Martin Luther writes: “It is the nature of God to make something out of nothing. Therefore out of him who is not yet nothing God cannot make anything… So then God receives only the abandoned; He makes well only the sick; He makes seeing only the blind; He makes alive only the dead; He makes godly only the sinners; He makes wise only the foolish. In short, He has pity only on the miserable, and gives grace only to those who are without grace.” A man of God is sent to you, sent from the glories of heaven itself into the famine of this world, sent from prosperity to want, from the garden to the wilderness, from abundance to scarcity. All around you there is not wealth but poverty; the people are starving, their stomachs empty and their mouths dry. There is need everywhere, and no one knows where provision will come from, no one knows when hunger will end. The famine rages, and at its worst the man of God comes to you. He comes to you where you dwell, in the midst of an unclean land, surrounded by worshippers of idols, the last place one would expect a man of God to go. This is far from the land set aside as holy, this is far from the sacred places where one would expect God to be. This bone-dry, idolatrous and wicked land is far from God, it is far from anything that is godly. Here idols dwell; here children are sacrificed to false gods; here the temple prostitutes ply their trade. But it is not to the city of Jerusalem that the man of God is sent; He is sent to the land of the Gentiles, the land of sin and death; He is sent to you.
He is sent to you because God has appointed you to serve Him. You didn’t know it, you were never asked, you never signed your name on the dotted line. There were no notaries or lawyers involved here; God simply appointed you, He chose you to welcome His sent one, to receive Him into your home. That is why this man of God comes to you, to receive all that you have to give, to eat and to drink out of your abundance, to share your table. To the man of God you are to render the service that is owed to God Himself: a life lived in obedient service to your Creator, following His laws and constructing a home of holiness, filling a storehouse to the brim with righteousness, constructing barns stacked with good works. That is the food that God requires, that is the drink He demands. You are appointed to care for this man of God, to provide for Him from your abundance, to set His table richly, whether He says, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink,” or “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” Food, water, shelter, this man of God has come to be served by you.
But that’s ridiculous; you have nothing to give. You are in poverty yourself, you are starving, abandoned by all, surrounded by wickedness: how can you give the man of God anything? You have nothing to give, nothing that He needs, nothing that He can use. You are a beggar, you are nothing, you have nothing except empty hands. You do not have any house of holiness, just a shack of sin. Your storehouses are not full of righteousness but iniquity. Your barn of good works? It’s a shed built with sticks, and every good work in there is moldy with sin. You are starving; you have not the food that the man of God is seeking, that God has demanded that you render to Him.
You are at the point of death; the famine is about to take you, to claim you for its own. All you have is a poor meal that cannot save from death, and may even speed up the process. That is what your idols have given to you, that is what your coveting has delivered: a cake of bread, that you may eat of it and die. That is the abundance that your neighbors encourage you to chase: wealth, power, influence, glory. A little oil in a jug and a handful of flour in a jar. You eat of it, and you are hungrier than before. This food cannot satisfy, it cannot fill; in fact, this food doesn’t fill the pit in your stomach, it expands it. The world, along with your idols, continues to hand you everything on the shelf to toss in there: money, influence, work, sex, alcohol, drugs, sports, but nothing satisfies, nothing fills that hole. Such food simply makes you hungrier, emptier, and the more you pour into that hole, the bigger it gets
This is a meal of death, a meal that can only deliver death. You have nothing for this man of God but your sin, and you say to Him, “Now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and for my son, that we may eat it and die.” For that is all that this scarce meal can give you—death. Some of this fare may bring death quicker than others, but none of it can deliver from death. Nothing this world can offer or deliver lasts beyond the grave. So God seems to be mocking you. Just what is He after, sending this man of God to you, asking you to provide for Him? He knows you are starving, He knows your cries of anguish in the night, begging for deliverance, begging for some food that might last. And now the man of God comes to you so that you can provide for Him? No, you would rather eat your meal and die.
But the man of God is undaunted. “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and for your son.” He is calling on you to believe, to trust without seeing; to give up all that the world gives you, that sparse meal in the midst of famine that has been the only fare you’ve ever known, trusting that God will provide. For the man of God adds this promise: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” The man of God has not come to you to demand holiness, for He knows you are unholy, He has not come to you to demand righteousness, for He knows you are unrighteous, He has not come to you to demand good works, for He knows you have none that are worth anything in God’s sight. He has instead come to take and to give: to take your sin and wretchedness, the last morsel from your jar, and to give in its place the overflowing bread of life until the famine is broken on the great Day of the Lord.
You are called upon to believe, to trust, to hand over your sin and iniquity to Him trusting that He will provide for you. “Do not fear,” He tells you. Do not fear, for God has never failed to keep a single one of His promises. Do not fear, for the man of God is not going to take anything that is worth keeping. Do not fear, for this is the deliverance you have prayed for. Unbelief clings to what is seen, what it knows, no matter how poor and miserable that sight is. Unbelief doesn’t want to let go of sin; it wants to treasure it, indulge it, wallow in it. Faith, on the other hand, is born of the promise, its strength comes only from the Word of God, and it clings to that Word with tenacity.
The man of God takes your morsel of sin, your meal of unrighteousness, and He consumes it. He fills His belly with your every iniquity, He takes into Himself your every transgression. Your uncleanness, your unrighteousness, your tainted good works, He takes them all into His own flesh. He consumes them all, and they kill Him, just as they were killing you, just as they were delivering you up to death. The man of God, Jesus Christ, takes your sin into Himself and dies the death that it was to give to you. He dies in your place, as your substitute, with that bitter food filling His belly. But He did not stay dead. This food would’ve killed you forever, but Jesus, the man of God, the innocent One, cannot be held by the grave. He rose, leaving behind your sin and iniquity, having borne in His own body the death you should’ve died, and winning for you a jar of flour that will not be spent and a jug of oil that will not become empty.
In place of the food of sin, the meals of iniquity, Jesus provides much richer fare, food that delivers life, food that actually fills that gaping, empty pit within you. From the jar of flour and the jug of oil comes the Bread of Life Himself, Jesus, giving to you the meal that brings immortality, the food that will last forever, the Word, the water, the bread and the wine which give eternal life. You still dwell in the midst of the famine; you still dwell in a foreign land, surrounded by idol-worshippers, but you have what no unbeliever has: a jar of flour and a jug of oil that will never run out, that feed and sustain you in the midst of a world filled with scarcity. That is God’s promise, fulfilled when you gather in this place, a promise founded on the power of His Word. “The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the Word of the Lord.”
Only having received the miraculous food that He alone gives do you then serve Him by serving others, by extending the love that He first showed to you and producing the only works that are good, those done in faith, those made with the flour and the oil that He provides. This is the life of faith, dwelling with Jesus in our house, eating from His miraculous provision, and sharing those gifts with a starving world. As Saint Paul says, “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” The flour and the oil, eaten in this place and given into the world, is the guarantee that there is a Day that is coming when you will hear the thunder, and the sweet smell of rain will fill your nostrils. The famine will end, the wilderness of scarcity will become the garden of abundance; that is God’s promise, as sure as the jar of flour and the jug of oil, as sure as the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Though you were not worthy, this Jesus, the man of God, came to you; not to be served, even though the Law demanded that you serve Him, but to serve. When you were nothing, when you were a beggar, when you had nothing to give but your sin, that was what the man of God took from you, that is what Jesus took upon Himself. When you were nothing, when you were struck down by your sin and poverty, it was then that Christ came to you, for as Luther declares: “It is the nature of God to make something out of nothing. Therefore out of him who is not yet nothing God cannot make anything… So then God receives only the abandoned; He makes well only the sick; He makes seeing only the blind; He makes alive only the dead; He makes godly only the sinners; He makes wise only the foolish. In short, He has pity only on the miserable, and gives grace only to those who are without grace.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Friday, September 23, 2016
Holy Cross Day (John 12:20-33)
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this festival of the Holy Cross is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” A simple request, really, and quite understandable. These Greeks are in Jerusalem for the Passover; they have heard the commotion of Palm Sunday, the events that shook that great city to its core. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” They want to see this great man of God, to hear Him speak, to perhaps even have the opportunity to ask a few questions. They have heard so much about Him, now they want to see Him for themselves. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The disciples have certainly fielded requests like this before; throughout His three-year ministry many people have been brought to see Jesus. But this time something is different. This request comes not from Jews, or even from Samaritans, the usual crowd hanging around Jesus, the inhabitants of first century Palestine, occupying a small corner of this world. These are Greeks, and at this moment, on Palm Sunday, they stand in for the rest of the world; they represent the nations lining up to see Jesus, peoples and tribes and languages spanning the globe, all with this simple request: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The time has come for Jesus to show Himself to the world.
“And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’” The request of these Greeks, as simple as it may sound, is a signal Jesus has been waiting for. The hour has come; it is time for Jesus to be revealed, to be glorified before the entire world. It is time for a local mission to become universal, it is time for the message of Christ to travel to every corner of creation. It is time for all to see His glory. And the world will be looking for it. We will look for the glory of Christ in more and greater miracles, delivering us from the suffering of disease and depression. We will look for the glory of Jesus in more profound and practical teachings, delivering us from the suffering of broken relationships and business failure. We will look for the glory of Jesus working the levers of power, delivering us from the suffering of poor government. We will look for the glory of Jesus in fancy church buildings, full pews and full offering plates, delivering us from the suffering of persecution and opposition. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus;” we wish to see His glory, the glory that will glorify us in the eyes of all those around us, the glory that is an escape from all the suffering this world can deal out.
