a quarterly publication for students and alumni of Luther Seminary, and there you see three pastors who will receive this annual award. Now I am sure there is fine and noble work being done in the ministries of all three of these pastors, but that they are given awards and given credit for the work not that they are doing, but that is being done through them is just another reflection of our goat-like tendencies.
But you see, if it really were up to us, then we would all just remain goats. What this vision of our King Jesus coming on the day of the final judgment shows us is not that these sheep claimed their place in the Kingdom through their good works, but that the good works done through them were the result of the claim that had been made upon them by the King.
For you see there is only one way to be made from a goat to a sheep, and that is by being killed as a goat and raised in new life as a sheep. And try as we might, we cannot do this ourselves. We are so quick to forget what Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, that apart from Him we can do nothing. But He does not leave us on our own.
He does not wait for us to claim Him, but rather He claims us by coming to us in Word and sacrament. He comes to us in baptism with the very same power that Paul writes about in Ephesians, the power that God put to work in Christ Jesus when He rose Him from the dead. He puts this power to work in us, by bringing us into the death and resurrection of Christ and thus killing the old, sinful goat in us and then raising us in new life and bringing about the new creation in us.
But the old goats in us don’t die easily, and so daily the old goat in us tries to convince us that we’re fine on our own and that we don’t need our Shepherd. Sin and the devil continue to tempt the old goat in us, playing on our ego by filling us with delusions of grandeur and our own ethical progress through our own best efforts. But the good shepherd Christ Jesus continues to come to us in His Word and sacrament, killing the goat in us, raising us as sheep.
The only way that the sheep in this illustration of the final judgment realize that they are a part of the Kingdom is through a Word proclaimed to them. And so today, in the words of my mouth through the Holy Spirit, Christ Jesus declares you as being among those blessed by His Father and who are awaiting the inheritance of the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world. Hear the words of Ezekiel in the Old Testament lesson through whom our Lord says that He will be the shepherd of His sheep and make them lie down.
Cast aside all your illusions of progress and piety and rest in Christ Jesus who laid down His life for you. Then, of course, go forth and do for the least of these, not to show your piety, but in joyful response to the new life that you have been given, the new creation that Christ Jesus is making of you, and the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world.
Amen

Sunday November 16, 2008

2008-12-12T18:44:00.001-08:00

Proper 28
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
There has been a lot of talk about fear in the news lately. Of course much of this talk has been in connection with the economy. But some of it has also been in connection with the presidential election. While some are rejoicing over the election of Barack Obama, others are somewhat apprehensive, and question whether he has enough experience to prepare him for the no-doubt incredible challenges that await him when he takes office. And still with others, there is perhaps simply a general fear of the uncertain times that we live in.
One can almost hear the echo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And in the context that FDR was speaking, things of the world, I believe that notion probably applied very effectively. But I believe in the Word that our Lord comes to us with this morning, the problem is not so much ‘fear itself’ but rather what we fear.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells a parable of three servants who had each been entrusted with a certain amount of talents (money) by their master, a wealthy landowner, when he went on a journey. The landowner came back and each of the first two servants returned the money they were entrusted with, plus additional money that they had managed to make from the money that they had been entrusted with. It doesn’t really say how they made the money, whether it was from investing or what, but just that they had managed to take what they had been given, and from it, get more.
And then He went to collect from the third servant. And the third servant, whom He had given the least amount to, gave his Master only what he had been entrusted with. He explained that he knew that his master was a harsh man, reaping where He did not sow, gathering where He did not scatter seed. He confessed to being afraid, and for that reason, he just went and buried his talent in the field, rather than risk losing it. But his master replied in a most harsh manner, calling him a wicked and lazy slave, telling him he should have invested his money with bankers, so that upon the master’s return he would at least have made some interest. And He was thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The servant said that he was afraid, but it was not his master whom he was afraid of, but rather it was actually the perceived uncertainty of the world around him, in relation to the gift that he had been entrusted with. He was sure that the world around him would destroy the gift that he had been entrusted with, while the other two servants went confidently into the world, seeking to utilize the gifts in whatever way they saw possible, seeking whatever gains they could obtain from the gifts that they had been entrusted with.
And since we know that the master in this parable is God, then we know that the third servant in the parable was lacking the proper fear and reverence for God. We know that, like us he was guilty of fearing things of the world, and things of man more than God. For you see, we are guilty of this everyday.
Think about it. Throughout the day, throughout the last week, throughout the last month, throughout the last year, what have you feared? Have you feared the stability of your pension? Have you feared for your health or the health of loved ones? Have you feared whether or not you will be able to pay your mortgage? Have you feared whether or not you would reap a big enough harvest? Have you feared whether or not you would be able to pay your bills? Have you feared the prospect of having to call another pastor, and wondering just how many pastors there are that would be willing to come to Western North Dakota?
These are all valid things to be concerned about but they are ultimately things of the world. And since they are things of the world, we need not become so consumed with these concerns that they become a hindrance to our discipleship. We need not become so attached to the temporary things of the world that we lose sight of the eternal. When it comes right down to it, we are all just like the third servant, fearing the things of the world and things of man more than we fear the eternal things of our Lord.
But through the words of Zephaniah in the Old Testament lesson we are reminded that the day of the Lord is indeed something to be feared. Through the words of Zephaniah we are told that there will be great distress brought upon people because they have sinned against the Lord. He writes that their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. That does not sound pleasant, that sounds frightening and it is frightening. Indeed for some it will be a day of great darkness. It will be day of great despair.
Zephaniah writes that neither silver nor gold can save us from this day, and those sentiments are echoed in the explanation to the second article of the apostle’s creed from the small catechism where Luther reminds us that Christ Jesus saves us, lost and condemned sinners that we are, from this day of wrath not with silver and gold but with His holy and precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.
Every day we fear the things of this world more than our Lord and as such show ourselves to be deserving of the wrath that Zephaniah writes about, but our Lord Christ Jesus has taken upon Himself our fear and our doubts and our despair and our sin and He has saved us from the day of wrath. We have been freed from the darkness of that day of wrath and so hear the words of Paul from the second lesson through which our Lord tells us that we are not children of darkness but rather children of light and children of the day. Through the waters of baptism we have been claimed by our redeemer Christ Jesus, as children of the light, children or our Lord. We have been brought into the death and resurrection of Christ.
The old creation in us has been put to death, and the new creation in us is coming forth as the Holy Spirit comes to us in word and sacrament nurturing and sustaining us in our faith. And so to fear the temporary things of this world more than God is nothing but fearing and giving more reverence to the old creation that is being done away with; it is nothing but fearing this old sin-filled world that we have been saved from.
But such thinking is nothing but the type of backward thinking that we have been freed from, for the kingdom of our Lord is not a kingdom of this world, but the Kingdom of heaven. In 2nd Peter we read that we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth. As we live in the daily struggles of this old world, we should of course be concerned about the things of this world and the slings and arrows that sin and the devil hurl at us in the midst of this sin-filled world.
Concern over things of the world? Yes, but ultimately we need not fear things of this world for they are simply part of the old world that is being done away with. Having been brought through baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ, we are no longer moving from life to death, but rather from death, as in the death of the old creature in us, to life, as in the eternal life with our Lord that awaits us upon the resurrection when the new Heaven and the new earth arrive, and the new creation that our Lord is making in all of us has fully emerged. And so, to fear things of this world is simply to take our eyes off the new-life that awaits us, only to dwell upon death, which has been defeated for us through Christ.
And so knowing that we are new creations in Christ; children of the day, then all that is left is to put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of the hope of our salvation, and go forth and proclaim Christ to your neighbor, and encourage each other, and build each other up, as you so often do; all the while knowing that no matter what the world throws at you, in the midst of this, you have been destined not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, secure in this knowledge, you know then that there is nothing in this tired old world to fear; and so all that is left to fear is your Lord who, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, has saved you from His day of wrath, and given you the sweet joy of His forgiveness.
Amen

Sunday November 2, 2008

2008-12-12T18:40:00.000-08:00

All Saints Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday. Today we remember all of the saints who have gone before us. And indeed, soon when I do the prayers I will name off all of the saints from this congregation who went to be with the Lord in this last year.
But what exactly does it mean to be a saint? When we refer to someone as a saint, it is usually meant to be high praise of some sort, even possibly implying that the person being referred to is of a higher moral fiber than most other people. So, is that what it means to be a saint?? Is a saint someone who is of a higher moral fiber than most other people? Well a saint is someone who is thought of to be holy, and to be holy is to be set aside, or set apart for God’s purposes. But does that mean that one who is a saint is of a higher moral fiber than someone else??
Well in the Gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus gives us the sermon on the mount, in which we read the beatitudes. It is no coincidence that this is the Gospel passage for All Saints Sunday. In the beatitudes of; blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn etc., we have some of the primary characteristics used in illustrating just what it means to be a saint. And I believe one of the beatitudes gets right to the heart of what it means to be a saint. And that would be the one that comes pretty much right in the middle, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
And so what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness? Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness? I think it is essential to recognize that Jesus does not say that it is those who have attained righteousness who are blessed, but those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Jesus said that He came not for the righteous but for sinners.
This week I read that 85% of all American drivers believe that they are above average drivers. Think about that. 85%. By definition, only 49% can be above-average drivers. But this survey gives us some insight into human nature. People generally view themselves as being better than others, and as long as we feel like we are doing better than other people than generally we believe that is good enough.
And this reflects on our faith and religious life also. Often it reflects on how many in the church have come to interpret the beatitudes. You see, it is in our human nature to see the beatitudes as qualities and attributes that we are to strive toward. We think that what Jesus is saying is that if we are meek enough then we are blessed, or if we are pure enough in heart or poor enough in spirit we will be blessed.
And so we think that Jesus is calling us to strive to be more meek. Jesus is not talking about a meekness that avoids anger at all cost, which would be in line with how we generally understand meekness. Jesus is talking about being able to exercise control when it comes to power, emotions, authority etc.
Basically Jesus is talking about one who uses their gifts in service to others and not themselves. And so Jesus comes to us in His Word saying that the meek shall inherit the earth and we think "Am I meek enough?" And if we can find one or two people whom we can feel confident we are meeker than, then more than likely we think that we are ok.
And so it goes with Jesus’ call to purity of heart and being poor in Spirit. To be poor in spirit is to be among the humble and pious who recognize their need for God’s grace and so they "tremble" at His Word. Being pure in heart, refers to an honest sensibility that could kind of be seen as a sort of transparency, where that which drives and motivates a person is always seen and apparent because there is no attempt to hide it. What you see is what you get, as the saying goes. And so of course the transparency that Jesus refers to is one that would reveal an individual’s motivation and desire to love and serve God and their neighbor.
And we hear these two beatitudes and all the rest of them and we mistake them for calls to strive just a little bit harder to be more merciful or more pure in heart etc so that we might be blessed. And we end up being motivated by a desire not to love and serve our neighbor but to be just a little better than them; to be a little more merciful than our neighbor, or a little more meek, a little more pure in heart, on through the rest of the beatitudes, all so that we can be just a little more blessed.
But Jesus is not talking about being merely a little better on these than our neighbor. Jesus is talking about being perfect in these; that we be perfectly meek, and perfectly poor in spirit, and perfectly merciful etc. If living up to the perfect standard that Jesus lays out in the beatitudes it what it takes to be saints then it would have been hopeless for the prophets and the apostles and the church-fathers let alone any of us.
And this is why I believe that the beatitude of hungering and thirsting for righteousness is the one that gets right to the heart of what the whole sermon on the mount is about. For it is only through faith in the One who speaks to you through the words of my mouth as I proclaim His Word to you, the One who will come to you with His real and bodily presence in a few minutes in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, as He brings you the forgiveness of your sin, that you find the holiness that is required to make of you a saint.
Jesus is the righteousness that is demanded of us. And so He gives us the beatitudes not to inspire us to be more holy through our best and most sincere efforts, but rather to remind us that, on our own, daily we fail to be poor in Spirit, or merciful, or pure in heart. Indeed the beatitudes are impossible for us to fulfill on our own, and so on our own it is impossible for us to be holy. On our own it is impossible for us to be saints.
But praise be to God, in the waters of baptism, having been brought into the death and resurrection of Christ, we are set aside for holiness as we are cleansed in the water and claimed by Christ and brought into the family of our Lord as children of God. And in the lesson from 1st John we are reminded that this is purely out of the love that our Lord has for us where John writes "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!"
We are children of God and just as children are completely dependent upon their parents for their needs we are completely dependent upon our Lord for the holiness and righteousness that we need in order to be called saints. We are made holy and made saints not because of our ability to fulfill the beatitudes but because the Holy Spirit is at work in us calling us through God's Word to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus, driving us to hunger and thirst for the righteousness that only comes to us through faith in Christ Jesus, the faith which we receive in baptism, the faith which is nurtured and sustained in us by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel and the partaking of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus in Holy Communion as we daily live in our baptism.
All the while the Holy Spirit is at work bringing forth the new creation in us, making us more meek, and more merciful, more pure in heart and driving us to hunger and thirst after righteousness, so that we will receive mercy, inherit the earth, so we will see God , and so we will be filled.
And so All Saints Sunday, while on one hand is a day in which we mourn the loss we feel because of the saints from this community who have departed this broken, sinful world, it is also a day to rejoice because they have gone into the arms of their Lord. We rejoice in the light of the promise we read in Revelation that we have been draped in the robes of righteousness that have been washed in the blood of the lamb. We rejoice in light of the promise that Christ Jesus makes to us that no matter what sin, death, and the devil throw at us, Christ Jesus is with us to the end of the age bringing us through the great ordeal. We rejoice in light of the promise that one day this old world will pass away and all things will be made new, and we will no longer need to hunger and thirst for righteousnes for righteousness will be all that there is and we will be filled as we enter into the eternal banquet with all of the saints, and our Lord in His Kingdom.
Amen

Sunday October 26, 2008

2008-12-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

Proper 25
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are a people who desire to be able to see that which we believe in. When we are looking to buy a new car or house and we hear about something that sounds like it could be what we are looking for and at a price that we can afford, we want to go see it. We want to look at the house, we want to see if we can envision ourselves living happily in that house. We want to test-drive the car. We want to see how roomy it is, how noisy it is, or how it handles itself around corners. And then ultimately we want to see if it really is at a price that we can afford or if there were some hidden fees that did not get mentioned.
Indeed we desire visible signs for that which we believe in. And of course, as you might imagine, this spills over into our faith life also. We desire visible signs for the faith that is given to us in baptism. That is why books dealing with Christian apologetics, or physical evidence for the truth claims of Christianity are among the most popular selling Christian books; because we want those visible signs. And I have to say many books dealing with Christian apologetics, like The Case for Faith or The Case for Christ have been very helpful for me and can be very valuable to someone looking to grow in their faith.
But at the end of the day, the best that these books and any other "visible signs" can do is possibly shed some light on the truth of the Gospel, but they are of course not the Gospel themselves. In fact, the truth is the mere existence of these books, and the fact that they are as popular as they are really functions more as law than as Gospel. What I mean by that is the fact that we seek physical evidence for the truth claims of the Bible is more reflective of a desire to live by sight than by faith.
But this is revealed not just in the Christian books that we might buy and read, but in just about every aspect of our lives. We question the sincerity of someone claiming to be a Christian, who doesn’t go to church as often as we do. Or when confronted with the question of the sincerity of our own faith, we think not of the One who brings us faith, but instead we look to our traditions and our heritage. Like the Jews who "had believed" in Jesus in the Gospel lesson who reverted back to their identities as sons of Abraham, we base the sincerity of our faith on our religion and our traditions and our piety.
This was the trap that Martin Luther had fallen into prior to the Reformation, which we remember today on Reformation Sunday. He had fallen prey to the delusion and the deception that security in our salvation can only be found in good works; that the only way to know that you are safe from God’s eternal punishment is by your own personal good works and piety.
But that is a trap. It is what Luther would eventually come to call the state of being incurvatio; or being curved in toward ourselves. The problem is the more focused we are inward toward ourselves, the more we see ourselves for what we really are; sinners in need of a merciful God. But we do not find the gracious and merciful God we are in such dire need of by looking in toward ourselves.
When we focus in toward ourselves; again all we see is sin and a pathway to the grave. And so we react to this in different ways. For some of us, we may react like Luther and get trapped in an endless cycle of despair and anxiety as we try to find peace and comfort in our futile attempts to be faithful to God’s law. But the law does not comfort, the law does not bring peace, the law only accuses. And so, trying to find peace and comfort in the law, we find only despair and terror, and not a gracious and merciful God that we can love, but an over-bearing taskmaster God that we will resent and in some cases even hate, as Luther would later confess to feeling himself.
Another way we react is not by running to the law, but by running from the law. But when we are curved in toward ourselves, the only other place to go is to our sin and pride. And so running from the boney finger of the law, we delude ourselves into thinking that the law no longer applies. We convince ourselves into thinking that we can revise, reduce and re-define God’s Holy Word according to our desires and orientations. In doing this we allow ourselves to be seduced by the most dangerous sort of idolatry; worship of the self. And this is all a part of our desire to build our faith not on the One who sets us free by becoming a slave for us, but on a mythical, visible holiness that is impossible for us to ever fulfill.
So run from the law as we might, we cannot stop it from accusing us. For the law is no longer merely something outside of us that seeks to maintain order in society. For the days that our Lord tells us about through Jeremiah have arrived; the law has been written on our hearts. But the law is not written on our hearts to drive us to a constant state of despair and anxiety. The law has been written on our hearts for the exact reason that our Lord tells us, so that He can be our God and we can be His people.
The purpose of the law is as Paul says in the lesson from Romans, "…that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God." We cannot run from the accusing finger of the law as it exposes the futility of our endless quests for glory and visible holiness. The law serves to expose the impossibility of our trying to be justified in His sight by deeds prescribed by the law.
The law serves to show us finally that we are slaves to sin. And so as slaves, we can only face up to the reality that we do not have a permanent place in the household of our Lord. But as our Lord tells us in His word this morning, the Son has a place in the household of the Lord forever, and that if the Son makes us free we are free indeed. And the Son has indeed made you free, and you are free indeed.
But this is not simply a case of the Son vouching for you, the Son Christ Jesus became a slave for you; and took on your bondage and sin and gave you freedom and righteousness. And it is this promise and this reality that finally freed Martin Luther from the bondage that he was under. He finally realized that redemption comes only in Christ Jesus; that justification comes only by grace as a gift.
He was finally free to cast aside his futile quest for the visible holiness we are simply not capable of. Because the law had been written on his heart and exposed him for the sinner that he was, Luther could do nothing else but be still and know that God is God. He finally understood that righteousness comes only when we repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is not to say that faith in Christ produces righteousness. Faith in Christ does not set us off on a quest to attain righteousness. Faith in Christ makes us righteous before God. We go forth into the world, to our neighbor, having been made righteous already by the blood of Christ.
We are free to stop searching for visible signs that will inevitably fade anyway. We have more than visible signs, we have an eternal promise from our Lord who is our refuge and strength and a very present help in trouble. We have the faith that we receive in baptism; the faith that makes us righteous.
And so we can follow the lead of Martin Luther who once he realized that Christ doesn’t just show us a path to the truth that sets us free, but that He is the truth who sets us free, Luther then abandoned all of his holiness quests and stayed focus on one thing; preaching the Gospel of Christ Jesus. We have been freed to go forth to our neighbor preaching the Gospel through Word and deed and whatever other form we feel called to. You have been freed to go forth and share with your neighbor the righteousness that you have received and been transformed by. Through faith in Christ Jesus you have been made righteous sons and daughters of God and you have a permanent place in God’s household. Go forth, with the Gospel, and share that place in the household of the Lord that you have been given with your neighbor, and like you they will be made free indeed.
Amen

