Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Last Sunday of the Church Year (Isaiah 65:17-25)

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” 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 Last Sunday of the Church Year is the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the sixty-fifth chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Dear friends in Christ, years ago I was told a story (and despite numerous Google searches this week, I was unable to verify it), a story about a stone church in Europe. Right outside the walls of this ancient church was a massive rock, a rock that was slowly sinking into the soft earth. Year by year, the rock, as it sank and shifted, moved closer and closer to the wall of the church. Now, I was told that a legend had grown up about this church and this rock, a prophecy of sorts, that when the rock finally touched the wall of the church, the trumpet would sound and Christ would return. When this story was told to me years ago, I heard that to this day, you can see this church and the rock that was the ‘countdown clock’ for the Last Day. The rock still has not touched the wall of that church, and if you look closely, you can see why. It’s covered with chisel marks; every time the rock came close to touching the wall, the faithful would, almost in a panic, attack the rock, chiseling it away, making sure that Christ would delay just a little longer. It seems that they were not quite so eager for the Last Day to come, for the graves to open, for Jesus to come back.

The second to last verse of the Bible gives us what should be the cry of the Church in all ages: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” If this story is true, then the cry of the faithful in that village was quite different: “Amen. Delay, Lord Jesus!” Delay, Lord Jesus, just a little while longer! I have children to raise, I have money to make, I’m planning retirement, I have this, that, or the other thing to accomplish, I’m not ready for you to return quite yet! Delay, Lord Jesus, give me some time to indulge my pleasures, to sin a little more, to take in all this world has to offer. God declares in our text: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” The former things will pass away, we are told, and that is what scares us, because the former things are what we know, what we enjoy, what we cling to. Ask a couple on the night before their wedding if they are praying with the Church, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Ask a football player the morning of the Super Bowl. Ask a businessman the day he is to take over a company. Ask yourself before a long-awaited vacation, before you graduate high school (or college), before you are planning to enjoy any of the pleasures of this world: are you praying, “Come, Lord Jesus”?

We all have reasons that we want Christ to delay, just a bit longer, we all have our hammers and chisels sitting on the shelf, ready to go. We find it hard to pray, “Amen. Come Lord Jesus,” because deep down, we’re comfortable with life in this world and we aren’t too sure about what is to come; our typical idea of heaven doesn’t entice us. We have no experience of life without sin, the unknown makes us nervous, and (you know this is true), we like having the ability to sin. One of Satan’s tricks is to convince us to cling to the things of this world, to even desire them above the eternal gifts God wants to give to all the saints. But dear friends, this world is not worth clinging to! There is nothing that this world can offer that is worth ever saying, “Amen. Delay, Lord Jesus!”

What this world has to offer you is sorrow, mourning, sadness. Certainly, there are joys and pleasures in this life, and we receive them as gifts of God, but so often they are tainted by sin; indeed, this world seems to be of the opinion that only through sin can we have any pleasure or joy. Just listen to most comedians or watch the soft pornography that passes for primetime television today. Such joy and pleasure leaves you empty, instead of filling you up, the pleasures of sin make you hollow. And that’s what the world passes off as joy; what it gives you more often is the sadness and grief of broken relationships, of conflict; what it offers is the devastation of depression.

The world can only give you sorrow; Christ comes to bring joy, to make you joy incarnate, joy enfleshed. “Be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.” The joys that we have in this life are glimpses of the joy that is to come, for God declares that His new creation will be characterized by unbridled, undiluted joy, the joy of the resurrection, the joy of Christ’s victory over sin and death, a joy not tainted by sin, not corrupted by any kind of sorrow or sadness. There will be no depression, no sadness at all in God’s new creation. Sorrow will be replaced by joy.

For there can be no sorrow in a place with no death. But all this world has to offer you is death. No matter what pleasures it can give you, no matter how comfortable life can be, we all have the same destination, and the world can give you no escape. We keep building more (and bigger) hospitals, clinics and surgical centers are everywhere, but we continue to fight a losing battle with death. As much as we modernize, we still fear deadly diseases, and we all dread that six-letter word: cancer. Every day that this world endures is another day for children to die, for people to be diagnosed with terrible diseases. This world is the domain of death, where death rules and always has the last word.

But the new heavens and the new earth, the new Jerusalem, is a place where death will no longer reign, where its domination over all things will come to an end. “No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.” Now, God isn’t saying that people will die in the new creation, or that the wicked will dwell there, but He is describing His new creation by these illustrations to make this point: death will have no more grip on us there. Jesus Christ rose from the dead to put an end to death, to destroy death forever. What the world cannot do through bigger and better hospitals, through more advanced technology, Jesus did by dying. He died bearing our sin and He rose victorious over our enemies: sin, death, and Satan. He rose to establish a place where death is replaced with life.