But the glorification that Jesus has in mind has nothing to do with escaping suffering. “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The Greeks wish to see Jesus; the world is looking for the revelation of His glory, and Christ will show it to us, but in a way that none expect: by dying. He will bear much fruit, He will give forth a harvest the world has never seen, grain from every corner of this planet, but only by following the seed into the ground, only by dying. One of God’s greatest miracles in creation is that a dead, dry and wrinkled seed can sit on a shelf for months, even years, but when it is put into the ground, when it finds soil and water, it comes alive, and bears a harvest. Jesus will follow the pattern of the seed: He will be put into the ground dead, but will emerge alive, bearing much fruit. Only by dying will we see Jesus’s glory, only by suffering will Jesus be exalted. “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Jesus saves His life only by losing it; He loves the world only by hating His life in it. He doesn’t escape from suffering, but gives Himself into it. And He calls on the world to follow Him. “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” Where is Jesus? On the cross, and there His servants will be also. We follow Jesus to glory, certainly, but only after suffering, only after the cross.
It is at this point that many who wished to see Jesus turn away; the cost is too high. Jesus, too, is tempted to escape from suffering; as the cross draws near, He wrestles with His Father’s will. “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’” Jesus sees what lies ahead of Him: the horror of the cross, the humiliation, the pain, the suffering that will be inflicted by a sinful world. We want a Jesus that has no cross, a Jesus that makes us feel better, that gives us glory right now, who delivers from suffering, not one who leads us into it. But the only path to glory, the only path to true, complete, and eternal freedom from suffering, is through suffering and death, it is through the cross. “For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your Name.” Asking for glory is asking for the cross. The two are inseparable, tied together; they are one and the same. Christ’s glory is Christ’s suffering; Christ’s exaltation is Christ’s cross. Jesus’ soul was troubled, but now He is resolute, He will go to the cross, He will fulfill the Father’s will, Jesus will save His life by losing it, He will hate His life in this world by giving it into death upon the cross. He will not ask for salvation from this hour but for glory, the glory of the cross. And His Father will answer. “Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
The cross doesn’t look very glorious, although we dress it up like it is. Every cross should be a crucifix, every cross should bear the body of Jesus, or else we are tempted to make it pretty, to give the cross some kind of magnificence or glory of its own. Dear friends, the cross has no glory in itself. By itself the cross is an instrument of torture, designed to give a cruel and agonizing death. Our attempts to dress it up, to plate it with gold, to hang it from a rapper’s neck or tattoo it on the small of our back are futile. The cross only has glory because it bears the body of Jesus. The glory of the cross only comes from what was done there, what Jesus accomplished hanging on its horrific beams. “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The cross only has glory because Jesus hung there, exalted and lifted on high, bearing the sin of the world. The cross only has glory because it is spattered with the blood of Jesus, because there the sacrifice for the sin of the world was slaughtered. The cross only has glory because on the cross the serpent’s head is crushed, there the ruler of this world is cast down from His throne. The cross is a standard of victory because it is in the death of Jesus that we see Jesus for who He truly is, the Savior from sin and death, the One who leads us through suffering and death, His and ours, to a new creation where suffering and death will be no more. Glory comes through suffering: that is the message of the cross.
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” It isn’t important whether those Greeks saw Jesus or not that day: what is important is that their request was answered on Good Friday: there the world sees Jesus as He wishes to be seen, in His glory as the Savior of the world. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” This is the question the world is asking the Church, whether they realize it or not. And we must give answer, we must show this world Jesus, Jesus upon the cross, Jesus lifted up from the earth, for we have the promise that where Jesus is thus exalted, He will draw all people to Himself. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” This is the question you must ask every time you gather in this place, and you must hold your pastors accountable to show you Jesus as He wishes to be seen: suspended between earth and heaven, exalted in glory upon the cross, drawing all people to Himself. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The people of Israel, facing the just consequences of their sin, were told to look upon the embodiment of their sin hanging upon a pole; they looked, and they lived. As we languish in our sin, suffering in a sinful world, subject to sin’s penalty, we are called to look upon the embodiment of our sin hanging on a cross; we look in faith, and we live. Jesus’ glorification began when they lifted up His body on the cross, suspending Him between earth and heaven, exalted for you, glorified for you, so that one day He will draw you out your graves and to Himself; forever. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
“And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’” The request of these Greeks, as simple as it may sound, is a signal Jesus has been waiting for. The hour has come; it is time for Jesus to be revealed, to be glorified before the entire world. It is time for a local mission to become universal, it is time for the message of Christ to travel to every corner of creation. It is time for all to see His glory. And the world will be looking for it. We will look for the glory of Christ in more and greater miracles, delivering us from the suffering of disease and depression. We will look for the glory of Jesus in more profound and practical teachings, delivering us from the suffering of broken relationships and business failure. We will look for the glory of Jesus working the levers of power, delivering us from the suffering of poor government. We will look for the glory of Jesus in fancy church buildings, full pews and full offering plates, delivering us from the suffering of persecution and opposition. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus;” we wish to see His glory, the glory that will glorify us in the eyes of all those around us, the glory that is an escape from all the suffering this world can deal out.
But the glorification that Jesus has in mind has nothing to do with escaping suffering. “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The Greeks wish to see Jesus; the world is looking for the revelation of His glory, and Christ will show it to us, but in a way that none expect: by dying. He will bear much fruit, He will give forth a harvest the world has never seen, grain from every corner of this planet, but only by following the seed into the ground, only by dying. One of God’s greatest miracles in creation is that a dead, dry and wrinkled seed can sit on a shelf for months, even years, but when it is put into the ground, when it finds soil and water, it comes alive, and bears a harvest. Jesus will follow the pattern of the seed: He will be put into the ground dead, but will emerge alive, bearing much fruit. Only by dying will we see Jesus’s glory, only by suffering will Jesus be exalted. “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Jesus saves His life only by losing it; He loves the world only by hating His life in it. He doesn’t escape from suffering, but gives Himself into it. And He calls on the world to follow Him. “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” Where is Jesus? On the cross, and there His servants will be also. We follow Jesus to glory, certainly, but only after suffering, only after the cross.
It is at this point that many who wished to see Jesus turn away; the cost is too high. Jesus, too, is tempted to escape from suffering; as the cross draws near, He wrestles with His Father’s will. “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’” Jesus sees what lies ahead of Him: the horror of the cross, the humiliation, the pain, the suffering that will be inflicted by a sinful world. We want a Jesus that has no cross, a Jesus that makes us feel better, that gives us glory right now, who delivers from suffering, not one who leads us into it. But the only path to glory, the only path to true, complete, and eternal freedom from suffering, is through suffering and death, it is through the cross. “For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your Name.” Asking for glory is asking for the cross. The two are inseparable, tied together; they are one and the same. Christ’s glory is Christ’s suffering; Christ’s exaltation is Christ’s cross. Jesus’ soul was troubled, but now He is resolute, He will go to the cross, He will fulfill the Father’s will, Jesus will save His life by losing it, He will hate His life in this world by giving it into death upon the cross. He will not ask for salvation from this hour but for glory, the glory of the cross. And His Father will answer. “Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
The cross doesn’t look very glorious, although we dress it up like it is. Every cross should be a crucifix, every cross should bear the body of Jesus, or else we are tempted to make it pretty, to give the cross some kind of magnificence or glory of its own. Dear friends, the cross has no glory in itself. By itself the cross is an instrument of torture, designed to give a cruel and agonizing death. Our attempts to dress it up, to plate it with gold, to hang it from a rapper’s neck or tattoo it on the small of our back are futile. The cross only has glory because it bears the body of Jesus. The glory of the cross only comes from what was done there, what Jesus accomplished hanging on its horrific beams. “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The cross only has glory because Jesus hung there, exalted and lifted on high, bearing the sin of the world. The cross only has glory because it is spattered with the blood of Jesus, because there the sacrifice for the sin of the world was slaughtered. The cross only has glory because on the cross the serpent’s head is crushed, there the ruler of this world is cast down from His throne. The cross is a standard of victory because it is in the death of Jesus that we see Jesus for who He truly is, the Savior from sin and death, the One who leads us through suffering and death, His and ours, to a new creation where suffering and death will be no more. Glory comes through suffering: that is the message of the cross.
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” It isn’t important whether those Greeks saw Jesus or not that day: what is important is that their request was answered on Good Friday: there the world sees Jesus as He wishes to be seen, in His glory as the Savior of the world. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” This is the question the world is asking the Church, whether they realize it or not. And we must give answer, we must show this world Jesus, Jesus upon the cross, Jesus lifted up from the earth, for we have the promise that where Jesus is thus exalted, He will draw all people to Himself. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” This is the question you must ask every time you gather in this place, and you must hold your pastors accountable to show you Jesus as He wishes to be seen: suspended between earth and heaven, exalted in glory upon the cross, drawing all people to Himself. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” The people of Israel, facing the just consequences of their sin, were told to look upon the embodiment of their sin hanging upon a pole; they looked, and they lived. As we languish in our sin, suffering in a sinful world, subject to sin’s penalty, we are called to look upon the embodiment of our sin hanging on a cross; we look in faith, and we live. Jesus’ glorification began when they lifted up His body on the cross, suspending Him between earth and heaven, exalted for you, glorified for you, so that one day He will draw you out your graves and to Himself; forever. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Trinity 14 (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 from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ: common politeness dictates that you tell someone ‘thank you’ when they give you a gift. We teach our children this, and we hammer it home, whether it’s for a bike on their fifth birthday or for a college scholarship. A thank-you acknowledges the gift, it acknowledges its importance, and it honors the giver. It demonstrates how highly you hold that gift, and how highly you respect the one who gave it to you. In the fifth petition to the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” Martin Luther teaches us to confess: “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” All people receive daily bread from God; they all are provided for out of His abundance with what they need for this body and life. The rain doesn’t just fall on the fields of Christians; it is not only Christians that have food to eat. But only Christians give thanks to the right person, only Christians give thanks in the right place; only the voice of faith gives thanks to the God who gives all good things, while the voice of unbelief gives thanks in the wrong place or not at all.