Sunday October 19, 2008

2008-12-12T18:35:00.000-08:00

Proper 24
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus says "Give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor." We are in the midst of a presidential election. Soon we will be electing a new ‘emperor’ if you will. And it seems that in one respect this election is typical in that both candidates seem to spend more time blaming the other candidates for our problems than presenting solutions. But this is just human nature. This is what we do, we run from our accountability. Rather than face up to our own problems, we look for someone to blame.
Such was what Jesus was up against in the events that unfold in this morning’s Gospel lesson. The Pharisees and Herodians were simply trying to trap Jesus. They asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor because they knew that if He had said ‘yes’ then the crowd that was supporting Him would turn on Him. They knew that if He said ‘no’ then the Herodians would be able to arrest Him and turn Him over to the Roman authorities. They wanted either the crowd to reject Him or the Roman authorities to arrest Him.
The Pharisees were part of a Jewish community that clung to the Old Testament promise to the Jews that if they remained faithful to God’s law they would receive a new kingdom.
However, as is the bad habit of all humans, ancient Israel failed to observe the conditions that they should remain obedient to God and observe His commandments, something that we fail at every day. And this unfaithfulness became so ingrained in them that they just lost sight of the fact that they were being unfaithful. They had forgotten that there was a condition to the promise. They had forgotten that just as God had made a promise to them, they had also made a promise to God that they would remain faithful and obedient. And so they were unfaithful. They worshipped false gods, they believed false prophets, they put more faith in themselves and their best efforts than they did in their Creator.
They failed miserably at their conditions, but of course they did not forget to expect God to live up to His. They expected God to give them the kingdom that He had promised them if they had remained faithful to Him, even though they failed miserably at every turn.
But then along comes the Son of God, the Son of man, the Word incarnate, the Word made flesh, Christ Jesus exposing them for the hypocrites and sinners that they were. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. They were no doubt considered by some to be the picture of righteousness.
But the Pharisees had come to believe in a righteousness based on the law and not on faith. They clung to their status as sons of Abraham, but they forgot that it was Abraham’s faith that was reckoned to him as righteousness and not his good works or his piety or his adherence to the law.
But they were simply guilty of the same thing that we are guilty of everyday. In spite of their lack of faith, the Pharisees thought that they were entitled to the kingdom that God had promised. And so it is with us.
As I said, we are in the midst of a presidential campaign. Soon we will be electing another "emperor." And this has been, although as I said earlier a typical election in one respect. In another respect, it has indeed been an interesting election because we have both sides singing the virtues of bringing change to Washington. But what kind of change are they promising? How are they trying to win our vote? How are they trying to woo us to their side? It is primarily by promising that they are not going to be taking as much from us as their opponent. We are in the midst of an economic crisis, and yet both sides seem to be promising that they are not going to raise any taxes and that they are the one who can save our pensions and fix the economy.
But this just shows that the candidates know our human nature. They know that, for most of us, the decision who we vote for (if we vote) is going to come down to which candidate we believe is going to make life better for us.
At the end of the day, we are just like the Pharisees and the Herodians, all of us, running from our own accountability, searching for that kingdom that we all think that we are entitled to, whether we are trying to find it in a political candidate or money or possessions or work or status or whatever other idols we create; it is all a reflection of our desire to usher in God’s kingdom through our own efforts and timing and in the way in which we desire, even though our Lord Jesus has made it clear that His kingdom is not of this world and that only the Father knows when the Son will return and establish His eternal kingdom.
And it is this desire that led to the Pharisees and Herodians trying to trap Jesus. But He would not be trapped. In fact His answer exposes the Pharisees and Herodians for the hypocrites that they are. You see, Jesus’ answer reveals the reality that God’s people live simultaneously in two kingdoms; the earthly kingdom and the spiritual kingdom. Both of them are established by God. The earthly is a part of ‘the old’ that is being done away with and the spiritual is a part of the ‘all things new’ that comes about through the power of God’s Word.
The earthly is temporary, the spiritual is eternal. But that the earthly is temporary does not mean that we denounce it or run away from it. Quite to the contrary, the God who created the universe on His own timing and through His own means, establishes the earthly through property, marriage, family, laws, commerce etc. And so when Jesus says ‘give to the emperor’ what is the ‘emperor’s’ what He means is that whether you are a farmer or a banker or a teacher or a pastor or whatever, we are not to try to, as Luther puts it ‘unsettle the emperor’s realm.’ We are to remain in our vocation and give to the emperor what they are due, but always with an eye to the spiritual.
But we are also called, as we live in the spiritual realm, to give God His due which is simply to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus; to hear and accept the Gospel; to look upon the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus and see nothing other than the defeat of sin, death, and the devil for you, to see the forgiveness of your sin, to see in Christ Jesus laying down His life for you the gateway to eternal life for you that would be ushered in with His resurrection three days later.
The answer that Jesus gave the Pharisees and the Herodians exposes them to be unwilling not only to give the emperor what he is due, but also their unwillingness to give God what He demands, faith in His Son Christ Jesus, faith in the Word incarnate, faith in the One standing before them. But the One standing before them would not be stymied by the efforts of the Pharisees and Herodians. You see eventually the Pharisees and Herodians would get what they wanted. Eventually Jesus would be turned over to the Roman authorities and be rejected and despised by the crowds. But this would happen only on God's timing, not on that of the Pharisees and Herodians.
And so this just shows that the Pharisees and Herodians were right when they said that Jesus does not show deference to anyone. God would not allow the Pharisees and Herodians to stymie His will anymore than He would allow the fact that King Cyrus did not know Him to get in the way of His using King Cyrus to reveal Himself once again to Israel as we read in the lesson from Isaiah.
But that is good news. God does not show deference to any one. He does not consider your good deeds, or your piety, your sins or your transgressions; what you have done or what you will do. He is the almighty God, Creator of the universe. He wills what He will, He does what He does. And what He wants is to count as beloved those whom He has elected through the Gospel. And since you are within earshot of the Gospel that is being proclaimed through the words of my mouth, then count yourself among the elect.
We cannot look to ourselves or a political candidate or any other idol we create for the kingdom that our Lord has promised, but rather only to Christ Jesus and what He has done for us in His death and resurrection and what He is doing for us in Word and sacrament; bringing to us the forgiveness of sin, nurturing and sustaining us in the faith He gives us.
And so listen to and believe in the Gospel that I am proclaiming, come forward in a few minutes and receive the body and blood of your Lord Jesus in His Supper, and let the Word made flesh bring forth in you a new song and make of you an imitator of Christ.
Amen

Sunday October 5, 2008

2008-12-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

Lessons
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
"They will respect my Son.." These are the words that Jesus attributes to the landowner who represents God in the parable that we read about in this morning’s Gospel lesson. But looking at this parable in it’s entire context, it really is amazing that would be the thoughts of this landowner. How could this landowner possibly think that these tenants would respect His son? After everything that had taken place, after all the evil that these tenants had inflicted, why in the world would this landowner think that if He sent His Son that His Son would be safe?
It is totally and completely irrational. It was totally irrational that the landowner would send anybody after the tenants had beaten, killed, and stoned the first group of servants that the landowner had sent. That is not rational behavior. He didn’t go after the tenants. He didn’t call the local authorities. He didn’t even evict the tenants. I mean what kind of landlord doesn’t evict tenants after they kill someone sent to them by the landlord?
But, the reason why Jesus tells this parable, as irrational as the behavior of the landlord may have seemed, is because it is a direct reflection of how the Almighty God has related to His people throughout our history. From Moses to John the Baptist, the Almighty God continually and repeatedly sent prophet and servant after prophet and servant, and they were repeatedly rejected, despised and sometimes even killed.
In fact the period from about 900 BC until around 600 BC is considered to be the most wicked period in ancient Israel’s history. There were thirteen prophets sent during that period of time. The more wicked God’s people became, the more prophets were sent. During the exile of Israel in Babylon there were two sent and in the years after the exile there were three until finally John the Baptist.
But the Baptist signaled a breaking point. For John the Baptist came pointing the way to the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist marks the beginning of the fulfillment of the words of Isaiah who says that the hedge that has been placed around the vineyard that is the house of Israel will be removed. The Almighty God had hoped that His people would yield good and fertile grapes but instead they yielded only wild grapes. Our Lord expected justice but instead saw only bloodshed and heard a cry.
But our Lord would send One more. He would send the One whom John the Baptist came pointing to. To His people He would send His Son. He would Send His Son. To His people who had shown themselves to be capable of rejecting those servants whom He had previously sent, time after time after time.
So His Son came. He came proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God. He came to bring recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. He came to announce the arrival of a kingdom that was not of this world. He came announcing Himself as the way, the truth, and the life and that nobody got to the Father but through Him. He came calling people to repent and believe upon Him. He came proclaiming not a righteousness built on good works but upon faith in Him.
But His people wanted nothing to do with that, and so they killed Him. They killed Him and the hedge was removed. They did not respect His Son. They killed Him and now the hedge around Israel was removed. They killed Him and now the house of God would be open not just exclusively to Israel but to gentiles as well.
But lest you think that this is simply about Israel, think again. Lest you think you have no culpability in the killing of the Son who was sent by God, Christ Jesus your Lord, think again. For just as the actions of the landlord are a direct reflection of how the Almighty God relates to His people, the actions of the tenants are a direct reflection of how we relate to our Lord.
This is not a parable that is stagnant in one particular period of time throughout history. The actions of the wicked tenants reflect the actions of God’s people throughout our entire history; from the Old Testament Israelites who rejected the prophets to the chief-priests, scribes and elders who arranged for Jesus’ crucifixion to us today who continue to kill the Word made flesh with our sin and rejection.
For you see, Christ Jesus came not just to teach us about mercy and forgiveness and then leave it in our hands to follow His example. Christ Jesus came to be, bring, and do mercy and forgiveness to us. He came to have mercy on us and to forgive us unconditionally. And this is not merely a concept or an idea for us to strive after, but rather it is His work. It is what He has done to and for us and what He continually does to and for us.
But total and complete mercy and forgiveness is a threat to our way of doing things. It’s a threat to our ego-driven eternity projects. It’s a threat to the sin and pride which we cling to for dear life or in some cases refuse to acknowledge. It’s a threat to the principalities and powers that we seek our hope in.
The love, grace, mercy and forgiveness of Christ Jesus shown on the cross exposes us as the sinners, idolaters, and crucifiers that we are, but then leaves us nowhere to go but to the crucified One. It leaves us nowhere to go but to the One who defeated sin and the devil for us and then ushered in new life for us when He was resurrected. The landowner who represented God the Father did say in the parable from the Gospel lesson "They will respect my Son" and that remains a true statement. It remains true because the One whom we kill with our sin refuses to leave us in our guilt and desperation.
Such was the case with Paul who found himself exposed for the sinner and crucifier that he was in his encounter with the crucified and risen Christ. For as Paul himself reminds us, if anyone had reason to be confident in the flesh he had more. If righteousness could be obtained through the law, Paul was blameless. And yet when he was struck by the living stone whom he rejected, all he could do was regard all of his works-based righteousness as loss. All he could do was to respect and believe upon the Son whom he persecuted and crucified.
And so the innocent and risen Son of God, Christ Jesus continues to come to the vineyard in Word and sacrament being, bringing and doing forgiveness to us the forgiven tenants. The word ‘respect’ can be defined as ‘turn to.’ In other words, one could very easily replace the word ‘respect’ here with ‘repent.’ And that would work because contrition, repentance and faith are primary among those fruits of which our Lord Jesus refers to when He says that the Kingdom of God will be given to a people that produce it’s fruits. In Word and sacrament Christ Jesus calls us to contrition, repentance and faith and produces those fruits in us.
He is the stone whom we rejected and yet remains the cornerstone of our faith as He comes to us in the waters of baptism and claims us as His own and continues to come to us in Word and sacrament as He will in a few moments in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, creating, nurturing and sustaining faith in us; the faith that frees us to do the work to which we are called to love and serve our neighbor as we respect and believe upon the crucified and risen Son.
Amen

Sermon Sunday September 28 2008

2008-09-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What was Jesus thinking in this story that we read from the Gospel lesson this morning? I mean here He is being confronted once again by the Sanhedrin who are questioning His authority; and asking Him by what authority He "does these things" and He doesn’t answer them. He could have blown them away. He could have made it rain and thunder, He could have given blind people their sight, He could have taken people’s sight away, He could have levitated the whole crowd. But instead He asks them a question about John’s baptism and says if they answer His question then He will answer theirs. Of course the Sanhedrin don’t answer Jesus’ question because they realize it will incriminate them, and so Jesus doesn’t answer them.
The elders and chief priests were wrong in ways that they didn’t realize. It’s easy to say "Well they just didn’t believe that Jesus had been sent by God the Father" or that they didn’t believe that He was the Son of God. And that may be true, but I think the fact that they were at least interested in knowing by whose authority He preached, and taught and spoke shows that they were at least somewhat open to the idea that He could have been from God. They were open to it in the sense that if He was they better recognize it for their own good.
But Jesus wasn’t going to cower to their demands. He wasn’t going to fit into their little box. And so He answers them through a parable, and in the process reveals to them just how wrong their thinking was. He tells them this parable of two sons who are told by the Father to go into the vineyard and work and the first son refuses and then later changes his mind. The second son says that he will concede to the Father’s demands but then does not. Jesus asks which of the two did the will of their Father and the chief priests and the elders say the first son.
And why not? Of course that is who they are going to say. After all it was the first son who went and did the work, even though he initially said he would not. But Jesus responds to the chief priests and elders by telling them that tax-collectors and prostitutes are going to the kingdom of God ahead of them.
And then Jesus reminds them that John the Baptist came to show them the way of righteousness and did not believe him but the tax-collectors and prostitutes did believe him. That was the difference between the two sons; one believed and the other one didn’t. The will of the Father for His children was not predicated by works but by faith.
And this is the Word that your Lord is coming to you with today; that the way of righteousness that our Lord called His disciples to through John the Baptist, and that the chief priests and the elders did not believe in and that He calls all of us to in baptism is not a way that we find our place on through our best, and most sincere and most purpose-driven efforts. What Jesus was telling those chief priests and elders and what He tells you today through the words of my mouth is that only through faith in Him do you find the way to righteousness.
And so that is why He said that the tax-collectors and prostitutes would get to the kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders. The tax-collectors and the prostitutes were righteous in their faith. They were righteous because unlike the chief-priests and the elders they were glaringly aware that they were sinners. They were reminded everyday that they were sinners, if not by their own conscience or guilt, probably by those around them. And so they repented, which means simply again that they acknowledged their sin. And so they repented and heard the call to the way of righteousness through faith in Christ Jesus.
For you see the Way that John the Baptist came to proclaim was not a step-by-step plan or process by which you could find your own eternity. No quite to the contrary John came proclaiming the law that exposes us bare and naked for the sinners that we are. John came to accuse us and point our sin to us and when we are finally driven to the point of despair and helplessness then he points us to Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
The way of righteousness that our Lord speaks of is not through our exalting ourselves but through the Lord Almighty humbling Himself, coming to us in human form as His Son. And He doesn’t just come to us as a human, but a human in the most humble of forms. He did not come to us triumphantly on a mountaintop but as a lowly infant in dingy and stinky barn in a dingy and stinky manger.
He comes to us, as we read in the lesson from Philippians and empties Himself and takes the form a slave. This is an amazing thing because it is exactly the opposite of how we naturally behave. We don’t seek to empty ourselves, that goes totally and completely against our nature. It is in our nature to be full of ourselves. We want to grasp onto every last piece of freewill that we can so we can cling to our mythological eternity projects.
We want to be recognized. We want to be in charge. We want status and we want others to know that we have status and treat us as though we did. We drop names to let other people know how important we are, always grasping for glory that doesn’t belong to us.
But our Lord Jesus is the opposite. He casts aside the glory and power that are His by right. He is the Son of God. He is God incarnate. He is God of God, light of light, true God of true God. Nobody deserves honor and glory more than Him. But He chose to become a man for you. He took the way of righteousness by casting aside the glory and honor that was due Him and choosing the path of grace, mercy, humility, poverty, obedience and death.
Now don’t get me wrong. He did not cast aside His divinity. When our Lord Jesus went through all pain, suffering, obedience and eventually death that He did for us, He was and is fully God, just as He had been throughout eternity. When He entered into the depths of our humanity He was fully God in fully human form enduring all of our pain, suffering, and death.
In doing this He leaves us no more room for our free-will. We work so hard to elevate ourselves but it’s all for naught. We seek glory and recognition that is built on deception, as we continue to try to fool ourselves with out mythological free-will.
But we are told in our Lord’s Word to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus. We are told to follow Jesus’ suit and not grasp for what is going to suit and glorify us. We are told to follow Jesus’ example and empty ourselves and take the form of a slave.
But we can’t. Through our best efforts we can’t. On our best day we still fail so miserably that even our "good works" are riddled with sin. He entered into humanity and took on all the sin and ugliness we could throw at Him, until eventually He laid down His life for us.
And then He was raised from the dead and now He is exalted in glory, and now because He entered into the depravity of our sin and despair and took all our sin upon Himself, His glory is our glory. He took our sin and we received His glory, and it has been done, it is finished.
And the only way to grasp this glory is through faith. Through the humble obedience of our Lord Christ Jesus, sin and the devil have been defeated for you. Cast aside your illusions of free-will and merit and simply repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus as He calls, nurtures and sustains you in the faith that you received in the waters of baptism.
Empty yourself and hear the call of your Lord through His Word, nurturing and enhancing you in your faith by filling you with the mind of Christ giving you your true identity and purpose to empty yourself and taking the form of a slave for your neighbor. And in the midst of whatever assaults sin, the world and the devil hurl your way, you need not worry for through faith in the One who humbled Himself and became a slave for you have been exalted with Christ in front of God because that is the Father’s will.
Amen

