Monday, July 11, 2011

Proper 10 of Series A (Isaiah 55:10-13)

“So shall my Word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing which I sent it.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the fifty-fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Dear friends in Christ, in the beginning, God planted a garden. It was full of beautiful plants, bringing forth a bountiful harvest continually, feeding both animals and man. But man ruined this garden, he spoiled this wonderful gift that had been established for his good. By succumbing to Satan’s temptation, the man didn’t just condemn himself to death, but he condemned the garden to corruption. Now, weeds grew up, thorns and thistles that choked out the good plants. It was no longer a pleasure to tend that garden, but instead it only gave up its fruit through back-breaking labor. You have seen the effects of this. You have pulled those thistles, you have worked the ground, or watched your neighbors and relatives struggle to bring in a crop. Gardening is enjoyable, but every thistle, every weed, every drought or flood is a reminder that we live in a corrupted world, a world broken by sin. The thorns and thistles that rise from even the best-kept field show us what we are inside- fully corrupted by sin. But despite this corruption, God in His grace continues to pour out His great gifts.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my Word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” The Lord has not abandoned His corrupted garden, but He continues to provide for it. You know the benefit of a timely rain; we are seeing that in the beauty of our fields this season. I’ve lived through a drought; I know what a ‘million dollar rain’ is, when Nebraska farmers can turn off their wells for a few days. Each timely rain is a gift from God’s bountiful goodness. The water doesn’t return empty, but accomplishes what He sent it to do: it waters the earth and makes things grow and flourish. God provides for His thirsty, corrupted garden with rain, and in the same way He provides for His thirsty, corrupted people by raining down the Word. “So shall my Word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

The rain we can see, we can understand. We know exactly how it provides for the Lord’s garden. We know the power of the rain; power to make alive, power to renew and strengthen. But the Word’s effects we cannot always see and so we don’t understand its power. For if you truly understood the power of the Word, you would thirst for it even more than the dry ground thirsts for water. Someone would have to physically restrain you to keep you away from the Sunday morning Divine Service. You would drink in every bible class, and be pestering me to offer more. If you truly understood the power of the Word, you would begin every day in that Word, drinking deeply of the living water that the Lord gives you there. That Word would be on your lips in your various vocations, as you sought out opportunities to give to others the great gift you have been given. As corrupted and sinful as this earth is, it still has the good sense not to reject the rain that the Lord gives it, but instead it drinks deeply of His gifts. Not you, not me. We cut ourselves off from the life giving rain of the Word; we choose to dehydrate ourselves while God pours out His gifts in abundance. God states that His Word will not return to Him empty, but we treat it as empty, we treat it as if it were worthless.

We scorn the Word because we it doesn’t seem very successful at all. Unlike the rain, which makes the corn grown taller and yields a harvest we can literally bring to the bank, the effects of the Word are much less visible. Think about the Parable of the Sower that Jesus told in our Gospel lesson. Three quarters of the seed produces no harvest at all! I don’t think any farmer or gardener would be satisfied with that! That is why so many churches and so many Christians think that something has to be added to the Word for it to have any effect. There has to be something else, right? The Word by itself can’t have any kind of power, because it seems to be so ordinary and seems to cause such little success. Surely a book or some words spoken by a sinful pastor doesn’t look like much. But success in God’s eyes is something different. He sends His Word to accomplish what He desires. And what does God desire? He tells us in the book of Ezekiel: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” God desires that no person should die in their sin. He has no pleasure in the death of any wicked person, whether it is you or me or Osama bin Laden. His definition of success is sinners turned from their wickedness in repentance and faith, and His Word is successful because it accomplishes just that.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” God’s Word was sent to this corrupted earth to accomplish God’s desire by taking on human flesh and walking among us as a man, God and man in one person, Jesus Christ. God desired that no person should die in their sin, but that all should be turned in repentance and faith to Him in a restored relationship. God sent out His powerful Word to cleanse this earth of its corruption, to restore the garden to the way it was in the beginning. “So shall my Word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” His Word did not return to Him void, but instead it accomplished all that God sent it to do. Jesus, the Word, succeeded in the task for which God sent Him. But once again, this success was not the success of the world. In fact, it looked like anything but. For the success of God is a man hanging upon a cross, suffering and dying. Such humiliation is success for the Word hung there bearing your sin, your corruption, His blood was poured out upon the ground to renew it, to cleanse and restore it. The success that God sought was that sin would be paid for, that you would be delivered from the corruption that has filled you since conception. Jesus accomplished all of that for you; the Word did not return void, but accomplished your salvation. The resurrection was the kind of victory that the world would expect, but it only came after the triumph of the cross. The Lord poured out His Word upon His garden, and it succeeded in the thing for which God sent it.

