Friday, October 13, 2017

Trinity 17 (Proverbs 25:6-14)

“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” 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 comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Proverbs, summarized by the last words of Jesus in our Gospel lesson. Dear friends in Christ: it was just recently that I heard the commercial, advertising adult education through a major university. The spokeswoman first talked about convenient hours and practical classes, but then she gave the punch line: “This is the education I deserve.” The education she deserves. That was the hook, intended to grab the listener, and I have no doubt that it was very effective. We like being told that we deserve things, from a good education, to a well-paying job, to an attractive spouse. Yes, of course I deserve those good things! We like to demand our rights; indeed, the Constitution of our nation could only be ratified if the framers attached a Bill of Rights. We are always looking for the slightest offense, the most minor infringement on our perceived ‘rights,’ and we will pounce, verbally or legally. Rights become a weapon, a bludgeon to beat down others, a tool of our selfish pride to get our own way, and the courts invent new rights nearly every day. We think we deserve certain things, we have a right to them, and therefore we expect others to give them to us.

The devil, the world, and our sinful flesh preach pride, pride which demands what we deserve, our ‘rights.’ But what we find is that not everyone indulges the proud. “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” ‘Pride goes before the fall.’ We’ve all heard that saying, but we don’t really believe it. We still jockey for position, not necessarily before any kings and nobles, but before employers and friends, at the dinner table and at church meetings. We desire for others to give us what we deserve, to look at us as highly as we look at ourselves. And we take this same attitude with our God, demanding that He give us what we deserve. Our default setting is pride, we seek our own honor, but Solomon teaches us that one who exalts himself will be forcibly humbled, before men and before God. What honor do you have before God? What good is it to exalt yourself before the One who knows you inside and out, who knows your every sin, who is jealous for the glory of His Name?

Jesus didn’t seek His own honor, He didn’t ask for what He deserved. The perfectly innocent Son of God deserved all the honor and glory that men and God could give. Instead, He received a cross. As Paul states, “Being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Christ humbled Himself before God and man, even unto a death He didn’t deserve. He submitted to the Father’s will for you and for me; for those trapped in pride He humbled Himself, and then was told to ‘Come up here,’ as He was exalted to the right hand of God.

We would not have endured such injustice upon us. Indeed, we hardly endure any injustice; we demand our rights and we are ready to take any to court who violate them. But once again, pride goes before the fall. “What your eyes have seen do not hastily bring into court, for what will you do in the end, when your neighbor puts you to shame?” The one who quickly goes to court may find himself not only disappointed, but humiliated and embarrassed. “Argue your case with your neighbor yourself, and do not reveal another’s secret, lest he who hears you bring shame upon you, and your ill repute have no end.” The one who tries to gain an edge by revealing secrets will have the reputation of a gossip who cannot be trusted, and just as surely as if you hung a sign around your neck, “your ill repute will have no end.” Rights are good things, I suppose, useful to protect us from each other, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that the concept is Christian. What rights do you have before God? What do you deserve from Him?

What you have a ‘right’ to is death, what you ‘deserve’ is hell; we shouldn’t be too quick to demand what we think we deserve, for God’s holy Law tells us what we deserve: eternal judgment. Jesus didn’t deserve God’s judgment or man’s judgment. He was sent to Pilate without a fair trial, then judged before the governor with a mob exerting pressure. But He didn’t demand His rights, He didn’t ask for what He deserved, He asked for what you deserve, He took your sinful pride upon Himself. He didn’t protest the injustice done upon Him, but instead fulfilled the Scripture: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.”

We would’ve protested, we would’ve opened our mouths. The injunction of Jesus to “turn the other cheek” is frequently quoted, but rarely followed. We don’t want to be corrected or called to repentance. Instead, the itching ears of pride listen to voices which promise much and deliver little. These voices call on you to demand your own rights, to claim that education, that job, that position, that spouse, that vacation that you deserve. Solomon calls such preachers empty and worthless. “Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give.” Nothing that the preachers of pride promise will last, and most of what they claim to give never materializes in the first place. But while our pride refuses to hear correction or reproof, in the eyes of God, those who speak the words that call us to repentance are the most valuable treasures in the world. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reproof to a listening ear.”