Sermon Sunday September 21 2008

2008-09-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The question was posed this week when I went to text-study, and this is a paraphrase, but essentially the question posed was if the parable of the vineyard workers from this week’s Gospel lesson is true then why seek to be a faithful Christian? Why should we confess our faith or love our neighbor as ourselves or seek to feed and clothe the hungry if we don’t need to for our salvation?
If we can just be like those slackers who showed up at the eleventh hour to work in the vineyard and yet still received the same pay and the same reward as those who had worked all day, then why bother? If we can just live a life of selfishness and repent and confess on our deathbed and still be welcomed into our Lord’s eternal kingdom, just as much as someone who has served the Lord their entire life, then why bother?
Why would we want to work for something when we don’t need to? And yet still we try to earn that which we can’t. Still we try to take credit for that which can only come to us, not from our best and most pious and sincere efforts, but from outside of us, as a gift of God’s grace. And so in doing this, we look around and we see our neighbors maybe aren’t working as hard as we are, or not getting up as early as we are, or not giving as much as we are and we become like Jonah grumbling against the heathen Ninevites or that first group of laborers in the vineyard grumbling to the landowner about those slackers who showed up so much later than they did,
We look around at our neighbors and rather than loving and serving them the way that we are called to, we ignore them, or reject them. We hold onto grudges tighter than we would hold onto the last remaining piece of food during a famine. All one has to do is watch the news and hear all the talk of how the economy is in a shambles, and four dollars a gallon for gas would suggest that it is, and see how many different targets there are for finger-pointing in connection to the economy to see how much we love to grumble against the slackers.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up where we see this in the election; where one candidate’s attempt to besmirch the name of the other candidate, will the next day become the other candidate’s opportunity to haughtily exalt themself above their opponent all so they can say "See how they attack me."
All of this is a reflection of our inborn tendency to resist allowing God to be God. We love to sing that favorite old children’s hymn "He’s got the whole world in His hands" but when push comes to shove, we don’t really believe it, certainly not the whole world. You see as baptized believers in Christ, we talk a good game about grace but we have a really hard time accepting just how radical our Lord’s grace really is. We’re okay with God extending His grace and mercy to us, but when we see our Lord getting, what we perceive to be a little too loosey-goosey, maybe a little careless with that whole mercy and forgiveness thing, then we want Him to reign it in a little bit.
We think surely God must see the same faults, sins, and blunders in our neighbors that we see, and yet He doesn’t seem to be holding those against them. We expect the Almighty God and creator of the universe to bow to the standards and whims of His own creation. We demand that our Lord be brought to order and that He prescribe to our standards, so as to make sure that He condemns those whom we see as deserving of His condemnation.
But if ever the old adage, ‘Be careful what you wish for’ applied, it applies here, because if our Lord ever did start relating to us through any means other than His pure and radical grace, we would all be lost and condemned. For with every condemning thought against our neighbor, or every act of self-righteous indignation, or every mere angry thought we simply show ourselves to be bound to the very same sin that we love to point out in our neighbor. If God did prescribe to our standards of what is fair, just, and appropriate, we would be doomed for eternity.
But today in the Gospel lesson, our Lord comes to us with a radically different Word and He flips our standards of fairness and justice completely upside-down. Today in His Word our Lord comes to us and reminds us that try we as might, we cannot fit Him into our standards of fairness and justice.
We thought we Had Him once. We thought we had Him bound to our standards of fairness and justice, when we bound Him to a cross. But three days later, with the rolling away of the stone, He showed that He would not be bound to the grave. He showed that just when we thought we had Him, He was simply doing what He chose with what belongs to Him. He showed that what we thought was the demise of our Lord was actually the demise of our sin as He bore the wages of our sin by taking our sin upon Himself and laying down His life for us on the cross, and now we belong to Him.
And so from this we know that the work of the Lord Jesus, the Word incarnate bears fruit with or without us. His Word does bear fruit and so we see it bearing fruit today as our Lord comes once again in the waters of baptism claiming yet another laborer for His vineyard, as He has claimed all of us, and marked all of us with the Cross of Christ; the mark that try as we might we cannot erase from our head. We may try to erase it with our little schemes and projects, as the devil slings his arrows at us.
But the Word that is spoken over us in baptism, continues to come after us, just as the landowner continued to go out after workers for his vineyard. And so all we can do is simply believe; believe our Lord when He tells us that we are forgiven, believe our Lord when He tells us that we are His, believe our Lord when He tells us that He is gracious and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
And so being grasped by the faith that we receive in baptism we go forth and work. We hear and respond to the calling of our Lord to confess our faith to our neighbor, to love and serve our neighbor, to feed and clothe the hungry and naked, to visit the lonely, to raise our children in the faith and expose them to God’s Word and the confessions and to bring them, with you, to the Lord’s house for worship, and do whatever else the Spirit leads you to do as the One who claims you in baptism does with you as He will.
And we do this not to receive kudos from our Lord, we do this because, as St Paul reminds us in the lesson from Philippians, we have been granted the privilege not only of believing in Christ but of suffering for Him as well. Indeed we have been freed to follow Paul’s lead and simply acknowledge that our Lord works in ways that we often don’t see, so we can stop looking and actually trust our Lord who promises that all things work for the good of those who love Him, and start hearing and listening to what our Lord is saying. Stop focusing on the old that is being done away with and start listening to the new that He is bringing forth in His Word and sacrament.
You are among the heathen who have come in at the eleventh hour to receive God’s grace. You are God’s own and He has done with you what He wants by showering you in His radical grace, mercy, and forgiveness. And what He wants is for all of His people to come to a saving knowledge of the truth, and so here today you once again have had that very saving knowledge in the Gospel of our Lord proclaimed to you, and soon you will come forward once again and receive the forgiveness of your sins in the body and blood of your Lord Jesus in His supper, and so when you leave today remember that you have been branded with the cross of Christ, and filled with the fruit of the vineyard, that your neighbor, be they a fellow-worker in the vineyard or not; you leave here with the fruit of the Gospel that your neighbor needs and that the Lord promises to produce in you.
Amen

Sermon Sunday September 14 2008

2008-09-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter asks Jesus how many times should he forgive his brother when he sins against him. Peter suggests what he probably thought was a pretty gracious figure; seven times. And when you think about it, why wouldn’t he have thought that was a gracious figure? As human beings, we’re big on giving second chances. In fact, there is a saying that goes "Everyone deserves a second chance."
A second chance, yes; but we tend to think that if we are anymore gracious than that then we run the risk of allowing someone to walk all over us. In fact, I believe there is also a saying that says "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
But the answer that our Lord Jesus gives to Peter is one that would fly in the face of such a self-focused world view. Indeed Peter’s suggestion of forgiving someone seven times would no doubt have seemed very gracious to him, and I am sure it would seem overly gracious to some today. But Jesus answers Peter in a way that shows that Peter clearly just isn’t getting it, even if his suggestion does show more grace than Peter’s contemporaries would have been willing to show. Peter’s problem was not that he had the wrong amount, but that he thought such a thing as how much our Lord calls us to forgive a repentant sinner, could be calculated.
One could probably speculate that Joseph from the Old Testament lesson might have asked a similar question. Joseph might have wondered, with everything that his brothers had put him through, in all the ways that they sinned against him, does he have to forgive them all at once for the wrongs that they did, or can he forgive them some of it but still hold a grudge for some of the things that were harder to forgive? And really, considering that his brothers tried kill him but then sold him into slavery, but told their father Jacob that Joseph had died, who could blame Joseph for possibly holding onto some grudges?
And as the Old Testament lesson opens, it appears that Joseph’s brothers feared that Joseph would choose to hold onto some grudges. They seem to suspect that Joseph might have been just holding out and waiting for his father to die before he tried to settle the score with his brothers. Joseph’s grudge had a long time to simmer in his heart.
Joseph’s brothers probably wouldn’t have been surprised, and they probably would have felt it would have been perfectly just, for Joseph to act like the slave in the parable that Jesus recounts for the disciples; the slave who after having been completely forgiven of the debt that he owed the king, was not able to do likewise for someone who owed him a fraction of the amount that he had owed the king.
That is how we work. We all just naturally think in the same way as that slave. We are not naturally inclined toward love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. We are naturally inclined to get what is ours. We are naturally inclined toward getting what we think we have coming to us. If anything it is thought of as a sign of weakness to show grace, mercy, and forgiveness in our culture.
I think that is why television shows like Law and Order and CSI are so popular; because they operate on a fairly simple premise. Somebody is hurt or even killed by someone else. Experts in various fields of investigation, depending on the show, gather evidence, they find out who is responsible for the crime, and the person pays for the crime. It is a simple formula, and we like it, because there is not a lot of room for mercy and grace in those shows. For 60 minutes while we watch these shows we are allowed to judge, and belittle, and scorn, and exalt ourselves above the dastardly perpetrator of whatever fictional crime they happen to be investigating that week.
And I believe that is a reflection of our human relationships. Too often our human relationships are boiled down simply to a matter of settling accounts. We spend too much time focusing on how we believe that we have been wronged and how we can make it right. And the more we do this, the more we become curved in toward ourselves. And it is not just limited to when we believe we have been wronged. It also affects how we behave when we are the one who has wronged someone else.
When grace, mercy, and forgiveness are taken off the table in our human relationships then all that is left is trying to figure out how to even the score. And when you are the person who has sinned against someone, and we have all been in that group and probably put ourselves there every day in one way or another, then the only recourse is to fear the inevitable backlash for your actions or to simply live in denial of the destructive nature of our sin.
But again, when how we relate to each other is merely a matter of settling scores then we just remain curved in toward ourselves. But we are not called to be curved in toward ourselves, for when are then we run the risk of forgetting where we stand before God. What this means is that failing to forgive as we have been forgiven by our Lord does not merely affect our human relationships it affects our relationship with our Lord. And in the parable we can see the result of failing to forgive when the unforgiving slave was handed over to be tortured until his entire debt was paid. And Jesus tells us in His Word that His Heavenly Father will do the same to us if we fail to forgive our brother or sister from our heart.
And so we go back to Joseph and we can see that Joseph was a man who knew where he stood with God. Joseph was a man who understood that for all God’s people, not only is grace and forgiveness a part of how our Lord relates to us but rather our relationship with our Lord is defined by grace and forgiveness. That is why Joseph was able to forgive his brothers for everything that they had done to him. And when Joseph explained to his brothers that what they had intended to harm Joseph, God had intended for good, he showed that, like Paul writing in the lesson from Romans today, Joseph understood that whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s.
And as abundant and everflowing as the love of God must have seemed to Joseph, it was merely a reflection of what was still to come. Joseph had no doubt seen and experienced God’s amazing grace, but it was a glimpse of how our Lord would reveal that amazing love, grace, mercy, and compassion for all God’s people to see.
Once you realize the extravagance of God’s forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus, then you have no room in your heart for grudges. Just as it was Joseph’s desire to forgive his brothers, forgiveness of your neighbor becomes something you desire when you truly know the joy of forgiveness that comes in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
His brothers begged him for forgiveness, but there was no need, because Joseph’s response shows that any grudge that he held toward his brothers had long since been let go. And so it should be for you. In the waters of baptism you were claimed by your Lord Christ Jesus and marked with His cross which declares to the world that whether you live or whether you die, you are the Lord’s.
This does not mean of course that we are to forget our sins. We are never to forget that we are sinners and that it is for our sins that Christ Jesus laid down His life. And it is exactly to that promise and refuge of Christ that we run when the law condemns us of our sin. And so no matter what the devil throws at us; our Lord comes to us everyday in His Word, accusing us with the law, exposing us for the sinners that we are, driving us to our knees in confession and repentance, but then lifting us up in grace, mercy, and forgiveness with the sweet Gospel of the abundant and extravagant love shown us in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
And just as with Joseph, that is how forgiveness springs from the heart to the lips to merciful action toward your neighbor. Jesus’ response to Peter’s question of how many times we are to forgive our brother was "seventy-seven times." Of course he didn’t literally mean 77, he meant our call to forgive is limitless. It is limitless because the forgiveness we receive is limitless in that we are in a constant state of confession and forgiveness. We are constantly receiving the forgiveness of our Lord in Word and sacrament, and in that the forgiveness that our Lord demands of us is brought forth in our words and actions toward each other and our neighbor.
Amen

Sermon Sunday September 7 2008

2008-09-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This morning in our Gospel lesson our Lord tells us of the greatest gift that we as disciples of Christ have for the world, for our community, for our neighbor. And what I am referring to is nothing short of the opportunity and the privilege that we, as forgiven sinners have to literally share Jesus with those around us; to share the Gospel, or specifically in the case of this week’s Gospel lesson, the opportunity and privilege, and obligation to declare the forgiveness of sin.
And indeed this is a great gift and privilege and obligation, for it speaks to the very heart of what the Gospel is all about; the forgiveness of our sin; the great promise that on the cross, Christ Jesus bore the burden of our sin, death and punishment. And we have the privilege of being able to share this with our neighbor. And at the end of the day, that a gift far more precious and valuable than anything else that we could give to our neighbor, for as Luther reminds us in the catechism, we are saved not by gold and silver but by the holy and precious blood of our Lord Jesus, and He calls us and frees us to share this precious gift of forgiveness with our neighbor.
So why do we resist this call? Why do we resist this call to share the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus with our neighbor, when it is such a wonderful gift? In the catechism this is called the Office of the Keys and is described as the authority which Christ gave to His church to forgive the sins of those who repent and to declare to those who do not repent that their sins are not forgiven. He didn’t just give it to the apostles, He didn’t just give it to bishops, He didn’t just give it to pastors. Our Lord Jesus gave the authority to declare the forgiveness of sins in His name to His church. Why do we resist this calling.
We get a clue as to why we reject this as much as we do from three words contained in the description from the Office of the Keys. The three words??? "Those who repent." We are called and sent to declare the forgiveness of sin in Christ’s name to those who repent, those who acknowledge their sin and turn from it. You see, in order to declare someone forgiven of sin, they have to be aware that they are a sinner, and that is a difficult thing to tell someone. It is difficult to point out somebody’s sin to them.
But we are called to do just that. Our Lord gives us the Office of the Keys for a reason. He wants us to use it, and so in today’s Gospel lesson, He helps us out. He shows us how it is that we, the church can live out or calling to declare the forgiveness of sin to our neighbor.
He tells you first that if someone sins against you, you are to show that person their fault when you are alone, just one on one. If you listen you have regained them. But if they don’t listen then you take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen then you tell the church and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, then you are to let such a one be to you as a tax-collector and a Gentile. In other words, at that point, if the offender refuses to listen to you, then to a few of you, then to the church, then you are to reject them, or excommunicate them. In other words, this would be an example of when we withhold forgiveness.
And that is why we resist and run from our calling to utilize the Office of the Keys. We are afraid that it will get to that point. We are afraid to hold people accountable for their own sin because we fear that they will reject us or take it personal. We are afraid that it will get messy. And it can, and does.
But we don’t do anybody any favors by trying to save them from being offended. In fact, often trying to save someone from being offended may mean allowing them to mire in their sin, and there is not greater disservice that we could do to anyone. We need to remember, when we run from this calling, we are denying someone the gift of the Gospel.
Luther wrote of the Gospel and how it relates to God’s calling to the church…
We shall now return to the Gospel, which offers council and help against sin in more than one way, for God is surpassingly rich in his grace: First, through the spoken word, by which the forgiveness of sin (the peculiar function of the Gospel) is preached to the whole world; second,5 through Baptism; third, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar; fourth, through the power of the keys; and finally, through the mutual conversation and consolation of brethren. Matt. 18:20, "Where two or three are gathered," etc.6
For the most part, we are ok with the first three; preaching, baptism, and Holy Communion, but it’s those last two; the Office of the Keys and bringing the Gospel to our neighbor through mutual conversation and consolation, that we have trouble with. It’s those last two that we tend to run from, and we do so because they are messy.
Oh we may try to convince ourselves that we are acting out of love by saying things like "Who am I to judge?" or "I am no better than them." or "I’ll just make them upset or offend them." But the truth is, it’s not out of love that we avoid holding each other accountable for our sin. It’s out of fear; fear of the unknown; fear of how the person might react; fear of putting yourself in a situation you can’t control.
There is a television show that I sometimes watch called Intervention. It is a reality-based show where in each episode you see a family planning to stage an intervention for one of their own who is struggling with addiction or alcoholism. At the end of the episode you see the intervention which is where they will unsuspectingly bring the person who is struggling with addiction or alcoholism to a place where there will be a group of their closest family and friends. One by one the family and friends will tell the addict or alcoholic how their actions, their mistakes, their sin has affected them.
And quite often, through the whole episode the addict or alcoholic will be in denial, but when they start hearing how their actions and decisions have hurt and offended their family, how the burden of alcoholism or addiction has become a burden on their family and friends also, that is when the breakthrough finally comes. That is when the walls finally come down and the person finally admits that they need help, and quite often it’s a very powerful and moving moment. But it would not have happened if the people who loved and cared for this person had not loved and cared for them enough to be open and honest with them about their sin, and be willing to risk getting messy.
The final authority in this process of repentance and forgiveness that our Lord lays out for us is the congregation. What this tells us is that, when it comes to the Christian witness, there is no higher authority in the land than the individual Christian congregation. But when we refuse to live out our calling to bind and loose sins then we essentially relinquish that authority, for when we do that we relinquish our ability to address the greatest need there is; and that is the world’s need of the Gospel.
Confronting people with their sin is challenging and messy and it does involve giving up control. And because of that, our Lord has attached a wonderful promise to this that where two three are gathered in His name He is there among them. He has freed us from having to worry about the messiness.
Our Lord Jesus bound our sin to Himself when He went to the cross and loosed it in the grave where it remains. And when He walked out of the tomb three days later His disciples saw that He was who He said He was; the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and this glorious Gospel message of forgiveness and new life was proclaimed and passed on to the generations and it wouldn’t have happened if our Lord Jesus were not there among those gathered in His name. And so here we are, baptized in His name and gathered in His name in Word and sacrament and He is among us, and He will come to us in His bodily presence again in a few minutes in the Lord’s Supper, and so we have three of those five elements of the church that Luther spoke of. And when you leave here those last two of binding and loosing sin and consolation of the brethren go with you. But our Lord is there among you at all times, perhaps especially when it gets messy.
Amen

