From the Vicar,
The Lutheran Church has always been known as the singing church. Today, that often does not seem to be saying much. We can attend a variety of other churches around us and hear singing, some better, and some worse. Beautiful Roman Catholic cathedrals and money-hungry televangelists have singing, just like your own Lutheran church. But yet there is a difference, a Lutheran difference, which makes singing in the Lutheran church unique amongst all other branches of Christ’s Church. This difference goes much deeper than which hymns we choose to sing, though the hymns we select are the most important result. Why are Lutherans different when it comes to the song of the Church? The answer lies in both the historical and theological realms.
When you look around the Christian landscape today, singing is simply a part of what Christians do in worship. However, this was not always the case. Several times in its history, the Christian Church has abandoned music for the congregation, making it the exclusive property of the priests and monks. The Early Church struggled with heresies (as does the Church in all ages), heresies that often spread their theology through music. In response, many clergy began to condemn popular singing in the churches, and instead gave music to choirs, clergy, and monks. Popes and bishops wanted to control music within the Church, and not give it free reign to spread falsehood. Popular hymnody was shut down for centuries, but music still thrived in the monasteries, where many hymns we find in our hymnals today were written. Therefore, with only a few exceptions, the congregation was generally not able to sing until the time of the Reformation. And even in that period the Church’s song suffered. Reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin looked down on singing any songs but those found in Scripture, sung in a very simple way.
In direct contrast with these outlooks, Martin Luther gave the Church’s song back to the people. He saw music not as something frivolous, but as a good gift of God to be used in His service. Music was not the sole possession of the clergy, but belonged to all Christians. Music served to bring people into the liturgy, where God gives His good gifts. Finally, unlike Zwingli and Calvin, Luther also gladly accepted the music of the Church throughout history, bringing the hymns hidden in the monasteries for centuries to the people. Therefore, the Lutheran difference is first of all that Lutherans, in contrast to Church history and contemporary trends, celebrated music as a good gift of God to be given to the congregation in the Divine Service.
The theological side of the Lutheran difference can best be illustrated through the example of one man, Johann Sebastian Bach. Most people know of Bach as a great composer, one of the most talented that ever lived. But very few know about or appreciate his theological background. In fact, many Lutherans (including myself until I attended the seminary) do not even realize that Bach is ‘one of us,’ a Lutheran musician strongly motivated by his orthodox Lutheran theology. This is quite simply because most attempt to understand Bach apart from his theology. Few musical textbooks or television programs even consider this an area to explore, and so we are left with a deficient picture of this great man. These sources see Bach’s music as disconnected from his theology, a contention that he himself would find utterly false.
Bach was a kantor in the Lutheran Church, an office that combined theological and musical training, so he did not think solely in musical terms. For Bach, as for all Lutherans, doctrine and practice (theology and music) could not be separated. This is the most important part of the Lutheran difference. We do not only sing, but we sing with a purpose, we sing what we believe. Hymns must preach. If a hymn does not express what we confess as a church, then we do not sing it. Therefore, Lutherans require much more of their hymns than do other denominations, and many hymns found in Lutheran hymnals do not have a place anywhere else. This principle seems quite simple, even obvious, but in actual practice this Lutheran difference is maintained only by pastors, musicians, and laity who are conscious of what they sing and why.
The office of kantor has fallen out of use since the first centuries of the Lutheran Church, but it is so emblematic of the Lutheran difference that it could use a revival. Lutherans have historically expected their musicians to have a firm grounding and understanding of theology. If theology and practice are so intertwined together, then a musician with no concept of theology simply cannot lead the Church’s song. In the same way, a pastor cannot be ignorant of music in the Church. He must have a firm understanding of both the role and practice of music. In addition, the Lutheran difference not only influences who leads the Church’s song, but most importantly what is to be sung. If Lutherans want their music to confess what they believe, then the texts must clearly and honestly proclaim Christ and the theology of the cross. The music must be wedded to the text in such a way that it does not obscure what the text says or give a different message. To accomplish this, the Lutheran Church has had both theologians who could write and compose, such as Martin Luther, and combinations of theologians and composers that could work together to wed text and tune, such as Johann Gerhard and Johann Ebeling.
Lutherans are not called the singing church because we sound so much better than everyone else. In fact, some of our singing leaves much to be improved and we who are in the church that bears this title should be active in enhancing the congregation’s song. Instead, we are called the singing church historically because Lutherans brought hymns back to the people and theologically because we view the Church’s song very highly as a sung confession of faith. Lutherans should have high standards for what is sung in the Divine Service because what we sing does matter, it says something to us and it says something about us.
In Christ,
Vicar Maronde
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Advent 3 of Series B (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11)
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this the third Sunday in Advent is from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the prophet Isaiah the sixty-first chapter. Dear friends in Christ, “there was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.” God did not send our Savior into a vacuum, but instead prepared the way, just as He promised. John the Baptist was a man of the wilderness, a man hardened by Judea’s harsh deserts. He came to call all Israel, indeed all people, you and me, to repentance. The day of salvation was drawing near, and his job was to prepare the way. “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’” John preached and baptized, but not to gain fame and a following for himself, instead his job was simply to point to another: “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even He who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”
God also did not send John into a vacuum. He sent the witness to the Light into a world, our world, which was devastated and filled with mourning. The consequence of the first sin of Adam and Eve was that of death, and in every generation since, humanity has been in a constant state of mourning. We are sinful, and therefore must die, as Paul says in Romans “the wages of sin is death.” This is made graphically demonstrated again to us every time that we lose a loved one, every time that we hear of another tragedy, and every time that someone we have looked up to who has died. When the casket sits at the front of the church, or when we walk through a cemetery, we need no one to tell us of the consequence of sin. A person does not die because of specific sins, but instead they die because of the infection of sin that fills us all, that has consumed us since the earliest days of creation. We screwed up God’s perfect world, and through humanity death came into the world, and it has not left. Humanity is therefore condemned to mourning throughout our days. We are condemned to fear death because of our sin, because deep down our human conscience knows what we deserve for our sin. The wages of sin is death, but that phrase does not only describe temporal death. The wages of sin is eternal death, death forever in hell.
That is what humanity’s sin deserves after death, but even in this world sin wreaks havoc. Every one of you could tell me a different story of how sin has invaded your lives, or the lives of your parents, or the lives of your children. Sin destroys lives, it destroys marriages, it destroys families. Humanity’s sin has left us the legacy of devastated lives, lives in ruin, lives that may never be the same. Our sin, this infection that clings to our very bones, leaves us in this situation. But there is even more than this. Our sin causes us to only look at our own problems, our own legacy. However, humanity’s guilt extends far beyond our own lives. The sin that fills us from conception, the sin that has been passed down to all who are children of Adam and Eve, has left a devastated world, a world in ruin. It may be hard to comprehend, but the simple fact is that humanity’s sin, your sin and my sin, has created a world filled with death, a world that is in shambles, a world that is in decay.
It was into this world, our world of death and mourning, desolation and despair, that God sent His anointed One. The Messiah declares in our Old Testament lesson for today: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.” This Advent season we greet God’s Anointed One, the one appointed from all eternity to preach the good news to all who mourn and all whose lives are devastated. A little baby born in a stable in a dusty town called Bethlehem was this Anointed One, He was the one who was to proclaim this good news. When this same Jesus Christ stepped into the Jordan’s muddy waters to be baptized by the desert preacher, He began His mission of restoring and reversing all that our sin had so completely and utterly corrupted. As He says in our text, His mission was “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” In the Old Testament, God established a Year of Jubilee for His people, a time when slaves were liberated, debts were forgiven, and people returned to their homes. But this Year of Jubilee was not only for the people of Israel, it was a prophecy of what God’s Anointed One, the Messiah, would do.
As our text says, Jesus was anointed to “bring good news to the poor.” His proclamation was the proclamation of Advent, the proclamation of Christmas- the Messiah has come, and He has come in the most unexpected way. He has come as God in the flesh, true man yet true God, a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem, yet the Lord of heaven and earth. He has come to the poor of this world, all who have been beaten down by sin, all who have spent their days in mourning, all who have seen their lives and their world devastated by sin. He came to “bind up the brokenhearted,” you and me, all who are burdened with the loss of loved ones, who fear the consequences and the just punishment for our sin. He came to us to bind up our wounds, to heal and make new all that had been ruined by the rule of sin.
Jesus Christ was on a rescue mission. He was anointed to release all that were in the bonds of fear, the shackles of sin and death. He declares the He was sent “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to those who are bound.” The word here used for ‘liberate’ is only used in the context of Year of Jubilee, when the nation of Israel freed all of her slaves and cancelled all debts. Those who had been bound were now truly free, but they remained in bondage to sin. The Year of Jubilee had no power over sin and death. Only Jesus could deal with those slavemasters, and He could only do this by allowing Himself to be bound, by giving Himself up to sinful men, to the very ones He had come to liberate. And so He was seized by a mob, God in the flesh bound and delivered to death. Jesus Christ refused to exercise His heavenly power, He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross, because it was only through the blood flowing from His forehead, His hands, and His feet that all mankind could be saved. He who was free was bound for you, for me, and for all who languished in the bondage of sin. There He died, and was bound once again, this time sealed into a tomb. But the bonds of death, the supposed triumph of sin and Satan, did not keep Him there. Jesus broke those bonds for you and when He did, He broke your bonds as well. His message of liberty and freedom was fulfilled that Easter Sunday, and it was fulfilled for you!
His shed blood on the cross and victorious resurrection reverses all the consequences of sin, all the mourning and desolation that has filled our lives and this world. Because of His death and resurrection, Jesus comes “to grant to those who mourn in Zion- to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” This proclamation is for you! We have been delivered from the dominion of death, our deaths no longer are a doorway to hell, but instead are the beautiful gateway to heaven! We still mourn, we still miss those who have gone before us, but now our mourning is mixed with rejoicing, the oil of gladness and the garment of praise now cover us. We rejoice because they now taste eternal glory, they are at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, we rejoice because we too will join them someday. Moreover, we know that the devastation of this sinful, corrupted world will be renewed. As our text says: “They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.” On the Last Day, all will be made new and perfect, the dominion of sin in this world will be ended, and we will live in the new heavens and the new earth.