Ten lepers stood at the side of the road, just outside of a village. They were afflicted with a terrible disease, a disease of living death, that would not only one day claim their life, but until that day made them outcasts, isolated from their people and from the worship of their God. The book of Leviticus tells them how they are to live. “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone.” They are lost, without hope, condemned to death, estranged from their people, estranged from their God. But then they see Jesus. They see this man they have heard so much about, this great miracle-worker from Galilee, the teacher, the healer of so many. This is their chance, their one hope, and so they do not cry, “Unclean, unclean!” but, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
Their voices utter a cry of faith. They believe that Jesus can heal them; they believe that He can do something about the terrible state that they’re in. They trust that He will have mercy, that He will have compassion, that He will not hold back, but will act. They cry out to the only One who can do anything about their situation, the One who has proven again and again that it is to Him that all who are broken by the effects of sin must go, that it is He alone who can give the healing that all men need. They believe that He can heal them; otherwise, they would’ve kept quiet in their dark despair. But when they see Jesus, they see hope, when they see Jesus, they see healing, when they see Jesus, they see the coming of light and life into their darkness and death.
And they were right. Their faith has the proper object; they believed in the only One on the planet who had in Himself the power to heal. Their faith would’ve been of no benefit if they would’ve believed in the next guy to come into town, or if they would’ve put their trust in a Greek, Canaanite, or Egyptian god. Dear friends, faith is only as good as its object. If the object cannot heal or save, no amount of faith will help. The object of their faith was the only one who could heal them. And heal them He did. “When He saw them He said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ He calls them to a further exercise of their faith; He does not heal them immediately, but He sends them to demonstrate their healing to the proper authorities, trusting that it will happen, indeed as if it had already happened. They do not waver: they trust, they believe, they go.
“And as they went they were cleansed.” Death reversed. Life restored. Skin renewed and reborn. They actually experience Nicodemus’ sarcastic question: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” The ten lepers are reborn; they pass from death to life, from outcasts to full members of the community. Imagine the sight, as they watched their skin renewed and restored, made whole again, cleansed from its corruption. Now all that was left was to go, as Jesus instructed them, to the temple. There they testify to their healing; there they demonstrate that the Law’s demands have been fulfilled: they are clean! Christ has done it all for them, they are healed by His work, not their own. They simply believed in the One who had power to heal, and He healed. The Law which once excluded them now brings them back into the fellowship of their people, the fellowship of their God.
Nine former lepers returned home, certainly rejoicing, certainly giving thanks. The miracle worker had worked a miracle in their lives, they believed that He could heal them, and heal them He did. Now they are restored to their community, and they will begin the rituals to be fully integrated back home. But that’s all. Certainly this has been an amazing, miraculous, wonderful day, but there is nothing for them beyond the physical healing. So ends the story of the nine; once lepers, now clean. But as great as the cleansing of leprosy is, for one man this miracle has meant much more than the healing of his body. “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.” Something much more important happened to him than the cleansing of his skin.
The same Word that cleansed his body also cleansed his soul. The new birth that he experienced on the outside was mirrored by a new birth on the inside. He received both what Nicodemus sarcastically asked for and what Jesus actually promised: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” He knew what it meant to be baptized into Christ; he saw in his body what Christ had done to his soul. Ten men were healed, only one was saved, only one believed. The nine believed that Jesus was a miracle worker, a rabbi who could restore their skin; the one believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, the One who could restore his soul. His skin was afflicted with living death—the exact same state of his soul—but both were restored, both were healed, both were saved. The nine left the temple with clean bodies and still corrupted souls; the one returned to Jesus restored in both body and soul.
Faith gives thanks in the proper place to the proper person. In this case, the proper place and the proper person are the same. Only Christ has healed him, only Christ has saved him. His voice, once raised up in cries for help, is now raised up in cries of thanksgiving. Ten were healed; one was saved. God sends rain on the just and the unjust, and He sent His Son for the healing of all people, to cleanse them from the leprosy of their sin. The Law’s demand on the leprous in soul is not only death, but eternal death, to be outcast from God forever. But Christ fulfilled the Law’s demands, bearing your sin in His own flesh; dying and rising again as your substitute, in your place. And now His healing, won by His blood, is for all, it is freely given to all, to be received by faith. Go and show yourselves to the Law, dear friends, and because you are in Christ, it will have nothing to say against you. Your soul has been restored like the skin of the ten lepers; you have been washed clean by Christ’s shed blood, poured out on Calvary’s cross.
But what is true of daily bread is also true of the bread of life: unbelief gives no thanks. The voice of faith gives thanks; it can’t help it. Gratitude overflows from one who has been given all things, the healing of body and soul. The voice of faith gives thanks to the One who is Himself the presence of God in the flesh, it realizes that every good gift comes from God, and that God is to be found where the flesh of Jesus is. And where is the flesh of Jesus to be found? In His Church, His bride. Where the bride is, there the bridegroom will be, serving the wedding guests. And there Christians will be gathered, giving to Christ great thanks and praise, falling down before His feet, as the psalmist says: “Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!”
Elsewhere, away from Jesus, is thankless unbelief. “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” It’s just common politeness, after all, to give thanks when a gift has been given, but Jesus has much more in mind than proper etiquette. A lack of thankfulness isn’t remedied by a good scolding or taking away a toy; a lack of thankfulness indicates that there is no faith. Once again, as Luther teaches us in the Small Catechism: “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” The difference between a believer and a non-believer is not in the gift given—as God gives daily bread to everyone, so Christ died for the sin of the world—but in the thankfulness born of faith. The believer gives thanks, the non-believer gives no thanks at all, or (perhaps even worse) gives thanks to someone else.
But thanks given to anyone other than Jesus is misplaced. Only He comes to give the healing that all people need, even foreigners, even Samaritans, even you and me. He comes to heal our souls by washing them clean in His shed blood so that one day our bodies will be cleansed from the leprosy of sin, the disease that is at the root of all others, the only malady that can condemn to hell. When the Samaritan leper sees his skin restored on the road, he is seeing a preview of the Last Day, when his flesh, resting in the grave these past two thousand years, will be raised up and restored to perfection forever. He already saw in his body, in some small way, what you too will see in your body on the Last Day, when Jesus will summon you forth from your graves with a voice of compassion, of love: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Ten lepers stood at the side of the road, just outside of a village. They were afflicted with a terrible disease, a disease of living death, that would not only one day claim their life, but until that day made them outcasts, isolated from their people and from the worship of their God. The book of Leviticus tells them how they are to live. “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone.” They are lost, without hope, condemned to death, estranged from their people, estranged from their God. But then they see Jesus. They see this man they have heard so much about, this great miracle-worker from Galilee, the teacher, the healer of so many. This is their chance, their one hope, and so they do not cry, “Unclean, unclean!” but, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
Their voices utter a cry of faith. They believe that Jesus can heal them; they believe that He can do something about the terrible state that they’re in. They trust that He will have mercy, that He will have compassion, that He will not hold back, but will act. They cry out to the only One who can do anything about their situation, the One who has proven again and again that it is to Him that all who are broken by the effects of sin must go, that it is He alone who can give the healing that all men need. They believe that He can heal them; otherwise, they would’ve kept quiet in their dark despair. But when they see Jesus, they see hope, when they see Jesus, they see healing, when they see Jesus, they see the coming of light and life into their darkness and death.
And they were right. Their faith has the proper object; they believed in the only One on the planet who had in Himself the power to heal. Their faith would’ve been of no benefit if they would’ve believed in the next guy to come into town, or if they would’ve put their trust in a Greek, Canaanite, or Egyptian god. Dear friends, faith is only as good as its object. If the object cannot heal or save, no amount of faith will help. The object of their faith was the only one who could heal them. And heal them He did. “When He saw them He said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ He calls them to a further exercise of their faith; He does not heal them immediately, but He sends them to demonstrate their healing to the proper authorities, trusting that it will happen, indeed as if it had already happened. They do not waver: they trust, they believe, they go.
“And as they went they were cleansed.” Death reversed. Life restored. Skin renewed and reborn. They actually experience Nicodemus’ sarcastic question: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” The ten lepers are reborn; they pass from death to life, from outcasts to full members of the community. Imagine the sight, as they watched their skin renewed and restored, made whole again, cleansed from its corruption. Now all that was left was to go, as Jesus instructed them, to the temple. There they testify to their healing; there they demonstrate that the Law’s demands have been fulfilled: they are clean! Christ has done it all for them, they are healed by His work, not their own. They simply believed in the One who had power to heal, and He healed. The Law which once excluded them now brings them back into the fellowship of their people, the fellowship of their God.
Nine former lepers returned home, certainly rejoicing, certainly giving thanks. The miracle worker had worked a miracle in their lives, they believed that He could heal them, and heal them He did. Now they are restored to their community, and they will begin the rituals to be fully integrated back home. But that’s all. Certainly this has been an amazing, miraculous, wonderful day, but there is nothing for them beyond the physical healing. So ends the story of the nine; once lepers, now clean. But as great as the cleansing of leprosy is, for one man this miracle has meant much more than the healing of his body. “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.” Something much more important happened to him than the cleansing of his skin.
The same Word that cleansed his body also cleansed his soul. The new birth that he experienced on the outside was mirrored by a new birth on the inside. He received both what Nicodemus sarcastically asked for and what Jesus actually promised: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” He knew what it meant to be baptized into Christ; he saw in his body what Christ had done to his soul. Ten men were healed, only one was saved, only one believed. The nine believed that Jesus was a miracle worker, a rabbi who could restore their skin; the one believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, the One who could restore his soul. His skin was afflicted with living death—the exact same state of his soul—but both were restored, both were healed, both were saved. The nine left the temple with clean bodies and still corrupted souls; the one returned to Jesus restored in both body and soul.