Srmon-Sunday August 31 2008

2008-09-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I, like I am sure many of you, have spent some time this past week watching the Democratic National Convention. And next week I will spend some time watching the Republican National Convention. I have noticed this week that politicians are pretty skilled at the fine art of exaggeration. Barack Obama’s campaign approach, as is common for the presidential candidate from the non-incumbent party, has been to emphasize the need for change. "Change we can believe in" has been his campaign slogan. And indeed there is some genuine need for change. But to listen to some of the speeches this week, one would think that America, as a nation was on the verge of collapse, and our only hope is Barack Obama, when the reality is in the grand scheme of things we are the richest country in the world. And of course this week the Republicans will do the same thing and they will present John McCain as the one who can save us.
And I am not belittling the issues that the conventions address. The issues they are addressing such as healthcare, social security, the war, the economy, national security etc are all of course very valid and essential. And indeed there were some very powerful and poignant examples of people struggling with these issues that were mentioned at the convention this past week. But overall I found a lot of the language and a lot of the hoopla and hype connected to the convention to be reflective of a culture mired in the very condition that our Lord Jesus sees in Peter when Peter dared to rebuke Jesus for telling Peter that He (Jesus) was going to have to undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and be killed and raised on the third day. This is to say that often, our culture, we, set our minds too much, and place too much value on and hope in human things and not nearly enough on divine things.
And it is that condition and that state that our Lord Jesus addresses when He says that those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for His sake will gain it and then poses the question of what it profits anyone to gain the whole world but forfeit their life. Imagine if the very disciples whom Jesus was speaking to could see the world that we live in today, with the greater access to food and necessities, health care, living accommodations, entertainment options etc. We live in luxury that would have been unimaginable to them. They would no doubt say that we have gained the whole world.
And yet because, like Peter, we are so focused on things of the world we want more. You see Peter’s objection is rooted in his limited and cultural understanding of Jesus. You’ll remember in last week’s Gospel lesson Peter showed that he and his fellow disciples had a much better understanding of who Jesus is than their contemporaries who confused Jesus for John the Baptist, Elijah and a prophet, when Peter boldly confessed his belief, on behalf of he and the rest of the disciples, that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God.
But in this week’s Gospel lesson we see Peter, not long at all after his bold confession of faith, already messing up again. We see that, in spite of the fact that he might have been far ahead of some of his contemporaries when it came to his understanding of who Jesus is, Peter still had a long way to go. He was trapped and bogged down by his human understanding of who Jesus is, which told him that the Messiah shouldn’t have to be killed.
Which of course it is true that Jesus didn’t have to be killed. He could have allowed us to mire in our sin and suffer the due punishment which we all deserve. But He didn’t. Instead He laid down His life for us; taking upon Himself our sin and shame and bearing the punishment we deserve. But notice this is not the level upon which Jesus responds to Peter’s rebuke. In other words, He does not respond by getting into a theological debate with Peter.
You see Jesus knows that at the heart of Peter’s rebuke lies not a concern over right doctrine, but rather that Peter fears that if suffering and death await Jesus then perhaps a similar fate awaits Peter. Peter gave up everything to follow Jesus, but to give up his life? But that is exactly what our Lord Jesus demands of us, to give up our lives for His sake.
Focused on human things, we look for solutions to our problems and challenges and fulfillment for our needs and desires in the creation and not the Creator. But the more tightly we cling to the creation and our earthly life the more we close ourselves off from the Creator such as we see from Jeremiah in the Old Testament lesson.
And so in our self-absorption and greed we also lose sight of the joy and sweetness of God’s Holy Word and His eternal promise. We focus so much on saving our temporary earthly lives and thus oppose Christ’s perspective of giving up our lives for His sake that we forget the great gift of eternal life that awaits us. But just as Jeremiah was called to turn back to God so our Lord calls us back to Him and turns us back to Him.
God’s Word tells us that the message of the cross is foolishness and a stumbling block for those who are perishing, and when we focus on human things, like Peter we show our inherent offense to Christ’s perspective and the message of the cross. But by our Lord Jesus’ reaction to Peter’s rebuke we see that He is offended by that which opposes the cross. In spite of how offensive it might have been to Peter, Jesus was speaking Gospel to Peter. Peter rebukes Jesus, and Jesus’ response reveals that this wasn’t just about Peter’s offense at the Gospel but about the devil’s attempts to cast doubt on Jesus and the Gospel when Jesus says to Peter "Get behind me Satan."
Jesus provides the life and forgiveness we need, but we set ourselves against Him and on a path which leads only to the grave that by ourselves we can’t get ourselves off of. We can’t, but our Father in heaven can and did when He sent His Son to lay down His life for us. And that is what He is revealing to the very disciples who oppose Him when He tells them that He must suffer and die and rise from the dead for them.
And just as Jeremiah was called back to faith, Peter was called back to the faith that he had just boldly confessed when our Lord Jesus demanded the removal of the very one who was diverting Peter away from that faith when He said "Get behind me Satan."
Jesus didn’t get into a theological debate with Peter because he knew that ultimately Peter was not so much diverting himself away from the truth but rather sin and the devil were and Jesus would not stand for it. As I said, Peter was focused on human things, and this just made him that much more susceptible to the lies of sin and the devil, as it does to us today.
But our Lord Jesus did not allow Peter and nor does He allow us to remain stumbling blocks. And so like He did for Peter when He called Peter behind Him as a follower of Jesus, so He does for us today through Word and sacrament, calling us to our rightful place behind our Lord Jesus as His followers.
In Jesus’ death and resurrection we are transformed from stumbling blocks to saints and we are given new life as His followers, so we no longer have to try to save our lives. Of course in 21st century North America generally this does not mean that we literally lay down our lives to follow Jesus. But He does call us to let go of those human things that our culture embraces and stay focused on Him.
But understand that He does not demand that we do this but rather He frees us to do this. In Jesus’ death and resurrection we are given new eternal life so we no longer need to focus on saving our temporary earthly life. We are free to lose our life for His sake by, as it says in the lesson from Romans, blessing those who persecute us, contributing to the needs of the saints, extending hospitality to strangers, living in harmony with one another, refusing to pay evil for evil, and just overall living out our Lord’s call to follow Him by loving and serving our neighbor in Word and deed; the very Word of our Lord that Jeremiah describes as precious and by which we serve our Lord’s mouth.
And in doing this, we find our very Lord making us whole, making us whom we were created and saved to be and preparing us for or place in His eternal kingdom. And that is a promise, unlike perhaps many of the promises you heard from the convention last week and the one to come this week, that you can always count on.
Amen

Sunday, August 24 2008

2008-09-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today you are confronted with a question that gets right to the heart of what it means to call yourself a disciple of Christ. And this question is of course the question that Jesus confronts the disciples with when He asks them who people say that He is. And the answers that the disciples give indicate a real lack of understanding of who Jesus is, not necessarily among the disciples mind you but among their contemporaries on whose behalf they are speaking. The disciples report that some say that Jesus is John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
And so upon reading this morning’s Gospel lesson perhaps you find yourself wondering how they could have been so wrong about Jesus. Maybe you even think that "Well certainly we don’t find that sort of confusion today." There are nearly 2 billion people on the planet who profess to be believers in Jesus Christ. I think it’s very likely that among that many self-professed Christians there are going to be some pretty different views on the person of Jesus.
Just here in the US you have countless denominations. You have televangelists who try to figure out a way to fit Jesus into their un-biblical vision of America as the nation most blessed by God. You have leaders of national Christian church-bodies who will present their ideas of helpful legislation to presidential candidates, as prophetic, as if when Jesus told us to go out and feed the hungry and clothe the naked He meant we should do it through legislation. And there are Christian "academic scholars" who seem committed to chipping away at the image of Jesus that we read about in God’s Word.
All of these are examples of trying to understand and define Christ Jesus according to human wisdom. It’s something that we are all guilty of everyday. Maybe our examples aren’t as obvious as some of the ones that I mentioned, but they are still there. Through the daily greed and anger and lust and every other sinful thought, feeling and desire that we give into we show that we are just as capable as anyone of trying to define Jesus according to human logic and wisdom and even weakness. And when we do that we show that we are afflicted with the same weakness that the contemporaries of the disciples and often the disciples themselves struggled with.
For you see the question of who Jesus is is one that ultimately we can’t answer on our own. Left to our own devices we are not able to see Christ Jesus for who He really is. And so we find ourselves reducing Jesus to being a moral teacher, or a prophet, or a great teacher. Or we find other ways to try to fit Jesus into our box of reason and logic, going so far perhaps to even exploit His holy name in order to push an agenda, political or otherwise.
But in this Gospel lesson we can see that our Lord is at work revealing Himself to us, and drawing us into the faith that He calls us to and demands of us. After the disciples told Jesus of all the false notions that the contemporaries of the disciples had, Jesus then responds to this by asking all of the disciples and not just Peter, as some would tell you who they say that He is. And Peter, speaking on behalf of all the disciples rightly says to Jesus "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Peter’s confession is nothing short of miraculous. We’re all familiar with so many of the other miracles that took place during Jesus’ ministry; the feeding of the 5000, turning water into wine at the wedding in Canaa, all the healings and exorcisms. and as impressive and glorious as all of those are, Peter’s confession of faith, and for that matter anybody’s confession of Christ Jesus as the Son of the living God and the Messiah and the Savior, anybody’s confession of that, including yours is miraculous.
It is miraculous because it is a confession that human, sinful minds could never declare without the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself confirms this when He responds to Peter’s confession by declaring to Peter that he is blessed because the confession of Christ Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God that came from Peter’s mouth did not come from flesh and blood but was revealed to him by Jesus’ Father in heaven. Sin and the devil want nothing more than to prevent you from making this confession of faith.
And it is for that reason that our Lord saw fit to send His Son Christ Jesus the Word incarnate, to live the perfect life, death, and resurrection for us. In Christ Jesus our Lord does not just tell us who He is, He shows us who He is, and that He loves us so much that He would take our sin upon Himself and die for our sin so that we might be forgiven, and be raised so that we might receive eternal life. And through the Holy Spirit coming to us in Word and sacrament, we are called to believe this and confess this.
And when our Lord Jesus says to Peter "…and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." The Rock He is referring to is not Peter himself but the truth that Peter had just confessed; the truth that Christ Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God. In other words, the church is built upon the disciples of Christ, past, present, and future, so this includes you, boldly preaching, teaching and confessing the name of Christ. And He continually comes to you in Word and sacrament to fill you with the faith do just this in the face of the attacks of sin and the devil.
And sin and the devil will and do attack. Sin and the devil try to tear down the Church that is built upon the confession of Christ Jesus as the Messiah and Son of the living God. And one of the primary means that this is done is by attacking the very confession of faith that we are called to bring to the world.
Most of you probably remember that in the days immediately following the 9-11 attacks government officials and commentators alike were quick to point out that our nation’s fight was not with Muslims in general but with fundamentalists and extremists. And so how did they define a fundamentalist or an extremist? The popular definition became one who holds that his or her religion is right and thus that other religions are false. I don’t know about you but this would qualify me as a fundamentalist or extremist.
In fact anyone who would say that they agree with the confession that Peter made in today’s Gospel lesson would qualify as a fundamentalist or extremist by that definition. For Peter did not merely confess Jesus to be a messiah, but the Messiah; and he did not confess Him to be a son, but the Son, and he confessed Him to be not the Son of a god, but the Son of the living God. It’s important to recognize that Peter said living God because that would have stood in direct opposition to the multitude of false, dead, idols that were so present back then, and today stands in opposition to the dead idols of money, power, ego, sin, false idols and yes false religions that are out there.
So we live in a culture that tolerates Christianity but if we dare to confess our faith in Christ with the boldness that Peter did then the world labels us extremist and fundamentalist, and this of course is nothing but sin and the devil attacking the church built upon Christ Jesus.
But again our Lord Jesus promises that not even the gates of hell will prevail against His church. And so we can listen boldly to the words of the apostle Paul in the lesson from Romans where our Lord tells us not to conform to the ways of a world that rejects the truth of Christ Jesus as the One and only Savior and redeemer, which of course is nothing but sin and the devil attacking the church built upon Christ Jesus.
It is true that we live in a culture that is hostile to the Christian witness, but there are many confessors of the faith who have worse it than us, and certainly the disciples and apostles faced rejection the likes of which we couldn’t imagine. This does not mean that the reality of a culture hostile to the Christian witness should not be taken seriously. Of course it should and we can look to how our Lord has sustained those bold confessors who came before us all through the years and those who are with us today proclaiming the Christian witness in lands where doing so in places where doing so is not only rejected but could have you killed.
But Paul reminds us that we are all one body, those of us here today, those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. And the same renewing of minds in our Lord’s Word that sustained the disciples and early-church fathers, even in the face of death sustains us in the face of those who would label us extremist and fundamentalist.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 27 2008

2008-07-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Is there a better feeling in the world than those moments that most of us have probably experienced where you are going through your clothes, specifically pockets in your pants or maybe a sport-coat, or maybe for some of you women, your purse, and you find a ten or a twenty dollar bill that you had forgotten about? Or what about finding out that you are going to get a much bigger return on your income-tax than you were anticipating? Or what about the unexpected bonus at work?? It could be a Christmas bonus or something like that?
We love those unexpected surprises or bonuses. But there is a common thread among the three examples that I spoke of that make them maybe a little different, and from our human and somewhat prideful perspective, a little more satisfying than probably most other examples of unexpected benefits.
For you see we all have that desire for unexpected and unearned prosperity. We all have that desire to get something for nothing. We all desire to be included among those luck few for whom good fortune just seems to smile on them; whether it’s winning the lottery, or having you number drawn for the grand-prize in a raffle, we all yearn for that.
But we also have this dream and this desire of earning our way; of attaining the American dream through our own blood, sweat, and tears. It’s the dream of making your own way; the dream of becoming well known and well liked and well respected because of you own hard work and toil.
And so what makes finding that 20 dollar bill that you lost in your sportcoat, or the income tax return that is larger than you were expecting or the bonus at work so enjoyable is that they have elements of both. There is the joy that comes from the receiving of the unexpected benefit and prosperity, but in these cases there is also the personal satisfaction that comes with knowing that, to a certain extent you earned these benefits. Of course you should find your 20 dollar bill, after all you earned it. Of course you should get a Christmas bonus for all the hard work you do. And it’s about time those crooks in the government stop ripping you off and give you what you deserve.
But this morning you are confronted with a Word from your Lord that seems to completely flip upside down this romanticizing of the whole idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, that we just love to embrace. For you see in this morning’s lesson the kingdom of heaven is not presented as some ideal to strive toward, or some impossible dream that we can go after and attain because we really set our minds to it.
No, this morning straight from the mouth of our Lord Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is compared to treasure hidden in a field, which someone found. Again He says that it is like treasure that someone found, not that someone earned, nor a goal that someone attained but a treasure that someone found hidden in a field.
And so on one hand we pay lip-service to understanding this, but do we really understand it? Do we really understand that the Gospel really is like stumbling upon a treasure? Or are we more likely to try to convince ourselves that we can earn our place in the kingdom of heaven?
We want our place in the kingdom of heaven to be like the Christmas bonus. We want to experience the joy that comes from benefiting from something unexpectedly and spontaneously, and indeed our Lord promises that one day we will all be raised again and living in the place that has been prepared for us. And we also know that the date and the time of this glorious event is a mystery. So we are promised that there will be this wonderful, unexpected joy and pleasure, the likes of which we couldn’t even come close to imagining. But we also want that personal satisfaction that comes with the Christmas bonus which says, as nice a surprise as the Christmas bonus is, I must deserve it otherwise why would they be giving it to me?
And so you say? "Well what’s wrong that, we just want to do our part?" The problem with that is it’s not your part to do. The problem with wanting to do your part is that really it is ultimately a return to the sin that got us here; the sin of wanting to be God. The problem with wanting to do your part when it comes to the kingdom of Heaven is that ultimately what it reveals is a desire to control the promise of God, a desire to strategically map out the words of promise that were proclaimed over you in the waters of baptism.
But when we can’t even effectively map out what happens in the temporal world, how arrogant is it of us to even for a second think that we can do our part in regards to our place in the eternal kingdom of heaven. It is so important to our Lord that we understand that our place in His kingdom comes purely as a free gift that He repeatedly drives this point home in various parables throughout this lesson.
After this parable comes the parable comes the merchant in search of fine pearls who finds a pearl of great value. And you think, well there, surely the merchant in his searching, was doing his part. But no because the merchant was searching for many pearls, but the treasure he found consisted of one great pearl. This one single pearl of great value was revealed to the merchant in spite of his endless quest to find value in many pearls.
And finally by comparing the kingdom of heaven to a net full of different kinds of fish which was pulled ashore, where the good fish were kept in baskets and the bad ones thrown out, our Lord Jesus shows that as wonderful and glorious a surprise the kingdom of heaven is going to be, there will be some who will not enter and they will be thrown into, according to the very words of our Lord, the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And that is how important it is that you understand and believe that you have no part in attaining your place in the kingdom of heaven; that your place in the kingdom of Heaven is a completely free gift that was attained when your Lord Jesus paid the price for you sin and pride and you self-centered desire to do your part.
St Paul said that if anyone could attain righteousness through good works it would have been him but even all his good works were as dirty rags. And so the question surges up in you "If there is nothing that I can do, then what do I do?" But that is nothing but the devil and the old Adam trying to tempt you to do your part. But you tell them to go away for your part has been done by Another. Simply hear the word proclaimed in the Gospel that through faith in Christ Jesus; the One who laid down His life for you and gave all for you taking on your sin and defeating sin and the devil for you, you are among the righteous who will be separated from the evil.
But for now the evil and pride is still within you tempting you and deluding you into thinking that you can do your part. But you are not left alone, for the Lord promises to send His Spirit who helps you in weakness, and interecedes with sighs to deep for words, praying for you and teaching you how to pray and reminding you that your are His and your place in the Kingdom is secure. This is happening as we speak through the words of my mouth as the Gospel is proclaimed to you. It happens every time you come forward to receive the Lord’s Supper. For that is nothing short of the kingdom of heaven breaking forth in your midst.
So hear the words of St Paul who reminds you today that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, for He has called you according to His purpose. And so your place in the kingdom has been secured, and so you are now sent forth with this great treasure of God’s promise to your neighbor, to bring this promise to the so that the kingdom of heaven will break forth in their midst and claim them as it has claimed you.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 20 2008

2008-07-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am sure most of you have heard the expression ‘the devil is in the details.’ The meaning of the expression is pretty self-explanatory. When used in everyday language it basically refers to the idea that when something is planned, often many of the details that may not seem necessary are ignored and overlooked and then end up causing problems later.
For instance, a family plans a camping trip, and so they find a campground, reserve a spot, get a tent, make sure they have enough food and clothes and they think they are all set. They get to the campsite, they unpack the tent, and there are no tent-stakes. They made sure to bring the tent, but they did not think to double-check and make -sure that they brought the stakes. The devil is in the details.
But when this expression is used in everyday talk, the use of the word devil seems symbolic or metaphorical. But in our Gospel lesson this morning our Lord presents to us an image of the Kingdom of God where, until the day of judgment, the devil, the real devil, is in fact in the details. Like last week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is once again using farming imagery. In this week’s lesson Jesus is using farming imagery to describe the Kingdom of God.
Right from the beginning we can see that it is part of the devil’s design to be in the details. For in using this farming imagery Jesus parallels the devil with someone sneaking into someone’s field at night, while everyone is sleeping and then sowing weeds among the wheat. And when the weeds appeared, all the servants can say is "Where then did the weeds come from?"
There is a line from a favorite movie of mine that came out about thirteen years ago that speaks to the reality of the devil’s intent to be hidden in the details. The movie is called "The Usual Suspects" and the line in that movie that I am referring to is spoken by the person who ends up being the killer who everyone throughout the movie is looking for. But he is about the last person that one would have expected to end up being the killer. He has a moment in the film where he says "The greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist." And I think that there is a lot of truth in that.
The devil is in the details, and part of the reason why is because he doesn’t want us to think he’s there at all. And we see this in our Gospel lesson this morning when the servants ask where the weeds came from. But the owner of the field who of course represents our Lord Jesus tells them an enemy did it. And much to the servant’s surprise they are told to let the wheat and the weeds grow together. They are told that if you uproot the weeds you may uproot the wheat with them.
And so it is for us, we live as wheat among weeds. But I believe that if we simplify this into saying that, with the weeds and the wheat, Jesus is simply referring to two different kinds of people then we don’t necessarily get to the essence of this passage because we are skipping the details. It would be real easy to simply say well, we as Christians are clearly the wheat and non-believers are the weeds. But again, as I said the devil is in the details.
When Jesus is asked to explain this parable, He explains to His disciples that the field where the weeds and the wheat are growing together side-by-side represents the world. He says that at the end of the age He will send His angels, who in the parable are represented by the servants, and they will collect out of His kingdom all evildoers and all causes of sin. So in other words, the devil, who causes sin with his temptation and deception and despair will remain a reality in our world until the end of the age.
But the devil is not just a reality in the lives of non-believers. Quite to the contrary, with non-believers, the devil’s work is pretty much done. From the first appearance of the devil, what does he mess with? Right from the get-go we see him messing with God’s Word tempting Adam and Eve to question whether God really did say that they were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And today we can hear the echo of the devil’s temptation. I read a survey earlier this week that estimated that roughly thirty percent of all American mainline protestant clergy don’t believe in the devil nor do they believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. Know that I definitely do not include myself in that thirty percent.
But it seems that among some our clergy we hear the echo of the devil’s tempting question to Eve "Did God really mean it when He said that His Son would rise on the third day?" or "When God speaks of the devil, does He mean an actual being?" Or we hear this echo through the words of the recently elected presiding bishop of the American Episcopal church; Katherine Jefferts Schori who when asked whether she believed that Jesus was the only way to salvation she flat out rejected that idea as narrow-minded saying that such a suggestion is to "Put God in a box." And so the echo of the devil continues "Did Jesus really mean that nobody gets to the Father but through Him?"
But I am not singling our clergy out here, nor is my point that even in the church there are weeds among the wheat. There are, so that is definitely true, but the essence of what our Lord says to us in the Gospel lesson goes deeper than that. For, when it comes right down to it we are all weeds. We are not just weeds and wheat living together, we are all simultaneously weed and wheat.
Martin Luther writes of this reality saying "Since baptism is a sign, a visible Word, its significance endures throughout the believer’s life on earth. Yet, as Luther explains, its significance competes with the continuing natural life and impulses of the baptized person. That person, paradoxically, is at one and the same time righteous in Christ and sinful in his own flesh: simul justus et peccator.9" We are not just weeds among the wheat, we are simultaneously both weed and wheat. The devil is in the details; every detail and nuance of our life.
But Luther also reminds us of the blessed gift our baptism, by which we are united with our Lord Jesus, having been brought into His death and resurrection. Through this blessed means of grace we receive what St Paul wrote of in our second lesson for today a Spirit of adoption when we cry "Abba! Father!" By this Spirit bearing witness with ours we are made children of God.
The devil is in the details, and that is revealed in our lives through our anger and sorrow and despair. The echo of the devil’s temptation reveals itself in our lives. In our every word of anger we show that we are continually tempted by the devil’s whispering in our ear "Did God really say love your enemies?" But the devil can tempt you all he wants because Christ Jesus entered into the details of your life also when He took all of your sin and anger and sorrow and despair upon Himself when He laid down His life for you, and sin and the devil who is in the details were defeated for you.
There is no reason to fear believing in the devil; he is real and he is in the details. So while you still struggle with the details of the devil, through faith in Christ Jesus you have the assurance of knowing that Christ Jesus took the devil’s details of death upon Himself and in exchange you have received Christ Jesus’ details of new and abundant life. The devil’s days in the details are limited. For our Lord promises that one day the devil will be destroyed and you will one day experience the full redemption of your bodies. Until then we are witnesses of His promise. So take heed of our Lord’s Word from Isaiah through whom we are told "Do not fear, or be afraid;" the Lord is with you in all the details of your life.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 13 2008