These voices, these preachers of repentance, may not promise you the world, they may not stroke your pride, they may not give you what you think you deserve or are owed. In fact, they are going to call on you to die, to lay down your pride in humble repentance. They will call on you to give up on your rights, to forget about what you claim to deserve; a painful killing of pride is called for. They will preach God’s Law to humble you, to put you in your place. But the one who in repentance humbles himself before God will find the words of our text to be true. They will be told, by God Himself, “Come up here.” As Jesus says, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

You see, pride goes before the fall, but humility goes before exaltation. The messengers that Christ sends out to kill your pride are a precious treasure, the words on their lips more valuable than any gold or silver, because they proclaim the glory that Christ won for you. You didn’t deserve it, you don’t have a ‘right’ to it, but it is given to you as a gift, full and free, a gift won by Jesus. You have been struggling in the heat of pride, trying to exalt yourself, to demand your own rights, struggling to crawl to the top of whatever social or business ladder you are on. Repent, and hear of Jesus’ treasure for you as a drink of cool water that satisfies forever. “Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the souls of his masters.” In the heat of harvest in northern Israel, a generous master would send servants to the mountains to carry down snow for his parched workers. You dwell in the desert of pride; repent and hear the Gospel, receive the cool water of Christ’s victory for you.

)If anyone had a right to be proud, it was Jesus, but He laid down all of His rights for you. He made Himself humble even to the point of death, dying for you and me, trapped in the bondage of pride, dying to forgive your sins, to release your bonds. He laid down His life into death, humiliating Himself before God and men, knowing that He would be exalted, knowing that His Father would say to Him, “Come up here.” You live with that same confidence. You have no need to demand your rights, to seek what people tell you that you deserve; you have exaltation coming, not deserved, but gift. On the Last Day, the Father will say to you what He said to Jesus: “Come up here,” and you will take your given place in the King’s presence forevermore. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Trinity 16 (Luke 17:11-17)

“Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God has visited His people!’” 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 seventh chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ, it is the characteristic and nature of our sinful human flesh that we seek help and comfort from other places—any other place!—than God. It is only when we have nowhere else to turn, when we have exhausted every other means that we have available to us, that we actually turn to God. Only when we have tried everything else do we come to God, unless, of course, we simply despair, or worse, curse God and turn away from Him, taking our grief as evidence that God has abandoned us. If we believe that there is no God, or if we believe that God hates us, we then grieve, as Saint Paul says, “without hope.” I have seen people grieve without hope. It is a terrible, alarming thing. I have seen people collapse, screaming before an open grave, I have seen those who cannot leave the coffin, who refuse to leave, who watch their loved one lowered into the ground. They cannot let go, they cannot handle it, they are grieving without hope. That is our nature, to seek help and comfort from any other place than God, but none of those places can comfort, none of those places can help, they only bring despair and never-ending grief.

Two processions met each other outside of the city gates of Nain; one coming out and one coming in. One followed a coffin, one followed Jesus. The first is a funeral procession: “As He drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.” I’m sure that all of you have seen a funeral procession, and many of you have been in one. Just a quick aside: in the city of Lincoln, there are no police escorts, no blocking of traffic; the funeral procession is on its own. I know you have places to be, but I beg you, please be courteous, yield to these grieving people, and take a moment to pray for them. For every funeral procession is a reminder, a reminder that you and I are part of one right now, indeed, every day of our lives. We are all following the coffin.

Our life in this world is a constant, daily walk toward death until the Last Day. One after another is always dying off, and we are busy with our life of suffering, as some carry others to the grave, and we, day after day, follow along. We bring death with us from the womb; we all have in common that we will one day die. We all walk this road, except we are at different stages, someone is always getting ahead of us, and we all follow him or her, until it comes down to the last one. We pretend that it isn’t so, we try our hardest to avoid death, expending money and time and energy to defeat it, we try everything that our human ingenuity can devise, but the wages of sin is death, and death therefore reigns over all, for all have sinned. Death always wins, and one day you will be at the head of your own procession, but for now, you follow.