If death is the destination that this world offers, the path to get there is paved with deprivation and want. There are some in this world who don’t have to watch their budget, who aren’t worried about how they will afford groceries for the month, who haven’t had to tighten their belt over the past few years. Yes, there are some. But for most people, want is the order of the day, whether on a small scale or a large scale. Millions in our country are out of work, millions are struggling to pay the rent, millions are dependent on food banks and other assistance. In this world, the works of our hands fail us; crops won’t grow, or are destroyed by numerous dangers, prices go up and wages go down.

When Jesus walked this earth, two of His greatest miracles involved the multiplication of food: the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand. He did this to point to an eternity where scarcity and want will be no more. “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them.” No more scarcity, no more want; Jesus has replaced deprivation with abundance, and we will live secure.

Security is not something that we often have in this world of violence and conflict. In our country, in our city, we may be more secure than many (perhaps most) other places around the world, but we still fear. We fear crime, we fear violence, we fear terrorism. Christians fear persecution all around the world. Conflict characterizes our existence in this world: conflict between family members, conflict between groups in our country, conflict between nations. There is no peace, and there never has been, since Cain killed Abel, in a world at war with God and at war with each other.

When Jesus appeared to His disciples on Easter evening, He had a simple message for them: “Peace be with you!” Peace was the result of His resurrection: peace between God and man, peace between you and your Creator. And that peace will fill the new creation, it will permeate our existence there: “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” The conflict will be over—forever. The peace that we have with God through the blood of Jesus Christ means a new creation at peace, it means people at peace; no more violence, only peace.

Leave your chisels on the shelf, dear friends, as if you could delay the return of Jesus anyway. Do not pray, ‘Delay, Lord Jesus,’ but rejoice to cry out, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” Come quickly to deliver us, to save us from sorrow and death, from deprivation and violence. Come quickly to reverse the curse, to replace mourning with rejoicing, death with life, want with abundance and violence with peace. Come quickly to deliver us from evil, to bring us all that you won through your death and resurrection for our sake. And we know that Christ will hear our cry, though the timeline is in His hands, for He has promised us, “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.” Christ will hear, and Christ will come, just as He has promised: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’” To which the Church replies: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” Amen.

Trinity 25 (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

“And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” 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 evening is the Epistle lesson read a few moments ago from the fourth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church in Thessalonica. Dear friends in Christ: grieve, weep for those whom you love. Go to their graves, place your flowers, shed your tears, go through all the stages of grief that counselors and psychologists identify. Be angry, be sad, cry out to God, cry out to others. Do not trap your emotions inside of you; let them out! Weep as Jesus did at the grave of Lazarus, be troubled as Jesus was as He faced His own death. Grieve, dear friends, but do not grieve as the world does. “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Most seasoned pastors can tell the difference at a funeral between those who are active in worship and those who are not. Those who have abandoned the Church, who have cut themselves off from Christ and His gifts struggle to maintain any kind of control, they cannot let go, they linger by the graveside, or they go into a sort of shock, refusing to have any emotion at all. On the other hand, those who have heard the Word of God, who have been fed regularly by Christ’s gifts, do mourn, they do weep, it is not an easy day, but they have something the others do not, which Paul points out in our text: hope.

This hope does two things for the believer. First, it gives the Christian a quiet, calming confidence and peace that tempers the raw emotions of the day, and second, it gives the Christian the freedom to grieve, to weep, to mourn. You weep because you love the one who died, the separation of death is a tragedy, a tragedy that even Jesus felt. But your weeping is not hopeless, it is not wild and despairing; you weep as one who knows that the separation is only temporary: you will see them again. “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.” Your confidence isn’t without basis; it isn’t some ‘pie in the sky’ dream or a pious wish that ‘good people go to heaven.’ No, the hope sustains you as you grieve is founded on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus died and rose again, because His grave is empty, we have confidence that the grave of our loved one will be empty one day, that our grave will empty. Those who believe in the One who conquered death will themselves conquer death; those who belong to the One who died in their place know that death has no permanent hold on them. Because Jesus died, because Jesus rose, we can say with confidence that those who died in Jesus are simply sleeping.

Three times in our text Paul says that those who have died in Christ are asleep. Jesus said this to the crowd, and the world laughed at Him. ‘They’re not sleeping, they’re dead!’ the world cries with anger and sorrow. But this word, ‘asleep,’ is the core of our hope. One who is asleep will awake; one who is asleep is waiting for the dawn, for the sun to rise. Sleep is not a permanent condition, and for the believer, death is not permanent either. Their bodies sleep in the ground, waiting to be awakened, but their souls are with Jesus. We should not make this word ‘asleep’ say more than it is meant to say, as if the saints are in limbo, and not with Jesus, as if they are unaware of heavenly bliss. Know this, dear friends, while their bodies sleep in the grave, still on this earth, the dead in Christ enjoy the fellowship of Jesus, their souls are with Him, right now. But even they are waiting, for they were created body and soul. Even though they are in the presence of the Lord, they still cry out, “How long?” Their salvation is still not yet complete, they still haven’t received their full inheritance, they are waiting for the trumpet to sound.