For the success and victory of God is a dead Jesus upon the cross, a sinful man preaching from a pulpit, infants being baptized. The success of God is sinners being forgiven, transformed through repentance and faith. His powerful Word does that work within you. His Word even today transforms you from a sinner under the condemnation of eternal death to a child of God, cleansed and forgiven from your sin and corruption. His Word was sent out to turn you from your sin in repentance and faith, and it has not returned void. It forgives your sin, it gives you faith in Christ as it has done this very day. The Word restores you to your God. Only the power of the Word can do that, only it could transform enemies of God into His beloved children. The Word comes to us in such humble means: in a book, through the lips of a pastor, joined with ordinary water, bread and wine. But in those means it has power, the power to make all things new.

For God doesn’t stop with transformed people. The Word has gone forth to transform the entire creation, to renew and restore His garden. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle.” On the Last Day, the garden will emerge once again, and the thorns will be no more. All corruption will be erased, for the Word gave His life to cleanse this world of sin and death. The new heavens and the new earth is the new garden, established by the power of the Word of God. All creation will rejoice in that day, for our bonds have been loosed, we have been redeemed and restored, all things have been transformed by the Word of the Lord. “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” The very creation will rejoice, for God’s Word did not return empty, but accomplished all He sent it to do. His Word will pour out upon the new creation, God’s garden, for eternity, nourishing it forever. That is your destination, your eternal dwelling place, for the power of the Lord’s Word has transforms you from death to life.

Transformed people along with the transformed creation point to the One who acted to restore it. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” For eternity, the new heavens and the new earth will declare God’s character, that He is a God of love who delivered creation from its bondage through the power of His Word. It will stand as a memorial to God’s goodness, declaring that His Word did not return empty, but accomplished that for which it was sent. The success of the Word, hidden until that day, will then be clearly shown forth in a new creation that will never be corrupted again. But until that day, you and I also stand as signs in a world of sin, demonstrating God’s gracious character. We are living, breathing examples of the power of the Word; we are living, breathing examples that we have a God of love. For He has redeemed us, forgiven our sins through the power of the Word, and has given us the promise of a life forever with Him. In that promise we live each day, sustained by the power of His Word. In the Name of that powerful Word made flesh, our Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ, whose blood sets all creation free from the bondage of sin, Amen.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Proper 9 of Series A (Zechariah 9:9-12)

“As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the ninth chapter of the prophet Zechariah. Dear friends in Christ, even if you have never stepped foot in a prison, you can imagine what it is like to be a prisoner. Prisons are a far cry from a five-star hotel; they are imposing structures, built to look powerful and impregnable. You can see in your mind the high fences, with the razor wire on top; you can imagine the guard towers, filled with men holding guns. And you can imagine the people inside of those fences. Most people spend time in prison to pay for their own crimes, but think also of prisoners of war. We’ve heard their harrowing stories from time spent in German or North Vietnamese camps. Prisoners have no freedom, they spend their days being told by others what to do. They eat when they’re told to eat, they go outside when they’re told to, they have little or no time to themselves. Those in wartime prison camps were subjected to various measures intended to crush the spirits of the soldiers, to drive away any hope, and it often worked. I think I can safely say that being a prisoner is never something we would choose for ourselves.

But yet we are all prisoners. Keep the imagery that I have just described in mind as you hear again the words of Saint Paul in our Epistle lesson. “I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” As Paul tries to serve God in this world, he finds that he has been taken captive by the law of sin. “I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” St. Paul, the greatest of Christ’s apostles, finds himself chained to sin. He is imprisoned by his sin, it has him captive, in bonds that he cannot break. And he is hardly alone. You and I are also chained to sin, imprisoned by the corruption that fills us. No matter how much we want to serve God, no matter how much we want to do the right thing, sin has us in its grasp. “I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Sin holds us captive, and it refuses to let us go. We are utterly unable to do any good; each and every one of our actions is stained with sin. You know the truth of Paul’s words; no matter how hard you work to cast off your sin, it keeps coming back, it has you in bondage, and escape is impossible.