Until that Day, God promises us: “I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed.” Because Jesus Christ came to us as a little baby, as the Anointed One come to save, because He set us free through His death and resurrection, reversing the mourning and desolation that fills this world, we are given an everlasting covenant. The nation of Israel has fulfilled its purpose in bringing forth the Messiah, and now it gives way for the new Israel, the Church, which is in the midst of the people, the offspring that the Lord has blessed. We can say triumphantly with those in our text: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” The garments of salvation were placed on us in our Baptism, they cover us like a white robe with Christ’s very own righteousness, when God looks at us He sees His children, those redeemed by His Son. We are covered in Christ’s blood, we are clothed with the garments He won for us, and for that reason we rejoice.
“For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.” The Gospel, the good news that the Anointed One proclaims, makes us righteous and motivates our praise. As those who have been liberated by Christ, what else can we do but praise Him? But as our text says, this is not something we do, it is the work of God in us, He is the actor in bringing forth righteousness and praise. God is working within us so that the concluding benediction of our Epistle lesson will be fulfilled: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.” Amen.
God also did not send John into a vacuum. He sent the witness to the Light into a world, our world, which was devastated and filled with mourning. The consequence of the first sin of Adam and Eve was that of death, and in every generation since, humanity has been in a constant state of mourning. We are sinful, and therefore must die, as Paul says in Romans “the wages of sin is death.” This is made graphically demonstrated again to us every time that we lose a loved one, every time that we hear of another tragedy, and every time that someone we have looked up to who has died. When the casket sits at the front of the church, or when we walk through a cemetery, we need no one to tell us of the consequence of sin. A person does not die because of specific sins, but instead they die because of the infection of sin that fills us all, that has consumed us since the earliest days of creation. We screwed up God’s perfect world, and through humanity death came into the world, and it has not left. Humanity is therefore condemned to mourning throughout our days. We are condemned to fear death because of our sin, because deep down our human conscience knows what we deserve for our sin. The wages of sin is death, but that phrase does not only describe temporal death. The wages of sin is eternal death, death forever in hell.
That is what humanity’s sin deserves after death, but even in this world sin wreaks havoc. Every one of you could tell me a different story of how sin has invaded your lives, or the lives of your parents, or the lives of your children. Sin destroys lives, it destroys marriages, it destroys families. Humanity’s sin has left us the legacy of devastated lives, lives in ruin, lives that may never be the same. Our sin, this infection that clings to our very bones, leaves us in this situation. But there is even more than this. Our sin causes us to only look at our own problems, our own legacy. However, humanity’s guilt extends far beyond our own lives. The sin that fills us from conception, the sin that has been passed down to all who are children of Adam and Eve, has left a devastated world, a world in ruin. It may be hard to comprehend, but the simple fact is that humanity’s sin, your sin and my sin, has created a world filled with death, a world that is in shambles, a world that is in decay.
It was into this world, our world of death and mourning, desolation and despair, that God sent His anointed One. The Messiah declares in our Old Testament lesson for today: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.” This Advent season we greet God’s Anointed One, the one appointed from all eternity to preach the good news to all who mourn and all whose lives are devastated. A little baby born in a stable in a dusty town called Bethlehem was this Anointed One, He was the one who was to proclaim this good news. When this same Jesus Christ stepped into the Jordan’s muddy waters to be baptized by the desert preacher, He began His mission of restoring and reversing all that our sin had so completely and utterly corrupted. As He says in our text, His mission was “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” In the Old Testament, God established a Year of Jubilee for His people, a time when slaves were liberated, debts were forgiven, and people returned to their homes. But this Year of Jubilee was not only for the people of Israel, it was a prophecy of what God’s Anointed One, the Messiah, would do.
As our text says, Jesus was anointed to “bring good news to the poor.” His proclamation was the proclamation of Advent, the proclamation of Christmas- the Messiah has come, and He has come in the most unexpected way. He has come as God in the flesh, true man yet true God, a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem, yet the Lord of heaven and earth. He has come to the poor of this world, all who have been beaten down by sin, all who have spent their days in mourning, all who have seen their lives and their world devastated by sin. He came to “bind up the brokenhearted,” you and me, all who are burdened with the loss of loved ones, who fear the consequences and the just punishment for our sin. He came to us to bind up our wounds, to heal and make new all that had been ruined by the rule of sin.
Jesus Christ was on a rescue mission. He was anointed to release all that were in the bonds of fear, the shackles of sin and death. He declares the He was sent “to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to those who are bound.” The word here used for ‘liberate’ is only used in the context of Year of Jubilee, when the nation of Israel freed all of her slaves and cancelled all debts. Those who had been bound were now truly free, but they remained in bondage to sin. The Year of Jubilee had no power over sin and death. Only Jesus could deal with those slavemasters, and He could only do this by allowing Himself to be bound, by giving Himself up to sinful men, to the very ones He had come to liberate. And so He was seized by a mob, God in the flesh bound and delivered to death. Jesus Christ refused to exercise His heavenly power, He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross, because it was only through the blood flowing from His forehead, His hands, and His feet that all mankind could be saved. He who was free was bound for you, for me, and for all who languished in the bondage of sin. There He died, and was bound once again, this time sealed into a tomb. But the bonds of death, the supposed triumph of sin and Satan, did not keep Him there. Jesus broke those bonds for you and when He did, He broke your bonds as well. His message of liberty and freedom was fulfilled that Easter Sunday, and it was fulfilled for you!
His shed blood on the cross and victorious resurrection reverses all the consequences of sin, all the mourning and desolation that has filled our lives and this world. Because of His death and resurrection, Jesus comes “to grant to those who mourn in Zion- to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” This proclamation is for you! We have been delivered from the dominion of death, our deaths no longer are a doorway to hell, but instead are the beautiful gateway to heaven! We still mourn, we still miss those who have gone before us, but now our mourning is mixed with rejoicing, the oil of gladness and the garment of praise now cover us. We rejoice because they now taste eternal glory, they are at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, we rejoice because we too will join them someday. Moreover, we know that the devastation of this sinful, corrupted world will be renewed. As our text says: “They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.” On the Last Day, all will be made new and perfect, the dominion of sin in this world will be ended, and we will live in the new heavens and the new earth.
Until that Day, God promises us: “I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed.” Because Jesus Christ came to us as a little baby, as the Anointed One come to save, because He set us free through His death and resurrection, reversing the mourning and desolation that fills this world, we are given an everlasting covenant. The nation of Israel has fulfilled its purpose in bringing forth the Messiah, and now it gives way for the new Israel, the Church, which is in the midst of the people, the offspring that the Lord has blessed. We can say triumphantly with those in our text: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” The garments of salvation were placed on us in our Baptism, they cover us like a white robe with Christ’s very own righteousness, when God looks at us He sees His children, those redeemed by His Son. We are covered in Christ’s blood, we are clothed with the garments He won for us, and for that reason we rejoice.
“For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.” The Gospel, the good news that the Anointed One proclaims, makes us righteous and motivates our praise. As those who have been liberated by Christ, what else can we do but praise Him? But as our text says, this is not something we do, it is the work of God in us, He is the actor in bringing forth righteousness and praise. God is working within us so that the concluding benediction of our Epistle lesson will be fulfilled: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.” Amen.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Advent 2 of Series B (Mark 1:1-8)
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this second Sunday of Advent is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the opening verses of the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Dear friends in Christ, Peter wrote in our Epistle lesson for today: “Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” God’s people have almost always been waiting. Every once in awhile, a generation comes along where the promises of God are fulfilled in their midst, but most of the time, we wait. The Israelites waited four hundred years for God to deliver them from Egypt, and the gap between the Old and New Testaments, only a page in most of our bibles, extends for another four hundred years. And we haven’t even talked about the greatest period of waiting yet: in my bible up here in the pulpit, there are one thousand and four pages between God’s promise of a Savior in Genesis chapter three and the opening words of our text: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” But before we get to Jesus, God has yet one more messenger to send, John.
John was a unique man of God, the last in a long line of Old Testament prophets, he did not seem to fit in the refined world of Roman Judea. “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.” John’s very appearance preached a sermon, he was dressed in the clothing of repentance. His shirt was very uncomfortable, but it reminded him and all others that he was conceived and born in sin. His food was a sacrifice, but what else would more graphically remind him and others of how they had rebelled against God? He was a man hardened by the desert, he was a product of that treacherous wasteland. Throughout the Scriptures, it is the desert prophets who are most fiery, they have an earthy, bold quality to them, and John was no exception.
For John was the one prophesied in Isaiah and elsewhere in Scripture, he was a part of the plan of salvation. Mark gives us the reference: “Behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” John preached a fiery message of repentance, but his message was not only for his day. He is also preaching to you and me- ‘Repent and prepare for the coming of the Lord!’ The Advent season is a season of preparation for us all right, as we are reminded how many shopping days we have left and we pay attention to our decorations and pocketbooks. But John is preaching to you and me, ‘Have you prepared yourselves for the coming of your Lord? Do you realize that your sin separates you from God? Do you know that you are mortal?’ Here he is only echoing Isaiah’s prophecy in our Old Testament lesson for today: “A voice says, ‘Cry!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.” This desert preacher then confronts us then with one word- ‘Repent!’ He urges us to confess our sins this Advent season, to live a life of repentance, remembering and confessing the sins, our sins, that stirred up God’s wrath. He asks us, ‘How often do you confess your sins to God and one another? How often do you admit your sins, even to yourself?’ The prophet cries out to us as he did in our text, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”
By preaching this message of repentance, by calling on all people, you, me, and the people of his day, to confess their sins and prepare themselves for the coming Savior, John built the way of the Lord. That is how we can look at John, as a construction worker, as a builder. In that way He is no different than any of the other prophets. From the very first promise of a Messiah in Genesis chapter three, God has been calling men to build a road for Jesus Christ, a paved highway for the Savior to tread. Men like the patriarchs and Moses laid the foundation, and each successive generation added a layer or completed what had come before. When the final builder, John, came on the scene, he had the tasks of putting the finishing touches on the paving stones, making sure that all was in earnest for the coming of the Lord. For this would be a highway of salvation, and it led to a cross.