“For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.” If the dead in Christ are asleep, that means they will awake; if the dead in Christ are asleep, that means they are waiting for the dawn. That is why the trumpet sounds, that is why the archangel shouts, not simply to alert the living, but to wake the dead. This is the great alarm clock of the Last Day, to awake all the sleeping. The dead haven’t missed out on anything, whether it is Abel, the first man to die, or the man who dies a second before the trumpet sounds: all will hear the sound, and all will awake.

There is no difference between the dead and the living on the Last Day. The dead will rise first, only because the living don’t need to rise; but all will be transformed. All will hear the cry of command, all will be changed. This mortal body will put on immortality; this lowly body will put on glory. This is true for every believer that has ever died, and every believer who is alive on that Day. There will be one generation that will not taste death, but know this, dear friends: all believers in Christ have conquered death, all believers live even though they die. On that Day, the living, those whose bodies are still awake, will join the dead, those whose bodies were asleep, and together we will be with Jesus. “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”

This is what all the saints are waiting for, those of us who are still alive, and those who have died and are with Jesus: resurrection. As Christ is raised, never to die again, so we will be raised, never to taste of sin or corruption ever again. And what will happen to our bodies will happen to this creation: it will be renewed and restored, cleansed from sin and corruption. Our existence for eternity will not be floating on the clouds, disembodied spirits wandering through a dreamland, but a real, physical existence, more real than anything we have experienced before, because there is no sin to corrupt it. It will be like turning a television from black and white to color, or waking up from a dream; not that this world isn’t real, but the world to come will be more, it will be better, it will be perfect.

For whatever else the new creation will be, Paul’s declaration will remain true: “We will always be with the Lord.” In the new heavens and the new earth, we will see Jesus face to face, in our bodies, just as Christ is Himself still true man. He will never shed His body, and neither will we, but will have fellowship with our God as He always intended. That is the result of the Last Day, and it is crystal clear: “We will always be with the Lord.” So much ink has been spilled, and so many pages wasted, speculating about the Last Day. Especially this text has been mined to figure out clues on how that Day will go. But Paul writes it not to give us a guidebook to the Last Day; instead he writes to encourage us about the results of the Last Day: the dead will be raised, they will join those who are alive, and “we will always be with the Lord.” The Lutheran Church’s confession of the Last Day is just as simple, proclaimed in the Small Catechism: “On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.” One sentence, simple and clear, on a topic that others spend thousands of pages making muddy and complex. The dead are raised, and eternal life is given to believers, you and me. That’s it. That’s all.

“Therefore encourage one another with these words.” The Last Day is not a day to fear; for those who cling to Christ in the faith created by the Holy Spirit, the Last Day is a day to look forward to, to anticipate, to rejoice in. Encourage one another with the sure and certain confidence that the dead in Christ are sleeping; they will awake, and they are even now with Jesus in His glory, awaiting with the Church on earth the Day that is coming, the Day of victory, the Day of resurrection. Encourage one another with the simple confession of the Last Day, telling each other the truth: on that Day Jesus will fully deliver to you and me all that He won with His death and resurrection. As He rose, so you too will rise, and as He lives, so you too will live, for He died bearing your sin and He rose leaving it behind Him in the grave. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” Amen.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

All Saints' Day (1 John 3:1-3)

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure.” 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 commemoration of all the saints, is the Epistle lesson I just read from the third chapter of Saint John’s first letter. Dear friends in Christ, the world doesn’t know all the saints. It doesn’t know how the mourning could be comforted, it doesn’t know how the meek will inherit the earth, it doesn’t know how the poor in spirit will receive the kingdom of heaven. The world doesn’t know all the saints, because it doesn’t know the Savior. “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.” The Creator came into the creation and those whom He made didn’t know Him. They didn’t recognize Him for who He was, and so they rejected Him, they turned their backs. But ignoring Him wasn’t enough. In their ignorance, they raged against Him, putting Him to death. Now, they certainly don’t know all the saints, those who proclaim alive a man the world put to death, those who follow a man the world watched die.

The world doesn’t know you, it doesn’t understand you, it doesn’t get you. If it did, it would be like you are, but as it refused to have anything to do with Jesus, it refuses to have anything to do with you. Christ and all the saints is a huge hole in the world’s knowledge; all else the world can quantify, understand, put in a lab, but people clinging to a crucified man, that the world will never understand. It can only know, it can only understand, by becoming as you are, one of all the saints. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” See the Father’s love, the love that He has for you, a love the world cannot understand or comprehend, a love the world does not know. But you know this love, for you have heard the Word proclaimed to you: “I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” You have heard the declaration, as water was poured over your head, that you are now a child of God; that is what God has called you, that is what He has said about you at the font.