Faith gives thanks in the proper place to the proper person. In this case, the proper place and the proper person are the same. Only Christ has healed him, only Christ has saved him. His voice, once raised up in cries for help, is now raised up in cries of thanksgiving. Ten were healed; one was saved. God sends rain on the just and the unjust, and He sent His Son for the healing of all people, to cleanse them from the leprosy of their sin. The Law’s demand on the leprous in soul is not only death, but eternal death, to be outcast from God forever. But Christ fulfilled the Law’s demands, bearing your sin in His own flesh; dying and rising again as your substitute, in your place. And now His healing, won by His blood, is for all, it is freely given to all, to be received by faith. Go and show yourselves to the Law, dear friends, and because you are in Christ, it will have nothing to say against you. Your soul has been restored like the skin of the ten lepers; you have been washed clean by Christ’s shed blood, poured out on Calvary’s cross.
But what is true of daily bread is also true of the bread of life: unbelief gives no thanks. The voice of faith gives thanks; it can’t help it. Gratitude overflows from one who has been given all things, the healing of body and soul. The voice of faith gives thanks to the One who is Himself the presence of God in the flesh, it realizes that every good gift comes from God, and that God is to be found where the flesh of Jesus is. And where is the flesh of Jesus to be found? In His Church, His bride. Where the bride is, there the bridegroom will be, serving the wedding guests. And there Christians will be gathered, giving to Christ great thanks and praise, falling down before His feet, as the psalmist says: “Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!”
Elsewhere, away from Jesus, is thankless unbelief. “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” It’s just common politeness, after all, to give thanks when a gift has been given, but Jesus has much more in mind than proper etiquette. A lack of thankfulness isn’t remedied by a good scolding or taking away a toy; a lack of thankfulness indicates that there is no faith. Once again, as Luther teaches us in the Small Catechism: “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.” The difference between a believer and a non-believer is not in the gift given—as God gives daily bread to everyone, so Christ died for the sin of the world—but in the thankfulness born of faith. The believer gives thanks, the non-believer gives no thanks at all, or (perhaps even worse) gives thanks to someone else.
But thanks given to anyone other than Jesus is misplaced. Only He comes to give the healing that all people need, even foreigners, even Samaritans, even you and me. He comes to heal our souls by washing them clean in His shed blood so that one day our bodies will be cleansed from the leprosy of sin, the disease that is at the root of all others, the only malady that can condemn to hell. When the Samaritan leper sees his skin restored on the road, he is seeing a preview of the Last Day, when his flesh, resting in the grave these past two thousand years, will be raised up and restored to perfection forever. He already saw in his body, in some small way, what you too will see in your body on the Last Day, when Jesus will summon you forth from your graves with a voice of compassion, of love: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Reetz family reunion (Luke 8:19-21)
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this afternoon is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the eighth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ: every family has its memorials, its sacred places, like the cave east of Mamre, where the biblical patriarchs were buried, and you are sitting in one of them. Of the nine children of William and Augusta Reetz, six of them were married in this very sanctuary. My own great-grandfather Fred was confirmed and married at this altar, which today still stands right before your eyes, though a few miles from its original location. Look around you; this mass of people, over twice as many as we anticipated, all trace their roots (or the roots of their spouse) to the same two people, immigrants from Germany, William and Augusta Reetz. This is their legacy: you, and many more who are not here today, and even children yet to be born, generations to come. William and Augusta were not celebrities, nor influential politicians, the decision-makers that set the course for a state or a country. Just farmers, part of the waves of immigrants from Germany that brought to Nebraska all the roots of my own family tree. To the world, the name of William and Augusta Reetz doesn’t mean too much; to you and me, they are a part of us, our heritage, our history, our family, and we can all look at each other this day and know one thing: our roots (or the roots of our spouse) go to the same place.
It is good, right, and salutary that we should gather here as family to give honor to family, to celebrate the heritage we hold in common. Through this family God gave us life, through this family God not only brought us into this world but sustained and nourished us, providing for the needs of our body through them. It is God-pleasing to celebrate our family, so God-pleasing, in fact, that God Himself set forth the Fourth Commandment to protect the institution of the family: “Honor your father and your mother.” Martin Luther teaches us the explanation in the Small Catechism: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” For the God who created all things, the human family, man and wife bringing forth the next generation, is the foundation of society, it is the very building block on which all else is built, and thus we are to honor our parents, and not just our parents, but all those who went before us, as the children of Israel did, honoring Jacob and Joseph’s request to be buried in the family cemetery. Our family deserves our respect, whether the world gives them any or not, they deserve the honor of their office, because God Himself has commanded it.
But we should take care to understand what the Fourth Commandment does not say. The Fourth Commandment says “Honor your father and your mother,” not, “Worship your father and your mother.” Another commandment has something to say about worshipping anything other than God, the First Commandment, and the idols we craft are not just statues or false religions, but so often we turn the good gifts of God into our objects of worship, we bow down before the creature rather than the Creator. Satan tempts us to twist anything that God gives into an idol, to make it the focus, the center of our lives. That is the danger of a gathering like today, that we would make more of our bloodlines than we ought to, that we take more pride in our human lineage than anything else, and forget what is most important. Jesus’ mother and brothers certainly thought that bloodlines counted for something, they thought that they should have priority. They stood at the edge of the crowd, this mass of desperate people, hungering and thirsting for the Word of God, and they wanted to see their son and brother. And they thought they should have no problem doing so. “Then His mother and His brothers came to Him, but they could not reach Him because of the crowd. And He was told, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.’”
Now one would think that any good Jewish boy, especially the Son of God, would remember the Fourth Commandment, pause His sermon, and obediently go out to visit His family. After all, mama’s calling! But not Jesus; He, as usual, does something completely unexpected. “But He answered and said to them, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it.’” He doesn’t stop His sermon, in fact, He puts an exclamation point on it. Throughout Luke chapter eight Jesus has been teaching about faithfully hearing the Word; He has taught that those who listen to the Word bear much good fruit, they shine their light out into the world, and now comes the kicker. Those who hear the Word and ‘do it,’ that is, who believe that Word and live according to it, have a closer relationship with Jesus that even His own family. No one related to Him by blood is as close to Jesus as those who are related to Him by faith. Jesus doesn’t abolish the Fourth Commandment here, He subordinates it, as all things are subordinated, to the First Commandment. In the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods,” we are to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, including our family, including our bloodlines. And the only way to fear, love, and trust in God above all things is to hear His Word and do it, to hear the voice of His Son Jesus and believe. Apart from Jesus, you do not have the true God, apart from Jesus, God is not your Father.
Jesus came to establish a family, to bring forth children of God by reconciling sinful men to their Creator. His suffering and death was a ‘family event,’ for in giving Himself into death as the price for your sin, He eliminated all that separated you from your heavenly Father, all that estranged you from Him. He came as our brother, in our human flesh, to make us brothers and sisters with a bond closer and more important than any earthly family can muster, founded in His death for your sake. You’ve heard the expression, ‘blood is thicker than water’? Well, it’s not true. No blood is thicker than the baptismal waters, which bind us to Christ as our brother, to God as our Father, and to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. St. John proclaims it: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
We are called children of God because that is exactly what we are. We are children of God because we have been reconciled to Him by the blood of His Son, poured out for us on the cross of Calvary. And the resurrection of Jesus on the third day is the guarantee that there will be at least one more family reunion on the Day when all the graves are opened, including those at Zion Lutheran cemetery, Thayer, Nebraska. On that Day, all the saints, all those who heard the Word of God and did it by faith, will be raised up to join in the family reunion forevermore in the new heavens and the new earth. There, we will join our brother Jesus, our heavenly Father, and all who have gone before us, William and Augusta, their children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, and on down the line, all who clung to Jesus in faith.
There, on that Day, William and Augusta will see their legacy. The legacy of William and Augusta Reetz is not in the acres farmed, not in lasting contributions to society or government, not even in the children born from their line. Their legacy is a legacy of faith, the Word of God handed down from generation to generation. Their legacy is in the saints who will stand with them in the hallowed halls of the New Jerusalem forevermore. God used them as His instruments to pass on the faith once delivered to all the saints, to bring little ones to the baptismal font. Through them Jesus was proclaimed, and His gifts were delivered; through them, each succeeding generation was brought from this earthly family into the most important family, the family of Christ. That is what we give thanks for on this day, that is what we celebrate: God taught the Word, He delivered Christ, to generation after generation through this family, and I personally give thanks to God that He preserved the faith from William and Augusta, through Fred and Helena, to Velma and Willis, to Gail and Steve, the faith that I have the honor and responsibility to pass on to my children. You belong to this family, but more importantly, you belong to the family of Christ, the only family that will last forever, world without end. Amen.
It is good, right, and salutary that we should gather here as family to give honor to family, to celebrate the heritage we hold in common. Through this family God gave us life, through this family God not only brought us into this world but sustained and nourished us, providing for the needs of our body through them. It is God-pleasing to celebrate our family, so God-pleasing, in fact, that God Himself set forth the Fourth Commandment to protect the institution of the family: “Honor your father and your mother.” Martin Luther teaches us the explanation in the Small Catechism: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” For the God who created all things, the human family, man and wife bringing forth the next generation, is the foundation of society, it is the very building block on which all else is built, and thus we are to honor our parents, and not just our parents, but all those who went before us, as the children of Israel did, honoring Jacob and Joseph’s request to be buried in the family cemetery. Our family deserves our respect, whether the world gives them any or not, they deserve the honor of their office, because God Himself has commanded it.
But we should take care to understand what the Fourth Commandment does not say. The Fourth Commandment says “Honor your father and your mother,” not, “Worship your father and your mother.” Another commandment has something to say about worshipping anything other than God, the First Commandment, and the idols we craft are not just statues or false religions, but so often we turn the good gifts of God into our objects of worship, we bow down before the creature rather than the Creator. Satan tempts us to twist anything that God gives into an idol, to make it the focus, the center of our lives. That is the danger of a gathering like today, that we would make more of our bloodlines than we ought to, that we take more pride in our human lineage than anything else, and forget what is most important. Jesus’ mother and brothers certainly thought that bloodlines counted for something, they thought that they should have priority. They stood at the edge of the crowd, this mass of desperate people, hungering and thirsting for the Word of God, and they wanted to see their son and brother. And they thought they should have no problem doing so. “Then His mother and His brothers came to Him, but they could not reach Him because of the crowd. And He was told, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.’”