For the one whose way John prepared would be the agent of salvation, God in the flesh come to do battle with the powers of darkness. John never pointed to himself, but instead his finger was outstretched toward the coming one Jesus Christ, his cousin according to the flesh, but yet His Lord and Savior. “And he preached, saying, ‘After me comes He who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” Jesus was mightier that John because John was only a messenger, Jesus Christ was the message. He became Incarnate as a little baby to do battle with Satan, to do what John and all humanity was unable to do, He fought on our behalf. Jesus engaged our Enemy at every turn, casting out demons, healing the scourge of sin, but these were only small victories compared to the battle He was marching toward. In Jerusalem, the battle was joined, and Jesus Christ went to the cross for us and our sin, He took on Satan head on by enduring the wrath of God for our sin. Satan tried everything he could to deter Jesus from the cross, he tried to convince Jesus to come off of that instrument of torture, but instead Jesus endured. His love for you was so great that He who had no sin was willing to become sin for you and die in your place. Jesus engaged Satan in battle that day and gave up His life. Own foes thought the battle was won. But on Easter Sunday Christ triumphed over sin, Satan, and death, but the victory was not for Himself, it was for you, me, and all people.
And now this message goes out throughout the world, as our Old Testament lesson puts so beautifully: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” This victory, this comfort, this pardon is yours for the sake of Christ, He did this all for you! And so we are like the heralds that Isaiah describes: “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’ Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him; behold, His reward is with Him!”
And this reward now comes to us. John prophesied: “I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The baptism of John was for the forgiveness of sins, but it was still incomplete. It looked forward to the great victory of Christ over Satan on Calvary’s cross, it anticipated all that God was about to do through His Son. Moreover, it anticipated Christian baptism. John’s baptism brought the Old Testament to a close, as one final prophecy of what God was about to do in Christ. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, John’s baptism was transformed into Christian Baptism. Both baptisms provided forgiveness and a new relationship with God, but only the Baptism initiated by Good Friday and Easter Sunday involved a death and resurrection- yours and mine. On our Baptism day, God incorporated us into the death and resurrection of His Son, as Paul says: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” The old, sinful Adam in us was put to death, drowned in the water with the word, but in that very same water God gave life, He rose up a new person to live before Him in His kingdom forever. It was in that washing that you were incorporated into Christ’s victory over Satan, and therefore, you now have all the benefits thereof. He also gave you the gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that John’s baptism could not give, a gift that strengthens you to live as a Christian, a gift that strengthens your faith, a gift that brings Christ to you. The Holy Spirit is much like John- He is always pointing to Jesus.
In this Advent season, our task is much the same as John: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” We live in the wilderness of a sinful world, a world that is in rebellion against God and the Messiah He sent. Our voices in this world are the voices of John, the voice calling in this wilderness to prepare the way of our Lord. We call this world to repentance through our words and actions, and then proclaim the One who defeated humanity’s enemies on our behalf, the one who triumphed with His death and resurrection. Moreover, we live the lives of repentance that John called us to, we live out our Baptisms each and every day by dying to sin and rising to Christ. Baptism shapes our lives into the form of a cross and calls to mind daily what God did for us there, as He claimed us as His child for the sake of Christ. May the Lord preserve and strengthen you in your baptismal life as you walk through this Advent season, and may we all meet with joy the coming Christ that John declares, Amen.
John was a unique man of God, the last in a long line of Old Testament prophets, he did not seem to fit in the refined world of Roman Judea. “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.” John’s very appearance preached a sermon, he was dressed in the clothing of repentance. His shirt was very uncomfortable, but it reminded him and all others that he was conceived and born in sin. His food was a sacrifice, but what else would more graphically remind him and others of how they had rebelled against God? He was a man hardened by the desert, he was a product of that treacherous wasteland. Throughout the Scriptures, it is the desert prophets who are most fiery, they have an earthy, bold quality to them, and John was no exception.
For John was the one prophesied in Isaiah and elsewhere in Scripture, he was a part of the plan of salvation. Mark gives us the reference: “Behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” John preached a fiery message of repentance, but his message was not only for his day. He is also preaching to you and me- ‘Repent and prepare for the coming of the Lord!’ The Advent season is a season of preparation for us all right, as we are reminded how many shopping days we have left and we pay attention to our decorations and pocketbooks. But John is preaching to you and me, ‘Have you prepared yourselves for the coming of your Lord? Do you realize that your sin separates you from God? Do you know that you are mortal?’ Here he is only echoing Isaiah’s prophecy in our Old Testament lesson for today: “A voice says, ‘Cry!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.” This desert preacher then confronts us then with one word- ‘Repent!’ He urges us to confess our sins this Advent season, to live a life of repentance, remembering and confessing the sins, our sins, that stirred up God’s wrath. He asks us, ‘How often do you confess your sins to God and one another? How often do you admit your sins, even to yourself?’ The prophet cries out to us as he did in our text, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”
By preaching this message of repentance, by calling on all people, you, me, and the people of his day, to confess their sins and prepare themselves for the coming Savior, John built the way of the Lord. That is how we can look at John, as a construction worker, as a builder. In that way He is no different than any of the other prophets. From the very first promise of a Messiah in Genesis chapter three, God has been calling men to build a road for Jesus Christ, a paved highway for the Savior to tread. Men like the patriarchs and Moses laid the foundation, and each successive generation added a layer or completed what had come before. When the final builder, John, came on the scene, he had the tasks of putting the finishing touches on the paving stones, making sure that all was in earnest for the coming of the Lord. For this would be a highway of salvation, and it led to a cross.
For the one whose way John prepared would be the agent of salvation, God in the flesh come to do battle with the powers of darkness. John never pointed to himself, but instead his finger was outstretched toward the coming one Jesus Christ, his cousin according to the flesh, but yet His Lord and Savior. “And he preached, saying, ‘After me comes He who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” Jesus was mightier that John because John was only a messenger, Jesus Christ was the message. He became Incarnate as a little baby to do battle with Satan, to do what John and all humanity was unable to do, He fought on our behalf. Jesus engaged our Enemy at every turn, casting out demons, healing the scourge of sin, but these were only small victories compared to the battle He was marching toward. In Jerusalem, the battle was joined, and Jesus Christ went to the cross for us and our sin, He took on Satan head on by enduring the wrath of God for our sin. Satan tried everything he could to deter Jesus from the cross, he tried to convince Jesus to come off of that instrument of torture, but instead Jesus endured. His love for you was so great that He who had no sin was willing to become sin for you and die in your place. Jesus engaged Satan in battle that day and gave up His life. Own foes thought the battle was won. But on Easter Sunday Christ triumphed over sin, Satan, and death, but the victory was not for Himself, it was for you, me, and all people.
And now this message goes out throughout the world, as our Old Testament lesson puts so beautifully: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” This victory, this comfort, this pardon is yours for the sake of Christ, He did this all for you! And so we are like the heralds that Isaiah describes: “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’ Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him; behold, His reward is with Him!”
And this reward now comes to us. John prophesied: “I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The baptism of John was for the forgiveness of sins, but it was still incomplete. It looked forward to the great victory of Christ over Satan on Calvary’s cross, it anticipated all that God was about to do through His Son. Moreover, it anticipated Christian baptism. John’s baptism brought the Old Testament to a close, as one final prophecy of what God was about to do in Christ. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, John’s baptism was transformed into Christian Baptism. Both baptisms provided forgiveness and a new relationship with God, but only the Baptism initiated by Good Friday and Easter Sunday involved a death and resurrection- yours and mine. On our Baptism day, God incorporated us into the death and resurrection of His Son, as Paul says: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” The old, sinful Adam in us was put to death, drowned in the water with the word, but in that very same water God gave life, He rose up a new person to live before Him in His kingdom forever. It was in that washing that you were incorporated into Christ’s victory over Satan, and therefore, you now have all the benefits thereof. He also gave you the gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that John’s baptism could not give, a gift that strengthens you to live as a Christian, a gift that strengthens your faith, a gift that brings Christ to you. The Holy Spirit is much like John- He is always pointing to Jesus.
In this Advent season, our task is much the same as John: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” We live in the wilderness of a sinful world, a world that is in rebellion against God and the Messiah He sent. Our voices in this world are the voices of John, the voice calling in this wilderness to prepare the way of our Lord. We call this world to repentance through our words and actions, and then proclaim the One who defeated humanity’s enemies on our behalf, the one who triumphed with His death and resurrection. Moreover, we live the lives of repentance that John called us to, we live out our Baptisms each and every day by dying to sin and rising to Christ. Baptism shapes our lives into the form of a cross and calls to mind daily what God did for us there, as He claimed us as His child for the sake of Christ. May the Lord preserve and strengthen you in your baptismal life as you walk through this Advent season, and may we all meet with joy the coming Christ that John declares, Amen.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Advent 1 of Series B (Mark 11:1-10)
“Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Our text for this the first Sunday in Advent, the opening of another Church Year, is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from Mark, the eleventh chapter. Dear friends in Christ, I was in Fort Wayne a couple of years ago when the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl. Being in Indiana for that event was quite an exciting experience- I would bet that a colt has not felt that good about itself since the Lord of Heaven and Earth sat upon one around two thousand years ago. For on that day, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, chose one colt in the villages outside of Jerusalem to be His transportation into the city where salvation would be accomplished. “Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of His disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it.’” This colt was required by the Lord, no questions asked: “‘If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” say, “The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.”’ And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.” This animal was then pressed into service- its purpose was to bring the King into the city of Israel’s kings: “And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and He sat upon it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.” And like a good football player, we can only guess that after this moment in the sun, the colt retired from public life.
On the back of that colt, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to sinful humanity. This was necessary because we as sinful humans cannot come to God. In our Old Testament lesson for today, Isaiah writes: “Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?” Ever since conception, ever since our forefather and mother fell into sin, we have been consumed by sin. Mankind has toiled in sin since the earliest days of creation, and it continues to ensnare you and me. Isaiah continues: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Our sins fill us, they consume us, they attempt to take over our life. But more than that, our sins prevent us from coming to God, from turning to Him, as Isaiah says: “There is no one who calls upon your Name, who rouses himself to take hold of you.” Because of our sin, we are constantly in rebellion against God- we cannot, nor do we want to, come to Him. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, and just as a dead person cannot raise himself, so all of us who are born in rebellion against God cannot end that rebellion by ourselves and come to Him.