2008-07-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel lesson for this morning, our Lord presents us with images that most of you can relate to, being that so many of you are either farmers or you come from farming backgrounds. In our Gospel lesson Jesus tells the disciples the parable of the sower. This is a parable that is rich with farming images, with seeds being sown and falling on three different types of soils and producing three different results. And so, like I said, this is a passage with a lot of images that a farming community can relate to.
Now granted, I am no farmer but this is actually not the first time I lived in a farming community. The town where I did my internship, Kimball, South Dakota was a farming community. If I remember correctly they were primarily wheat farmers. And I remember that in some cases, and I don’t remember if it was the combining or what, but I remember sometimes they would have to wait until as late as midnight to start their work out in the field.
It was explained to me that it was because that the soil was in the best condition for what they had to do in the hours between midnight and roughly 5 am. Any other time and it might have been either too moist or too dry.
And there was something really impressive about that to me. And I have been around here long enough to come to the conclusion that this same sense of care and devotion and commitment is common among most farmers. I have come to realize that farmers will do whatever they can to achieve a maximum yield. And don’t get me wrong, I am not naïve. I know that the bottom line, the desire to make as much money as you can is a big motivating factor here, and there is nothing wrong with that. But I have also sensed among farmers an inherent respect of the land, and a reverence for this section of God’s creation that you have been entrusted with.
Because you see ultimately farming is an act of faith. Even with all the preparation and hard work and studying of the soil, it is still an act of faith. All the hard work and preparation in the world does nothing to bring you all the rain you need, or protect your crops from an unexpected hail storm.
There are all these potential pitfalls that could make the efforts of the farmer null and void and yet the farmer continues to trudge along year after year. And this is to the farmer’s credit. Because ultimately what farmers do is place their livelihood in God’s hands. And that is an incredibly rare thing in a culture that would sooner place their faith in the stock-market and politicians and the lottery than they would in their Creator.
But the question that our Lord challenges you with in the lessons for this morning is ‘Do you show the same love, care, devotion, and commitment to God’s Word that you show to farming, or whatever livelihood your Lord has provided you with?’ Are you willing to put the same time, energy and sacrifice into the Word of your Lord that you do for your job or even for your recreation?
If not then what you are ultimately showing is that the commitment, devotion, work, sacrifice and faith that you display in farming or again whatever vocation your Lord has provided for you is not rooted in God’s Word. And a faith that is not rooted in God’s Word is a faith based more upon the creation than the Creator.
Indeed daily we show that we fit into all three categories of the bad and unproductive soil that Jesus refers to in this morning’s Gospel lesson. When we take something from God’s Word that confuses or offends us and we try to adapt what it says to fit our little box of reason, logic and inclusiveness then we show ourselves to be in the first category of seeds that fell on the path, which represent those who hear the Word of the kingdom and don’t understand it and were snatched up by the devil. And I would say in many cases it is not a situation of us simply not understanding, but actually refusing to understand.
Or maybe there are days when you hear and receive the Word of your Lord with great enthusiasm. Maybe there is a scripture passage that you stumble upon that really speaks to you and sustains you for a day or two, but you don’t continue to go back to God’s Word and so eventually the enthusiasm and that Word that once sustained you becomes a mere memory and footnote. When something like this happens you reveal yourself to belong in the second category as well which Jesus refers to as seeds that fell upon rocky ground. This image represents those who hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy but endure only for a little while or fall away immediately in the face of persecution because they have no root.
Or there is the seed sown among thorns. When you allow the demands of vocation, recreation and all the other daily demands that are thrust at us to divert you away from God’s Word and sacrament then you reveal yourself to belong in this category, for this image of seeds sown among thorns represents one who hears the Word but the cares of the world choke the Word and cause it to yield nothing.
Now contrary to popular belief, Jesus is not talking about three different types of people here but rather he is talking about three different ways in which we are all guilty of rejecting God’s Word; three different ways in which we all place our own limited understanding, desires and needs before faithfulness to God’s Word.
These are three ways that we show ourselves to be among those whom Paul refers to in the lesson from Romans today as those who set their mind on the flesh. And through the Word of Paul our Lord warns us that to do that is death. For you see all this is reflective of the delusion that we try to convince ourselves of ; that we can live by the law. On our own we can’t even come close to fulfilling one iota of the law, because on our own we live by the flesh and so we set our minds on things of the flesh which as Paul says is death. And so on our own, even on our best days through our best efforts, all we can accomplish is to trudge closer to death.
But our Lord is bound and determined to bring forth a good harvest in each of us. As impressive as all the planning, devotion, and sacrifice that farmers make is, it still produces a harvest that ends up being temporary, and while it may help sustain physical life, it gets us no closer to eternal life. But our Lord has sent His Son; the Word incarnate to deal with all the bad soil within each and every one of us.
And so hear the words of Isaiah through whom our Lord tells us this morning that the Word of the Lord does not return to Him empty but it shall accomplish that which the Lord purposes. And so the Word incarnate, the Word made flesh, or as Paul puts it, the Word in sinful flesh, our Savior Christ Jesus was sent to dwell among us and to live the perfect life for us.
And in order to accomplish His purpose and deal with the bad soil of our sin that plagues all of us, He took that condemned sin upon Himself in the flesh so that as Paul writes, the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. He took that condemned sin upon Himself when He laid down His life for you as He bore the punishment for that sin for you. And that condemned sin was taken with Him as He was planted in the ground in the tomb, having defeated sin and the devil for you. And that is where your condemned sin remained when He was resurrected three days later gushing forth in glory having ushered in eternal life for you.
And so in baptism the seed of faith which transforms the rocky and thorn-filled soil of your heart into the good soil which bears fruit, was planted in you through the Word of our Lord spoken over you by a sinful pastor. And indeed the Word of our Lord does not return empty, for this Word continues to come to you through Word and Sacrament, cultivating, nurturing and sustaining the seed of faith that was planted in you as you were cleansed in the waters of baptism.
And this frees you to build your faith on the Word of our Lord. You are free to continue to have faith in the livelihood your Lord has provided for you, but to now base it on the Creator who has provided it for you rather than on the creation that has been provided for you. And this Word which calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies us to faith has been placed in your heart and on your lips and has freed you to bring to your neighbor the Word of Christ that bears fruit and does not return empty.
Amen

Sermon Sunday July 6 2008

2008-07-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and Sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
On Friday, we as a nation, celebrated our independence. We celebrated the work of our fore-fathers who came before us and who sacrificed so much to free us from tyranny and oppression. We celebrate the independence that we are so fortunate to enjoy everyday. And I will admit, I like the 4th of July. I like the fireworks, I like the picnics and the barbecues and everything else. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood involve 4th of July celebrations with my family. And even the simple freedom we have to set aside a day to do just that, is reflective of the extraordinary freedom that we as Americans experience.
But as extraordinary and inspiring as this freedom and independence might be, it is still just temporary and the idea of celebrating independence and self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps seems very antithetical to many of the words of our Lord from this morning’s Gospel lesson. In this lesson, Jesus is singing the virtues of being yoked and compares His disciples to infants, while He is critical of being ‘wise’ and ‘intelligent.’
This, among many other ways, is how we know that those who would suggest that the United States of America is somehow the most favored nation on the planet are wrong. We know they are wrong first of all because our Lord says that His kingdom is not of this world. We also know that the myth of America as God’s most favored nation is not true because as disciples of Christ, we are not called to be self-reliant and independent.
And, as I said, any independence we experience as Americans in this life is all purely temporary. For indeed our Lord Jesus is speaking of His disciples as being like infants, who are totally dependent upon others for their own needs, and so He calls us to be under His yoke so that we might be free from the myth of our own independence, so that we might be totally dependent upon Him.
You see any independence that we think we experience when it comes to matters of the faith is myth, because even outside of the yoke that our Lord places on us we are still not free or independent. For we read in the lesson from Romans this morning where St Paul describes himself as being sold as a slave to sin. He recognizes that the law is good and spiritual, but because of the sin that dwells within him he is totally incapable of fulfilling even one fraction of it.
And so it is with us. Sin holds us captive. Martin Luther says of this idea of being a slave to sin That is to say, all nature resists the Law of God. This is surely a frightful utterance, whether I like it or not, I am forced to serve sin contrary to the Law of God. Thus we see in young people the movement of passion, which carries them away to sin, willing or unwilling. And there is not enough strength in either reason or will for them to repress this raging drive. Thus greed devours the old folks.
Moreover, just as these vices harass and plague a certain age, so either sorrow in bad days or smugness in good days harass and plague, even completely devour, all Christians. We are all such people by nature.
All our best efforts do nothing in the face of the grip that sin holds over us. This is not to say that we are constantly committing visible acts of sin, although the struggle with sin certainly leads to visible acts of sin probably more often than we would like to admit, but what St Paul and Luther are referring to is the reality of our sinful nature, of constantly being in a state of being assaulted, attacked and deceived by sin and the devil. And every attempt to free ourselves from this bondage, through our best efforts of reason and will just leads to the shackles being clamped on that much tighter as we become more and more seduced by the myth of our own independence.
But nevertheless, independence and self-reliance are highly valued and coveted in the world and so we continue, as we live in the midst of the physical and earthly realm, to chase after our independence. And so this leads to a state where maybe you don’t pray as much as you once did or read the Bible as much or go to church as much. The means of grace that our Lord graciously provides for you and calls you through to complete and utter dependence upon Him are cast aside in order to make room for your quest for independence.
But still, as St Paul makes mention of in the lesson from Romans, it is still within us to recognize the inherent spiritual goodness of God’s law. Like Paul, we agree that the law is good. Like Paul we have the desire to do what is good. But also like Paul, because of the sin that lives within us, we cannot carry them out.
And so we want the best of both worlds. We want the freedom of the earthly realm and the holiness and promise of eternal life of the spiritual. And so we delude ourselves into thinking that we can integrate the two. We actually start to think that there is room in God’s kingdom for our earthly and temporary independence.
And so we become like those mentioned in the Gospel lesson who rejected both John the Baptist and Jesus. We reject the law that John brought because maybe it doesn’t seem reasonable and so we delude ourselves into thinking that, 2000 years later, somehow we have greater insight into God’s Word than the disciples who walked with Jesus and those who had firsthand encounters with them. And so we find ourselves saying things like "Well Jesus didn’t really mean this.. did He?"
But we also reject the grace that Jesus brings by refusing to acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him and so the Gospel is seen as just another pursuit of excellence.
But the astonishing good news in light of this is that we are not independent. We are not left on our own. The Gospel is not something for us to pursue or a goal for us to strive after, it is an accomplished feat. On the cross Christ Jesus took on the burden of your sin, doubt, pride, envy and despair and when He breathed His last He said "It is finished" and He meant it. It is an accomplished feat that sin, death, and the devil have been defeated for you. It is an accomplished feat that in the resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been given eternal life in God’s eternal kingdom.
And that you believe this is a miracle in itself. That you believe this means that you are among the "infants" or "little children," as some translations have it, for whom the Gospel has been revealed to you by your Father.
And so hear the Words of your Lord this morning as He comes to you again, revealing Himself to you through the words of my mouth and in the bread and the wine, in a few minutes as you come forward once again for the Lords Supper to receive the forgiveness of your sins in the body and blood of Christ Jesus. Hear the Word of your Savior as He tells you to come to Him so He can give you rest.
As He calls you in His Gospel and in the Lord’s Supper just know that is nothing short of the Holy Spirit calling you and nurturing you, preserving you and sustaining you in your faith. It is nothing short of your Lord Jesus coming to you in His body and blood and reminding you of the claim that was made upon you in your baptism, and the faith that you receive in baptism as the yoke that removes all the burdens of your sin, self-reliance and mythical independence was placed upon you in baptism. Hear His Word that He gives you grace and forgiveness and all good things.
And so you have heard the plea of your Savior who tells you to come to Him. And the One who came on the foal of a donkey comes to you today bringing not a step-by-step plan to discern God’s special purpose for you, or a new insight into His Word for us to figure out thus implying that "God is doing a new thing." No He comes bringing grace, mercy, the removal of your burdens and the forgiveness of sin. He has revealed Himself to you and He brings you salvation and rest and relieves you of the burden of your mythical independence.
Amen

Sermon Sunday June 29 2008

2008-07-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
I remember when I left Oregon to go to Minnesota for seminary, I was told by the pastor of the church that I was a member of in Oregon, who was originally from Minnesota that before I went I needed to learn about mid-west hospitality. He told me that when I am dealing with mid-western Scandinavians it’s important to understand that there is a certain protocol to communicating with them.
He told me that when you offer help or assistance of any kind, be it to pay for a meal, or to lend someone some money, or to help someone with a project they are working on, or anything else, it is necessary to understand that if I am sincerely offering to help them and I sincerely want to know if they want my help then I have to ask at least three times. And he said this is because, in most cases they will instinctively say "No thank you" the first two times you offer and then it’s not until the third time you offer that you find out whether or not they really do want or need the assistance you were offering.
Now obviously this advice was given more than a little tongue-in-cheek, and honestly I don’t know if I’ve noticed this to be true or not. However it does reflect something that Jesus is addressing in our Gospel lesson this morning. From the opening words of this lesson we can see that Jesus is speaking of hospitality and speaking of how when someone welcomes a disciple of Jesus they welcome Jesus and when someone welcomes Jesus they welcome the One who sent Jesus; God the Father. So, because of the mystical union of faith between God the Father and Jesus and Jesus’ disciples, when someone welcomes a disciple of Christ it is the same as welcoming God.
Now while it is true that Jesus is addressing hospitality here we must understand that He is speaking to the disciples here and so He is not so much addressing how they will give hospitality but rather their own willingness to receive hospitality. Because you see Jesus knew that His disciples were human and prideful and so, like many of us, would often have difficulty accepting the gracious hospitality that would be extended to them. And so what the advice that I received from that pastor in Oregon shows is an inherent prideful resistance in all of us to receive hospitality.
And so when Jesus says to you this morning that those who welcome you welcome also Him and His Father you must understand that He is addressing something much more significant than polite behavior and good and proper etiquette. He is addressing our refusal to admit our dependence on Him. He is showing you that there is much more at stake here than just your pride. If you refuse to accept the gracious gift of another how willing are you to believe the promise of your Lord in Christ Jesus? And Jesus tells you that when you refuse the gracious gift of another, it is the same are rejecting our Lord Jesus. Refusing to accept the gracious gift of another is the same as being a stumbling block to someone else.
And indeed it does work both ways. We reveal our inherent refusal to acknowledge our dependence through our prideful inhospitality also; by pridefully blaming our problems on someone else and thus refusing to be hospitable to them. Earlier this week I watched an episode of the show Battlestar Galactica where the main character of the show, the commander of the Battlestar Galactica was clinging to guilt and remorse over something and essentially blaming all of the struggles he and his crew were dealing with on himself. One of the other characters who is a political leader on the show said to him, and this is a paraphrase "We like to over-simplify the most complicated problems that we are challenged with all so we can cling to the illusion that we can control them."
I thought there was a lot of truth in that. And I found it to be reflective of what Jesus is addressing. You see whether we are too proud to offer hospitality or too proud to receive it, it is all indicative of the inherent self-idolatry within all of us. It is all clinging to the illusion of control. And so we give in to the deceptive attacks of the devil as he attempts to play on our pride and self-pity and lure us into the myth of our own autonomy, or the lie that we need only ourselves.
And so we become like Hannaniah from our Old Testament lesson. As we pridefully cling to our illusions of control we attempt to deceive ourselves and others into believing a false image of peace. But this is a path that can only lead to sin, delusion and ultimately to the grave as it did for Hannaniah, for as we read further in this chapter in Jeremiah the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and told him that Hannaniah was a false prophet, and so Jeremiah confronted Hannaniah and told him that because he had uttered rebellion against the Lord with his false prophecy that the Lord would remove him from the earth and that Hannaniah would die that year, and he did.
And what Hannaniah’s story shows us is that there is much more at stake here than proper courtesy. Jesus is concerned about our willingness to extend and receive grace and hospitality because it is through us, those who have been claimed by our Lord in the waters of baptism and the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, that the Lord continues His work of proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of the Lord and proclaiming the good news of forgiveness of sin through Christ Jesus. Through us His disciples, our Lord works to make more disciples. And so with our prideful refusal to acknowledge our dependence on our Lord we are guilty of nothing less than trying to hinder the very work of our Lord.
But the good news is that even when we refuse to see our dependence, our Lord does see it. And so He sends His Son Christ Jesus our Lord in whom was performed the most extraordinary act of love, grace, mercy, faith and forgiveness; in Him was accomplished the most amazing act of radical hospitality to of all things; sinful human beings when He took the burden of their sin upon Himself and gave up His life on the cross and gave you a home with your Lord.
In radical love and hospitality that revealed itself through your Savior Christ Jesus dying on a cross and three days later walking out of an empty tomb after being resurrected, a place in the kingdom of the Lord has been graciously prepared for you. And try as you might to simplify the challenges that come about as a result of the attacks of sin and the devil, the reality is you don’t have control and so all you can do is humbly accept the gracious hospitality our Lord brings your way. Indeed it is in those moments when we are in our most severe and often self-inflicted guilt and desperation that the cool-water of grace and forgiveness from our Lord tastes the sweetest.
And we can also set our pride aside to live a life reflective of that grace and hospitality that was extended to us on the cross by extending hospitality and forgiveness to our neighbor. To do otherwise could likely be an inadvertent attempt to hinder the gracious will of our Lord.
And so hear the Word of our Lord from St Paul this morning through whom we are urged to present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and present our members as instruments of righteousness. We have been brought from death to new and eternal life with our Lord in His kingdom by the One who does have control, and this happened when you received the forgiveness of sin in the cleansing waters of baptism and sin no longer has dominion over you. But you still don’t have control, but now it’s good news because now it means that through faith in Christ Jesus you are made a slave of righteousness for sanctification, but that is to our advantage for it is through the sanctification that we receive from our Lord that His gracious hospitality is extended to our neighbor even when they say ‘No thank you.’
Amen

