Thursday, May 18, 2017

Fifth Sunday of Easter (Isaiah 12)

“The Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” 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 Old Testament lesson that we sang at the beginning of the service and read just a few moments ago, the twelfth chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Dear friends in Christ, the old song was sung by the Red Sea. It was a song of victory, of triumph over the enemies of God and His people. The people stood above the waters, gazing into the waves that swallowed up their foes: Pharaoh’s host, chariots, horses, officers and soldiers, all cast down in utter, humiliating defeat. Their song of triumph echoed out over the waters of destruction, the waters of victory: “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father's God, and I will exalt Him.” But that was the old song; our Introit calls on us to sing anew. “Sing to the Lord a new song, Alleluia, for He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. Alleluia.” The new song is sung by the baptismal font. It is a song of victory, of final triumph over the enemies of God and His people. We stand above the waters, gazing into the waves that swallowed up our foes: sin, death, and the power of the devil, all cast down in utter, humiliating defeat. Our song of triumph echoes out over the waters of destruction, the waters of victory: “The Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.”

Sing, dear friends, sing out the song of victory. Sing out, each and every one of you, for God has Himself become your Savior; He has come in salvation to you—you singular—delivering you from His just wrath over your sin. “You will say in that day,” the day of Easter, the day of your baptism, every day since that you celebrate His salvation, and then on the Last Day that endures forever, “You will say in that day, ‘I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.’” God was angry with you, for you sinned; God was angry with you, for your rebelled against Him. God was your enemy because you were His enemy, you, along with all of humanity, turned against the One who gives every good gift. You were quite rightly condemned to death and hell. I am convinced that we do not take this nearly seriously enough. Yes, we say the words, “We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment,” but we don’t actually take them seriously. We don’t really think that our sins anger God, that a holy God must have wrath over sin, and that His wrath paints a bullseye on our chest. We don’t think about what it means to have the God of creation angry with us, or consider the eternal consequences of our sins. But that is reality. Our sins anger God, they anger and offend Him enough that death and hell is our only share. You deserve to spend eternity in hell; know it, believe it, confess it, sing it.

But don’t stop singing there. “Though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.” The wonderful miracle that inspires our song is quite simple, though it is the most profound mystery ever conceived: in an inconceivable act of mercy, the angry God has become our salvation. Our salvation came from no other place, no other source, than the very God who was angry with us. This angry God freely, in His overwhelming love for you, acted to bring you salvation. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.”

In Isaiah chapter eleven, we see this plan unfold. A shoot will come forth from the barren stump of Jesse, the line of Israel’s kings that had been cut off by God’s wrath. A shoot will come forth, a Branch bearing fruit, true God in the flesh, and He will go forth to bring you righteousness and peace. He will restore Eden again, reconciling man and beast to each other and to their Creator, and He will bring forth the new Exodus that requires a new song, gathering the people of God from every place they have been scattered. He will bring us through the waters of baptism as He brought the people of Israel through the Red Sea waters, and we will see our enemies drowned behind us. How will He do this? To find the answer, we must look to Isaiah chapters fifty-two and fifty-three. There we see this Branch from the stump of Jesse placing Himself between us and God’s wrath over our sin. “He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” God was angry with the Branch, His Son, for our sins, He was angry with the Branch and so His wrath passed over us, and now He comforts us, the angry God has become our salvation for the sake of Christ. Sin can no longer enslave, Satan can no longer accuse, and death has no more victory. Know it, believe it, confess it, sing it!

Come singing to the waters of life, drink deeply of this salvation. “With joy will you draw waters from the wells of salvation.” This is the water flowing from the pierced side of Jesus, the living water that He promised the Samaritan woman, water that one drinks and is never thirsty again. This is the water bubbling up from what used to be desert; as God gave His people Israel water from the rock in the wilderness, so He gives you and me water from Christ, our crucified and risen Lord. The desert has become a garden, and on the Last Day we will dwell in the new Eden forevermore. On that day, the day of salvation, the day of Easter, the day of your baptism, and every day since until the Last Day, you will rejoice to sing, together with all the Church of every tribe, language, race, and century, “Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His Name, make known His deeds among the peoples, proclaim that His Name is exalted.”

Call upon His Name, the Name of salvation, the Name above all other names, at which every knee shall bow. The salvation of the Branch, the salvation brought by God, is not just for you as an individual, it is not just for us in the Church, it is for the entire world. “Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth.” That is what the song is for, to proclaim to the world that the angry God has become our salvation. He has done gloriously, He has acted, intervened in mercy, in grace, in love for a creation estranged from Him. He did Himself what we were unable to, He acted in compassion toward those who had only hatred for Him. He brought you through the waters; He destroyed your foes in the font, but his salvation doesn’t end with you, it doesn’t end with those currently in the Church; His salvation is for all, and the Church sings so that the world will know that God has acted in salvation for all people.