You are called a child of God, all the saints are called children of God, and these are no empty words. These are God’s words. Jesus said, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The Word of God does what it says. You are called a child of God, and so you are, His Word makes it happen. It is reality, not a pious wish, not an uncertain hope, but reality. You are a child of God; that is who you are, that is what you have become. God said it, and it is true. God said it, and He doesn’t lie, He doesn’t deceive. Your identity is as sure and certain as the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, as sure and as certain as the empty tomb.

“The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now.” The world doesn’t know you, for you have become something the world can never understand: a child of God. It doesn’t know Jesus, it refuses to know His resurrection, and so it doesn’t know you, it doesn’t know all the saints. The world scoffs at even calling you, or anyone else in the Church, living or dead, saints. The term ‘saint’ in our world today has come to means a person who is morally upright, who does good deeds incessantly, who acts in kindness toward all. And the world laughs at the notion that the Church could then ever be called the assembly of all the saints. The world sees our sin, it sees our wretchedness; it has encouraged it, it has led us from sin to sin. The world knows just how dirty we are, how filthy we make ourselves, it can even make some good guesses about the sins you think you have kept safely hidden.

All Saint’s Day seems like a joke, a lie, that the Church could somehow corner the market on sainthood. All Hypocrites’ Day seems more accurate, more true to life; the world calls us out on our pretending, our playacting, our hypocrisy. And we know that the world speaks the truth. When we examine our lives, we see very little that is ‘saintly,’ at least as the world defines that term. But the true definition of ‘saint’ isn’t about moral perfection and piles of good works. Those who are true saints, all the saints we commemorate today, are those who have been declared so by the Word of God. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” You are a saint, you one of all the saints, not because you do not sin, but because you are forgiven, because you are covered with the blood of Jesus.

You are a child of God now; that is your present reality, that is true because it has been declared to you, and God’s Word does what it says. You know this, it is certain and true, an anchor in this world of sin. It is especially true when you approach that time that all the saints must pass through: death. The world laughs at All Saint’s Day, it scoffs at our commemoration of those who are dead. The world can show us the graves, it can take us to the bones, it knows just as well as you do, that death is inevitable, it is inescapable. All the saints are dead, they’re gone, no more. Whether it is Peter or Paul, Augustine or Luther, or people closer to home, like Moe, Wally, Harold, or Danielle, the world simply proclaims reality to us: they’re all dead, and one day you will be too.

And we must admit once again that the world is right; certainly, all the saints who have gone before us remain in the grave, certainly the grave is our destination, too. In the face of death, we too shudder, we too fear its coming. But the one mystery that the world can never solve gives us hope, a sure and certain hope: the grave of Jesus is empty; He has been raised from the dead. And because He has been raised from the dead, so all those who belong to Him, all those who have been declared children of God through His shed blood, now live with Him, even though they died, and will one day be raised with Him. The world doesn’t know you, it doesn’t know all the saints, because it doesn’t know the resurrection. It searches for His body, but that body will never be found, for what the angels said on Easter remains true today: “He is not here, for He has risen, as He said.” Christ is risen, and all the saints will rise. Christ is risen, and all the saints who died in Him live. The world sees a dead man on the cross; we see the One who was crucified in our place rising in victory, the proof and guarantee that death will not hold us either.

That is the death and resurrection you were baptized into, and your present identity is the pledge of your future reality. “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” Now we are saints not yet in glory, now we are saints who have the promise of resurrection. We are God’s children right now, at this very moment, possessors of an inheritance that Saint John hesitates to even try to describe in detail. Know, dear friends, that we will be like Christ, all the saints will imitate Him in His resurrection forever. We don’t see our inheritance with our physical eyes; the crown of glory and robes of Christ’s own blood-bought righteousness are invisible to us and to the world, and in fact what our eyes see is too often the opposite, but know that this inheritance belongs to you even now in this world of sin. And know what you will be: like Christ, seeing Him as He truly is to be seen, the glorified Son of God, enthroned in His splendor.

In this world, that reality is concealed, hidden from human eyes, but we have been given the very Word of the One who does not lie that this glory is ours, it is our possession right now because we are saints, because we have been called children of God, and thus we are. Jesus died for you and He rose for you, and He gives you a hope that is unshakable in this world of sin and death. “And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure.” All the saints are those who hope in Christ, those who have been given the promise, the sure and certain guarantee that they are children of God. All the saints are those who are pure, not because they are sinless, but because they are forgiven, because they have been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, shed for them upon the altar of the cross. All the saints will imitate Christ: as His grave was left empty behind Him, so shall the graves of all the saints, including yours and mine, be.