Now one would think that any good Jewish boy, especially the Son of God, would remember the Fourth Commandment, pause His sermon, and obediently go out to visit His family. After all, mama’s calling! But not Jesus; He, as usual, does something completely unexpected. “But He answered and said to them, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it.’” He doesn’t stop His sermon, in fact, He puts an exclamation point on it. Throughout Luke chapter eight Jesus has been teaching about faithfully hearing the Word; He has taught that those who listen to the Word bear much good fruit, they shine their light out into the world, and now comes the kicker. Those who hear the Word and ‘do it,’ that is, who believe that Word and live according to it, have a closer relationship with Jesus that even His own family. No one related to Him by blood is as close to Jesus as those who are related to Him by faith. Jesus doesn’t abolish the Fourth Commandment here, He subordinates it, as all things are subordinated, to the First Commandment. In the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods,” we are to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, including our family, including our bloodlines. And the only way to fear, love, and trust in God above all things is to hear His Word and do it, to hear the voice of His Son Jesus and believe. Apart from Jesus, you do not have the true God, apart from Jesus, God is not your Father.
Jesus came to establish a family, to bring forth children of God by reconciling sinful men to their Creator. His suffering and death was a ‘family event,’ for in giving Himself into death as the price for your sin, He eliminated all that separated you from your heavenly Father, all that estranged you from Him. He came as our brother, in our human flesh, to make us brothers and sisters with a bond closer and more important than any earthly family can muster, founded in His death for your sake. You’ve heard the expression, ‘blood is thicker than water’? Well, it’s not true. No blood is thicker than the baptismal waters, which bind us to Christ as our brother, to God as our Father, and to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. St. John proclaims it: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
We are called children of God because that is exactly what we are. We are children of God because we have been reconciled to Him by the blood of His Son, poured out for us on the cross of Calvary. And the resurrection of Jesus on the third day is the guarantee that there will be at least one more family reunion on the Day when all the graves are opened, including those at Zion Lutheran cemetery, Thayer, Nebraska. On that Day, all the saints, all those who heard the Word of God and did it by faith, will be raised up to join in the family reunion forevermore in the new heavens and the new earth. There, we will join our brother Jesus, our heavenly Father, and all who have gone before us, William and Augusta, their children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, and on down the line, all who clung to Jesus in faith.
There, on that Day, William and Augusta will see their legacy. The legacy of William and Augusta Reetz is not in the acres farmed, not in lasting contributions to society or government, not even in the children born from their line. Their legacy is a legacy of faith, the Word of God handed down from generation to generation. Their legacy is in the saints who will stand with them in the hallowed halls of the New Jerusalem forevermore. God used them as His instruments to pass on the faith once delivered to all the saints, to bring little ones to the baptismal font. Through them Jesus was proclaimed, and His gifts were delivered; through them, each succeeding generation was brought from this earthly family into the most important family, the family of Christ. That is what we give thanks for on this day, that is what we celebrate: God taught the Word, He delivered Christ, to generation after generation through this family, and I personally give thanks to God that He preserved the faith from William and Augusta, through Fred and Helena, to Velma and Willis, to Gail and Steve, the faith that I have the honor and responsibility to pass on to my children. You belong to this family, but more importantly, you belong to the family of Christ, the only family that will last forever, world without end. Amen.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Trinity 6 (Exodus 20:1-17)
“And God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning is the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the twentieth chapter of the book of Exodus. Dear friends in Christ, the First Commandment doesn’t stand alone; it isn’t an isolated, arbitrary word. The jealousy of God doesn’t come from God’s cruel, spiteful nature, like the Greek and Roman gods, who were in competition with one another for the honor of men. No, the First Commandment, God’s demand for exclusive obedience, is predicated on the Gospel, it is rooted in God’s gracious action toward His people. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” God has given Himself to His people, He has acted to deliver them, He has established a relationship with them founded on deeds of salvation—He is their God, they are His people—and now their saving God asks for their fear, their love, their trust.
The First Commandment implies a promise: ‘You shall need no other gods.’ Only the true God delivered His people Israel from bondage in Egypt; not the gods of Canaan, and not the gods of Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Only the God has delivered you from the bondage of sin and death; not the gods of Muhammed or Joseph Smith; not the many gods of the East. Only the true God has sent His only begotten Son into our flesh to suffer and die, bearing your sin upon Himself and paying the price that sin had earned. No other God offered up the sacrifice sufficient to take away the sin of the world; only the God who is the Father of Jesus. No other God raised up His Son, victorious over sin and death.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you can find another god who has delivered you from sin, death, and the power of the devil, you are welcome to him. But only the God who speaks in our text this day has given His Son into death for the life of the world, only this God has raised Him up again in victory, so that as Jesus lives, so you too will live. The First Commandment is founded on God’s action, that He has given Himself to you in His Son. It’s a command, to be sure, the most potent Law ever offered, the foundation of all other laws, every other command, but it is predicated by a promise, the saving relationship God has established with you through His Son. The God we are called upon to fear, love, and trust above all things has given Himself to you for your salvation, He has delivered you from the penalty of death and hell by giving His Son in your place.
The gods of this world promise much. They promise deliverance, they promise salvation, they promise to provide for our needs. They promise freedom, they promise prosperity, they promise greatness. They promise to fight for you, to take up your cause, to advocate for you. And we look at ourselves, we look at our lives, we look at our society, and we see much to be delivered from. We are poor, we are downtrodden, we are tyrannized. We are trampled on, we are exploited, we are treated unjustly. We are desperate for a word of hope, and the gods are all too happy to speak it. They know what we are seeking, and from billboards, on television, in the paper, they all make their offer of salvation. They trumpet their promises to the masses, hoping for obedience, seeking followers, desiring sacrifice. They are all in competition with one another; each is seeking to be the one whom you fear, love, and trust above all else. They know what you want, and they all want to be your god. And we are only too happy to oblige. Luther had it right when he said in the Large Catechism: “A god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need. To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart.”
All gods demand worship, all gods demand obedience, all gods demand images. And so we craft our idols, we hew our monuments from the solid rock, and we travel many miles, we spend large amounts of money to see them. We build statues of our gods and house them in Greek temples, we carve their faces into mountains, we have our own hallowed ground and pilgrimage sites, we celebrate all the holy days. Every god has its image, whether it hangs on your wall, sits in your garage, or hangs from a pole. Every god has its demands, whether it be your loyalty, your money, or your vote. And every god demands sacrifice, whether your time, your integrity, or your worship. We bow down before the image of our gods, giving them homage, promising obedience, promising loyalty, promising to fear, love, and trust in them above all else.
We make our promises to the gods, we swear our oaths of allegiance, as they have promised to give us every good thing. We bow down before the images we have created in their honor, praying that they will notice and acknowledge our loyalty. But as we return, year after year to our idols, we see them deteriorate. The elements, the wind and the rain, the snow and the ice, take their toll on our images of stone and metal, cloth and paper. Fire consumes them, water damages them; time itself launches an attack on them, and the victory of time against our idols is as slow as it is inevitable. Time takes its toll, and will one day erase any sign that they ever existed. God knows this fate of our idols, our images, and so He says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Once again, this is a command—Law, stern Law—predicated on a promise. Like the ones in whose honor we made them, all idols will fail, all idols will pass away. In love, God calls on us to cling to something that endures, that will last, that can truly deliver on the promise of salvation.
For the gods cannot deliver. Their images will fade away, they will eventually succumb to the ravages of the years and centuries; but much sooner than that, the gods themselves will fail us. They will let us down, failing to provide for us as we had hoped. They will be shipwrecked by scandal and division. They will find the obstacles put in their path too great to surmount; they will be thwarted by forces completely out of their control. They will deceive you, they will take your obedience, your loyalty, your money and do the opposite of what you wanted; the gods whose image you travel to worship will be betrayed by those who follow in their stead. Or, on the other hand, maybe they will actually succeed. Perhaps the gods can give us some good; maybe they can deliver us from opposing armies, from criminals who wish to hurt us, from senseless violence. Maybe they can raise us from poverty, give us a voice, and protect our liberties. Maybe. But any benefit that the gods can give us ends at the moment that we draw our last breath. Even if they can deliver on all of their promises, when our final hour comes, they will all fail. At that moment, they will all be shown for who they are: false gods.