But oh, does our sinful nature try! This is perhaps that most insidious perversion that sin and Satan places in our mind- that we who are sinful and corrupted can somehow make ourselves clean, that we can turn to God, at least a little bit. Satan knows that when we rely on ourselves to turn to God, our focus is exactly where he wants it to be- on us! We try to please God with our works, with our ‘good life,’ with all those nice things that we do. This perversion is ingrained in our world today- if you ask many people, ‘who is going to go to heaven?’ they will say that it is the ‘good’ people. This is despite the fact that Jesus Himself rarely hung out with those ‘good’ people, but instead ate many meals with tax collectors and prostitutes, those who had definitely not lead a ‘good’ life. Many people do realize this, they know that their good works do not count anything before God, but still, we must be able to do something, right? We can at least make the decision to come to God, we can pray the ‘acceptance prayer’ we see in much of Christian literature today, right? This is Satan’s most cunning move. When a person says “I decided to accept you Jesus,” Satan has turned the focus of that person’s salvation once more upon him or herself. Many who say this do believe in Christ, but unfortunately they have a belief founded on their own decision, their salvation is based on themselves. When we focus on ourselves, when we trust in our own capability to come to Christ, we are walking in the wrong direction, we are focusing on ourselves, we are setting ourselves up to fall- we cannot come to God by ourselves, period.
Instead of trusting in our capability, in our own good life, or our own decision, we place our trust in the One who came to us. As Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem, “many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!’” The crowd began their cry with a very ancient word, ‘Hosanna.’ We usually think that this is simply a word of praise, but it is much more than that. This word is actually two words in Hebrew, two words that mean ‘Lord, save us!’ The crowd understood, at least in part, that this man Jesus Christ had come for salvation, He had come to deliver them! He entered into Jerusalem to save the crowd, he entered into Jerusalem to save you and me, He entered into Jerusalem to save all people. We who have been afflicted by sin cry out ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Lord, save us!’ because we cannot save ourselves, we cannot come to God, and so He comes to us.
“Blessed is He who comes in the Name of Lord!” God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, He came to us by sending His one and only Son. Jesus Christ came bearing the Name of the Lord, He came as Yahweh in the flesh, God come to save. But His first entrance was not into Jerusalem, it was into our world as a little baby. This Advent season, we turn our attention to a stable in Bethlehem, to the night when God was born as a man to Mary and Joseph. On that wondrous night, Jesus Christ came to us, to sinful and fallen humanity, as a little baby, He came to answer our cries of ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Lord save us!’ and for that reason there was another entrance yet to come. We look beyond the stable in Bethlehem to the gates of Jerusalem; Jesus Christ came as a little baby for the very purpose of sitting on a colt and riding into Jerusalem. This was the mission of the Messiah, the one who bore the Name of the Lord for us.
The crowd calls Jesus ‘blessed’ because they are asking that God will bless all that He does within the city. And God did so, but in a way that no one expected. That is because Jesus did not come on the back of a colt to defeat the Romans, He did not come as a triumphant king to take His throne, He instead came as the suffering servant, as the one who must shed His blood to answer the cries of ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Lord save us!’ He came into the walls of Jerusalem to do this, but Pilate and the Jews cast Him outside the walls, where He was hung on a cross to shed His blood and to die, to die for us and our sins. He hung on that cross to be a blessing to all people, the only blessing that we all truly need, the blessing of the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. Because Christ came to us in our hour of need, and He came to die for our sins, we receive these blessings, we no longer have to fear the wrath of God, for it was poured out upon Christ. God blessed this sacrifice, this shed blood, by raising Christ from the dead and then delivering those gifts to us.
Only after His blood was shed and Jesus cried out ‘It is finished,’ only after God blessed His shed blood by opening the tomb for the risen Christ to walk out, did Jesus take His throne. The crowds may not have completely understood this, but they still cried out: “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” He entered Jerusalem as a king, and so He was, but His kingdom was not founded on the defeat of the Romans, it was not based on His wealth or earthly power, but instead it was founded on His shed blood, the blood He shed for you and me. This kingdom is not an earthly kingdom of power, but instead a heavenly kingdom of grace.
And this grace, this kingdom now comes to us. It comes to us because we cannot come to God, if left to ourselves we would never reach salvation. Christ’s greatest gift is that He continues to come to us, and He comes bearing salvation. He came as a baby to Bethlehem, He came to Jerusalem to shed His blood for us, and now He comes to each of us to create and sustain faith, He comes into our midst bearing the benefits of that death and resurrection. We cannot come to God with our own works, we cannot decide to accept Jesus, but instead, while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, Christ came to us and made us alive, He kindled faith within us that grasps the promised gifts, the blessings that He won for us. And He continues to come to us, bearing in abundance all of His gifts.
There is a place in our worship service where we join with the crowds in greeting the coming Christ. We sing in the words of the Sanctus: “Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” Where do we sing this? Directly before the pastor speaks the Words of Institution, right before we receive the Lord’s Body and Blood in His Supper. In this song we celebrate with the crowd the coming Christ, the Christ who comes to us in His own Body and Blood, given and shed on the cross and now given and presented to all who believe for our salvation.
Christ came as a baby, He came through the gates of Jerusalem, He came to us to create faith, and now He comes to us to sustain that faith. But there is yet one more coming that we look forward to. In our Epistle lesson for today, Paul writes that we are waiting for “the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” On that Day, the Last Day, Christ will return in glory, and He will return for the purpose of raising you and all believers to live before Him forever. May we all meet the coming Christ with joy this Advent season, as we look forward to His final coming, when we will see Him face to face in heavenly glory, Amen.
On the back of that colt, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to sinful humanity. This was necessary because we as sinful humans cannot come to God. In our Old Testament lesson for today, Isaiah writes: “Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?” Ever since conception, ever since our forefather and mother fell into sin, we have been consumed by sin. Mankind has toiled in sin since the earliest days of creation, and it continues to ensnare you and me. Isaiah continues: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Our sins fill us, they consume us, they attempt to take over our life. But more than that, our sins prevent us from coming to God, from turning to Him, as Isaiah says: “There is no one who calls upon your Name, who rouses himself to take hold of you.” Because of our sin, we are constantly in rebellion against God- we cannot, nor do we want to, come to Him. We are dead in our trespasses and sins, and just as a dead person cannot raise himself, so all of us who are born in rebellion against God cannot end that rebellion by ourselves and come to Him.
But oh, does our sinful nature try! This is perhaps that most insidious perversion that sin and Satan places in our mind- that we who are sinful and corrupted can somehow make ourselves clean, that we can turn to God, at least a little bit. Satan knows that when we rely on ourselves to turn to God, our focus is exactly where he wants it to be- on us! We try to please God with our works, with our ‘good life,’ with all those nice things that we do. This perversion is ingrained in our world today- if you ask many people, ‘who is going to go to heaven?’ they will say that it is the ‘good’ people. This is despite the fact that Jesus Himself rarely hung out with those ‘good’ people, but instead ate many meals with tax collectors and prostitutes, those who had definitely not lead a ‘good’ life. Many people do realize this, they know that their good works do not count anything before God, but still, we must be able to do something, right? We can at least make the decision to come to God, we can pray the ‘acceptance prayer’ we see in much of Christian literature today, right? This is Satan’s most cunning move. When a person says “I decided to accept you Jesus,” Satan has turned the focus of that person’s salvation once more upon him or herself. Many who say this do believe in Christ, but unfortunately they have a belief founded on their own decision, their salvation is based on themselves. When we focus on ourselves, when we trust in our own capability to come to Christ, we are walking in the wrong direction, we are focusing on ourselves, we are setting ourselves up to fall- we cannot come to God by ourselves, period.
Instead of trusting in our capability, in our own good life, or our own decision, we place our trust in the One who came to us. As Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem, “many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!’” The crowd began their cry with a very ancient word, ‘Hosanna.’ We usually think that this is simply a word of praise, but it is much more than that. This word is actually two words in Hebrew, two words that mean ‘Lord, save us!’ The crowd understood, at least in part, that this man Jesus Christ had come for salvation, He had come to deliver them! He entered into Jerusalem to save the crowd, he entered into Jerusalem to save you and me, He entered into Jerusalem to save all people. We who have been afflicted by sin cry out ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Lord, save us!’ because we cannot save ourselves, we cannot come to God, and so He comes to us.
“Blessed is He who comes in the Name of Lord!” God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, He came to us by sending His one and only Son. Jesus Christ came bearing the Name of the Lord, He came as Yahweh in the flesh, God come to save. But His first entrance was not into Jerusalem, it was into our world as a little baby. This Advent season, we turn our attention to a stable in Bethlehem, to the night when God was born as a man to Mary and Joseph. On that wondrous night, Jesus Christ came to us, to sinful and fallen humanity, as a little baby, He came to answer our cries of ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Lord save us!’ and for that reason there was another entrance yet to come. We look beyond the stable in Bethlehem to the gates of Jerusalem; Jesus Christ came as a little baby for the very purpose of sitting on a colt and riding into Jerusalem. This was the mission of the Messiah, the one who bore the Name of the Lord for us.
The crowd calls Jesus ‘blessed’ because they are asking that God will bless all that He does within the city. And God did so, but in a way that no one expected. That is because Jesus did not come on the back of a colt to defeat the Romans, He did not come as a triumphant king to take His throne, He instead came as the suffering servant, as the one who must shed His blood to answer the cries of ‘Hosanna,’ ‘Lord save us!’ He came into the walls of Jerusalem to do this, but Pilate and the Jews cast Him outside the walls, where He was hung on a cross to shed His blood and to die, to die for us and our sins. He hung on that cross to be a blessing to all people, the only blessing that we all truly need, the blessing of the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. Because Christ came to us in our hour of need, and He came to die for our sins, we receive these blessings, we no longer have to fear the wrath of God, for it was poured out upon Christ. God blessed this sacrifice, this shed blood, by raising Christ from the dead and then delivering those gifts to us.
Only after His blood was shed and Jesus cried out ‘It is finished,’ only after God blessed His shed blood by opening the tomb for the risen Christ to walk out, did Jesus take His throne. The crowds may not have completely understood this, but they still cried out: “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” He entered Jerusalem as a king, and so He was, but His kingdom was not founded on the defeat of the Romans, it was not based on His wealth or earthly power, but instead it was founded on His shed blood, the blood He shed for you and me. This kingdom is not an earthly kingdom of power, but instead a heavenly kingdom of grace.