Semon-Sunday June 22 2008

2008-06-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you heard about “The Secret?” Yes “the Secret.” The Secret refers to an alleged revelation that a woman named Rhonda Byrne had. Much of what she supposedly learned in the revelation was released to the public in a movie and then, I believe with more detail, in a book and has become an international phenomenon, helped in large part by Oprah Winfrey who recommended The Secret on her show. A quote from the web-site for the Secret says.
The Secret reveals the most powerful law in the universe. The knowledge of this law has run like a golden thread through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages and saviors in the world's history, and through the lives of all truly great men and women. All that they have ever accomplished or attained has been done in full accordance with this most powerful law. Without exception, every human being has the ability to transform any weakness or suffering into strength, power, perfect peace, health, and abundance. The alleged secret to the secret is simply that your thoughts control the universe. Through this “law of attraction” you can manifest your desires.. If you imagine and envision hard enough that something is yours, it will become yours. There you don’t need to buy the book or see the film. I just saved you $20 and most likely a lot of frustration.
Seriously the fact that this is referred to as a secret shows that behind this theory, or whatever you want to call it, is the idea that it is now up to you to attain the benefits contained within the Secret, which will give you the fulfillment we all want.
And this is one of the ways that we know that the Secret is completely and utterly bogus, and is completely and utterly incompatible with the Word that our Lord brings to us this morning. For when we read the Gospel lesson for this morning we can see that our Lord Jesus refers to something that He shared with the disciples “in the dark” or “whispered in their ear.” In other words Jesus is referring to something that He shared with the disciples in private. But then Jesus also lets them know that they will soon be called upon to speak this “secret” in the daylight and proclaim it from the roofs.
Jesus is speaking here of course of the Gospel; of the good news of the coming of the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus, the good news that in Christ Jesus we are reconciled and made right with God, the good news that in the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, sin and the devil have been defeated and heaven’s gates have been flung open-wide and the good news that those who acknowledge the Lord Jesus before others, the Lord Jesus will acknowledge before His Father in heaven.
The Secret, referring now back to Rhonda Byrne’s movie and book promises the knowledge that we need to create a joyful life and the means to unlimited happiness, love, health and prosperity. And she claims that you can find it yourself if you know the secret and can envision effectively enough everything that you desire.
But what Ms Byrne and Oprah Winfrey and anyone else swept away by this mythical secret fails to realize is that our wants and desires are diametrically opposed to the good and perfect will of our Father in heaven. St Paul writes in Romans 7 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
And so left to our own desires we are left wallowing in sin and despair. There might be a part of you that desires truly good things, or that may be appalled at different varieties and aspects of sin but left to our own desires, reason and strength we just run from one sin to the next looking for the next secret to latch onto.
Whatever the Secret might be able to provide, or for that matter any of the other countless means that we come up with in our seemingly endless quests for self-fulfillment, they all fall short of the simple and eternal promise of forgiveness and eternal life that our Lord brings to us in His Word. They all fall far far short of the promise of Christ Jesus confessing your name to His Father in Heaven.
Left to our own reason and strength we are dead in our trespasses, but when we let go of the myths and lies that the devil and the world and our sinful nature tempt us with there is only One recourse left and that is to cling to the One who, in our Gospel lesson is speaking to the disciples of something that He had spoken to them of in private telling them that soon they would be called to shout it from the rooftops; and that was the good news of what He was preparing for, when He would lay down His life, taking upon Himself all of your sin, and sickness, and despair and your seeking after the latest self-centered secret to come cross the pike; taking all of that with Him to the cross for you where sin and the devil were defeated for you.
And three days later was raised from the grave for your justification as He daily justifies you by daily acknowledging you to His Father, the same as you acknowledge Him before others.
And so indeed we are called to acknowledge our Lord Jesus before others. We are called to continue the work of the disciples acknowledging and confessing our Lord Jesus before others. Indeed what was whispered to the disciples in the dark we are called to speak in the daylight, what was whispered to them we are called to shout from the rooftops.
Are you doing that? Do you confess the name of Christ Jesus as your Savior in public, to your friends, family, co-workers? Do you acknowledge Him as your Savior before others. I am not talking about standing on a corner preaching to strangers as they walk by or anything like that. But do people whom our Lord has placed in your life know that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus has had an impact on your life? Or is that just something you do on Sundays?
It’s not always easy. Often it is much more convenient to just keep our faith to ourselves and limit it to being that thing we do on Sundays, but the truth is a non-confessional internalized faith is not what our Lord Jesus wants of us or calls us to. And in fact He says when we fail to acknowledge Him in public He will not acknowledge us before His Father.
We fear rejection but Jesus faced all the rejection we could muster and it led Him to the Cross, upon which He did nothing short of confessing your name to His Father in Heaven saying of the very ones who crucified Him, which included us “they belong to Me” as He bore the penalty for your sin and defeated sin and the devil for you. And so there is no reason to fear rejection or even death because as St Paul reminds us in the second lesson, in baptism we have already faced death. Indeed in baptism, we were baptized with Christ Jesus into His death. Death no longer has dominion over us, the wages of sin is death, and they were paid when our Lord Jesus laid down His life for us.
Indeed we do live in a world that is inclined to rejecting the Gospel. The assaults on the Gospel will continue through rejection, ridicule, false gospels and in some parts of the world confessing the name of Jesus could cost a person their life. But with Jeremiah we know that we don’t need to worry. We have been freed to proclaim the good news without fear of retribution. The One who claims you in baptism confesses your name before His Father, and so when you answer the call to confess His name in public, you are not performing a meritorious work, you are simply responding to the burning fire of the Holy Spirit shut-up in your bones and like Jeremiah you can’t hold it in, you are among the needy who has been delivered from the hands of the evildoers, and so as you hear this Word proclaimed to you and as you will soon come forward and receive the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, know that is nothing short of the work of the Holy Spirit nurturing, preserving and sustaining your faith and refusing to allow the Gospel that claimed you in baptism to remain a secret.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday June 15 2008

2008-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and Sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
What does it mean to be at peace?? What does it mean to have peace? Well the classic definition would usually be some sort of reference to an absence of conflict or disagreement or strife. And certainly in a global sense, when we are speaking in regards to international relations, that definition would apply. Truthfully, though I think that is really more the appearance of peace.
Earlier this week I heard about a joint worship service that took place in Southern California in January which involved leaders in the Episcopalean and Hindu religious communities. It was celebrated and hailed as a glorious and unprecedented event. The service involved the celebration of Communion for Episcopaleans and Hindus. It also involved an apology by an Episcopal bishop presuming to speak on behalf of the entire Christian community. Do you know what the apology was for? He was apologizing for attempts on the part of Christians to convert Hindus. Essentially he was apologizing for Christians proclaiming the Gospel among Hindus.
Now this worship service is problematic for many reasons. And I won’t even really get into the theological problems of this service, of which there are many, not the least of which is the idea of Hindus, who don’t even believe Jesus is the Son of God let alone believe He is truly and bodily present in the bread and the wine, partaking in Holy Communion. But my point in bringing this up is, that is not real peace, that is merely the appearance of peace. And what you don’t see in this picture of alleged religious harmony is an already extremely divided Episcopalean community, and all this did was add to the division and strife in the Episcopalean community. And I don’t know much about the Hindu religion, but I would imagine there were some orthodox Hindus who probably weren’t too happy about this.
I think real peace exists within conflict and disagreement and transcends disagreement and conflict. Now don’t think I am getting all eastern religiony on you. I simply believe that in a way we are all looking for that kind of peace. The problem is we look in the wrong places.
I read an article on CNN.com yesterday about a man named Samuel Israel. He was the co-founder of a company called Bayou hedge fund, and in 2005 he pleaded guilty to stealing more than $450 million from his clients. On Monday he was supposed to report to prison to begin a 20-year sentence. His car was found on a bridge in New York with the words “suicide is painless” scrawled in the dust and the pollen on the hood of his car. A body has yet to be found, and so as you might imagine, not too many people are buying this appearance of suicide.
Samuel Israel was and likely still is a man looking for peace, not just after he got caught but before he got caught. He had convinced himself that wealth and power was the way to peace, and so he became bound to the idol of wealth; so bound that he was willing to steal millions of dollars from people who had placed their trust in him. And now his life is an example of the futility and emptiness of seeking peace through our own convoluted means.
And so we go to our Gospel lesson for this morning and we see our Lord Jesus going through all the towns and villages proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. And still we read that as He looked upon the crowds He had compassion on them because they appeared to be like ‘sheep without a shepherd.’
What does that mean? What does it mean to be like a sheep without a shepherd? Sheep are totally dependent upon their shepherd. Without their shepherd, they are lost, without their shepherd they have no peace. And so Jesus sees all these people like sheep without a shepherd. He sees people searching for peace and He has compassion for them. Walking right in their midst was the good shepherd and still they continued to seek after peace through their own means, through their own efforts.
And so it is with us. Our Lord Jesus has promised to be with us to the end of the ages and still we look to ourselves and our never ending quest for self-gratification and visible signs of peace, rather than simply clinging to the shepherd who lays down His life for us. The peace that surpasses all understanding is not enough for us. The peace that comes through hearing the Word of our Lord who laid down His life for us is nice but we want something that we can see and touch right now. And so as we search for peace on our own terms, we scatter ourselves from our shepherd.
And we become like ancient Israel who heard the promise of their Lord that they shall be His treasured possession of all the peoples, and that He would make of them a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. And upon hearing this promise they respond by declaring that they will do everything that the Lord has spoken. But history would of course reveal that it wasn’t long before they were grumbling and complaining and longing to return to slavery and bondage thus forsaking the promise of their Lord in favor of worshipping a golden calf.
And this continues today in our own personal quests for peace and personal satisfaction be it through money or personal accomplishment or keeping up with the Joneses or whatever, we all have our own golden calfs and towers of Babel by which we try to attain the peace that can only come to us from outside of us. But as we see in the story of Samuel Israel, or in the joint Episcopal/Hindu worship service, and all throughout scripture, we find that such human-driven quests are futile and pointless, and lead only to bondage and at best the appearance of peace and ultimately only to the grave.
But fortunately when we go back to our Gospel lesson we see that our Lord Jesus does not leave us running around like sheep without a shepherd. For He summoned His twelve disciples and sent them out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He sent them out to proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God had come near. He told them that the harvest was plentiful but the laborers are few and so He gave them complete authority.
And we see that indeed the peace that our Lord Jesus provides is one that transcends the mere appearance of peace that comes with the absence of conflict, for He sends His disciples out like sheep into the midst of wolves. He tells them that when they enter the home of someone who welcomes them that they are to bring their peace to that house. In the midst of wolves they bring peace.
And we know that not long after this, our Lord Jesus, the good Shepherd did lay down His life for you, and sin and the devil were defeated for you and you were given eternal life when He was resurrected, and the harvest would not be limited to the lost sheep of Israel but would include all nations, to whom our Lord would send His apostles out to go and make disciples by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that He has commanded them, and Christ Jesus promised to be with them and you to the end of the ages.
And as present as He was with the apostles that day He was present with you when His word of promise was spoken over you in the waters of baptism, as He claimed you as one of His sheep and freed you from sin, death, the devil and from being like a sheep without a shepherd. In the same way Christ Jesus is present with you now through the words of my mouth nurturing you and sustaining you in your faith and He will be present with you again in a few minutes when you come forward to receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus in Holy Communion.
You have the peace you desire. For as St Paul tells us in the lesson from Romans “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Where there is justification in Christ Jesus there is eternal life with our Lord and thus eternal peace. And so simply believe the One who laid down His life for you. For you are no longer a sheep without a shepherd. You are a disciple and so follow the lead of the disciples from the Gospel, and go forth and share the peace of the Lord with your neighbor for the harvest is plentiful.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday June 8 2008

2008-06-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
this morning I am going to do something a little different. This morning I am going to do a teaching sermon. Now don't worry teaching sermon does not mean boring sermon, in fact I think you might find this interesting. I am going to be using a word that you have probably heard me use but might not have known what it meant. That word is doctrine, and it essentially refers to nothing more than simply teachings of the church.
A few weeks ago I was having lunch at the Pizza Hut in Sidney with some fellow pastors. One of the patrons came up to our table and asked if we were pastors. One of my fellow pastors said yes. The man responded by saying that he was a Christian. But then he said that he didn’t really worry about doctrine. He said "No doctrine, just Jesus." As if Jesus is not concerned about doctrine; as if Jesus is not concerned about those who would profess His name having a right and proper understanding of biblical truth.
Now while his heart might have been in the right place I actually see this man’s comments as being reflective of the disdain that the Pharisees were showing for Jesus in this morning’s Gospel lesson. But we have to understand that the commonly accepted understanding of the Pharisees and the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is wrong.
Now we all know of course that Jesus was very critical of the Pharisees, and for good reason. But the basis of this criticism is often misunderstood. I read a very interesting article this week on just this subject. It was written by a Lutheran pastor named Todd Wilken. In the article Pastor Wilken talks about how often these days people will play what he calls the "Pharisee card" in the same way that some people will play the "race card" or the "gender card." He rightly points out that in American politics, both the race and gender cards are used as a way to discredit someone by implying that they are racist or sexist. I would add that these tactics are used also as a way of avoiding any real genuine discussion of an issue.
In the article Pastor Wilken points out that this same tactic happens in the twenty-first century American church, with people playing the Pharisee card in an attempt to portray fellow Christians as narrow-minded, doctrinal purists, resistant to change and therefore unconcerned for the lost. The problem with this, and Pastor Wilken very effectively makes this point, is that it is based on an inaccurate characterization of the reasons why Jesus faulted the Pharisees.
Tonight I will be getting on the train and heading to Minnesota to go to a theological retreat at Mt Carmel retreat center. This retreat is being organized by people connected with Word Alone, the reform group that I am an active member of. There are some in the ELCA who like to play the Pharisee card against Word Alone because of our concern for doctrinal purity, not that there aren’t some in Word Alone who have their own cards that they play in an attempt to cast those who disagree with them in a negative light.
The point is Jesus never faulted the Pharisees for their concern for doctrinal purity. Quite to the contrary, Jesus was very concerned about doctrinal purity Himself. In John 8 we read where Jesus says that if we abide in His Word we are truly disciples of His and we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free. Doctrinal purity is not about trying to legalistically bind people in rules, it is about seeking to preserve the truth that our Lord promises will set sinners free.
Neither did Jesus fault the Pharisees for being resistant to change. In fact the opposite is actually true. The parable of new wine in the old wineskins from Luke 5 is often used to suggest that Jesus was critical of the Pharisees for being resistant to change, but actually that parable is critical of the Pharisees for introducing their own innovations in place of God’s Word. And again I must give Pastor Wilken credit for pointing this out in his article. Jesus concludes the parable by saying "And no one, after drinking old wishes for new; for he says, ‘the old is good.’"
Jesus did not see the Pharisees as being unconcerned for the lost. In Matthew 23 Jesus acknowledges that the Pharisees and scribes travel about on sea and land to proselyte.
The Pharisees error was not a concern for doctrinal purity or resistance to change or lack or being unconcerned for the lost; it was their false teaching. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their apostasy. The Pharisees taught that salvation was the result of God’s mercy plus man’s obedience. This teaching is reflected much more today in a lot of the tips for daily living preaching that you might see on television than it is in biblically grounded Christ-centered law and Gospel preaching that some might mistake for being reflective of the Pharisees.
The Pharisees could not let go of the myth of their own righteousness, so much so that they went to the point of actually not making the law more rigid but actually of dulling the law’s demands in order to fool people into thinking that they can fulfill the law. And this, finally, is where I see the connection between the man at Pizza Hut and the Pharisees.
I believe that ultimately the real problem that this man at Pizza Hut had with doctrine is that doctrine goes beyond a surface-level understanding of scripture. For to have a deeper appreciation of the Word than that would mean seeing that God’s Word cuts to the heart. To truly understand God’s Word we must understand that God’s Word interprets us, not the other way around.
And so it is with the Pharisees clinging to their mythical righteousness, all the while continuing with their vain efforts to interpret God’s Word incarnate Christ Jesus. But the Word-made flesh turns things around and interprets them by telling them that He desires mercy and not sacrifice and that He comes for sinners and not for the righteous. And in that moment He interprets the Pharisees as sinners and exposes them as false teachers.
And therein lies the biggest difference between the Pharisees and the sinners and tax-collectors. When Jesus said that He came not for the righteous but for sinners, He was speaking of how they saw themselves and not how God saw them. The Pharisees believed that they could be righteous on their own, and they were teaching this, and that was what Jesus faulted them about. And so He responds to them by trying to correct their doctrine, not by telling them to be more inclusive, or to be nicer people, no He corrects their doctrine by assuring that they have a true and right understanding of the Word; the Word made flesh.
And so the struggle continues today. The truth is everyone of us daily does something that warrants us rightly being called Pharisees. Anytime we trust our obedience over our Lord’s faithfulness we are being Pharisees. Anytime we cling to anything other than the Lord, be it money, alcohol, work or whatever we warrant the label Pharisee. Anytime we ignore biblical truth in the interest of promoting political-correctness, inclusiveness, ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and anything else, we warrant the label Pharisee. Really, anytime we sin we warrant the label Pharisee and so we show ourselves deserving of the condemnation and criticism that our Lord Jesus had for the Pharisees.
Our Lord demands perfect righteousness and hiding from that truth does not make it go away, and it certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to you. And try as we might to dull the demands, we still fall far short.
But the righteousness that our Lord demands of us, He brings to us. In the large catechism Luther summarizes the benefits of baptism in two words; "It saves." And so indeed in the waters of baptism our Lord Jesus comes to us, claims us, marks us with His cross, seals us with the Holy Spirit and gives us the righteousness that our Lord demands of us and then gives us the faith to believe this promise. Why would anyone want to cling to the myth of our own righteousness when our Lord Jesus brings us all of this.
There is no reason to run from doctrine. Quite to the contrary, doctrine should be embraced, for through doctrine our Lord gives us greater insight into the Word of our Lord and His promise. And in hearing His word, the Spirit leads into the truth that frees us preserves nurtures and sustains us in the faith; the faith that like it was with Abraham, is reckoned to us as righteousness-the righteousness that God sees.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday June 1 2008