At the point of death, all false gods pass away, all false gods fail, for they too are subject to death, they too will one day be no more. The same enemies that surround you surround them, and their powerlessness in the face of death and hell proves that they were no place to put your fear, love, and trust. The only God who can save, the only God who truly deserves your fear, love, and trust, is the God who has the power over death and hell, the very God who said to His people of old: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Only this God, the true God, has conquered death for you by sending His Son to suffer, die, and rise again. Only this God, the true God, gives you that salvation, making you His child, by putting you to death and raising you up again in the font. “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 only true God is the Father of Jesus, who is the very image of God, an image that you can trust, because this image is not subject to decay or the ravages of time, but is risen from dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. There is no other god who deserves honor, no other god who deserves worship, but the one true God, and Him alone. “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” In this world, it may be that those who trust in the gods and hate the true God live comfortably and without need, while those who reject the gods and worship the true God suffer want and deprivation. But appearances are deceiving, and death makes all things clear. For when death comes to you, so will the promise: “If we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”
God is jealous for His honor because He loves us. He loves us so much that He has no desire for us to chase after other gods that promise much but cannot deliver. Therefore, He has not only acted to deliver us by sending His Son to suffer, die, and rise again, but He has come to us in the Word, worked faith within us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and now, only through the Spirit’s work, we believe; we are made His children, restored to our Father through the blood of His Son. The First Commandment, or any of the other nine, cannot be kept apart from the faith worked by the Holy Spirit; no one can keep the Law apart from Christ, who kept it for us. In Christ, by faith in Christ, you keep the Law, for in Christ, by faith in Christ, you have no other gods before the true God. And there is no other god that you need, for only the true God sent His Son for you: to live for you, to die for you, to rise again for you. In the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
The First Commandment implies a promise: ‘You shall need no other gods.’ Only the true God delivered His people Israel from bondage in Egypt; not the gods of Canaan, and not the gods of Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Only the God has delivered you from the bondage of sin and death; not the gods of Muhammed or Joseph Smith; not the many gods of the East. Only the true God has sent His only begotten Son into our flesh to suffer and die, bearing your sin upon Himself and paying the price that sin had earned. No other God offered up the sacrifice sufficient to take away the sin of the world; only the God who is the Father of Jesus. No other God raised up His Son, victorious over sin and death.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you can find another god who has delivered you from sin, death, and the power of the devil, you are welcome to him. But only the God who speaks in our text this day has given His Son into death for the life of the world, only this God has raised Him up again in victory, so that as Jesus lives, so you too will live. The First Commandment is founded on God’s action, that He has given Himself to you in His Son. It’s a command, to be sure, the most potent Law ever offered, the foundation of all other laws, every other command, but it is predicated by a promise, the saving relationship God has established with you through His Son. The God we are called upon to fear, love, and trust above all things has given Himself to you for your salvation, He has delivered you from the penalty of death and hell by giving His Son in your place.
The gods of this world promise much. They promise deliverance, they promise salvation, they promise to provide for our needs. They promise freedom, they promise prosperity, they promise greatness. They promise to fight for you, to take up your cause, to advocate for you. And we look at ourselves, we look at our lives, we look at our society, and we see much to be delivered from. We are poor, we are downtrodden, we are tyrannized. We are trampled on, we are exploited, we are treated unjustly. We are desperate for a word of hope, and the gods are all too happy to speak it. They know what we are seeking, and from billboards, on television, in the paper, they all make their offer of salvation. They trumpet their promises to the masses, hoping for obedience, seeking followers, desiring sacrifice. They are all in competition with one another; each is seeking to be the one whom you fear, love, and trust above all else. They know what you want, and they all want to be your god. And we are only too happy to oblige. Luther had it right when he said in the Large Catechism: “A god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need. To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart.”
All gods demand worship, all gods demand obedience, all gods demand images. And so we craft our idols, we hew our monuments from the solid rock, and we travel many miles, we spend large amounts of money to see them. We build statues of our gods and house them in Greek temples, we carve their faces into mountains, we have our own hallowed ground and pilgrimage sites, we celebrate all the holy days. Every god has its image, whether it hangs on your wall, sits in your garage, or hangs from a pole. Every god has its demands, whether it be your loyalty, your money, or your vote. And every god demands sacrifice, whether your time, your integrity, or your worship. We bow down before the image of our gods, giving them homage, promising obedience, promising loyalty, promising to fear, love, and trust in them above all else.
We make our promises to the gods, we swear our oaths of allegiance, as they have promised to give us every good thing. We bow down before the images we have created in their honor, praying that they will notice and acknowledge our loyalty. But as we return, year after year to our idols, we see them deteriorate. The elements, the wind and the rain, the snow and the ice, take their toll on our images of stone and metal, cloth and paper. Fire consumes them, water damages them; time itself launches an attack on them, and the victory of time against our idols is as slow as it is inevitable. Time takes its toll, and will one day erase any sign that they ever existed. God knows this fate of our idols, our images, and so He says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Once again, this is a command—Law, stern Law—predicated on a promise. Like the ones in whose honor we made them, all idols will fail, all idols will pass away. In love, God calls on us to cling to something that endures, that will last, that can truly deliver on the promise of salvation.
For the gods cannot deliver. Their images will fade away, they will eventually succumb to the ravages of the years and centuries; but much sooner than that, the gods themselves will fail us. They will let us down, failing to provide for us as we had hoped. They will be shipwrecked by scandal and division. They will find the obstacles put in their path too great to surmount; they will be thwarted by forces completely out of their control. They will deceive you, they will take your obedience, your loyalty, your money and do the opposite of what you wanted; the gods whose image you travel to worship will be betrayed by those who follow in their stead. Or, on the other hand, maybe they will actually succeed. Perhaps the gods can give us some good; maybe they can deliver us from opposing armies, from criminals who wish to hurt us, from senseless violence. Maybe they can raise us from poverty, give us a voice, and protect our liberties. Maybe. But any benefit that the gods can give us ends at the moment that we draw our last breath. Even if they can deliver on all of their promises, when our final hour comes, they will all fail. At that moment, they will all be shown for who they are: false gods.
At the point of death, all false gods pass away, all false gods fail, for they too are subject to death, they too will one day be no more. The same enemies that surround you surround them, and their powerlessness in the face of death and hell proves that they were no place to put your fear, love, and trust. The only God who can save, the only God who truly deserves your fear, love, and trust, is the God who has the power over death and hell, the very God who said to His people of old: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Only this God, the true God, has conquered death for you by sending His Son to suffer, die, and rise again. Only this God, the true God, gives you that salvation, making you His child, by putting you to death and raising you up again in the font. “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 only true God is the Father of Jesus, who is the very image of God, an image that you can trust, because this image is not subject to decay or the ravages of time, but is risen from dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. There is no other god who deserves honor, no other god who deserves worship, but the one true God, and Him alone. “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” In this world, it may be that those who trust in the gods and hate the true God live comfortably and without need, while those who reject the gods and worship the true God suffer want and deprivation. But appearances are deceiving, and death makes all things clear. For when death comes to you, so will the promise: “If we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”
God is jealous for His honor because He loves us. He loves us so much that He has no desire for us to chase after other gods that promise much but cannot deliver. Therefore, He has not only acted to deliver us by sending His Son to suffer, die, and rise again, but He has come to us in the Word, worked faith within us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and now, only through the Spirit’s work, we believe; we are made His children, restored to our Father through the blood of His Son. The First Commandment, or any of the other nine, cannot be kept apart from the faith worked by the Holy Spirit; no one can keep the Law apart from Christ, who kept it for us. In Christ, by faith in Christ, you keep the Law, for in Christ, by faith in Christ, you have no other gods before the true God. And there is no other god that you need, for only the true God sent His Son for you: to live for you, to die for you, to rise again for you. In the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Presentation of the Augsburg Confession (John 15:1-11)
“I AM the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this commemoration of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, the foundational confession of the Lutheran Church, is the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ: “I will speak of your statutes before kings, O Lord, and will not be put to shame.” June 25th, 1530. Augsburg, Germany. A group of laymen were gathered before the emperor, before the representatives of the pope, before the powers and principalities of this world. They read a document, a confession, crafted by theologians, principally Philip Melanchthon, but confessed by laymen, princes and political officials. These men were fully conscious what this confession would mean; not only were they putting their lives on the line, but they were also confessing before Almighty God, to whom they would answer on Judgment Day. But they were not put to shame. They were not ashamed, they were not embarrassed, they were not timid, for they took their stand on the Word of God. They set themselves forward, in accordance with that Word, to oppose any attempt to take honor away from Christ, any attempt to achieve salvation apart from Him, in full or in part, in accord with His Word: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
Apart from Christ, there is nothing good in this world, for apart from Christ there is no faith, apart from Christ there are no good works. Apart from Christ, there is nothing, only sin and condemnation. Apart from Christ, no one has access to their Creator. Apart from Christ, there is no heavenly joy, only the wrath of judgment. To think otherwise is to think that a branch can survive without its vine. “I AM the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Christ is the vine, the true vine that replaces God’s original planting, the nation of Israel, which did not produce the fruit He desired. Apart from Christ, the branches are not nourished, they are not cared for. Apart from Christ, there is not the pruning that all healthy branches need.
“I AM the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” Apart from Christ, branches wither and decay, they are cut off to be burned. But those who are in Christ are pruned, and the word used here for ‘pruned,’ has the original meaning of ‘cleansed.’ How do you cleanse a branch? By cutting off its impurities, by pruning it. How do you cleanse a person, body and soul? By washing, the washing of the water with the Word. Jesus says to you and me, “Already you are clean because of the Word that I have spoken to you.” You have been cleansed by the washing of Holy Baptism, you have been scrubbed clean in the font; through the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been attached to the true vine, Jesus Christ. You are a part of His Body, the Church, connected to Him and your fellow Christians as branches are connected to a vine. And now the Father prunes you, cutting away every imperfection, cleansing you again and again, daily putting you to death in a return to your baptism and raising you up again to live before Him in righteousness and purity forever. You are cleansed, pruned, as the Father calls you to repentance through the Law and forgives your sin by the Gospel, each and every day, with each and every sin. You are cleansed, pruned daily, until that Day when every imperfection is finally cut away, and you stand before Him in the white robes, a pure and uncorrupted branch, forever.
Apart from Christ, you can do nothing. In Christ, you are clean by virtue of your baptism, you are attached to the true vine, and God works to cleanse you, to prune you, day by day in a return to the font. Apart from Christ, there is no cleansing, there is no pruning, there is only the growth of corruption. “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Apart from Christ, there is only burning. Apart from Christ, there is only destruction. Apart from Christ, there is no faith, no trust in the true God. A branch cannot live on its own; it can only have life if it receives that life from the vine. Christ is the vine; we are the branches. We receive our life from Him, by receiving His gifts, the life-giving nutrients that flow into us by the Holy Word, preached and read, and in the Sacrament of the Altar, where the sap of the true vine flows into our veins. Any and all who cut themselves off from these means will wither away. Apart from Christ, you can do nothing. There is no other way, no other path. Either we are attached to Christ, receiving life from Him, or we are apart from Him, withering away and destined to be burned.