Immediately behind the coffin is a woman, a woman, Luke tells us, who has lost her only son, and she was already a widow. Even though God’s holy Law calls for the provision of the poor, she is looking toward a life of abject poverty, without aid or comfort, a life that would often lead women with less moral fiber to prostitution. To all appearances, the wrath and hatred of God rests upon her. We have a knack for understanding our world simply by what we see, judging by appearances. We look at this widow and her son, we look at any who lie in a coffin or follow, weeping, behind one, as if they are under God’s curse. But that is not how a Christian judges. A Christian speaks about what is invisible, a Christian knows that appearances are deceiving. God sometimes sends suffering equally on both the wicked and the righteous; indeed, He even lets the wicked prosper and have success while it seems that He is angry with the righteous and hates them. No doubt it seems that He is siding with the wicked and persecuting the righteous, but appearances are deceiving: help is coming.

When suffering comes, we feel hemmed in, it seems that all is lost; God wants us to see that there is no way out on our own. No matter what we think or do, no matter what efforts we expend, we can find no way out, we are encircled. Someone who is starving or poor and knows that they have food or money hidden away somewhere still can trust in themselves. But when someone is completely helpless and powerless, when every prop has been kicked away, then we have nowhere else to turn, then all of our own devices have failed, and we cannot find the solution in ourselves. Then we must look outside of ourselves, and behold, help comes!

“Soon afterward Jesus went to a town called Nain, and His disciples and a great crowd went with Him.” Jesus doesn’t come out of the city following death, a sinner subject to death like any one of us. No, He comes into this world as the only human being who ever lived who had no fear of death, for He had no sin; therefore, He comes leading a procession of victory, not defeat, joy, not grief. He is not under death’s power, but He steps into death’s view and takes His stand against it as one who has power over it. First, He gives comfort, He proclaims His coming victory. “And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’” His words, His actions, were motivated by compassion, the same compassion that led Him to take flesh in the first place, the same compassion that always moves Him to action. Weeping is not evil; indeed, Jesus Himself wept at the grave of Lazarus, but with this command He is pointing this woman and us all to an age to come when weeping will be no more, and He is declaring that He is about to take her grief away.

“Then He came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still.” He does the unthinkable, stopping the procession, making Himself unclean. But He has come into this world precisely to take away uncleanness, to stop the procession of death forever. “And He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise.’ And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” With one word, one command, Jesus changes this procession of death into a wonderful, beautiful, rejoicing procession of life. The grave, the coffin, the grief are forgotten and left behind. All that remains is joy and gladness, and they go to transform a town in mourning to a place of joy.

The people understand, at least in part, what has happened; they rejoice and praise God with the language of salvation from the Old Testament. “Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God has visited His people!’ And the report about Him spread throughout the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.” A great prophet has indeed arisen among them, one who walks in the footsteps of Elijah in our Old Testament lesson, the prophet promised by Moses. But He is more than simply another of God’s prophets. In Him, in this Jesus, God truly has visited His people, He has come to them in a way that He never had before, this time bearing their flesh and blood. And while Elijah raised the dead through the power of God, He had not ability to defeat it. Jesus comes to defeat death.

Whenever death challenged Jesus, whenever it took Him on, He did not shrink away, but He met death and accepted its challenge. He even willingly gave Himself into death’s ugly jaws. Elijah never died, but Jesus did. He suffered more than this widow, or any of us, could imagine, for He suffered not for His own sins, but for yours and mine, for the sin of the world. He died, as you will one day, and He was placed into the ground, your destination. But the raising of the widow’s son was a preview, a prediction of His greatest miracle, for He who raised the dead outside of Nain was Himself raised never to die again, and He was raised to give comfort and hope to all who mourn, to give comfort and hope to you. For because He died bearing your sin, those sins, past, present, and future, have no hold on you, and if your sins no longer count against you, then death cannot hold you. As the boy was raised, as Jesus was raised, so you too will be raised.