2008-06-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus says to us this morning in the Gospel lesson that not everyone who says to Him "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven. He says some will say to Him "…did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in you name?" And Jesus says that He will respond to them by declaring that He never knew them and commanding them to depart from Him calling them workers of lawlessness.
Well those are bold words. These certainly don’t seem very fitting with the tender-hearted, hippie image of Jesus that our culture has come to embrace. Some might even say that Jesus was being offensive here. Certainly He doesn’t seem to be being very inclusive. Let’s face it, in our Gospel lesson our Lord Jesus comes to us preaching straight-up fire and brimstone.
So what is this about? What is Jesus getting at here? What is Jesus warning us against here? Well about six verses before the Gospel lesson for this morning starts, Jesus warns against false teaching by warning against false prophets. He actually describes false prophets as coming to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are actually ravenous wolves. That is how seriously Jesus takes false teaching and false doctrine, that He refers to those who would spread false doctrine and false teaching as ravenous wolves.
Is Jesus just being arrogant here? Is He just being narrow-minded here? I mean really as long as we love each other and are nice to each other and do good things for other people then do things like doctrine and theology and teaching really matter all that much? Why is Jesus so concerned about false teaching here? Why would Jesus go to the extreme of calling false teachers ravenous wolves? Well for one thing in His eternal nature He has seen just how dangerous false prophecy and false teaching can be. He has seen how the false prophets of the Old Testament, the false prophets of Baal misled the children of Israel into godlessness and sin and were thus destroyed.
So Jesus tells us that there is a way that we can spot them. He tells us that there is in fact a way that we can see these false teachers. Jesus tells us that we will know them by their fruits. You will know the false prophets and false teachers by their fruits. Well what does that mean? Well we know that Jesus is not talking about good works or lack of good works here because included among those whom Jesus says He will declare that He never knew and whom He will cast out are some who did mighty works in His name, and yet still Jesus says He never knew them. Indeed there are plenty of people who do good works; included among them are atheists, agnostics and false teachers.
Again, Jesus is talking about doctrine here. He is talking about what they believe, teach and confess. And we also know that He is not just talking about a generic belief in God here or even a generic belief in Jesus here because all of these mighty works that were done by those whom Jesus says He never knew, they were all done in Jesus’ name. And yet still Jesus says He never knew them.
And so where is it that some who will say to Jesus "Lord, Lord.." and do mighty works in His name, fall short? Where do we fall short? Jesus gives us the answer once again through a parable. He says that those who hear the words of Him and do them will be like a wise man who built his house upon a rock, And because of the solid foundation of this house built upon a rock, the house will be able to withstand rain and floods and winds.
The house is our faith. It is the very faith that we receive in baptism. And of course the Rock is Christ Jesus, the Rock of our salvation.
Recognizing false teachers is not just about recognizing whether or not they talk about God or even recognizing whether or not they talk about Christ Jesus. It is recognizing what they believe, teach and confess about Christ Jesus. Do they teach that He is the perfect, sinless Son of God who lived the perfect life, death, and resurrection for you as we read in all four of the Gospels? Dot they teach that it is the will of the Father that those who look upon the Son and believe should have eternal life as it says in John 6?
Do they teach that He is the only Savior and the only way to salvation as we read in John 14? Do they teach that His Word of truth is the only truth and that all other truth claims should be measured in light of the Gospel, for as our Lord Jesus tells us in John 5, all scripture testifies of Him? Do they teach that without Him we are all doomed? If not they are false teachers.
And as fire and brimstoney or non-inclusive as that might be to some, we need to hear it. We need to hear it because as Paul reminds us in the lesson from Romans, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Indeed we are all sinners.
We need to hear this because what Jesus is talking about is the righteousness of God. And the lesson from Romans today tells us that the righteous will live by faith. And through faith we receive the very righteousness of God, apart from the law. We receive righteousness by grace through faith. What our Lord demands of us and what those whom Jesus referred to in the Gospel lesson who called on Him saying Lord, Lord and did those mighty acts of the Lord, and yet still Jesus said He never knew them; what they were lacking, what they fell short of, what we all fall short of without faith built upon the solid rock of Christ, is the perfect righteousness that our Lord demands of us.
Rick Warren, author of the best-selling book, The Purpose-Driven life recently predicted that the next reformation will be about "deeds not creeds." Well with all due respect to Mr Warren all I can say is "Good Lord I hope not." In fact I pray that is not true. Because if that is true then what we will have is reformation built on sand. We will have reformation built upon works. Not that works in service of the Lord are bad. Quite to the contrary they are wonderful. But they should come as a joyful response to receiving the righteousness that comes to us from outside of us, that comes to us first from our Lord Jesus.
And so with all due respect to Mr. Warren, I will take a creeds-based reformation with creeds that will reveal confession and faith built upon the Rock of our salvation Christ Jesus over a deeds-based reformation any day because even if such a reformation turned every church in the world into a mega-church it would still be built on sand and so would b swept away by the rain and floods of sin and temptation and false teaching.
For there is only one way that we can receive the righteousness that Jesus is speaking of. We certainly can’t get it from ourselves because as Paul reminds us, as sinners we all fall short of the glory of God. And so God in His grace and love for us sends us His righteousness from outside of us. It comes in God’s judgment and so it is as unmovable as God Himself. He or she whom God declares righteous is righteous. The very righteousness that our Lord demands of you came to you in the waters of baptism when you received faith, forgiveness and were claimed by Christ.
And so all you can do is believe. Believe that the One who lived the perfect life, death and resurrection for you is the same One who claims you in baptism and the One who is coming to you right now through the words of my mouth reminding you that you are His, and that this same One will come to you in a few minutes in the bread and the wine of Holy Communion bringing to you once again in bread and the wine the forgiveness of your sins all the while creating, preserving, nurturing and sustaining your faith, that has been built upon the Rock of your salvation Christ Jesus.
We need to hear this because soon you will leave here and you will go out to the world where sin and the devil will assault you and try to seduce you into building you house upon the sand of works, or pluralism, or money or whatever else it can throw at you. But the foundation of Christ Jesus will not be shaken. In the midst of the assaults of sin and the devil, through our faith built upon the Rock of Christ, we are strengthened and inspired all the more to believe in Christ Jesus and what He has done for us and is doing for us; giving us the righteousness of God in the forgiveness of sins. And so in faith you have this peace, but maybe you neighbor doesn’t. And so it is all of our calling to go out into the world and share this good news so that they all might be brought into the house of faith built upon the Rock of our salvation, our Lord Jesus. There is nothing more inclusive than that.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday May 25 2008

2008-06-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Second Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
My sister was recently laid off from her job as a mortgage banker in Southern California. This is the result of what you may have heard referred to in the news as the sub-prime mortgage loan scandal. Five years ago there was an influx of loans being given on mortgages for many people who truthfully were not qualified to receive these loans. The loans were financed in such a way that for five years the borrowers would pay interest only and at a rate that was less than the going market rate.
But then when the five years was up, the existing loans were re-set with interest that was higher than the going market rate in order to offset the below market rates from the first five years, the effect of which was that the payments were immediately doubled or in some cases tripled or worse. For example a monthly payment of $1200 could very likely have been increased to $3500. As a result people who thought that they had achieved the American dream of owning a house were all of a sudden forced to sell their houses, very likely for less than market value. Many of these people likely ended up in small apartments, moving back home, or in some cases worse.
And another effect has been that many people, like my sister, who work in this industry have lost their jobs. I don’t want to make it sound like I am trying to portray her as a total victim here. Five years ago she was doing very well and reaping the benefits of people receiving these loans. The loans which she represented were of the sub-prime type. However, not being an economist and not being among those who developed and packaged and gave final approval for who received the loans there is no way she could have foreseen the current crisis that has unfolded.
Regardless it seems that those who were seeking out these loans could be a reflection of a culture that has come to take Jesus’ words from this morning’s Gospel lesson to not worry about tomorrow to a ridiculous extreme. Indeed Jesus tells us in the Gospel lesson for this morning we are not to worry about tomorrow.
But certainly one could see that this was not a call to cavalierly cast aside all of our practical concerns as we ransom our future and perhaps even our souls to a credit industry that ends up offering nothing but empty promises.
But what about those who didn’t recklessly seek out these loans, but today find themselves struggling from day to day? How do the words of our Lord telling us not to worry about tomorrow come across to a factory worker just trying to make it from one paycheck to the next? Or a salesperson who, because of a floundering economy, has seen their income split in half? And on this Memorial day weekend, I might be remiss if I didn’t ask how the words of our Lord telling us not to worry about tomorrow would speak to a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan who is literally just trying to survive from one day to the next.
Or what about a farmer? What about a farmer who is having trouble being optimistic about the coming harvest after a dry winter? What about a farmer who has found themself asking their pastor to pray for rain? My guess is that people in situations such as those would probably more easily identify with what Jesus says after He tells us not to worry about tomorrow. For after Jesus says "..do not worry about tomorrow.." He says "…tomorrow will bring worries of it’s own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."
But still we worry about tomorrow. Our Lord comes to us with a Word of promise to hear, telling us not to worry about tomorrow, but the truth is we relate more to what we see than what we hear. And so how can we not worry about tomorrow when what we see is dust clouds and empty fields and unpaid bills?
But what if you woke up tomorrow and lo and behold everything that you felt you were lacking and was keeping you from being free of anxiety, all of the sudden appeared? What if you woke and all of the sudden it appeared that for certain there would be a plentiful harvest, a bumper crop? What if all your bills were paid, your mortgage paid off, your cars paid for? Would you never have another worry or desire? Would you covet after nothing?
Or would it not be too long before you were thinking that you car is nice but maybe not as nice as your neighbors? Or that your house does the job and keeps you warm and gives you shelter but it is not as nice and spacious as your neighbor’s? Or that your harvest, while plentiful was not as bounteous as the field down the road or in the next town or county. The truth is, the more we have the more we want.
We live our lives professing to believe in God while at the same time seemingly trying to consume as much as we can just in case we’re wrong about God. With every covetous thought and desire we reveal the inner part of us that questions God’s promise to us that He cares for us more than the lilies of the field whom He adorns in such beauty or the birds of the air whom He always provides for. And so whatever our reason for striving after things of the world first, even when it seems justified and the only logical response, when we do this we challenge Jesus’ assertion that our Heavenly Father cares for us and so we show our innate tendency to try to serve two masters.
But we can’t serve two and so we end up serving the one that consumes us. We fail to strive first after the kingdom of God with all it’s righteousness; the kingdom that our Lord promises to us in faith through a Word that we hear. But instead we seek after the temporary and corruptible and ultimately disposable world that we see. But no matter what your lot in life this is a path that leads only to the grave. As long as you seek first the things of this world eventually the master of this world, the devil, will come to collect on the debt of your sin, which leaves you in the grave.
But there is One who has paid your debt, Christ Jesus on the cross, where He defeated death and took away the sting of death for you. And so He has freed you from the burden of seeking after this world and freed you to seek first His kingdom.
And so what does it mean to seek first after God’s kingdom? Well it’s not a chronological thing. The use of the word ‘first’ here does not suggest that there is a ‘second.’ What it means is that whatever we are doing, no matter what the circumstance, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness are always most important. And so what is God’s Kingdom? Martin Luther describes it as simply that "God sent His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, into the world to redeem and deliver us from the devil’s power. He sent Him to bring us to Himself and to govern us as a king of righteousness, life, and salvation against sin, death, and an evil conscience. For this reason He has also given His Holy Spirit, who is to bring these things home to us by His Holy Word and to illumine and strengthen us in the faith by His power."
And so whether you are a mortgage banker or a farmer or whatever, how you go about seeking first the Kingdom of God is the same; and that is simply this "Believe upon the Lord Jesus and receive His promise of forgiveness and eternal life that comes through faith in Him and His perfect life, death and resurrection for you; the faith that you receive through the Holy Spirit, who nurtures and sustains you in that faith through the hearing of God’s Word and the receiving of the sacraments.
You seek the Lord’s kingdom by seeking our Lord; in His Word and sacraments.
And in doing this you have the wonderful promise that our Lord gives to you this morning in the Gospel, that whatever earthly needs you are lacking, your Lord sees that you need these things. And so seek first His kingdom. Seek His promise. Live in the rest and comfort of knowing that your place in the Lord’s kingdom has been secured through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, and know that the One who has provided you with the eternal blessing of forgiveness of sin, eternal salvation, and a place in His kingdom that has been prepared for you; but that, without the Word of our Lord, you could not see that you need; He who has provided you with all of these eternal blessings that you cannot yet see, will certainly provide you with the temporal needs that you can see.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday May 18 2008

2008-06-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

Trinity Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
This morning in His Word, our precious Lord Jesus has made to us a truly extraordinary promise. Our Lord Jesus has promised us in His Word this morning that He is with us always, to the end of the age. Think about what an amazing promise that is. Our Lord Jesus promises that He is with us at all times and in all places, forever.
We can’t even really imagine how radical this promise is, let alone even coming close to trying to fulfill it ourselves. We certainly can’t do this in our own relationships. In marriage for instance there are careers that often necessitate being away from each other, there’s the driving the kids around, running errands, all sorts of things. And spouses just need to give each other their space. Even in the best of marriages that don’t end in divorce, one spouse always passes away before the other.
But of course it is not just our physical limitations or the constraints of time and space that make it impossible for us to even come close to fulfilling the kind of promise that Jesus makes to us in His Word this morning. In fact it is probably more so our sinful and selfish nature that makes this impossible for us.
As Luther said, "We are curved in upon ourselves……" As a people, as a species, we are just not inclined to look after the interest of others, of our neighbor before ourselves. Certainly we could all point to someone in our lives, be it a spouse, a child, a friend, a sibling, someone who’s needs we might have the ability and maybe even be inclined to look after more than our own. But our Lord sets the bar much higher than that.
The love that our Lord has for us is much bigger and more radical than that. In Matthew 5 our Lord tells us that our Father in Heaven makes the sun rise on the evil and the good and that He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
And again this promise that our Lord makes to us today in His Word is one that He promises to keep to the ends of the age. What He is talking about is eternity, and so He is not simply promising His faithfulness from that point on, but rather this radical promise also serves as a reminder of the selfless faithfulness that our Lord has shown through all time.
Our Lord’s selfless faithfulness to us began way back in creation and we read of this selfless giving in creation in our first lesson for today. I have been reading quite a bit lately about God’s created order. Now this term God’s created order refers to a structural or even hierarchical understanding of creation.
And so how this relates to our lessons this morning is the dominion of humanity over the rest of God’s creation. Our Lord gives us dominion over the birds, livestock and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. In other words, our Lord gives us dominion over the rest of creation. We are higher on the hierarchical scale than all the rest of creation.
And so indeed when we speak of an order in creation; that in creation we were given dominion over the animals and plants and fish etc. is a part of that order in creation and so reveals something to us about where we stand in regards to God as well as the rest of creation. But I think we also learn something of our standing with the Lord in the chronological order in creation.
I think it’s telling that before our Lord created us, He created that which He gave us dominion over. Everything that our Lord created before us was given to serve the uses and necessities of the life that He gives us.
Every thing that He created before us was created with us in mind. And it was created with the full knowledge that we were not worthy. He prepared for us all that we would need for our daily necessities and He continues to daily provide for our daily needs and preserves that which He has prepared for us and protects us from danger, and He has given us dominion over the rest of creation. And our Lord did all this and does all of this knowing full well that we are not worthy and that we would abuse the very dominion that He gives us.
Our Lord knew that we would fall far short of the image of God in which we were created, and yet He created us anyway. He knew that we would daily fail to answer His call to fruitful and caring stewardship of creation. He knew that our carelessness and neglect would lead to famine, plagues, pollution, and a vastly disproportionate distribution of wealth and resources that would leave most of the planet living in conditions that most would consider to be poverty.
He knew that we would fail to be the prudent, stewards of God’s rich resources that we are called to be. And history has shown us to abuse those resources all in the interest of seeking money, wealth and power.
And so why would our Father in Heaven give us dominion over anything if He knew that we would just abuse it? The answer is in some peculiar wording in our Old Testament lesson. In verse 26 and 27 it says "Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness…. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him." Why does it go from referring to God in the plural "our" to the singular He and His?
What the plural reference to God shows is the Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so our Lord selflessly gives of Himself by creating the world and everything in it and giving us dominion over the rest of His creation, knowing that we would exploit and abuse that dominion to our folly. But He also knew that He would be sending the Son. He knew that He would be sending the One through whom He would be with us until the end of the age.
He would be sending the One who, although fully human, would hold complete authority in Heaven and earth. He would be sending the One through whom we would be reconciled to our Lord. He would be sending the One who would permit Himself to lay down His life for us and pay the death-penalty that we deserve for the sinful abuse of the dominion that God the Father has given us. He would be sending the One who would bring forgiveness of our sin and abuse and the defeat of sin and the devil for us.
He brings this forgiveness to us through His Word and through the sacraments, through baptism which our Lord Jesus commands and institutes in the story from today’s Gospel lesson. And indeed in baptism we receive the gift of forgiveness of sins when we are marked with the cross of Christ and receive the gift of faith when we are sealed by the Holy Spirit.
And so in baptism we are also brought into the community of saints, or the Christian church, and it is through this community of saints that the Holy Spirit comes to us in the Word and sacraments sustaining and nurturing us in our faith. And that is what church is; it’s not a building, not a denomination, not a religion, it’s sinners gathered in the name of Christ around the Word rightly proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered.
And it is through these Word and sacraments, and the hidden power of forgiveness that we receive in them, that we are being made new and the old Adam or Eve in each of us is being put to death. We live in light of the promise given to us by the Son, that one day we will be new creations and restored back to the image of God given to us by God the Father which we tarnished with our sin and abuse. And so in the meantime, we are called to follow the lead of the disciples in the Gospel lesson and go forth and make disciples of our neighbors by sharing with them through Word and deed the love of the One who is with us now and has promised to stay with us, and has authority over us: Christ Jesus.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday May 11 2008

2008-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am going to talk to you a little bit this morning about the Koran; the book that Muslims consider to be their holy book. Now maybe you’re wondering why I would want to talk about the Koran on Pentecost of all days. I think you’ll understand why when I am done. Muslims believe that the only true and accurate translation of the Koran is the Arabic translation. It’s been translated into all sorts of different languages, but they say that it always loses something when it is translated into a language other than Arabic. And so they believe the Koran is only authoratative in Arabic.
Muslims believe that all Muslims are on what they call the "straight path" and that the Koran will guide them and show them how to stay faithful as they continue on the "straight path." They believe that the teaching in the Koran provides them with the knowledge they need to remain faithful in the midst of the attacks and temptations from those who aren’t on the "straight path.’ But, they believe, that if one strays from the teachings of the Koran, then one strays from the "straight path" and the only way to get back on track is to go back to the Koran.
You see they believe that God revealed the teachings of the Koran so that those on the straight path would be protected from the evil around them, the evil outside of them, and they believe that the only way to get the complete revelation of this truth is to read it in Arabic.
But you see this is how we know that the Koran is false. This is how we know that Muslims are wrong. I know that this isn’t very inclusive of me. I know that this isn’t very politically correct of me but I call it like I see it. For this Muslim image of God is completely contradictory to the image of God that is presented to us in our lessons for this morning.
In our first lesson, the lesson from Acts, the lesson that recounts for us the Pentecost events that we remember today; in this lesson we read of devout Jews in Jerusalem gathered from every nation who were amazed and astonished when they heard the disciples, as they were filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in the native languages of all of those who were there. All of them; Parthians. Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappodocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes, Cretans and Arabs-they all heard and understood the disciples speaking and telling about God’s deeds of power.
From this we can see that our Lord refuses to bind His Word to one language or nationality. In this first lesson from this morning our Lord promises that He will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh. The Spirit who guides and leads all people into truth will be poured out upon all people, as opposed to binding that truth to one language and putting the burden of finding that truth on God's people. Our Lord refuses to be hindered by any language barriers as we can see in this morning’s first lesson. The risen Lord Jesus does not wait for you to come to Him. If that were the case none of us would ever get there.
Instead He comes to us through Word and sacrament. Our Lord comes to us, as He will for Kaylie in a few minutes in the waters of baptism. The Spirit does not wait for us to enter onto the straight path but instead breaks through our barrier of sin and unbelief, washing us with the regeneration of renewal, claiming us as children of God through the Word of our Lord uttered through the mouth of a sinful pastor, as that Word is spoken over us in the waters of baptism.
But our Lord does not leave us there. He does not claim us in the waters of baptism and then leave us to our own defenses trusting that when we are tempted and attacked by the world and all it’s wiles then we will pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and put ourselves back on the straight path. He knows us better than that. He knows that our faith is as fleeting as the night.
Look at the disciples in our Gospel lesson. Jesus had told them that He would be raised from the dead. He told them of the resurrection, and yet there they were hiding from the Jewish authorities, from the ones who had just been defeated and whose plans had just been foiled. Of course anyone of us would have been right up there with them.
You see this is misplaced fear. And what this shows is that misplaced fear is every bit as dangerous as misplaced trust. And we have our own misplaced fears. In our self-imposed quest to avoid sin and stay on our own straight path we look for places and people to whom we can point the accusing finger. And so we fear the government or terrorists or immigrants. Really, all it takes is a well-calculated rumor to cause us to fear a neighbor, friend or loved one whom we have trusted our entire life. And indeed we do live in a broken and sinful world and we need to be aware of that.
We need to be aware of the danger that is our there, not just that which poses a threat to us on a physical level but even more so that which poses a threat to us on a spiritual level. The devil is out there whispering in our ear, telling us that we can stay on the straight path on our own, that we don’t need a Savior, or that we can have a god of our own design. And so we fear that which poses a threat to that in which we have misplaced our trust. We fear that which is outside of us and distracts us from the myths that we create for ourselves. And what our fear actually shows is that which we respect. And when we fear the world and the damage the world might do to our self-imposed myths, then we show that is what we respect, that is what we honor.
But the evil in the world that we fear so much does it’s greatest damage not from outside of us but from inside of us. The truth is, we embody the evil and sin that we fear. We are like the disciples hiding in the upper room from the Jewish authorities when the Jewish authorities had already been defeated. Acknowledging the darkness within us is the last thing we want to do, because then we have to acknowledge that through that darkness or sin we are enemies of God. We would have to acknowledge that we are bound to the sin that condemns us. We would have to admit that, on our own, we could not make it one inch on the straight path. And that is a terrifying thought.
That is enough to make one fear God. But we are commanded all throughout scripture to fear God. Because through our fear, what we respect and honor is revealed. In Exodus 14 it says that the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord. In Luther’s small catechism, we are reminded that we are to fear, love and trust God. Indeed the Word of God cuts like a knife, exposes our sin to us and drives us to call on the name of the Lord, that we would be saved.
And so when we are claimed by our Lord in the waters of baptism, we are not left to our own devices. We are not left on our own to simply follow the straight path but rather we are surrounded by parents, siblings, grandparents, sponsors, and other fellow members of the body of Christ who are all called to play a part in the raising up of the newly baptized, exposing them to God’s Word, bringing them to God’s house for worship, teaching them the catechism and the creeds, creating in us the fear of the Lord that leads to faith.
And faith is created in us when the One who paid the price for our sin, the risen Lord brings to us His peace in the midst of our fear when He brings to us the promise of forgiveness through His Word and in bread and the wine of Holy Communion we are given a tangible reminder of the price that He paid for our sin, and we are reminded that without Him there is no hope, that without Him we are forever lost on a crooked path that leads only to the grave. But with Christ Jesus, we are claimed by our Lord in baptism, through which the Holy Sprit brings us into the body of Christ where we are called to fear, love, and trust our Lord and we are filled with the faith by which we are granted eternal life with our Father in Heaven.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday May 4 2008