Apart from Christ, no one can be saved. Apart from Christ, all are alike condemned. Why? Because only Christ has paid the price for our sin; only Christ hung upon the cross and faced the wrath of God over your sin and mine. Only Christ is both true man, living a perfect life in your place, able to lay down His life as a sacrifice, and also true God, offering up a sacrifice sufficient for all the sin of the world. Only Christ went into the grave to come back out again, holding the keys of death and Hades. If you can find another savior who has paid the debt you owe, who has triumphed over the grave, you are welcome to him; but only Christ has won the salvation that all men need, only Christ gives it freely to you, and therefore Christ says, “apart from me you can do nothing.”
We can do nothing apart from Christ; nothing good, that is. With these words, Jesus shatters any confidence in human works; they are quite simply no good before God apart from Christ. “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” No work is good apart from Christ; we cannot keep the Law apart from being connected to the One who kept the Law on our behalf. A branch laying on the ground, cut off from the vine, cannot produce fruit; it is impossible. In the same way, anyone who is apart from Christ cannot do a good work; it is impossible. Their deeds may look good, they may help many, and we can rightly praise and encourage them in an earthly way, but before God these works are only sinful. They cannot bring salvation, they cannot bring a man to God, but only condemn him.
On the other hand, those connected to Christ, those who are attached to Him as the true vine, bear much good fruit. “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” Branches connected to the true vine bear fruit; this is simply a fact. They do not bear fruit in order to be attached to the vine, but they bear fruit because they are attached to the vine. And what is that fruit? One word: love. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” We love as Christ loved us: laying down our lives for others, placing them and their needs ahead of our own. That is the fruit that those who are in the true vine bear. That is the fruit that Christ calls on you to bear. But this fruit cannot be produced on your own, by yourself, but only through the life-giving gifts that Christ gives. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” We love as Christ has loved us; we receive love from Christ here in this place, and then we extend that love to others as God places them before us.
We do this in joy; not under compulsion, not under the threat of punishment, not out of a need to earn God’s favor. We have God’s favor, we are attached to the vine; we now serve others in freedom, with great joy. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” It is no coincidence that Jesus calls Himself a vine when the picture of the joy of the kingdom of heaven almost always includes wine. Being attached to the true vine and bearing much fruit lead to joy, the very joy of heaven itself. Apart from Christ there is no faith, apart from Christ there are no good works, and apart from Christ, there is no joy.
It was on that great truth that the confessors at Augsburg took their stand. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Their Roman opponents certainly held to Jesus as the only one who gives access to the Father. Their error was more subtle; they privileged human works by giving them a role to play in achieving salvation. Faith and works together brought the believer into a saving relationship with God. In response, the confessors went to John chapter 15 and declared: “Without faith human nature cannot possibly do the works of the First or Second Commandments. Without faith it does not call upon God, expect anything of God, or bear the cross, but it seeks and trusts in man’s help. Accordingly, when there is no faith and trust in God, all manner of lusts and human devices rule in the heart. Wherefore Christ said, ‘Apart from me you can do nothing.’” Faith comes first, then works, and those works have nothing to do with making a person righteous before God. No work that precedes faith and justification is good, but is damnable and condemned, no matter how beautiful it appears.
Melanchthon emphasizes this point in the Apology, or defense, of the Augsburg Confession. “Our opponents imagine that we are members of Moses rather than of Christ. They want to be justified by the law and to offer our works to God before being reconciled to God and becoming the branches of Christ.” The debate at Augsburg was not over whether Christians do good works, but where those good works were to be found: not before justification, not during justification, but flowing from justification, as those attached to the vine in joy bring forth the good fruit that delights the vinedresser, the fruit that will fill the foaming cups of wine in the halls of heaven, forever. In the Name of the true vine, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Apart from Christ, there is nothing good in this world, for apart from Christ there is no faith, apart from Christ there are no good works. Apart from Christ, there is nothing, only sin and condemnation. Apart from Christ, no one has access to their Creator. Apart from Christ, there is no heavenly joy, only the wrath of judgment. To think otherwise is to think that a branch can survive without its vine. “I AM the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Christ is the vine, the true vine that replaces God’s original planting, the nation of Israel, which did not produce the fruit He desired. Apart from Christ, the branches are not nourished, they are not cared for. Apart from Christ, there is not the pruning that all healthy branches need.
“I AM the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” Apart from Christ, branches wither and decay, they are cut off to be burned. But those who are in Christ are pruned, and the word used here for ‘pruned,’ has the original meaning of ‘cleansed.’ How do you cleanse a branch? By cutting off its impurities, by pruning it. How do you cleanse a person, body and soul? By washing, the washing of the water with the Word. Jesus says to you and me, “Already you are clean because of the Word that I have spoken to you.” You have been cleansed by the washing of Holy Baptism, you have been scrubbed clean in the font; through the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been attached to the true vine, Jesus Christ. You are a part of His Body, the Church, connected to Him and your fellow Christians as branches are connected to a vine. And now the Father prunes you, cutting away every imperfection, cleansing you again and again, daily putting you to death in a return to your baptism and raising you up again to live before Him in righteousness and purity forever. You are cleansed, pruned, as the Father calls you to repentance through the Law and forgives your sin by the Gospel, each and every day, with each and every sin. You are cleansed, pruned daily, until that Day when every imperfection is finally cut away, and you stand before Him in the white robes, a pure and uncorrupted branch, forever.
Apart from Christ, you can do nothing. In Christ, you are clean by virtue of your baptism, you are attached to the true vine, and God works to cleanse you, to prune you, day by day in a return to the font. Apart from Christ, there is no cleansing, there is no pruning, there is only the growth of corruption. “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Apart from Christ, there is only burning. Apart from Christ, there is only destruction. Apart from Christ, there is no faith, no trust in the true God. A branch cannot live on its own; it can only have life if it receives that life from the vine. Christ is the vine; we are the branches. We receive our life from Him, by receiving His gifts, the life-giving nutrients that flow into us by the Holy Word, preached and read, and in the Sacrament of the Altar, where the sap of the true vine flows into our veins. Any and all who cut themselves off from these means will wither away. Apart from Christ, you can do nothing. There is no other way, no other path. Either we are attached to Christ, receiving life from Him, or we are apart from Him, withering away and destined to be burned.
Apart from Christ, no one can be saved. Apart from Christ, all are alike condemned. Why? Because only Christ has paid the price for our sin; only Christ hung upon the cross and faced the wrath of God over your sin and mine. Only Christ is both true man, living a perfect life in your place, able to lay down His life as a sacrifice, and also true God, offering up a sacrifice sufficient for all the sin of the world. Only Christ went into the grave to come back out again, holding the keys of death and Hades. If you can find another savior who has paid the debt you owe, who has triumphed over the grave, you are welcome to him; but only Christ has won the salvation that all men need, only Christ gives it freely to you, and therefore Christ says, “apart from me you can do nothing.”
We can do nothing apart from Christ; nothing good, that is. With these words, Jesus shatters any confidence in human works; they are quite simply no good before God apart from Christ. “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” No work is good apart from Christ; we cannot keep the Law apart from being connected to the One who kept the Law on our behalf. A branch laying on the ground, cut off from the vine, cannot produce fruit; it is impossible. In the same way, anyone who is apart from Christ cannot do a good work; it is impossible. Their deeds may look good, they may help many, and we can rightly praise and encourage them in an earthly way, but before God these works are only sinful. They cannot bring salvation, they cannot bring a man to God, but only condemn him.
On the other hand, those connected to Christ, those who are attached to Him as the true vine, bear much good fruit. “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” Branches connected to the true vine bear fruit; this is simply a fact. They do not bear fruit in order to be attached to the vine, but they bear fruit because they are attached to the vine. And what is that fruit? One word: love. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” We love as Christ loved us: laying down our lives for others, placing them and their needs ahead of our own. That is the fruit that those who are in the true vine bear. That is the fruit that Christ calls on you to bear. But this fruit cannot be produced on your own, by yourself, but only through the life-giving gifts that Christ gives. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” We love as Christ has loved us; we receive love from Christ here in this place, and then we extend that love to others as God places them before us.
We do this in joy; not under compulsion, not under the threat of punishment, not out of a need to earn God’s favor. We have God’s favor, we are attached to the vine; we now serve others in freedom, with great joy. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” It is no coincidence that Jesus calls Himself a vine when the picture of the joy of the kingdom of heaven almost always includes wine. Being attached to the true vine and bearing much fruit lead to joy, the very joy of heaven itself. Apart from Christ there is no faith, apart from Christ there are no good works, and apart from Christ, there is no joy.
It was on that great truth that the confessors at Augsburg took their stand. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Their Roman opponents certainly held to Jesus as the only one who gives access to the Father. Their error was more subtle; they privileged human works by giving them a role to play in achieving salvation. Faith and works together brought the believer into a saving relationship with God. In response, the confessors went to John chapter 15 and declared: “Without faith human nature cannot possibly do the works of the First or Second Commandments. Without faith it does not call upon God, expect anything of God, or bear the cross, but it seeks and trusts in man’s help. Accordingly, when there is no faith and trust in God, all manner of lusts and human devices rule in the heart. Wherefore Christ said, ‘Apart from me you can do nothing.’” Faith comes first, then works, and those works have nothing to do with making a person righteous before God. No work that precedes faith and justification is good, but is damnable and condemned, no matter how beautiful it appears.
Melanchthon emphasizes this point in the Apology, or defense, of the Augsburg Confession. “Our opponents imagine that we are members of Moses rather than of Christ. They want to be justified by the law and to offer our works to God before being reconciled to God and becoming the branches of Christ.” The debate at Augsburg was not over whether Christians do good works, but where those good works were to be found: not before justification, not during justification, but flowing from justification, as those attached to the vine in joy bring forth the good fruit that delights the vinedresser, the fruit that will fill the foaming cups of wine in the halls of heaven, forever. In the Name of the true vine, Jesus Christ, Amen.
