“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ, as I travel the roads of northern Crawford County, I cannot help but notice how wonderful the crops look. Each and every field seems to be bursting with tall, green corn or full and bushy beans. It seems to me that we are headed for a bumper crop and a joyous harvest. Now I know that most of you are not directly involved in bringing in that bumper crop, but I don’t have to tell you that the entire economy of this area is ultimately dependent on those fields, making a good harvest good for everyone. The Lord has truly blessed us this summer, but when you think about it, He has blessed us each and every year, for even when the crops are not so good, He still provides for our needs.
That is because our God is a giver- He loves to shower His good gifts upon His people. I don’t think anyone has expressed this better than Luther did in his explanation to the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed. “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all I need to support this body and life.” The gifts of a fruitful creation, providing all that we need to live on this earth, come only from God. He works through humans to give these gifts to us, but they ultimately flow from His desire to give us every good thing. All that we have to support this body and life flow from the loving hands of our Creator. But notice how Luther began: “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul…” Not only does God give us the things we need for our lives, but even our lives themselves are a gift from Him. Our lives are not our own, but they are given and sustained by Him as a gift, along with every other gift.
But somehow that doesn’t sit right with us. We have been taught that our lives are our own, to use how we please, that the abundance of the earth is a result of our labor, to provide for our own pleasure and perceived needs. The rich man in our text is not too far off from any one of us. Listen again to this parable of Jesus: “The land of [a Crawford county farmer] produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.’” There is nothing wrong with building a barn, silo, or grain bin, but notice what the rich man doesn’t do. He doesn’t give thanks to God for this abundant harvest. He sees the abundance of his fields as something for himself, something earned solely by his own labor, and therefore something to be enjoyed by himself. Listen to the pronouns: my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods. He depends on no one but himself. And now he even has a conversation with himself: “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, and be merry.’” What is your first response when God has blessed you? Is it to give thanks and praise to Him? Is it to think of the needs of others that you can now provide for? Or do we, like the man in our text, praise ourselves and think about our own wants? The rich man completely isolates himself from others, he doesn’t think of God, he doesn’t think of his neighbor, but only about number one.
Before He tells this story, Jesus warns us: “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness.” Saint Paul in our Epistle lesson has an interesting take on that term, which is the same thing as greed: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Paul equates covetousness or greed with idolatry! It is not too hard to see why. Idolatry is the violation of God’s first commandment: “You shall have no other Gods.” Luther gives us the explanation: “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Who did the rich man fear, love, and trust? Himself. He made an idol out of his own accomplishments, his own wealth; in fact his own life of leisure became his idol. That is what happens when we depend on ourselves, when we don’t give thanks to God or share our bounty with others. We become self-centered and self-dependent, eventually worshipping not the God who gives all good gifts but instead only ourselves. But God has a wake-up call for all who trust in themselves: “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” A fool is one who places his trust in anything or anyone other than God. When we are focused only on ourselves, we are blinded to the fact that our own lives are given by God. It is His prerogative to take that life back when He so chooses. At that point, anything we have stored up here on earth is worthless, it can do nothing to help us, as God tells the rich man, “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Jesus’ conclusion is a warning to us all: “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
This brings up an important question: how do we become rich toward God? It is relatively easy to lay up treasure for ourselves, for greed is not simply a vice of the rich, but where is it that we find heavenly treasure? The answer, once again, comes in God’s character. Our God is a giving God. And in order to give us the heavenly treasure we needed, He gave us another gift. Luther talks about this gift in the explanation to the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed. “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord.” That is why we open presents on Christmas, because on that night God gave to us the gift of His Son. And Jesus Christ came into the world as God’s great gift to us to bestow on us even greater gifts. Luther continues: “who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.”
Jesus Christ came to give to us His own life in our place, on the cross He won the great gifts of forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. He came to fulfill the promise we heard in today’s Introit: “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for He will receive me.” We couldn’t pay for our own redemption, no amount of the stuff of this world could fulfill the debt we owed. But Jesus Christ, God’s gift to us, paid on our account with His life, with His very blood. He ransomed us from the power of death, He gave to us His very self. Jesus did this out of the same love that motivated the Father to create us, the same love that motivates Him to give us every good thing. Jesus hung on that cross to deliver you, to redeem you, to pay your debt out of His great love for you and His desire to give you the ultimate good gift: eternal life with Him.
When Christ rose from the grave on Easter Sunday, He went forth to deliver the heavenly treasure and inheritance to you, me, and all people. One becomes rich before God by being joined with Christ, by having His treasures poured into our hearts. He pours out on you in abundance His holy Word, filling your treasure chests with every good thing that your soul needs. This very day He gives to you the gift given by God on Christmas Eve and by Christ Himself on Good Friday, His very Body and Blood, given and shed for your salvation. He fills you with the treasure of Himself. Finally, he poured out on your head the treasure of Holy Baptism, where He gave to you an eternal inheritance, one that will never fade. You are not your own, you are His, bought with a price, and so the Lord desires to give you every good gift. The treasure and inheritance delivered through those gifts declares us right before God, it is the treasure that counts in eternity.