That is what the new song is all about. “Sing to the Lord a new song, Alleluia, for He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. Alleluia.” The old song was incomplete; the salvation it celebrated, though great, was not total. Pharaoh’s host was drowned in the Red Sea, but sin, death, and Satan still stalked God’s people, creation was still in the bonds of rebellion. The new song celebrates a salvation that fulfills the exodus because it is greater than the exodus; because the Branch stood between us and God’s wrath, an enemy nation has not been defeated, but the domain of death; the people have not just been freed from slavery, but from the shackles of sin. It isn’t a worldly ruler who is defeated, but the tempter and deceiver, Satan Himself. The Branch has triumphed over them by being nailed to a tree in our place and rising again in victory. “Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” The angry God has become our salvation. The angry God, whose holiness meant our destruction, now dwells in our midst, God comes among us, in Word and Sacrament, not to destroy but to save. We are the inhabitants of Zion, the Church, which exists in this world wherever the gifts of Christ are given, and will be fully revealed as a bride for her husband on the Last Day. On that day, we will shout, on that day we will rejoice, on that day we will sing! “The Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Fourth Sunday of Easter (John 16:16-22)

“A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” 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 Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ, we do not know what Jesus is talking about. We don’t get it, we cannot comprehend His words, they fill us with confusion. “So some of His disciples said to one another, ‘What is this that He says to us, “A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”; and, “because I am going to the Father”?’ So they were saying, ‘What does He mean by “a little while”? We do not know what He is talking about.’” It’s not that the words themselves are hard to understand, it’s not that we need to consult a dictionary or thesaurus. It’s not as if Jesus is speaking here in code. Yes, He’s speaking a little mysteriously, but anyone who has been with Jesus throughout His ministry, or anyone who has read the Gospels, who has heard the three passion predictions, knows exactly what He is saying. In a little while He goes to die, they will see not see Him, He will dwell in the belly of the grave, but that is not the end of the story. For it is only a ‘little while’ and they will see Him again, He will rise victorious over the grave, “and no one will take your joy from you.”

So it is not the words themselves that cause us the trouble, it is the consequences of these words, it is living out these words. We do not know what Jesus is talking about because we have to live through the ‘little while.’ For the disciples, “a little while and you will not see me” meant that very shortly, in just a ‘little while,’ a night of horrors would begin. They would see their Lord, their Master, their friend and the One they depended on betrayed by one of their own, handed over to a midnight court, and then condemned to the cruelest death imaginable. To the disciples, “a little while and you will see me” meant hours of waiting with Jesus’ cold, dead body languishing in the grave, a day of darkness so excruciating that many lost their faith, and nearly their minds. Jesus’ ‘a little while’ was overwhelming, crushing, it seemed to never end, and they couldn’t understand why. “We do not know what He is talking about.”

You and I understand their confusion. We too live in Jesus’ ‘a little while,’ living in the valley of the shadow of death without seeing our Lord. We dwell in a Holy Saturday that never seems to end, waiting and watching for Jesus to rescue us from our misery, and not understanding why this ‘little while’ is taking so long. We do not see Jesus, He has departed again, ascended to the right hand of the throne of God, but what we do see is what distresses us. “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament,” Jesus says, “You will be sorrowful,” He emphasizes, and He never spoke truer words. As the disciples languished in sorrow on Holy Saturday, so we languish in sorrow all the time. We feel like Jesus has abandoned us, that He has left us to languish in our sin and in the midst of a sinful world. To all appearances, Easter hasn’t changed anything; our baptism seems to have been a waste of time, Jesus doesn’t seem to love us or care how much we suffer. Job argued over and over again that the wicked often prosper while the righteous suffer, and Jesus here guarantees it: “You will be sorrowful.” And we do not understand why: “We do not know what He is talking about.” As a pastor, probably the question I am asked most often, in one way or another, is, “Why am I suffering?” Perhaps we started out patient, but as time goes on and sufferings pile up, there is an added urgency to our cries. We don’t understand what’s going on, we do not know what Jesus is talking about, ‘a little while’ seems interminable, we cannot see Jesus, we can only see suffering, and we are bearing the brunt of His words, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.”