The world doesn’t know all the saints. It doesn’t know how they could hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. It doesn’t know how the sun could not strike them, nor any scorching heat. It doesn’t know how graves could be opened and the dead could be raised incorruptible. The world doesn’t know the saints because it doesn’t know the Lamb. “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” The slain Lamb will be our Shepherd, our Good Shepherd for eternity, shepherding all the saints to green pastures and quiet waters. In this world, you have mourning, but take heart, you will be comforted. In this world, you are poor in spirit, but take heart, you will receive the kingdom of heaven. In this world you are meek, but take heart, you will inherit the world. In this world, you hunger and thirst for righteousness, but take heart, you will be satisfied. In this world, you will be persecuted, but take heart, you will receive the kingdom of heaven. In this world, you are pure in heart through your baptism into Christ, and take heart, you will see God. You will see Him face to face, as the saints of old did, and you will see Your Savior as He is, for you will be like Him. You know this, this is your sure and certain hope; what the world doesn’t know, you do: you know your present identity as a child of God through your baptism into Christ, and you know your future reality reflecting the glory of Christ in imitation of Him. “And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Saint Simon and Saint Jude (John 15:17-21)

“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” 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 as we commemorate the apostles Saint Simon and Saint Jude, is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ: love one another, that is Jesus’ request, His command to all who will follow after Him. Love one another, for the world will give you only hatred. “These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” Love one another, bear one another’s burdens, sustain one another in the midst of a world that hates you all. You, dear friends, are Christ’s gifts to each other, given to love one another even unto death. Tradition has it that Saint Simon and Saint Jude, after having preached the Gospel in many and various places, journeyed together to Persia to proclaim the resurrection of Christ in that place, and there they were martyred together. “These things I command you,” Jesus said, “so that you love one another.” They loved one another as Christian brothers even unto death, they did not face the evil of this world on their own, but with the promise of Christ and the love of a brother Christian, they suffered even death for their Lord. They showed to each other the very love that Christ showed them, as they faced the very hatred that Christ endured.

We should not be surprised that the world hates us; it should come as no shock, no great mystery to those who have heard the Gospels, those who have read of Christ’s passion. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” Christ was sent into this world, to fallen humanity, not to destroy us, not to bring God’s judgment upon our heads, not to condemn us to hell. We were doing a good job of bringing God’s judgment upon us without Jesus’ help. Instead, He came as our Savior, to spare us from the judgment we deserved. He came to show us love, to love the unlovable, to comfort the mourning, to fill the hungry and thirsty with His righteousness, to give the meek and humble the inheritance of a cleansed and purified new heavens and new earth. He came to love. But the world showed Him only hatred. He came to raise this world out of the prison house of sin and death, and it delivered its redeemer to be scourged. He came to conquer this world’s enemies, and it delivered Him to those who persecuted Him. He fed this world with His Word and refreshed it with living water, and it gave Him gall and vinegar to drink.

But Christ did not despair. When He came to save, when He came in love, He found only hatred. But He did not for that reason give up His task of salvation, He did not at that moment change from a loving Savior to a wrathful destroyer, wiping humanity from the earth. He knew that the hatred of this world was not simply hatred of Him, but hatred of His Father. “They do not know Him who sent me.” Hatred of Jesus means hatred of God, hatred of the Creator. When they put Jesus to death, they were crucifying God, they were committing an incredible, almost unthinkable act of rebellion against their Creator. He came to give life, and they chose death, He came to deliver from hell, and this world desired the flames of judgment more than the glories of heaven. But Jesus didn’t for this reason give up on fallen man, He didn’t simply ascend into heaven and leave us to deal with our sin on our own. He submitted to the hatred of this world, He in humility delivered Himself into their murderous designs. He faced the blows, the scourge, the whip, and the cross because the hatred of this world did not diminish His love, and in love, He gave up His life into death for the sin of the world. He used the hatred of this world to save this world, to bring life and immortality to light.

Salvation has been won, despite and through the hatred of this world, but this world wants nothing to do with it; as it hated Jesus before and during His crucifixion, so they still hate Him after He has been raised. And in its hatred, this world will die eternally for sin that has been paid for and forgiven, it will face the judgement from which it has been released. In self-destructive hatred, this world will remain on death row when the doors have been burst open. But from the mass of hatred that fills this world, His Gospel call goes out, and many believe. He chose you out of this world, a world destined for destruction, when He preached the Gospel to you, when He baptized you into His Name. Rejoice, dear friends, rejoice in the hatred of the world. Rejoice that the world hates you, because if you belonged to this world, it would show you only love. “If you were of this world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Dear friends, if the world loved you, you would have the same destination as the world: hell. But because the world hates you, rejoice, for you are not of the world. You are loved by Christ, and He chose you out of this world, so that you will not have this world’s destiny, or its penalty.