St. Barnabas (Mark 6:7-13)
“And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this feast of Saint Barnabas comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Dear friends in Christ, Barnabas was an apostle, a sent one. Not one of the Apostles, mind you, the chosen Twelve whom Jesus sends out on vicarage in our text, but he was certainly a ‘little a’ apostle, one sent by Christ through the Church, sent far and wide, with one task and then another. In our Epistle lesson Barnabas is first sent to Antioch, to see the firstfruits of the Gospel among Gentiles. He is next sent to Tarsus to find the newly converted Saul. He is then sent to Jerusalem with an offering for the impoverished Church, and finally, no less than the Holy Spirit Himself speaks to send Barnabas with Saul on the latter’s first missionary journey. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” A ‘little a’ apostle, a ‘sent one,’ does not go on his own volition, even if he is eager to go, even if he volunteered. A sent one never sends himself. Instead, by definition a sent one is sent by another, and when it comes to the messengers of the Word, the One who sends is Jesus Himself.
“And He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” Sent ones have little choice in where they are sent. Saul and Barnabas didn’t choose their missionary journey, even if they were eager to go; neither did the disciples have any choice when they first became apostles on their vicarage. Even today, a pastor is sent; he does not go freely on his own volition. He may choose not to go when a call is offered, but he cannot choose when a call might come or where it might lead him. His call is just that, a call; he can choose to remain at his current call when another call is offered, but he cannot choose whether that other call ever comes. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Nor are the sent ones free to fend for themselves when they reach the place where they have been called. “He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.” They are to be provided for by those who are grateful to have heard the Word. On the other hand, they are expressly forbidden to shop around for the place that will give them the best accommodations. “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there.” Their task is not to make money or live comfortably, it is to preach.
Sent ones preach, and those to whom they are sent hear. Faithful preachers are to be heard by believing hearers. According to the Third Commandment, faithful preachers are to be listened to. “We should far and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” Hearers owe faithful preachers attention and listening ears, for it is not the preachers, the sent ones, who are heard, but the One who sent them, God Himself. Preachers owe it to believing hearers to be faithful; they are held accountable to teach the Word of God in its truth and purity, as the First Petition of the Lord’s Prayer teaches. “God’s Name is kept holy when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God also lead holy lives according to it.” And when faithful preachers preach and believing hearers hear, the hearers support the physical needs of the one who is sent to them. Perhaps a congregation cannot support a sent one on their own, but if they have received the teaching Christ expects them to provide for the teacher as much as they are able. Reception of the Word a faithful preacher proclaims leads to provision for his needs.
Rejection of the Word a faithful preacher proclaims leads to the rejection of his needs. Faithless hearers starve faithful sent ones. Faithless hearers shut their doors, they shut their homes, they shut their hearts. Sent ones are called upon to be faithful, and when they are faithful, hearers are called upon to listen, as we confess in the Small Catechism. “I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sin and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, eve in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord had dealt with us Himself.” Faithless sent ones should be removed, but faithless hearers so often cast out faithful preachers, they ‘vote with their wallet,’ they cut benefits and salaries for no fiscal reason, they finally seek for ways to cast out the one who was sent to them. Soon the sent one finds himself with only the little that Jesus sent him out with, expecting the hearers to provide. “He charged them to take nothing for their journey.” And with nothing, faithful sent ones are cast out, they are cast aside; perhaps not physically wounded, they are mentally abused and traumatized. They took little with them as Christ sent them out, and they have little left when faithless hearers are done with them.
Jesus has one piece of advice when faithful sent ones are rejected by faithless hearers. “And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” When a sent one has been unfaithful, it is he that should be cast out by believing hearers; but when a sent one has been faithful and yet rejected, even the dust should not cling to his feet when he departs. “But anyone who teaches or lives contrary to God’s Word profanes the name of God among us. Protect us from this, heavenly Father!” Faithful preachers shake off the dust to call to repentance, as a declaration of the seriousness of rejecting the Word. Like God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, it is a fearful thing for God to leave you alone in your sin because you have rejected His Word. When the sent one moves on, there is no guarantee that God will send another; the passing rain shower of the Gospel may move to another place for years, decades, even generations! Heed the Word when a faithful preacher calls on you to repent, when you are called to turn away from your sin and believe the Gospel. Do not watch God’s messengers shake their feet, but hearken to faithful sent ones when they fulfill their task in accordance with the Word they were sent to preach.
For the power is in the Word, not in the sent one who bears it. Barnabas may have been a “good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” as Luke describes him, and he certainly was endowed with many gifts that qualified him for the task of representing the apostles in Antioch and accompanying Paul on his first missionary journey, but the power of his proclamation didn’t rest in himself, it rested in the Word. Neither did the disciples’ seeming success come from their own powers. “And [Jesus] called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits… So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” The power over sin, Satan, and even death belongs to Jesus Himself. He is the One who conquered, He is the One who triumphed, He is the One who seized the victory from all of our enemies. He is the One who paid the price, who gave up His life into death, who bore the sin of the world, even your sin, and mine. And when He rose victorious on Easter morning, He left that tomb with the keys of death and hell in His hands.
“And He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” Sent ones have little choice in where they are sent. Saul and Barnabas didn’t choose their missionary journey, even if they were eager to go; neither did the disciples have any choice when they first became apostles on their vicarage. Even today, a pastor is sent; he does not go freely on his own volition. He may choose not to go when a call is offered, but he cannot choose when a call might come or where it might lead him. His call is just that, a call; he can choose to remain at his current call when another call is offered, but he cannot choose whether that other call ever comes. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Nor are the sent ones free to fend for themselves when they reach the place where they have been called. “He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.” They are to be provided for by those who are grateful to have heard the Word. On the other hand, they are expressly forbidden to shop around for the place that will give them the best accommodations. “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there.” Their task is not to make money or live comfortably, it is to preach.
Sent ones preach, and those to whom they are sent hear. Faithful preachers are to be heard by believing hearers. According to the Third Commandment, faithful preachers are to be listened to. “We should far and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” Hearers owe faithful preachers attention and listening ears, for it is not the preachers, the sent ones, who are heard, but the One who sent them, God Himself. Preachers owe it to believing hearers to be faithful; they are held accountable to teach the Word of God in its truth and purity, as the First Petition of the Lord’s Prayer teaches. “God’s Name is kept holy when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God also lead holy lives according to it.” And when faithful preachers preach and believing hearers hear, the hearers support the physical needs of the one who is sent to them. Perhaps a congregation cannot support a sent one on their own, but if they have received the teaching Christ expects them to provide for the teacher as much as they are able. Reception of the Word a faithful preacher proclaims leads to provision for his needs.
Rejection of the Word a faithful preacher proclaims leads to the rejection of his needs. Faithless hearers starve faithful sent ones. Faithless hearers shut their doors, they shut their homes, they shut their hearts. Sent ones are called upon to be faithful, and when they are faithful, hearers are called upon to listen, as we confess in the Small Catechism. “I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sin and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, eve in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord had dealt with us Himself.” Faithless sent ones should be removed, but faithless hearers so often cast out faithful preachers, they ‘vote with their wallet,’ they cut benefits and salaries for no fiscal reason, they finally seek for ways to cast out the one who was sent to them. Soon the sent one finds himself with only the little that Jesus sent him out with, expecting the hearers to provide. “He charged them to take nothing for their journey.” And with nothing, faithful sent ones are cast out, they are cast aside; perhaps not physically wounded, they are mentally abused and traumatized. They took little with them as Christ sent them out, and they have little left when faithless hearers are done with them.
Jesus has one piece of advice when faithful sent ones are rejected by faithless hearers. “And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” When a sent one has been unfaithful, it is he that should be cast out by believing hearers; but when a sent one has been faithful and yet rejected, even the dust should not cling to his feet when he departs. “But anyone who teaches or lives contrary to God’s Word profanes the name of God among us. Protect us from this, heavenly Father!” Faithful preachers shake off the dust to call to repentance, as a declaration of the seriousness of rejecting the Word. Like God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, it is a fearful thing for God to leave you alone in your sin because you have rejected His Word. When the sent one moves on, there is no guarantee that God will send another; the passing rain shower of the Gospel may move to another place for years, decades, even generations! Heed the Word when a faithful preacher calls on you to repent, when you are called to turn away from your sin and believe the Gospel. Do not watch God’s messengers shake their feet, but hearken to faithful sent ones when they fulfill their task in accordance with the Word they were sent to preach.
For the power is in the Word, not in the sent one who bears it. Barnabas may have been a “good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” as Luke describes him, and he certainly was endowed with many gifts that qualified him for the task of representing the apostles in Antioch and accompanying Paul on his first missionary journey, but the power of his proclamation didn’t rest in himself, it rested in the Word. Neither did the disciples’ seeming success come from their own powers. “And [Jesus] called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits… So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” The power over sin, Satan, and even death belongs to Jesus Himself. He is the One who conquered, He is the One who triumphed, He is the One who seized the victory from all of our enemies. He is the One who paid the price, who gave up His life into death, who bore the sin of the world, even your sin, and mine. And when He rose victorious on Easter morning, He left that tomb with the keys of death and hell in His hands.
Jesus gives to His sent ones authority to exercise those keys for your good. They are to cast out demons with the power of the Word attached to water, setting you free from the choke-hold of Satan. They are to heal those sick with death by giving them the medicine of immortality, the power of the Word attached to bread and wine. And they are to comfort you when your sin is pointed out and you are driven to your knees in repentance with the power of His Words of forgiveness. That is where the power lies; in the Word, not the man, whether Barnabas or Paul or your own pastor. For the Word is Christ’s Word, and He has won the victory—for you! In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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