And this grace, this kingdom now comes to us. It comes to us because we cannot come to God, if left to ourselves we would never reach salvation. Christ’s greatest gift is that He continues to come to us, and He comes bearing salvation. He came as a baby to Bethlehem, He came to Jerusalem to shed His blood for us, and now He comes to each of us to create and sustain faith, He comes into our midst bearing the benefits of that death and resurrection. We cannot come to God with our own works, we cannot decide to accept Jesus, but instead, while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, Christ came to us and made us alive, He kindled faith within us that grasps the promised gifts, the blessings that He won for us. And He continues to come to us, bearing in abundance all of His gifts.
There is a place in our worship service where we join with the crowds in greeting the coming Christ. We sing in the words of the Sanctus: “Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” Where do we sing this? Directly before the pastor speaks the Words of Institution, right before we receive the Lord’s Body and Blood in His Supper. In this song we celebrate with the crowd the coming Christ, the Christ who comes to us in His own Body and Blood, given and shed on the cross and now given and presented to all who believe for our salvation.
Christ came as a baby, He came through the gates of Jerusalem, He came to us to create faith, and now He comes to us to sustain that faith. But there is yet one more coming that we look forward to. In our Epistle lesson for today, Paul writes that we are waiting for “the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” On that Day, the Last Day, Christ will return in glory, and He will return for the purpose of raising you and all believers to live before Him forever. May we all meet the coming Christ with joy this Advent season, as we look forward to His final coming, when we will see Him face to face in heavenly glory, Amen.
Thanksgiving Eve (Luke 17:11-19)
“Rise, and go your way; your faith has made you well.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this Thanksgiving Eve/celebration is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from Luke chapter seventeen. Dear friends in Christ, it is amazing how our liturgy brings Scripture to us! Every Sunday morning, directly after the Confession and Absolution and the Introit, after we have entered into God’s presence by having our sins forgiven, we come to a part of the service called the Kyrie. Now, the form of the Kyrie differs from service to service in our hymnals, but what is always included is the cry of the congregation, ‘Lord have mercy!’ The reason it is called the ‘Kyrie’ is because the Greek words ‘kyrie eleeson’ are translated ‘Lord have mercy.’ Does this phrase sound familiar? Of course it does, we heard it in our text for today: “On the way to Jerusalem [Jesus] was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, He was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us!” These ten lepers were calling out, ‘kyrie eleeson,’ Lord, have mercy! When we speak or sing the words of the Kyrie, we are joining with all others throughout history who have called on Jesus to show mercy.
We need this mercy, because we are afflicted with many sicknesses and diseases in this life. Life lived in fallen bodies, corrupted by the affects of the Fall into sin, is difficult and often filled with troubles, as the lepers in our text found out. These lepers had reason to cry out for mercy- they were afflicted with a disease that had no cure, a disease that was highly contagious, and so they were separated from their families and their people. We do not have to think very hard to make a connection to those lepers- we all have been or are being afflicted with many sicknesses and diseases. Whether it is simply the cold or flu, or something like cancer or heart disease, we all have experienced the fact that our bodies are fallen, we see the effects of sin in our own physical bodies. We need healing, we need deliverance, we need mercy!
But our physical weaknesses and infirmities are only part of the corruption of sin, in fact, they are very minor in comparison to the sickness that afflicts us all- sin. Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin has been a disease that has been passed on from each generation to the next. It is a part of our very being, it is in our DNA, so to speak. From the very moment of conception, we are filled with sin, and there is nothing that we as humans can do about it. It clings to our flesh like leprosy, it corrupts us to our very core. And that is only the sin that is passed down from our parents. We actively add to that corruption each and every day, we help to spread the disease of sin to others through our words and actions. The sin that has filled us since conception continues to spawn new sin in our lives, we can’t help but sin, it is part of our very nature. As much as we try, we cannot rid ourselves from sin, but instead we live in rebellion against God.
This corruption of our fallen bodies and souls, which brings us physical diseases and sins upon sins, makes us unclean. The ten lepers stood “at a distance” not to be courteous, or because they were afraid of passing leprosy on to Jesus and His disciples, but because they were judged unclean according to God’s Law. The Old Testament contains an elaborate system of clean and unclean, a system that was carried into Jesus’ day. The people of Israel were to be pure and holy, they were to be ‘clean’ before God. There were many things that could make a person ‘unclean’ before God, including disease or the food that one ate. A person who was unclean could make others unclean, and so unclean people were banished from the camp until they could once again be made clean. But the lepers in our text had no hope of ever becoming clean, they were banished to live a life in exile together, they were unworthy to be with God’s people, much less with God. Like those lepers, our own sin defiles us, it makes us unclean. Our corrupted flesh, our sinful thoughts and actions, all make us unclean and unworthy to stand before God. We need mercy, because we are unclean, and with our sin clinging to our flesh, we have no hope of being with God or His people.
“When He saw them He said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went they were cleansed.” The ten lepers needed mercy, and they called upon the only one that could make them clean, who could show them mercy. Jesus Christ became man for the very reason of making clean what had become unclean by sin. God’s beautiful creation had been corrupted by sin, it had become unclean and unworthy to stand before the God who had given it life. But in the person of Jesus Christ, God cleansed all of creation, Christ was His agent of cleansing for a world that was filthy and unclean. Our text begins like this: “On the way to Jerusalem, He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.” Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem, to the very place where His ultimate act of cleansing would take place. On this journey, He took up our sins and diseases, He took all that made us unclean upon His perfect shoulders and He carried them to Jerusalem. Each time that He healed someone, He was making another part of creation clean, but the greatest cleansing was yet to come. For when He entered Jerusalem, He entered to shed His blood, He entered to take our sins and diseases to the cross and there to die for them. On the road, He cleansed ten lepers, but on Calvary’s cross, His shed blood cleansed you, me, and all of humanity, indeed, all of creation. Everything was cleansed by His blood, it covered up every sin, every corruption, every disease, and every source of uncleanliness that filled our fallen bodies and souls. Red blood made us white and clean on that Good Friday, and not only us, but all of creation.
This cleansing then came to you and me in water. We call Baptism the washing of water with the Word precisely because it is in that water that we are cleansed. Just as water removes dirt from the body, so water applied “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” removes sin and all that made us unclean. Christ’s blood shed on Calvary then makes us clean and white, so that we can stand before God forever.
In our text, Jesus told the ten lepers to “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” They were to go to the location of God’s presence, the temple in Jerusalem, to be declared clean, to become part of the community once again. But before they had even made it there, they were cleansed. Nine men continued on to the temple to declare their cleansing. One man, however, turned back. “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” This man, who Jesus describes simply as a ‘foreigner,’ saw something that the other nine did not. He realized that the focus of God’s presence was no longer in the temple in Jerusalem, but instead it was centered in this man who was more than a man, Jesus Christ. He saw with the eyes of faith that Jesus truly was who He said He was, God in the flesh, the Messiah come to save. When Jesus was born, the temple became obsolete- God’s presence was in Jesus Christ, and would remain there for all eternity. Wherever Jesus is, there we have God’s presence, and God is present to save, He is present to cleanse. Jesus continues to clean us each and every time that we make our robes filthy again in sin, He is acting to cleanse our every stain. He does this through the words of forgiveness spoken by a pastor or other Christians, and through the feast of His Body and Blood. But this is only a foretaste of what is to come, for when Jesus Christ returns in glory, He will truly and ultimately cleanse all of creation, He will make everything new and clean, we will stand before God with the white robes. Our sicknesses and diseases remain with us in this world, but on that day, he will wash them all away.
When we realize this, when we see with eyes of faith that God’s presence is located in Jesus Christ, we respond as the Samaritan did: “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.” When we praise God, we are lifting Him up before the world as someone worthy to be praised for what He has done, namely because He sent His only begotten Son to bear our sin and be our Savior. When we fall on our faces and worship Christ, we acknowledge that He truly is God, that He deserves our worship and adoration. When we have been cleansed by Christ, when He has shed His blood on our behalf, what else can we do but give thanks to Him? Our thanksgiving does not bring us cleansing, it does not bring us Christ’s gifts, but instead is simply a response to the great things He has done for us. Each of these three responses is also a confession- we are confessing that God’s gracious presence is in Christ, we are confessing before all the world that the cleansing we all need only comes through Christ and His shed blood. When we give thanks, we are acknowledging, as the Samaritan leper did, that Christ has cleansed us.
And so as we celebrate Thanksgiving, we look toward all the gifts that God has given to us. He has given us families and friends, food and shelter, and a free country to live in. These are all wonderful gifts, gifts that it is proper to give thanks for. In our gradual today, we said: “The eyes of all look to You, [O LORD,] and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” However, we do not stop there- God has given us even greater gifts. Through Christ, we have been cleansed from all our sins, we have the promise that someday our corrupted, diseased bodies will be renewed and raised to live before God forever. That is the gift that we ultimately give thanks for on this day and every day. May the Lord continue to shower gifts of both body and soul upon you, and may He deliver to you His greatest gift, the gift of cleansing, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of living before Him forever, Amen.
We need this mercy, because we are afflicted with many sicknesses and diseases in this life. Life lived in fallen bodies, corrupted by the affects of the Fall into sin, is difficult and often filled with troubles, as the lepers in our text found out. These lepers had reason to cry out for mercy- they were afflicted with a disease that had no cure, a disease that was highly contagious, and so they were separated from their families and their people. We do not have to think very hard to make a connection to those lepers- we all have been or are being afflicted with many sicknesses and diseases. Whether it is simply the cold or flu, or something like cancer or heart disease, we all have experienced the fact that our bodies are fallen, we see the effects of sin in our own physical bodies. We need healing, we need deliverance, we need mercy!
But our physical weaknesses and infirmities are only part of the corruption of sin, in fact, they are very minor in comparison to the sickness that afflicts us all- sin. Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin has been a disease that has been passed on from each generation to the next. It is a part of our very being, it is in our DNA, so to speak. From the very moment of conception, we are filled with sin, and there is nothing that we as humans can do about it. It clings to our flesh like leprosy, it corrupts us to our very core. And that is only the sin that is passed down from our parents. We actively add to that corruption each and every day, we help to spread the disease of sin to others through our words and actions. The sin that has filled us since conception continues to spawn new sin in our lives, we can’t help but sin, it is part of our very nature. As much as we try, we cannot rid ourselves from sin, but instead we live in rebellion against God.