Do not despair, do not become callous. When the Gospel is met with indifference, with apathy, or with murderous hatred, we are tempted to give up. Indeed, that is precisely what the world is earnestly desiring. It wants you to give up, to go home, to be quiet and to speak no longer in Christ’s Name. But if Christ had done that, you and I would be lost. If He would’ve left this world when He faced its hatred instead of going the cross, you and I would still be in our sins. If He would’ve taken His Church out of this world when she was sorely attacked again and again, you and I would never have been baptized, or heard of the forgiveness of our sins, so that we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, would believe. Do not lose hope, do not cease speaking of Christ, do not stop doing good to your neighbor, for you bear the hatred of the world for the sake of Christ. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” If your proclamation and service brings forth one believing neighbor, or even if you manage to raise one believing child, rejoice. And if you see more fruit than that, count yourself especially blessed. “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my Word, they will also keep yours.” The one who strikes the Master will not show kindness to the servant; the Head cannot wear a crown of thorns while the body reclines in comfort and luxury. This world is not persecuting you, it is persecuting Christ. Let it scorn and sneer today, let it rage all it wants. Let this world take everything from us, even our lives. The day will come when it discovers what its fate and what ours will be. We know what our verdict is, but on that Day, the world will hear an unbearable sentence.

The love the world shows its own is fleeting; it will all evaporate on that terrible and glorious Day. The love that Christ’s shows you is eternal, it even reaches beyond the grave, and no one or nothing can take it away from you. The world did not conquer Christ; He rose again in victory on the third day, unable to be contained even by the grave, and neither will this world conquer you. His love is indestructible. And it is that same love that we are to show to one another. “These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” We do not love one another as the world loves its own; we love one another as Christ loves us. We love one another because if the world hates us, and Christ promises us that it will, then we need the mutual conversation and consolation of one another to help us to endure. That is one important reason why we gather together in congregations, why we assemble as a group in worship. Christ does not choose out from the world any ‘free agent Christians,’ but He puts us in community, for the good of one another. You are certainly in worship first and foremost to receive the gifts of Christ, but you are also here for each other. And living in the love of Christ means you are forgiven when you fail to show love to one another, and that you forgive others when their love fails. You are here to love one another, even, if necessary, like Saint Simon and Saint Jude, unto death. “These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” The world shows hatred, we show love, the very love of Christ Himself. In His Name, Amen.

Trinity 21 (Genesis1:1-2:3)

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” 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 is that portion of our Old Testament lesson just read, from Genesis chapter one. Dear friends in Christ: Who is man? The top of the food chain, say some, the pinnacle of evolution, and only getting better. A parasite, say others, sucking up the resources of this planet without contributing anything to its health. Man is the problem, they claim, the root and cause of ecological disaster, who poisons the water with his refuse and drives other species to extinction. The best thing for this planet, say some, would be for humans to decrease dramatically, to quit reproducing, or perhaps even go away. You can hear from those who are hoping for a repeat of the Black Plague: man is a scourge and a curse.

Who is man? Evolution’s greatest accomplishment or evolution’s great disaster? Neither, says God. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Man is unique, created in a way that is different than any other creature, for no other creature is made in the image and likeness of God. No other creature is made to have such intimate fellowship with God. Man is created to relate to God, to communicate with Him, to have a will that is perfectly aligned with that of God. And because of this unique relationship with God, man has a special task over all of creation: “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Man, the very image of God, reflects God to His creation as His representative. Man is created in the image and likeness of God to relate to God, to relate to creation, and to relate one to another as male and female. “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Together as male and female, man is made in the image of God. Together as male and female, man is to exercise dominion. In fact, the relationship between male and female is absolutely essential to the command to have dominion over this earth. “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Together as male and female, man is to fill the earth because as God’s representatives, their dominion over all creation is to be extended to the corners of the earth. That is why it is not good for the man to be alone; he needed a helper fit for him to be fruitful and multiply, he needed a helper to fulfill this great task. God’s love for His creation is to be extended over this entire planet through means, by those He has created in His image and likeness. They are to provide for this creation and protect it, using it for their good as a gift from God Himself.

But something happened before man had the opportunity to be fruitful even once, before man had filled any more of this earth than a garden: sin. Man fell, together as male and female, as Eve was deceived and gave the fruit to her husband, and he ate. They who were already in the image and likeness of God tried to be like God and ended up only being like the devil. The image of God was lost; no longer did man reflect God’s righteousness, His holiness. And at that moment, man’s dominion over creation was changed; changed, not abolished. Man, including you and me, sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, are still to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” but this will no longer be a task of joy. God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.”

Creation will rebel against our every attempt to make it fruitful. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, viruses and bacteria, famine and drought will all work against us, and try to destroy us. No more harmony, no more peace. The harmonious relationship between male and female is now a source of strife, the love that man was to have for woman, and woman for man, to be fruitful and multiply, is corrupted and perverted in a multitude of ways; the very distinction between male and female will be confused. And even when male and female do come together to fulfill the creation mandate, infertility will too often intervene, children will even die in the womb.