2008-05-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

Seventh Sunday of Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
The Gospel lesson for this morning gave me an excuse to watch one of my favorite movies. It’s a movie called Hoosiers, and it tells the true story of a successful high school basketball coach who, because of an incident at one of the schools that he coached at involving an altercation with one of his players, was fired from his position and, because of the scandal that inevitably followed, was unable to find another coaching job anywhere else for a long period of time. As the film opens he is finally being given another chance to coach high school basketball for a school in a very small town in rural Indiana.
The previous coach had passed away and so the team was currently being coached by some local supporters. The new coach’s methods were quite different from the way they had been doing things. The town seemed to be pinning their hopes on one particular player and so the assumption was that the best approach was to build everything around this one player.
But the new coach had a different approach, a more fundamentally team oriented approach. On his first day of practice he says to the team "Let’s be honest about what we’re after here; five players on the floor function as one single unit; Team! Team! Team! No one more important than the other." His approach was not embraced with great enthusiasm. In fact, two of the players walked out that day. And few of the adults, except the principal who hired him and an assistant coach and one of the players father, seem to really get behind him.
But this is what happens when someone comes along and knocks you off your lofty perch. This is what happens when something doesn’t quite go the way you envisioned it. This is what happens, more than likely, when someone dares to deviate from the "Way that we have always done it." Let’s face it, this is what happens when we don’t get our way. We reject that which we were not expecting and hoping. We reject it because it challenges us put our trust and faith in someone or something other than ourselves. We reject it because it challenges us take the focus off of ourselves.
And so this morning you are confronted with a Gospel Word that knocks you off your lofty perch. Our Gospel lesson for this morning contains a prayer that our Lord Jesus makes to His Father in Heaven. He knows that soon the time is coming when He would be laying down His life on the cross for you. And in the midst of this prayer Jesus says "Father…glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify You, since You have given Him authority over all people."
Even as He is about to face death, Jesus understands Himself as having authority over all people. And so you think, "Certainly He doesn’t mean all authority." You think "Well it’s a nice idea to think that Jesus would have authority over all people, but that’s not really what He meant right?" "He didn’t literally mean all authority?"
Because, let’s face it, we just are not comfortable with some of the things that Jesus says and does. I mean in last Sunday’s Gospel lesson we heard where Jesus said if we loved Him we would keep His commandments. But what about the commandments we don’t like or understand? Maybe they don’t affirm us, or celebrate who we are? Certainly in those areas we must be in charge.
After all we are all entitled to be our own people right? Certainly Jesus wouldn’t want to stifle or inhibit each of us from expressing ourselves. Are we not our own people? I mean sure we profess our faith in Jesus, we worship Him and we do things to serve Him sometimes, but we are the ones in control here right?
Judas thought he was in control. Judas decided that he was not going to let anything get in the way of an opportunity to make a little money. We all know how well that worked out for Judas. In fact in the verse that comes after this Gospel lesson, Jesus says, referring to the disciples, that not one of them was lost, except the son of destruction, referring to Judas.
That is what happens when you put your faith in your own authority and your own accomplishments; you end up lost. But the good news is that Christ Jesus does have all authority over you. Christ Jesus has a claim on you and He keeps that claim on you.
And being claimed by Christ means being included in His promise, and it means that you are included in this prayer that your Lord was praying in this morning’s Gospel. For later in this prayer, although it’s not in this mornings reading, Jesus says that He is not praying only for those who were there with Him but also for those who would believe in Him through their Word.
And so where Jesus says that He was given authority over all people, that in fact does include you, but then the very reason that He was given that authority also includes you and that reason was so that He might give eternal life to all whom the Father has given Him. And in the waters of baptism, you were given to and claimed by Christ Jesus. Jesus says that eternal life is to know His Father, the only true God, and Christ Jesus whom God the Father sent.
And so that Christ Jesus has authority over you is nothing to be uncomfortable with, in fact it provides great comfort. He has been sent and given authority over you when He claimed you in baptism. And by this authority He preceded to face death on the cross where He would take on the burden of your sin. And that is how He would be glorified, by going through death for you.
As He breathed His last and lay lifeless on the cross, the world saw a man defeated, but the truth is that in those moments where He looked so defeated, when it looked like those conspiring against Him had won, the reality is that He was exercising His authority in glory. He was exercising His authority by laying down His life and defeating sin and the devil, all so that three days later He would give you eternal life with the almighty triune God, by walking out of the tomb.
He was thinking not of Himself but of you. He knew that those whom the Father would give Him and would thus be called to go out into the world to proclaim His name would face opposition. And so He prays for your protection.
So hear Peter’s words from the second lesson, where he tells us that if we are reviled for Christ’s name, we are blessed because the Spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God is resting on us.
Those of you who have seen the movie Hoosiers, which I referred to earlier, no doubt remember that the team goes on to win, against insurmountable odds, the Indiana state High School basketball championship. And it happened because this coach had taught these players to look outside of themselves to each other so that they would learn to work together as one.
Well we know form our Gospel that our Lord prays for us to be one as He and the Father are one. And so, such as was the case in Hoosiers, we are to look outside of ourselves to find where we are made one. But unlike such was the case in Hoosiers, we do not look first outside of ourselves to each other, rather we look first to the One who has authority over us. He is the One who protects us from the devil who prowls around looking to devour us and He protects us from our sinful natures which call us to look inside of ourselves and only leads to us getting lost.
And so hear the words of Peter from today’s second lesson. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time." Indeed, humble yourselves before the One who comes to you right now in His Word through the words of my mouth, and He comes to you in a few minutes bringing to you His body given for you and His blood shed for you-supporting you, strengthening you, establishing you and keeping you as one under the authority of your Savior.
Amen

Semon-Sunday April 27 2008

2008-04-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

Sixth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The words of Jesus from the Gospel lesson seem almost a little manipulative. In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus says that if you love Him you will keep His commandments. It does sound kind of like the way some of us might talk to a loved one if we were trying to maybe guilt them into doing something for us. If you love me you’d let me get a new car. If you loved me you’d take me out to dinner more often. Now if your guessing that there is a little more to this than that, you would of course be right.
First of all perhaps we should ask ‘What does Jesus mean by keeping His commandments?’ Well we know that Jesus sums up all of the commandments in His commands to us to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and to love our neighbor as our self. We also know that Jesus is soon to be handed over to the authorities, so He knows that soon He will subjected to powers and principalities that do not love but actively oppose the love that Christ Jesus brings.
Jesus was thinking of the disciples here, knowing that soon He would be gone and they would be the ones being pursued by the principalities and powers and that their lives would be at stake. Now today, publicly professing the Gospel and proclaiming the name of Christ may not mean risking our lives, as it did for the disciples, at least not in the comfort and security of North America, but we face the same sin and the same devil. Sin and the devil are just as present a reality today as they were 2000 years ago.
Sin and the devil are just as active today trying to keep us from seeing and hearing our Lord in the midst of a broken and sinful world. Jesus warns the disciples that the time is coming when the world will no longer see Him. Sin and the devil are constantly attacking us and trying to distract us from the revealing of our Lord.
And so, losing sight of our Lord, like the loveless world we live in, we find ourselves following or obeying some false idol that eventually just enslaves us. The devil knows that without Christ, God is unknowable to us and so at the same time that sin and the devil obscure us from Christ Jesus, they also offer up false hope in the form of idols, and these idol can come in many forms. Today the world offers up idols of patriotism, money, false-teaching that is embraced because it seems more loving than the truth. Our fear can also become an idol; fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear how people would react if you were to truly confess your faith to them.
In all of that we don’t just show that we sometimes can’t see Jesus, we show that when it comes right down to it we don’t trust Jesus. We don’t trust Him because He doesn’t reveal Himself to us in the manner that we would prefer and to the degree that we would have Him reveal Himself to us. And so we replace Him.
We become like the Athenians whom Paul was addressing in the lesson from Acts today, who had many objects of worship but they were not worshipping the one and only almighty triune God, creator of the universe. They were not worshipping the God who loved the world enough to send His Son to die for the world. They were not worshipping Him because He had not revealed Himself to them yet. In fact they had come to worship what they referred to as an unknown God, among all of their other objects of worship. I would suggest that the presence of this image that the Athenians referred to as an unknown God shows that even in the midst of all the other objects of worship ultimately all their idols ended up leaving the Athenians feeling isolated, alone and abandoned.
And so it is for us, no matter how many false idols we may create for ourselves, as long as we fail to see Jesus as the only truth and the only way to God then ultimately the only image that we are left with is one of ourselves alone, isolated, and even dying. No matter how many false idols we create for ourselves, sooner or later sin and the devil will win out and death will come knocking. And there is only One who can save us from that. And He comes not through any political candidate offering a new and brighter vision for America, not through the latest self-help book offered up by the book of the month club, not even through ecumenical agreements.
For as Peter reminds us in our second lesson, we are saved in baptism through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus who appeals to God on our behalf for a good conscience. And so we can hear with faithful confidence, the words of our Lord who promises that He does not leave us orphaned. In fact it was the departure that He was preparing for in this lesson that ultimately served to bring Jesus closer to you than you could imagine. Jesus refuses to leave you isolated so He isolated Himself on the cross.
Jesus would indeed soon be departing but He was going to a place where He would bear the weight of your desolation and the burden and price of your sin. He was going to the cross where the devil and the onslaught of death are defeated.
That’s right, the onslaught of death has been defeated. You’ll still face it and you still face it one way or another everyday, but because your Lord Jesus loves you so much that He refuses to leave you orphaned, you have the comfort of knowing that your death has already been defeated. You have the peace of knowing that through the waters of baptism you have been brought into the resurrected presence of your Lord.
And indeed we do still live in a world held captive to sin and the devil and they will continue to attack us. They attack us with lies and deceptions, all in the name of taking our eyes off the One who gave all for us.
But here again, our Lord comes to us with a promise. He comes to us with a promise to send the Spirit of truth. Our Lord sends to us the Holy Spirit who comes to us in His word proclaimed, indeed the Spirit of truth comes to you right now through the words of my mouth and through the sacraments where we are claimed by our Lord as children of God in baptism and where we tangibly receive the forgiveness of sin through the body and blood of our Savior given and shed for us, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
In the midst of all that, the Spirit of truth comes to us and creates, nurtures and sustains in us the very faith that unites us with each other and with our Lord. Indeed as Martin Luther writes in the small catechism, we cannot by our own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit calls us through the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts and sanctifies and keeps us in true faith.
Writing further on this in the large catechism, Luther writes, "Until the last day the Holy Spirit remains with the holy community (tr-693) or Christian people. Through it he gathers us, using it to teach and preach the Word. By it he creates and increases sanctification, causing it daily to grow and become strong in the faith and in the fruits of the Spirit."
Through Word and Sacrament we are daily reminded that the promise our Lord makes to us that because He lives we also live, has been fulfilled. And so now the Spirit brings us forth in full confidence and assurance speaking His Word through us to our neighbor. Just as Jesus has been raised from the dead, we are alive in His Spirit and this Holy Spirit which daily reminds you of the good news that you have not been orphaned and that you are a child of God, now speaks His word of promise through you to your neighbor, sharing the love of Christ with your neighbor, bringing the good news of Christ Jesus to the same indifferent world, caught up in its own desolation, that daily tries to distract you from the truth. This Spirit of truth who brings you the faith to love God and believe in the good news of salvation through His Son, by bringing this same Word of hope to your neighbor through you, enables you to see that when Jesus said If you loved Him you would keep His commandments, He was not being manipulative, He was making a promise, a promise that the Spirit of truth fulfills in us.
Amen

Semon-Sunday April 6 2008

2008-04-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

Third Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
It says in our Gospel lesson ‘but their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.’ This is of course referring to two of the disciples who had yet to see Jesus risen from the grave and so they are incredibly disappointed and sad because they think "that’s it" "it’s over.’ They had hoped that He would be the One to redeem Israel but they had come to think otherwise because they had not seen Christ Jesus risen from the grave. But then Jesus comes right up next to them and they still cannot recognize Him.
And so we see that even in the midst of inevitable defeat sin, death and the devil are at work trying to hide God’s people from the truth of who Christ Jesus is and what He did for them and what He continues to do for you daily. And so indeed today, sin, death, and the devil continue their assaults on God’s people as they try to keep you from recognizing Jesus.
The devil had convinced these two disciples that Jesus was not coming back and that Jesus had not defeated sin, death, and the devil and so out of extreme disappointment and sadness these two disciples leave Jerusalem and they walk away from their Savior. And we can see that this is not just a matter of these two disciples simply thinking that Jesus was dead. This was not just a matter of not seeing Jesus. They didn’t even recognize Jesus when they saw Him. Jesus comes right up next to them and these two disciples still don’t recognize Him. In fact as I said it says that their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. In fact they even refer to Jesus as a stranger.
And these deceptive efforts of the devil, tempting to lead God’s people away from their Savior continue today. Indeed there is a whole world filled with all kinds of means that the devil will use to try to lure you away from Christ Jesus and to get you to fail to recognize Jesus when He does come to you, when He is literally right next to you. And so the devil will come at you with doubt and denial in the midst of all that the world throws at us, be it addiction or depression or materialism or greed or lust or simply in the every day struggles that we all experience.
But the trickery of the devil does not end there because the devil knows that even if he can lure you away from Christ Jesus there is still going to be a void. That void is going to need to be filled with someone or something. And so the devil will attack you with sin and temptation but still the void remains, still something must go where faith in Christ Jesus should reside or maybe even once did reside. And so the devil comes with a false gospel. The devil comes with a gospel that speaks of making you a better person or even making you wealthier if only your faith is strong enough. Or the devil comes with a false gospel that maybe doesn’t even mention Jesus or if it does it reduces Him to being one of many ways to salvation.
Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a better person and there is not necessarily anything wrong with a desire for more wealth. But Jesus did not come to give you tips on daily living or to show you how you can get a raise or a promotion. And He certainly did not come to be One of many ways to salvation.
To even suggest such a notion, that there might be more than one way to salvation shows the devil at work in us. After all it assumes that we even deserve the One way to salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. And to suggest that there might be more than that one way to salvation shows the devil at work in us again. We all want salvation and often we want it on our own terms. And sin, the devil and the world are constantly trying to convince us that we can have salvation on our own terms.
And so not only are we willing to buy into a false-Gospel and really a false Jesus, but we also fail to recognize the real Gospel and the real Christ Jesus when we are confronted by Him. At the heart of all this; being deceived by a false-Gospel, allowing struggles in our lives to create fear and doubt, materialism, addiction, greed, lust, all of this sin that each and every one of us struggles with on a daily basis, at the heart of all of them is the condition that we have all been stricken with; the condition of original sin; the condition that causes us to think that we can be righteous on our own, the condition that deludes us into thinking that salvation is an inalienable right and not that which was attained for us through the death and resurrection of Christ.
And so we see these two disciples who are walking away from Jerusalem, because the recent events surrounding the death of Jesus didn’t happen quite the way they were expecting. Jesus told them that He would be raised from the tomb but it didn’t happen the way these two disciples had envisioned and that was all it took for them, in spite of all that they had seen; that they had to wait a little longer than they had anticipated was enough to completely shatter their faith and leave them in a pit of denial and depression.
But then there is something truly unique that Jesus does, He goes after them. Now keep in mind, they were about seven miles away. That is a long walk but Jesus goes after them. Jesus goes after them because He refused to leave them in their doubt and denial. He went after them because, in spite of everything that He had taught them and everything that they had seen Him do, they still didn’t understand that everything that they witnessed; Jesus’ persecution, His suffering, and His death on the cross, it all happened for a reason. It was not an accident and He was bound and determined to see to it that they understood that. He went after them because He had claimed them as His own.
And He went after them and told them that His suffering and death was necessary and then He interpreted for them all the passages about Himself in scripture, going all the way back to Moses, showing them that it all pointed to Him.
He was doing for them, what He does for you right now; revealing Himself to you through His Word, revealing to you that the promise that is extended to all God’s people all throughout scripture is for you. He is revealing Himself to you as He does for you right now reminding you through His Word that the Word that Peter had in the first lesson, for that crowd of believers outside the upper room is for you also; that in baptism you have received the forgiveness of sin and the Holy Spirit, that you are among those whom the Lord calls to Him. And it took Jesus bearing the burden of your sin; suffering and dying for you.
And so hear the promise of Peter, this time from the second lesson for today, when he promises that you have been ransomed from the futile ways of your ancestors, which by the way are every bit your futile ways also, and this ransom was paid with the precious blood of Christ. And in the bread and the wine of His Supper He comes to you bringing you once again this same precious body and blood which redeems you and He brings to you forgiveness that you can see, taste, touch and feel. And in the same way Christ Jesus was fully and finally revealed to the two disciples from the Gospel lesson when? It was when they broke bread together, finally they realized, when they broke bread together that it was Christ Jesus breaking bread with them and then Jesus disappeared.
But that’s ok because that was all done so that they would believe upon Him. And so through Christ’s faithfulness they were finally drawn to faith, and Peter gives us a word in the second lesson that reminds us that through Christ Jesus we have come to trust in God; who raised Christ Jesus from the dead after He had done what He was destined to do, bearing the penalty for your sin in His suffering and death on the cross. Through the faithfulness of Christ and the faith that the Holy Spirit brings to you through God’s Word your faith and hope have been set on God and you have now been freed to go forth, like the two disciples from the Gospel lesson and proclaim to your neighbor that Christ has risen indeed.
Amen