This corruption of our fallen bodies and souls, which brings us physical diseases and sins upon sins, makes us unclean. The ten lepers stood “at a distance” not to be courteous, or because they were afraid of passing leprosy on to Jesus and His disciples, but because they were judged unclean according to God’s Law. The Old Testament contains an elaborate system of clean and unclean, a system that was carried into Jesus’ day. The people of Israel were to be pure and holy, they were to be ‘clean’ before God. There were many things that could make a person ‘unclean’ before God, including disease or the food that one ate. A person who was unclean could make others unclean, and so unclean people were banished from the camp until they could once again be made clean. But the lepers in our text had no hope of ever becoming clean, they were banished to live a life in exile together, they were unworthy to be with God’s people, much less with God. Like those lepers, our own sin defiles us, it makes us unclean. Our corrupted flesh, our sinful thoughts and actions, all make us unclean and unworthy to stand before God. We need mercy, because we are unclean, and with our sin clinging to our flesh, we have no hope of being with God or His people.
“When He saw them He said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went they were cleansed.” The ten lepers needed mercy, and they called upon the only one that could make them clean, who could show them mercy. Jesus Christ became man for the very reason of making clean what had become unclean by sin. God’s beautiful creation had been corrupted by sin, it had become unclean and unworthy to stand before the God who had given it life. But in the person of Jesus Christ, God cleansed all of creation, Christ was His agent of cleansing for a world that was filthy and unclean. Our text begins like this: “On the way to Jerusalem, He was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.” Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem, to the very place where His ultimate act of cleansing would take place. On this journey, He took up our sins and diseases, He took all that made us unclean upon His perfect shoulders and He carried them to Jerusalem. Each time that He healed someone, He was making another part of creation clean, but the greatest cleansing was yet to come. For when He entered Jerusalem, He entered to shed His blood, He entered to take our sins and diseases to the cross and there to die for them. On the road, He cleansed ten lepers, but on Calvary’s cross, His shed blood cleansed you, me, and all of humanity, indeed, all of creation. Everything was cleansed by His blood, it covered up every sin, every corruption, every disease, and every source of uncleanliness that filled our fallen bodies and souls. Red blood made us white and clean on that Good Friday, and not only us, but all of creation.
This cleansing then came to you and me in water. We call Baptism the washing of water with the Word precisely because it is in that water that we are cleansed. Just as water removes dirt from the body, so water applied “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” removes sin and all that made us unclean. Christ’s blood shed on Calvary then makes us clean and white, so that we can stand before God forever.
In our text, Jesus told the ten lepers to “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” They were to go to the location of God’s presence, the temple in Jerusalem, to be declared clean, to become part of the community once again. But before they had even made it there, they were cleansed. Nine men continued on to the temple to declare their cleansing. One man, however, turned back. “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” This man, who Jesus describes simply as a ‘foreigner,’ saw something that the other nine did not. He realized that the focus of God’s presence was no longer in the temple in Jerusalem, but instead it was centered in this man who was more than a man, Jesus Christ. He saw with the eyes of faith that Jesus truly was who He said He was, God in the flesh, the Messiah come to save. When Jesus was born, the temple became obsolete- God’s presence was in Jesus Christ, and would remain there for all eternity. Wherever Jesus is, there we have God’s presence, and God is present to save, He is present to cleanse. Jesus continues to clean us each and every time that we make our robes filthy again in sin, He is acting to cleanse our every stain. He does this through the words of forgiveness spoken by a pastor or other Christians, and through the feast of His Body and Blood. But this is only a foretaste of what is to come, for when Jesus Christ returns in glory, He will truly and ultimately cleanse all of creation, He will make everything new and clean, we will stand before God with the white robes. Our sicknesses and diseases remain with us in this world, but on that day, he will wash them all away.
When we realize this, when we see with eyes of faith that God’s presence is located in Jesus Christ, we respond as the Samaritan did: “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.” When we praise God, we are lifting Him up before the world as someone worthy to be praised for what He has done, namely because He sent His only begotten Son to bear our sin and be our Savior. When we fall on our faces and worship Christ, we acknowledge that He truly is God, that He deserves our worship and adoration. When we have been cleansed by Christ, when He has shed His blood on our behalf, what else can we do but give thanks to Him? Our thanksgiving does not bring us cleansing, it does not bring us Christ’s gifts, but instead is simply a response to the great things He has done for us. Each of these three responses is also a confession- we are confessing that God’s gracious presence is in Christ, we are confessing before all the world that the cleansing we all need only comes through Christ and His shed blood. When we give thanks, we are acknowledging, as the Samaritan leper did, that Christ has cleansed us.
And so as we celebrate Thanksgiving, we look toward all the gifts that God has given to us. He has given us families and friends, food and shelter, and a free country to live in. These are all wonderful gifts, gifts that it is proper to give thanks for. In our gradual today, we said: “The eyes of all look to You, [O LORD,] and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” However, we do not stop there- God has given us even greater gifts. Through Christ, we have been cleansed from all our sins, we have the promise that someday our corrupted, diseased bodies will be renewed and raised to live before God forever. That is the gift that we ultimately give thanks for on this day and every day. May the Lord continue to shower gifts of both body and soul upon you, and may He deliver to you His greatest gift, the gift of cleansing, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of living before Him forever, Amen.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Proper 28 of Series A (Matthew 25:14-30)
“For to everyone who has more will be given, and he will have an abundance.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning is the Gospel lesson read just a few moments ago from Matthew chapter twenty-five. Dear friends in Christ, we have just recently elected a new president. Today, a president-elect can travel throughout the country in a flash, he can go back and forth between his home and Washington in the same day. This was not the case a hundred and fifty years ago. Abraham Lincoln had to make a long trek across the heartland of the nation he had been chosen to lead, making many stops along the way. There was no triumphal entry for Lincoln- war was on the horizon. Instead he was almost smuggled into Washington to take power. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was much more dramatic, with giant crowds singing and waving palm branches, the people turned out to praise the one who would be their king. But Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. He did not enter Jerusalem to take the reins of power, He instead entered to depart. Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem to be crowned alright, but with thorns. He came to do battle against sin and Satan on our behalf, to slay them with all of their cruel power. Jesus came to die, and to die for us! He therefore told the parable in our text today to remind all people that He must depart, but that He would return.
But Christ did not leave us alone. He instead left us with His gifts, as He states in our text: “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.” Jesus may have left us visibly, but He remains with us through means. His promised Holy Spirit continually preaches Christ to us, He works to keep us focused on the king who departed. The Holy Spirit brings us Christ through the gift of the Word, both heard and read. He brings us Jesus in the waters of Holy Baptism, where He raises up a new person to live before Christ in His kingdom. In the Lord’s Supper the Holy Spirit brings us Christ’s very Body and Blood, Christ’s own physical presence. Even though we cannot see Him with our physical eyes, we know that Jesus is fulfilling His promise: “I AM with you always, to the end of the age.” The ‘ability’ that Jesus speaks of is not our own human ability, but instead, the word used here indicates the power given by the Holy Spirit, the very power given in those gifts, the power to live as Christians, as children of God. His grace overflows to us, from the cross through the Word and Sacraments to each and every one of us. This ability is the gift of faith, the gift of living a Christian life, if even in a weak and stumbling way. We are made able to live as Christians through the Holy Spirit- this ability is a gift of God. Without all these gifts, we would not be able to endure His departure, we would not be able to survive until His return. The Word and Sacraments are the beating heart of the Church, because through them the Holy Spirit strengthens your faith and continually forgives your sins. They are food for the journey, as we make our pilgrimage in the time between Christ’s first coming and His second.
Christ has given us gifts according to the overflowing grace and power that is given to us by the Holy Spirit. What do we do with such great gifts? “He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more.” Like the servants in our text, we spread the gifts we have been given to others, we multiply the gifts that have been given to us. We have the beautiful, wonderful Gospel message that Christ died for our sins, and not only our sins but the sins of the entire world. This message we show forth before others, we proclaim it to all whom we come into contact with. This message cannot stay trapped within us, but instead must get out to all people. In doing so, in proclaiming the Gospel entrusted to us, the Holy Spirit gains other people for Christ. God’s Word does not return empty, but instead works in the hearts of sinful people to create faith, to claim them for the kingdom, to bring those same gifts to them. He takes the gifts that were given to you and multiplies them, bringing others to the Savior.
But the last servant did not wish to proclaim his gift, he did not want to multiply what had been given him. “But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.” How often are we like this last servant!? We have received such amazing gifts from God, gifts that give us life and forgive our sins, but yet we often hid them in the ground. We do not speak of the hope that is within us, we do not even show with our lives that we have such a hope. Our faith becomes a private thing, something to be hidden and only spoken of within these walls. We gather here to receive the gifts of God, but do we take these gifts back with us into the world? Or does this place become the only place that we talk about Jesus? How often do we avoid opportunities to spread the Gospel to our friends and family, how often do we not even seek out such opportunities?
That final servant showed that he did not want the gift of the master, he showed that he despised his lord and all his gifts. “He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’” We also have many excuses for burying the gifts given to us, but the master will have none of it. “But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” And that is what we all deserve for not spreading the gifts of God into a world of darkness, we only deserve to be a part of that darkness, forever.
Thanks be to God that we have a Savior who is the Light, as Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson for today: “But you are not in darkness, brothers… For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.” How can that be, since we have not only failed to spread the Gospel, but have rebelled against God in every other aspect of our lives? Paul once again gives us the answer: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him.” Jesus Christ bled and died on a cross for our sin, He shed His blood in our place, granting us life and salvation. On that Friday which we call Good, the Light was surrounded by the powers of darkness. When the sun was snuffed out that afternoon, it was only a picture of the Light of the world being smothered and snuffed out, it was a picture of what we deserve. We deserve to be cast into outer darkness, we deserve to spend eternity apart from God, but instead the Light was cast into the outer darkness for us. Those who love the darkness thought that they had won, but instead three days later light once again shone forth from the empty tomb, and the Light, Jesus Christ Himself, God in the flesh, rose victorious over all darkness. And now Christ makes us children of light. Whether we are asleep or awake we live with Christ, we shine forth as children of light not because we ourselves are light, but because we have been illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
As children of the light, the grace of God for the sake of Christ comes into our lives each and every day. Every time that we sin, every time that we fail to share the gifts given to us, every time that we do not let our light shine before others, we repent and are forgiven by God. Because the Light died on the cross for us, because He has made us children of light through Holy Baptism, we are forgiven each and every time that we repent, and grace comes to us, overflowing like a spring.