That is what it looks like in the midst of ‘a little while.’ The Church at large, and individual Christians, sorrowing and suffering, wondering just how long ‘a little while’ will last, not seeing their Lord, only their sufferings. And all around them, the world rejoices, the world that hates Jesus and His followers celebrating victory after victory, Satan enjoying the torture of Christ’s saints. The world doesn’t see Jesus, and it is glad, because to all appearances its great enemy has been defeated. The foe was triumphant, when on Calvary, the Lord of Creation was nailed to the tree. In Satan’s domain did the hosts shout and jeer, for Jesus was slain, whom the evil one’s fear. You see them gloat, mocking Christ and His Church with seeming impunity, and the frustration of Christians only increases their fun. Nothing happens as they deride your Lord and run down His saints. Instead, they sit in smug victory, rejoicing with every suffering Christian.

But short was their triumph; only ‘a little while.’ The world killed the Lord of glory, their foe and bitter enemy, but in ‘a little while,’ their victory turned into defeat, their rejoicing into mourning. The tomb was robbed, the grave left empty; the enemy they had left behind them dead and defeated rose to put an end to their victory party. Jesus rose to turn the world upside down, to give mourning in the place of rejoicing and rejoicing in the place of mourning. The world didn’t see Jesus for ‘a little while,’ and they thought victory had been won, but now they see Him again, a terror to His foes. John cries out in the first chapter of Revelation, “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him.” In ‘a little while,’ the world will see Jesus again, coming with the clouds of heaven, and He, whom they mocked and killed, the Head of His body, the Church, which they persecuted and harassed for these many centuries, will return as the judge of the living and the dead. In just ‘a little while,’ the world’s smirk will be wiped off its face, in just ‘a little while,’ the world’s joy will be turned into sorrow.

In just ‘a little while,’ the sorrow of Christ’s suffering people will be turned into joy. “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” The same vision that gives the world terror, that melts those who stand against Christ’s Church, will give you joy. Satan oppressed you, sin overwhelmed you, death threatened you and finally took you, but their rejoicing, their victory, will be turned into sorrow, and joy will instead belong to you. On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb filled with sorrow. But as she wept, the promise of Jesus in our text for today was fulfilled, and her sorrow was turned into joy. “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” No one understood those words when He spoke them, but when Jesus looked Mary in the eye, risen and glorified, she finally understood. We do not understand why we must suffer so, we do not understand ‘a little while,’ but like Mary, we will. When we see our Lord face to face, then we will know that we have only been waiting ‘a little while.’

Jesus’ promise is ‘a little while.’ He guarantees that your suffering has a termination, an end, that this world does not have the victory, but is foolishly rejoicing in defeat. That is the promise of the cross and the empty tomb: Satan has been dealt with, sin has been paid for, death robbed. The world has no victory over you, but has already been defeated. Your sorrows will terminate, but joy will never end. Jesus led the way, winning joy—eternal joy—through His sorrow and sufferings; He too walked through the valley of the shadow of death to the joys of eternity. Without the sorrow of the cross, no joy is possible, without the death of Jesus sorrow lasts not ‘a little while,’ but for eternity. Because Christ has passed that way before us and in our place, we know that all the sufferings of this world last only ‘a little while,’ and a Day is coming when they will not be remembered any more. “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” This joy drives away all sorrow, because this joy lasts forever. In this world, you will have tribulation, but take heart, Christ has overcome the world, your sufferings have an end in perfect joy. Saint Paul captures it perfectly: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

‘A little while’ doesn’t remove the hurt, ‘a little while’ doesn’t eliminate the pain. ‘A little while’ will not immediately bring back your lost parent or child, it will not restore your marriage. ‘A little while’ doesn’t remove all the questions: “We do not know what He is talking about.” As a pastor, when people ask, ‘why am I suffering?’ I desperately want to take away their afflictions like the apostles of old. There are times that I wish I was a faith healer, and could simply say, ‘be healed,’ and their sufferings would be gone. But I am not an apostle, and neither are those faith healers, all they have to sell is a false theology and empty promises. Instead, I, along with all faithful pastors throughout the centuries, are to preach, we are to bring God’s Word to the hospital bed and the living room of those entrusted to our care. We are not given to ‘fix’ suffering, we have been given to say: ‘a little while.’ ‘A little while’ means that all suffering has an end, ‘a little while’ means that relief is coming, ‘a little while’ means that the cancer, the heart disease, the family conflict, the addiction, your sinful desires, even death itself, do not have the victory, but their days are numbered, in the new heavens and the new earth, they will not even be remembered. The cross and the empty tomb guarantee it. As Jesus was raised, so you too will be raised, and you will see Him face to face in an eternity that will be characterized by joy. Sorrow has a termination; joy will last forever. “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.