But do not begin to think, dear friends, that it is only the creation over which we are to rule that is corrupted by the effects of our sin. We, too, who have been given dominion over this creation, are also corrupted by sin; we rebel against the mandate given in the garden. Much more often than wombs become barren because of sin, we make ourselves unfruitful by artificial means. As often as children die in the womb because of sin, we put unborn children to death for any reason. We sinfully and in rebellion against our Creator disdain the command to “be fruitful and multiply,” perverting the natural attraction between male and female into a recreational activity for our own pleasure. And when that natural attraction is perverted because of sin, when even the distinction between male and female is confused, we do not call to repentance, we do not bring help, we give affirmation; in the name of tolerance and ‘love’ we endorse perversion. And our rule over creation is little better. We exploit this creation, we use it with no thought for our children, or the rest of the creatures over which we have been given dominion. Our rule is concerned only with our own good, our own bellies; we act more like we have a right to do what we want, than as those who have been given a mandate to reflect God’s love to His creation, as those who have been given this creation as a gift for our good and the good of our neighbor.

The image of God has been lost, and we can’t get it back. Only God could restore it, and He promised that He would, saying to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The creation mandate is still vitally important; for God promised that the command to “be fruitful and multiply” would bring forth a Savior, a Deliverer, the Offspring of a woman who would finally bruise the head of the serpent, destroying sin and death forever. This Offspring of a woman, brought into this world to bring an end to the curse, is none other than God Himself in the flesh, Jesus Christ. He comes to do what we in our sin are unable to: restore the image of God in us by destroying sin, putting our sin and this rebellious creation into submission. This Messiah, Jesus Christ, demonstrates His authority over creation as He does signs and wonders, healing once again in our Gospel lesson, exercising the kind of dominion that has been lost to us. But this is all preliminary to the cross, where the serpent will bruise His heel, putting Him to death, and He will bruise the serpent’s head, triumphing over him so completely that not even the grave could hold Him captive.

In the book of Micah, the work of the coming Messiah is described in this way: “He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” You were in the bondage of sin, in rebellion against the very commands that God gave to your first parents, with the image of God lost due to sin, you were separated from your Creator. But Jesus Christ came to have compassion on you; He came to tread your iniquities underfoot as he bruised the serpent’s head on your behalf, dying on the cross for you, bearing your sins. He came to cast all those sins into the depths of the sea, as He plunged your head beneath the baptismal waters. He redeemed you from your sin, paying the price, so that you are restored to fellowship with your God, with the promise that one day the sinful nature will be completely eradicated and the fully restored image of God will reflect His glory forever.

Who is man? A parasite? A curse? An invasive species? No, none of those things. Who is man? Created in the image of God. Made to have dominion, to reflect God’s love and rule over all creation. A sinner, who lost it all. Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Redeemed to have fellowship with God. Redeemed to have fellowship with one another. Redeemed to have dominion over this creation. The solution to the perversions of God’s good creation that we see all around us, from the abuse of the natural world to the confusion of male and female, is a return by Christians to the mandate of creation: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The wolf has no capacity to steward creation; he simply wants his next meal, and would eat the land barren if he had his choice; the atheist has no mandate from God to care for creation, for he’s already won the game of natural selection. Only Christians, restored to their Creator by Christ, sent forth by the mandate of creation, being fruitful and multiplying by having children and spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth, can truly have dominion over creation, for that is God’s gift and his mandate, carried forth imperfectly in this world, and fully restored in the new heavens and the new earth, where we will dwell in glory, harmony, and dominion, forever and ever. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Trinity 19 (Genesis 28:10-17)

“And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending upon 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 is the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Genesis. Dear friends in Christ: Jacob saw a ladder. For a moment, heaven and earth, linked together. In a dream, the barrier between God and man, abolished. For a brief space of time, the division between Creator and creation, healed. At that instant. every obstacle between a holy and righteous God and His sinful people, removed, so that a highway could be established between the throne room of God and the dwelling place of man. Jacob saw a ladder, the angels of God ascending and descending upon it; he saw a glorious picture, one that could not be further from what he would see when he awoke.

Jacob wasn’t lying on a lavish bed in the tent of his father, he wasn’t sojourning in a rich man’s house as an honored guest. He was an exile, an outcast, alone and on the run, lying on a pillow of stone. “Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep.” Why did he leave Beersheba, why is he going to Haran? Why does he use a stone for a pillow? He’s fleeing the rage of his brother Esau. He and his mother tricked father Isaac, they seized the blessing that God had promised to Jacob even from the womb, and now Jacob must escape the rage of Esau, who had something stolen that was never to be rightfully his. Jacob heard the Word of blessing from his father, no matter how deceptive the circumstances were; he heard that he would receive the inheritance, that he would rule over his brother, that any who cursed him would be cursed, that any who blessed him would be blessed. But that is not what he sees. He sees an exile and outcast; he who was to inherit the tents of Isaac, driven from them. The promises of God through his father seem very hollow now, they don’t seem to have anything to do with reality.