As our text states: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance.” Because we have been given those gifts, because the Holy Spirit has worked faith within our hearts that grasps onto the grace of God through Christ, we are given ‘more.’ Now, ‘more’ in our translation is much too weak. The Greek word here is the word used for ‘all.’ We are given all things for the sake of Christ, His gifts deliver to us everything, all the inheritance that He earned on the cross. When the king, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, returns, He will say to us as the master said to the first two servants in our text: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” Because the Light was crucified for us and our sins, we will enter into the joy of our Lord. We will be a part of heavenly joy, the joy that can only come at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, the joy that comes on the Last Day, where we will rise just as Christ rose and will dwell with God forever. Christ sets us over much in heavenly glory, Christ gives us a seat at the feast, Christ has won us a place in the joy of eternal life! Christ has done all that for us! He did that by dying on the cross and rising again, and He delivers to us the benefits of that death and resurrection in His gifts, the Word and Sacraments.
Because we have a seat at the feast for the sake of Christ, because we are given forgiveness in this place every day through the abundant and overflowing grace of God, we then go out and live as children of the light. We do not need to be prodded or threatened to speak the Gospel to others, but instead it is simply something we do because of who we are, those redeemed by Christ. A living faith within us simply cannot keep the Gospel bottled up- it must get this message out into a world that is still living in darkness. May the Lord shine His light through you into this dark world, strengthening you to bring the message of the Gospel out to people who so desperately need its comfort, assurance and salvation, Amen.
But Christ did not leave us alone. He instead left us with His gifts, as He states in our text: “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.” Jesus may have left us visibly, but He remains with us through means. His promised Holy Spirit continually preaches Christ to us, He works to keep us focused on the king who departed. The Holy Spirit brings us Christ through the gift of the Word, both heard and read. He brings us Jesus in the waters of Holy Baptism, where He raises up a new person to live before Christ in His kingdom. In the Lord’s Supper the Holy Spirit brings us Christ’s very Body and Blood, Christ’s own physical presence. Even though we cannot see Him with our physical eyes, we know that Jesus is fulfilling His promise: “I AM with you always, to the end of the age.” The ‘ability’ that Jesus speaks of is not our own human ability, but instead, the word used here indicates the power given by the Holy Spirit, the very power given in those gifts, the power to live as Christians, as children of God. His grace overflows to us, from the cross through the Word and Sacraments to each and every one of us. This ability is the gift of faith, the gift of living a Christian life, if even in a weak and stumbling way. We are made able to live as Christians through the Holy Spirit- this ability is a gift of God. Without all these gifts, we would not be able to endure His departure, we would not be able to survive until His return. The Word and Sacraments are the beating heart of the Church, because through them the Holy Spirit strengthens your faith and continually forgives your sins. They are food for the journey, as we make our pilgrimage in the time between Christ’s first coming and His second.
Christ has given us gifts according to the overflowing grace and power that is given to us by the Holy Spirit. What do we do with such great gifts? “He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more.” Like the servants in our text, we spread the gifts we have been given to others, we multiply the gifts that have been given to us. We have the beautiful, wonderful Gospel message that Christ died for our sins, and not only our sins but the sins of the entire world. This message we show forth before others, we proclaim it to all whom we come into contact with. This message cannot stay trapped within us, but instead must get out to all people. In doing so, in proclaiming the Gospel entrusted to us, the Holy Spirit gains other people for Christ. God’s Word does not return empty, but instead works in the hearts of sinful people to create faith, to claim them for the kingdom, to bring those same gifts to them. He takes the gifts that were given to you and multiplies them, bringing others to the Savior.
But the last servant did not wish to proclaim his gift, he did not want to multiply what had been given him. “But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.” How often are we like this last servant!? We have received such amazing gifts from God, gifts that give us life and forgive our sins, but yet we often hid them in the ground. We do not speak of the hope that is within us, we do not even show with our lives that we have such a hope. Our faith becomes a private thing, something to be hidden and only spoken of within these walls. We gather here to receive the gifts of God, but do we take these gifts back with us into the world? Or does this place become the only place that we talk about Jesus? How often do we avoid opportunities to spread the Gospel to our friends and family, how often do we not even seek out such opportunities?
That final servant showed that he did not want the gift of the master, he showed that he despised his lord and all his gifts. “He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’” We also have many excuses for burying the gifts given to us, but the master will have none of it. “But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” And that is what we all deserve for not spreading the gifts of God into a world of darkness, we only deserve to be a part of that darkness, forever.
Thanks be to God that we have a Savior who is the Light, as Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson for today: “But you are not in darkness, brothers… For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.” How can that be, since we have not only failed to spread the Gospel, but have rebelled against God in every other aspect of our lives? Paul once again gives us the answer: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him.” Jesus Christ bled and died on a cross for our sin, He shed His blood in our place, granting us life and salvation. On that Friday which we call Good, the Light was surrounded by the powers of darkness. When the sun was snuffed out that afternoon, it was only a picture of the Light of the world being smothered and snuffed out, it was a picture of what we deserve. We deserve to be cast into outer darkness, we deserve to spend eternity apart from God, but instead the Light was cast into the outer darkness for us. Those who love the darkness thought that they had won, but instead three days later light once again shone forth from the empty tomb, and the Light, Jesus Christ Himself, God in the flesh, rose victorious over all darkness. And now Christ makes us children of light. Whether we are asleep or awake we live with Christ, we shine forth as children of light not because we ourselves are light, but because we have been illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
As children of the light, the grace of God for the sake of Christ comes into our lives each and every day. Every time that we sin, every time that we fail to share the gifts given to us, every time that we do not let our light shine before others, we repent and are forgiven by God. Because the Light died on the cross for us, because He has made us children of light through Holy Baptism, we are forgiven each and every time that we repent, and grace comes to us, overflowing like a spring.
As our text states: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance.” Because we have been given those gifts, because the Holy Spirit has worked faith within our hearts that grasps onto the grace of God through Christ, we are given ‘more.’ Now, ‘more’ in our translation is much too weak. The Greek word here is the word used for ‘all.’ We are given all things for the sake of Christ, His gifts deliver to us everything, all the inheritance that He earned on the cross. When the king, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, returns, He will say to us as the master said to the first two servants in our text: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” Because the Light was crucified for us and our sins, we will enter into the joy of our Lord. We will be a part of heavenly joy, the joy that can only come at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, the joy that comes on the Last Day, where we will rise just as Christ rose and will dwell with God forever. Christ sets us over much in heavenly glory, Christ gives us a seat at the feast, Christ has won us a place in the joy of eternal life! Christ has done all that for us! He did that by dying on the cross and rising again, and He delivers to us the benefits of that death and resurrection in His gifts, the Word and Sacraments.
Because we have a seat at the feast for the sake of Christ, because we are given forgiveness in this place every day through the abundant and overflowing grace of God, we then go out and live as children of the light. We do not need to be prodded or threatened to speak the Gospel to others, but instead it is simply something we do because of who we are, those redeemed by Christ. A living faith within us simply cannot keep the Gospel bottled up- it must get this message out into a world that is still living in darkness. May the Lord shine His light through you into this dark world, strengthening you to bring the message of the Gospel out to people who so desperately need its comfort, assurance and salvation, Amen.
Proper 29 of Series A (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24)
“I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from Ezekiel chapter thirty-four. Dear friends in Christ, just because someone has been given authority does not mean that they will do a faithful job. That is probably no surprise to any of you. You have all encountered employers or political leaders that have fallen down on the job, who maybe even have abused those who they were supposed to care for. In Ezekiel chapter 34, God begins by railing against the shepherds who were supposed to care for His chosen flock, the people of Israel. “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?” All that God says in our text for today is in response to those shepherds and their mismanagement of the flock. God has appointed people to shepherd His flock throughout history, and in many cases, those shepherds have let Him down.
The shepherds of Israel have not only neglected the flock, but they have actively persecuted it. God says in verse sixteen that “I will bring back the strayed.” The word used here for ‘strayed’ has the sense of being driven away, of being banished from. These shepherds actively drove away the flock they were entrusted with! By their sinful living, by their overbearing rules and regulations, and by their neglect, these men entrusted with leadership drove the people of Israel into sin and despair. The flock was driven into sin by the example and prodding of the very ones who were to protect God’s Law! We too are driven away from God and His Word through many things in this life. Secular rulers in this world try to separate our faith from our lives, and encourage sin. Satan is constantly working through our own sinful nature to drive us from God, to send us in the wilderness of this sinful world. We are surrounded by influences that drive us away from God- all you have to do is turn on a television or log onto the Internet. Finally, though we hope and pray that this does not happen intentionally, even pastors and vicars can drive people into sin and away from God through their teachings or their life.
The sheep- you, me, and all Israel- have much to complain about. There are many things in this world that are driving us away from God, that are driving us into sin. But the sheep are not innocent. “Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep, because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad.” We are as much to blame for wandering away as sin, Satan, and our leaders are for driving us away. We separate ourselves from God, we get ourselves lost every time that we sin. Very often we get satisfied with our sin, we soak up our sinful lives, even if it is a ‘minor’ sin. We feed on our sin and become like the fat sheep in our text, dwelling comfortably in the muddy fields of sin. Like a sheep who has forgotten what green pastures look like, we prefer to graze in the filth of this world, we encourage our ‘shepherds’ to lead us astray. When we do this, we lead others astray, we encourage them to wander off as well, we encourage them to be separated from God and His Word. We often have no regard for the weak sheep, those who are most susceptible to wandering into sin. Through our own wanderings, we drive them out into the wilderness, our own sin helps to separate them from God. We forget that we are all examples to one another, whether we are parents, teachers, or simply Christians.