In our Old Testament lesson, Zechariah teaches that we are prisoners in a ‘waterless pit.’ The cisterns in that time were shaped like a bottle, tapering to a narrow opening at the top, making escape impossible on your own. Our jailers, sin and Satan, have cast us into this prison, bound and chained. This is the prison of death. That is where Satan wants us to spend our lives, imprisoned in the pit of death, chained to our sin, estranged from God, until we join him in eternal torment. And we can’t escape. Not only are the guards always awake, the prison is designed to make escape impossible, and even if escape were possible, our sinful nature would prevent it. “I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Just try to keep yourself from sinning even one hour. Choose your favorite ‘pet sin,’ the one you indulge in when no one is looking. Try to slip those chains off by yourself, by your own power. “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.” No matter how much you want to be free from sin, you cannot free yourself. Those chains aren’t coming off, and even if you get one chain off for an hour or a day, you will wake up the next morning finding that they are around your ankles again. And no one, I mean no one, is going to scale the wall of that pit; no one can cheat death. Paul summarizes it perfectly: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

The cry echoes along the hollow walls of the pit, our prison. It is a cry of triumph, of victory. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He; humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Who will release us from the pit, our prison? Our king, the Messiah, the coming one. St. Paul gives Him a name: “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Jesus Christ has come to us in our prison, He has come in righteousness, in humility. He has come not in power and glory, but he comes riding that most humble of beasts. He comes as a helpless baby, He comes as a dusty rabbi, He comes scorned by the world, without wealth or earthly power. But when He arrives, salvation has come. Listen to what your God declares about this humble servant. “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and He shall speak peace to the nations; His rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” He leads no armies, yet He will rule over all; through His work, peace will come to all nations. Through His work Israel will be disarmed, not to open it up to attack, but because weapons will be unnecessary in a new creation characterized by peace.

What is this work, this work that establishes His universal rule, a rule defined by peace? Listen to the words of the Messiah: “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” Jesus has come to do what we couldn’t; He has come as our king to rescue us in our great need. We cannot break our chains, we cannot scale the wall, we cannot defeat the guards, but Jesus can and He did. He freed us from the waterless pit. How did He do this? Through the blood of His covenant with us. Our King didn’t rescue us with an army, He didn’t rescue us with a show of earthly power, but instead He rescued us in humility. He rescued us by suffering, He rescued us by dying. He rescued us by paying the price of freedom with His own blood. He poured out His blood on the cross, the required price paid in humility to set you and me free. Only His blood shatters our bonds, only His blood avails before God. Only His death defeats and destroys the power of our jailers; sin paid for, death defeated, Satan crushed. Because He walked forth victorious from the pit of His grave, so we too are rescued from the pit of death. He gives us that same blood of the covenant this day in the Lord’s Supper to forgive your sins, to break your bonds. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He!”

Having pulled us from the waterless pit, the Messiah then calls to us: “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” We have exchanged the pit for a stronghold; we have left our prison for the fortress which is the Lord Himself. Remember the words of the Introit for today: “I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’” God is our fortress because of the deliverance of Jesus, the blood of the covenant that He shed for our salvation. We dwell with the Father, we abide in His loving arms because of the work of Jesus, our King. “Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place- the Most High, who is my refuge- no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.” No longer do we dwell in misery, in a prison that could only bring us sin and death, but instead we dwell in safety, in the assurance of God’s favor, grace, and forgiveness for the sake of Christ. In that stronghold, we find rest, we find refreshment, as Jesus promises in the Gospel lesson: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Through Christ’s blood, we have exchanged our prison for the stronghold of God, we have exchanged our jailers for the loving protection of the Father, and we have exchanged the chains of sin for the rest of Christ.

“Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” We are no longer prisoners of sin in a waterless pit; we are prisoners of hope in the stronghold of the Lord. We are chained to hope, it holds us even more tightly than sin once held us. This is the hope of final deliverance and freedom, the hope of an eternity spent with our God. This hope holds us captive, affecting every aspect of our lives in this world. It gives us assurance when we see our sin, it declares to us the promise of life when all we see is death. This hope declares to you the forgiveness that Christ won for you, that you have been cleansed from the corruption of sin, that you even now dwell in the stronghold of the Lord. You are chained to hope, the hope of eternal life, and nothing can break those chains.

We who bear the chains of hope for the sake of Christ, because of the blood of His covenant with us, have the Lord as our stronghold for eternity. Though with Saint Paul we still struggle with our sinful flesh in this world, we know that we are truly free, that we are prisoners of hope; sin, Satan, and death have no permanent hold upon us. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” We will abide with Him, and He with us, in the new heavens and the new earth, where Jesus will “speak peace to the nations,” the peace of His resurrection. “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” In the Name of Jesus, who sets the prisoners free by the blood of His covenant with us, Amen.