The grave cannot hold any who belong to Christ. He is the Lord of both life and death, He comes to us as we follow in the dreary procession of death and proclaims Himself as the One who has come to blot out death and bring life and immortality to light. An hour is coming when He will bring to completion the work previewed by Elijah in our Old Testament lesson, previewed by Christ Himself in our Gospel lesson, the work that He began with His own resurrection, as the firstfruit of life. On that Day, this work will begin, and it won’t only be on one person, but once and for all, and all who believe in Him will rise to live eternally in the new heavens and the new earth. On that Day, there will be a beautiful, glorious procession; all the saints will be called with a word from the dust of the earth, and led into the city, the New Jerusalem, with Jesus at their head. The procession of death will be no more, it will be forgotten in the joy of life. He will transfer you out of death into life and wipe away every tear from your eyes. The commands He gave in our text will be directed at you: “Do not weep.” “I say to you, arise!”

So even if we are stuck in the jaws of death, mourning the death of a loved one, or facing our own journey to the grave, we know that in Christ we have victory over death, and therefore only life. Faith grasps and clings to what it cannot be seen, even when we see only the opposite. We do not grieve as others do, who have no hope. We do not put our trust in the things of this world, the methods of men, to save us from death. Our trust, our faith, our hope, yes, even our grief, is in Jesus, who conquered death by giving Himself into its belly, by forcing it to swallow a poison pill that it cannot endure. Christ is risen, and death is overcome. Christ is risen, and the victory is yours. Christ is risen, and you will rise too. In His Name, Amen.

Trinity 14 (Proverbs 4:10-23)

“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings... For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.” 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 fourth chapter of the book of Proverbs. Dear friends in Christ: Who is teaching our children? Right away there seems to be a problem; you would expect me to say, ‘Who is teaching your children?’ Maybe you are single, maybe you are still in college, or a child yourself, maybe the Lord never gave you the gift of a child. There may be no children that you can call your own. But that’s not what I asked. Who is teaching our children? Our children? One of the greatest problems in congregational life today is that we see ourselves as a collection of individuals, not as a community of faith, gathered here together for the good of our neighbors, with responsibility toward one another. The children of this congregation are our common responsibility; we together as the body of Christ are to see that they are raised in the faith. Indeed, that’s what we say whenever a child is baptized at this font, if our words are not empty and false: “We receive you in Jesus’ name as our brother or sister in Christ, that together we might hear His Word, receive His gifts, and proclaim the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

Who is teaching our children? The Bible has an answer that is clear, and it is implied in the first words of our text. “Hear, my son, and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many.” The way of wisdom is to be taught in the home, it is to be passed on from generation to generation. In fact, God even gives us a commandment to drive this point home: “Honor your father and your mother.” Martin Luther begins every part of the Small Catechism with these words, “As the head of the family should teach in a simple way to his household.” Who is the head of the family? In normal circumstances, where sin has not wreaked havoc on this order, it is the husband and father. Who should teach our children? Fathers, first and foremost. Part of being a man, a husband, a father, is to ensure that your children are raised in the faith. Studies have consistently shown that when fathers bring children to church, the chances are tremendously higher that those children will become regular churchgoers than if the father is absent from worship. This fact isn’t meant to discourage mothers who faithfully bring their children to church, is meant to call on fathers to be men, to man up and take the responsibility that God has given to them.

But this fact doesn’t excuse the rest of us. These are our children, and we all should be concerned about our children. We are to encourage and exhort parents to teach the faith in the home, giving them the resources they need, we are to teach young men how to be heads of their households, how to man up. Who is to teach our children? We as a congregation, the body of Christ in this place, are to supplement the teaching of the faith that occurs at home. That’s why we have Sunday School and confirmation instruction, and that’s why we have a day school and pre-school, to exhort children as Solomon does in our text: “Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.” Parents are free to ask other churches, or the government, to educate their children, but if our school isn’t the first option considered—and it clearly isn’t—then our congregation needs to do some hard thinking, for we together, not just the school board, not just the staff, but all of us, have a responsibility to make our school the primary place where the children entrusted to our congregation can be set on the path of wisdom.