God promises in our text that He will “judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.” Those who have become filled up with sin, those who have grazed on the pastures of sin, will be judged. Jesus speaks of that terrible day in our Gospel lesson for today. “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on the glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” Those who are separated from God, and have even helped to separate others from God will be judged- “And these will go away into eternal punishment.” When we wander in our sins, when we allow sin, Satan, and the world to drive us away from God, that is all that we deserve.
But God did not leave His flock scattered. He declares in our text for today, “I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey.” He was not willing to leave His flock in the wilderness of sin, subjected to eternal death. His love for us moved Him to do something about our wandering. “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and He shall feed them: He shall feed them and be their shepherd.” All the shepherds that try to take over our lives- secular rulers, TV preachers, sin, Satan, and our own sinful mind- will be replaced by one Shepherd, the Shepherd, who will truly take care of God’s flock. This one Shepherd will be ‘set up’ by God, He will not be chosen by the sheep in a popular election, He will not be a sheep who decides to take on this role. Instead He will be a Shepherd risen up by God from amongst the sheep, He will be one of them, but one that does not feast on the pastures of sin. This Shepherd will be the promised Messiah of God, the one who came from the line of David, the one foretold in all of Scripture. He will be David’s Son according to the flesh, one of the sheep, but yet David’s Lord, God in the flesh, God in the form of one of His sheep. This man, born of David’s line, is named Jesus Christ, and where He is, there you have salvation! He was appointed from before creation as God’s agent of rescue and salvation for sheep who have wandered. The mismanagement of our shepherds had put us at risk, our own wanderings deserved punishment, but in the person of Jesus Christ God dealt with our sin and rescued us from its bonds. He came as the Shepherd, as God’s servant David, the location of God’s presence among His people. “And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.” In Jesus Christ, the prince from the line of David, God was present with His people, and He was present to rescue.
For the Shepherd and the Prince was also the Lamb, the Lamb whose blood would be shed for a wandering flock. Those shepherds of Israel, those who had been appointed by God to care for His flock, did not recognize God’s presence among them, they did not recognize the Chief Shepherd. Instead they put Him to death, they hung Him on the cross. But there the Lamb’s blood cleansed us of all our sin, His death forgave us for every time that we have wandered or caused others to wander. Those who drove us away from God did not have the final victory, because God acted to restore wandering sheep, He acted to gather His flock.
When the Shepherd, Prince, and Lamb- Jesus Christ- rose from the grave on Easter Sunday, God began to gather His flock again. “For thus says the Lord God: Behold I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep.” For the past two thousand years He has been gathering His flock through His Church. He has been seeking out these sheep, calling to people in each and every age, bringing them back into His fold. The Church can only be this instrument because the Shepherd remains among His sheep. Jesus Christ is God’s servant David, who “shall be prince among them.” We cannot see Him, but He is present among His sheep invisibly through the Word and the Sacraments. In the Word read and proclaimed, in the washing of water with the Word in Holy Baptism, and in the feast of the Lamb’s very own Body and Blood, the Prince is still present among His people, the Shepherd still seeks out His sheep. Wherever Christ’s presence is, there God is gathering sheep, and He has gathered us into His flock through those gifts.
God tells us that “I will seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.” On the Last Day, when Christ comes again in glory, God will gather all of His sheep, living and dead, together forever. It is on that Day that the rescue which our Shepherd and Prince affected with His blood will be completely fulfilled. We are the ones God is speaking about when He says “I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land.”
Our own land is the inheritance promised to us, the heavenly pastures that Christ’s shed blood delivers to we who as sheep have wandered. “And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.” We will dwell in safety and security for eternity in the heavenly pastures. We will no longer be led astray and driven away by false shepherds and the ways of this world, because we will have a new Shepherd, as God declares: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured.”
We have this promise and carry it with us because we know that Jesus Christ has died for our sins, and we know that God has accepted the sacrifice of the Shepherd, of His Prince, because He raised Jesus from the dead. Without the resurrection, none of what God described in our text belongs to us, and we are still in our wanderings, doomed to be separated from God forever. But as Paul reminds us in our Epistle lesson: “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” We place our confidence in the resurrection, that just as the Shepherd was raised, so we too shall be raised and will dwell forever in heavenly pastures. May the Lord preserve you in that faith and confidence until that Day when He gathers you to Himself to dwell as members of His flock forever, Amen.
The shepherds of Israel have not only neglected the flock, but they have actively persecuted it. God says in verse sixteen that “I will bring back the strayed.” The word used here for ‘strayed’ has the sense of being driven away, of being banished from. These shepherds actively drove away the flock they were entrusted with! By their sinful living, by their overbearing rules and regulations, and by their neglect, these men entrusted with leadership drove the people of Israel into sin and despair. The flock was driven into sin by the example and prodding of the very ones who were to protect God’s Law! We too are driven away from God and His Word through many things in this life. Secular rulers in this world try to separate our faith from our lives, and encourage sin. Satan is constantly working through our own sinful nature to drive us from God, to send us in the wilderness of this sinful world. We are surrounded by influences that drive us away from God- all you have to do is turn on a television or log onto the Internet. Finally, though we hope and pray that this does not happen intentionally, even pastors and vicars can drive people into sin and away from God through their teachings or their life.
The sheep- you, me, and all Israel- have much to complain about. There are many things in this world that are driving us away from God, that are driving us into sin. But the sheep are not innocent. “Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep, because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad.” We are as much to blame for wandering away as sin, Satan, and our leaders are for driving us away. We separate ourselves from God, we get ourselves lost every time that we sin. Very often we get satisfied with our sin, we soak up our sinful lives, even if it is a ‘minor’ sin. We feed on our sin and become like the fat sheep in our text, dwelling comfortably in the muddy fields of sin. Like a sheep who has forgotten what green pastures look like, we prefer to graze in the filth of this world, we encourage our ‘shepherds’ to lead us astray. When we do this, we lead others astray, we encourage them to wander off as well, we encourage them to be separated from God and His Word. We often have no regard for the weak sheep, those who are most susceptible to wandering into sin. Through our own wanderings, we drive them out into the wilderness, our own sin helps to separate them from God. We forget that we are all examples to one another, whether we are parents, teachers, or simply Christians.
God promises in our text that He will “judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.” Those who have become filled up with sin, those who have grazed on the pastures of sin, will be judged. Jesus speaks of that terrible day in our Gospel lesson for today. “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on the glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” Those who are separated from God, and have even helped to separate others from God will be judged- “And these will go away into eternal punishment.” When we wander in our sins, when we allow sin, Satan, and the world to drive us away from God, that is all that we deserve.
But God did not leave His flock scattered. He declares in our text for today, “I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey.” He was not willing to leave His flock in the wilderness of sin, subjected to eternal death. His love for us moved Him to do something about our wandering. “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and He shall feed them: He shall feed them and be their shepherd.” All the shepherds that try to take over our lives- secular rulers, TV preachers, sin, Satan, and our own sinful mind- will be replaced by one Shepherd, the Shepherd, who will truly take care of God’s flock. This one Shepherd will be ‘set up’ by God, He will not be chosen by the sheep in a popular election, He will not be a sheep who decides to take on this role. Instead He will be a Shepherd risen up by God from amongst the sheep, He will be one of them, but one that does not feast on the pastures of sin. This Shepherd will be the promised Messiah of God, the one who came from the line of David, the one foretold in all of Scripture. He will be David’s Son according to the flesh, one of the sheep, but yet David’s Lord, God in the flesh, God in the form of one of His sheep. This man, born of David’s line, is named Jesus Christ, and where He is, there you have salvation! He was appointed from before creation as God’s agent of rescue and salvation for sheep who have wandered. The mismanagement of our shepherds had put us at risk, our own wanderings deserved punishment, but in the person of Jesus Christ God dealt with our sin and rescued us from its bonds. He came as the Shepherd, as God’s servant David, the location of God’s presence among His people. “And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.” In Jesus Christ, the prince from the line of David, God was present with His people, and He was present to rescue.
For the Shepherd and the Prince was also the Lamb, the Lamb whose blood would be shed for a wandering flock. Those shepherds of Israel, those who had been appointed by God to care for His flock, did not recognize God’s presence among them, they did not recognize the Chief Shepherd. Instead they put Him to death, they hung Him on the cross. But there the Lamb’s blood cleansed us of all our sin, His death forgave us for every time that we have wandered or caused others to wander. Those who drove us away from God did not have the final victory, because God acted to restore wandering sheep, He acted to gather His flock.
When the Shepherd, Prince, and Lamb- Jesus Christ- rose from the grave on Easter Sunday, God began to gather His flock again. “For thus says the Lord God: Behold I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep.” For the past two thousand years He has been gathering His flock through His Church. He has been seeking out these sheep, calling to people in each and every age, bringing them back into His fold. The Church can only be this instrument because the Shepherd remains among His sheep. Jesus Christ is God’s servant David, who “shall be prince among them.” We cannot see Him, but He is present among His sheep invisibly through the Word and the Sacraments. In the Word read and proclaimed, in the washing of water with the Word in Holy Baptism, and in the feast of the Lamb’s very own Body and Blood, the Prince is still present among His people, the Shepherd still seeks out His sheep. Wherever Christ’s presence is, there God is gathering sheep, and He has gathered us into His flock through those gifts.
God tells us that “I will seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.” On the Last Day, when Christ comes again in glory, God will gather all of His sheep, living and dead, together forever. It is on that Day that the rescue which our Shepherd and Prince affected with His blood will be completely fulfilled. We are the ones God is speaking about when He says “I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land.”
Our own land is the inheritance promised to us, the heavenly pastures that Christ’s shed blood delivers to we who as sheep have wandered. “And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.” We will dwell in safety and security for eternity in the heavenly pastures. We will no longer be led astray and driven away by false shepherds and the ways of this world, because we will have a new Shepherd, as God declares: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured.”
We have this promise and carry it with us because we know that Jesus Christ has died for our sins, and we know that God has accepted the sacrifice of the Shepherd, of His Prince, because He raised Jesus from the dead. Without the resurrection, none of what God described in our text belongs to us, and we are still in our wanderings, doomed to be separated from God forever. But as Paul reminds us in our Epistle lesson: “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” We place our confidence in the resurrection, that just as the Shepherd was raised, so we too shall be raised and will dwell forever in heavenly pastures. May the Lord preserve you in that faith and confidence until that Day when He gathers you to Himself to dwell as members of His flock forever, Amen.
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