He sleeps the sleep of misery, the sleep of doubt. God has promised so much, but He hasn’t delivered. Jacob’s life is considerably worse than it was before he received the blessing. Maybe the words he heard weren’t worth much, maybe God wasn’t really speaking through Isaac his father, maybe God is a deceiver himself, who promises much but never delivers. Maybe He doesn’t really care for Jacob, as He said, or maybe He isn’t really there in the first place. But then Jacob goes to sleep. “And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.” Jacob sees a ladder, and from that ladder, God speaks. “Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” The promise given to Abraham, the promise given to Isaac, the same promise given to Adam and Eve, is now given to Jacob. In his offspring shall the world be blessed; it would be his descendant who would crush the serpent’s head. And for that reason, for the sake of his offspring, Jacob now has the assurance that he is not alone. The promises of God go with him, not for his own sake, not because he deserves it, but for the sake of the Messiah whose blood runs in his veins. “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Then he awakes. The vision is gone; it was only a dream. Only a dream, yes, but much more than a dream: a dream that brought to Jacob the very Word of God. He looks around him, and seemingly nothing has changed. He’s still an exile and outcast, he’s still lying on a stone pillow. But in fact, everything has changed. He is no longer alone; the God of his fathers is with him. He is no longer without hope; God has affirmed His promise, He has proclaimed to him a reality that will remain true despite the danger that lies behind and the trials that are ahead. And he has learned something very important: in the midst of an evil country, on the run and surrounded by enemies, even there is the house of God. He cries out, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it… How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” The house of God is not where it is safe, where there are no problems, only prosperity; the house of God is in the midst of devils, surrounded by enemies.

The house of God is there because that is where you dwell, with Jacob, resting on stones, pursued by enemies, with no sign of blessing around you. You hear the Word of God, giving to you great and various promises. It all sounds very impressive, promises like: ‘I AM with you; I love you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ You go into the world with the blessing of Almighty God ringing in your ears: “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.” You hear these words, these great promises of God, declaring great things to you, but as you walk through this life, they start to ring hollow. If God really loves me, if He is really with me, why is my life so miserable, why do I get only sadness? Why do my friends abandon me, betray me? Why did my child die, why did my mother leave, why am I struck with this disease when I should have so many more good years to live? Maybe the words we hear don’t mean much, maybe God wasn’t really speaking through the pastor, maybe God is a deceiver himself, who promises much but never delivers. Maybe He doesn’t really care for me, as He said, or maybe He isn’t really there in the first place. Maybe the promises are all lies.

But then we gather in the place to hear again the Word of God. “And [Jacob] dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!” The dream of Jacob was given for your sake; it is God’s gift to you. As it reassured him so long ago, affirming God’s promises to him, despite all that he saw, so it does the same to you today. Jacob’s ladder is the promise that one of his offspring, one chosen descendent, would link together earth and heaven, He would reconcile God and man. He would do this by being both God and man, by placing Himself between earth and heaven on the cross, linking the two by His blood, shed for the sin of the world. Jesus tells Nathanael, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” They ascend and descend to gaze with wonder at the mystery that is incomprehensible, that is for your salvation. They lift up their eyes and see the glory and majesty of God above them. They look down, and they see that same Divine Majesty subject to the violence of men. The highest is the lowest, the lowest is the highest. The God of God and Lord of Lords has been made the lowest creature, subject to death, even death upon the cross. The highest and the lowest are completely united in one and the same Person, Jesus, the highest God nailed to the cross. There, suspended between earth and heaven, the Son of Man, Jesus the Offspring of Jacob joins heaven and earth together, there the promise given to Jacob is fulfilled. “In you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”

This is the reality that God’s Word proclaims to you this day, and every day that you gather here, that Jesus has linked together earth and heaven, that your every sin is forgiven and your inheritance is heaven itself. Jesus and His cross abolishes every barrier between you and your God. Jacob saw a ladder, we see the cross, but they are one and the same, they proclaim the same reality, to Jacob in prophecy, to you and me now fulfilled. This reality is true despite all the evil that enters your life, it is greater than anything that might happen to you in this world of sin. We walk by faith, not by sight. Martin Luther wrote: “This is the constant course of the church at all times, namely, that promises are made and that then those who believe the promises are treated in such a way that they are compelled to wait for things that are invisible, to believe what they do not see, and to hope for what does not appear. He who does not do this is not a Christian. For Christ Himself entered into His glory only by first descending into hell. When He is about to reign, He is crucified. When He is to be glorified, He is spit on. For He must suffer first and then at length be glorified.” And having heard of this reality, proclaimed to us by God’s holy Word here in this place, we have learned the same lesson that Jacob did: God establishes His house in a land of enemies, in the midst of devils, to reassure you, to continually remind you of the promise, despite all that appear contrary. “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Jacob saw a ladder, we see the cross. For eternity, heaven and earth, linked together. In living reality, the barrier between God and man, abolished. Forever, the division between Creator and creation, healed. At every moment until time ends, and then where time is no more, every obstacle between a holy and righteous God and His sinful people, removed, a highway established between the throne room of God and the dwelling place of man. Jacob saw a ladder, we see the cross, but it gives us the same promise as we gather here: “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Where the cross is proclaimed, that place is the house of God, that place is the gate of heaven, and that, dear friends, is where you dwell right now. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.