For there are others who seek to teach our children, and wherever our children receive their education, there are many seeking to set our children on the path of the wicked. “Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on.” Who is teaching our children? Those in power. Those who control the levers of government education, those who produce the television programs and movies that our children consume, those who are rich and famous. It is no sin to ask the government to educate your child, or to turn on your television at night, but we cannot do so naively, without knowing what our children are taught and countering any falsehood with the truth of God’s Word. “I have taught you the way of wisdom; I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble.”

If you think that our children can be taught that sex is recreation—only be safe!—that the world came into being through chance, or that gender is fluid and has no connection to biology, and that these teachings will have no effect on the faith given to them in their baptism, repent. If you think that an hour a week, or less, of Christianity can counterbalance countless hours of the world’s education, repent. If you think that by sending your child to a Christian school—even our school!—your task of raising your child in the faith is complete, repent. Repent, dear friends, repent, for we are sending our children out as sheep among wolves, and we are neglecting our duty to prepare them for a world that hates them and hates Christ. Repent, for often the last thing we look at when considering colleges for our children is where they will go to church. Repent, for we have made sports—watching and playing—an idol to which we will even sacrifice the salvation of our children. Repent.

The devil wants our children to stumble; he wants them to falter and fall. He presents to them a wide and easy road, shrouded in darkness. He doesn’t want them to know that they stumble, he simply wants them addicted to sin. “For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.” The devil wants our children to stumble, to leave the faith. He is a master of a thousand arts; he simply changes tactics. He doesn’t care where you send your children to be educated, he just wants them to stumble.

But do not fear, dear friends. There is another power in this world, who has already overcome the devil with all of his wiles. He has put Satan under His feet, crushing the serpent’s head upon the cross. It is He who guides His children on the path of life. It is He who marked His children, our children, with the sign of the holy cross on the day of their baptism, who made them His own and will neither leave them nor forsake them. The way of wisdom, the path of righteousness, is not simply a moral code, a path of right and wrong. It is the path of salvation, the path of the cross. “My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.” His words are life only if they are the words of the Gospel, the words of the cross, Jesus’ death in our place. A moral and upright life cannot save us, for we always stumble, we enter the path of wickedness day by day. No, His words are life because they give us healing from our sin. As the prophet declares in Isaiah fifty-three: “But 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.” It is the wounds of Jesus that heal us; He was pierced for our negligence of the children entrusted to us, as parents or as a congregation, He was pierced for when we prioritize other things above the salvation of our youth. He was pierced for your every transgression, and with His wounds you are healed.

Who is teaching our children? Jesus. Jesus teaches His children the path of righteousness, the path of the Gospel, pouring out upon them the grace that He won for them on Calvary’s cross. That is what He does here in this place, bestowing His grace upon us and upon them, forgiving our every sin and reassuring us of our identity as His children. It is He who leads us on a path without stumbling; the words of our text are not really the words of Solomon after all, but the words of the One who suffered and died for you, who suffered and died for our children. “When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble.” It is Jesus who gave us the faith, who died for us, who baptized us into His Name, but He doesn’t leave us to our own devices after we leave the font. No, it is He who keeps us from stumbling, who leads us on the paths of righteousness, who gives us a way bathed in His light. “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” When the Light of the World dwells in us, then we can see the path, and the darkness is driven away. We will not stumble nor fall, because on His path, there is only Jesus, Jesus and His body, the Church.

Who is teaching our children? The beautiful message of the Gospel is that while the children given to us as parents or as a congregation are ‘ours’ in a very real sense, they are even more truly His. They are His children, as you are His children, and He will fight for them. Yes, He does so through you, and He gives you a solemn charge and responsibility toward our children, but the responsibility for His children ultimately lies with Him, they are His. You cannot save another, even one of our children; thanks be to God, that is the work of Jesus. He died for them, as He died for you, He forgives them, and He forgives you, and He has a place in heaven for them, as He has prepared a place for you. He is your life, and He is your healing, forever. In His Name, Amen.