The man who called out to Jesus at the beginning of our text wanted Jesus to divide his inheritance with his brother. Jesus responded: “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” Jesus did not come to grant earthly inheritances, He came to grant to us a heavenly inheritance, entry into the new heavens and the new earth where we will dwell into eternity. Because we have such a treasure, such an inheritance, we can have confidence that our God will continue to provide for us out of His rich bounty. We are freed from worry about trying to store up treasure on earth, for our inheritance is not of this world. Now, this does not mean that we sit around, waiting for God to send us abundance from the sky. We do continue to labor wherever God has placed us. But we do so with confidence in God’s providing hand, and with thankfulness for whatever He gives to us. If God gave to us His very Son, how will He hesitate to provide us with everything we need for this body and life? Our God is a giver God, and the same one who gave us Jesus Christ for our salvation will also give to us “clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all that I have.” He will provide for you because He loves you and has redeemed you through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Unlike the rich man in our parable, as Christians, when God blesses us with abundance in any way, we do not keep it for ourselves, but we give thanks to God for it and put it to use to bless those around us. The Lord uses us as His means for providing those ‘First Article gifts’ to our neighbors. We do this in the confidence that as God has blessed us, so He will continue to bless us. He is our heavenly Father, who desires to give good gifts to His children. He has given to you His Son Jesus Christ, and someday He will show you the heavenly inheritance that He has won for you! Amen.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Proper 12 of Series C (Genesis 18:20-33)
“And the disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the eighteenth chapter of Genesis. Dear friends in Christ, the Lord looked toward the city and said, “Because the outcry…is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.” And the Lord turned to go, but an intercessor came up and stood between God and the city. This man interposed himself between the Lord and creator of the universe and the sinful city there below. Webster’s dictionary defines an intercessor as one who offers “mediation, pleading, or prayer in behalf of another or others.” That is exactly what this intercessor intends to do. He places himself between God and the city and goes to work.
The intercessor gets right to the point, calling on God’s just character to spare the city. “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked!” He knows who he is dealing with. God is a God of justice, and while justice may mean the punishment of the wicked, it also means the deliverance of the righteous. But God answers, “If I find…fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. But don’t count on it. This people is rebellious and sinful, they do not hallow my Name. My Name is holy because I am holy, but these people use my Name in vain, they dishonor it by the way they live. They do not realize that every moment they bear my Name, and their sin defiles it. But if there are fifty who hallow my Name, the city will be spared.”
The intercessor is a good Old Testament Hebrew; he knows that the highest form of faith is to wrestle with God, to cry out to Him in prayer, and so he boldly pushes the envelope. “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” God wants His people to wrestle with Him in prayer, to bring every request to Him, and so He does not become angry, but answers: “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there. But don’t get your hopes up. This people wants nothing to do with my kingdom, they certainly don’t want it to come. They have things just fine the way they are, with a comfortable life, money, material goods. They don’t see that they have any need for my kingdom to come to them. But yet if there are forty-five who see their need for my just rule, the city will be spared.”
The intercessor knows that God is a god of justice, but He is also a God of grace. He wants to deliver His creation, for He loves all He made. “Again he spoke to Him and said, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’” The Lord of the universe answers, “For the sake of forty I will not do it. But I fear even so few are lacking. No one wants my will to be done, only their own. These people want their own desires fulfilled, they care nothing for my good and gracious will. They trust only in themselves, and have little room in their heart to depend on me. But if forty seek my will, I will spare the city.”
“Then he said, ‘Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” The Lord answers, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there. But there may not be thirty there who seek their daily bread from my gracious and overflowing hand. My people do not realize that I provide every good gift, and so they depend on their own labor to supply their needs. They toil away; they worry constantly about daily bread. They do not realize that I work through my creation to provide for them, they forget that it is their sin that has cursed the ground in the first place. But if thirty seek daily bread from their creator, I will not do it.”
The intercessor is one very bold individual, to bargain with God over the fate of the city. But that is what God desires from those who pray, boldness to bring every request before Him, to ask, seek and knock. And so the intercessor speaks again: “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” The Lord answers, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it. But not even twenty may be found who forgive their neighbor. Instead they hold onto their neighbor’s sin, letting it fester inside, waiting to be used at the worst possible moment. They do not even know how to say ‘I’m sorry,’ and when they do, the answer too often is ‘It’s OK,’ rather than ‘You are forgiven.’ But if twenty forgive their neighbors when they sin against them, I will spare the city.”
The intercessor is persistent with God, but he knows that God loves the persistent prayers of His people, and so he speaks one last time: “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” The Lord has a look of sadness as He answers, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it. But that deceiver, that murderer from the beginning has led all astray into temptation. They have all deserted me, they are all corrupted with sin from their first parents, as my psalmist said, ‘None is righteous, no, not one.’”
The Intercessor is not fazed by this reply, this final striking down of His prayers for the city, for its people, but instead He says, “No, Father, none of these your created people are righteous, but I am righteous, and I will stand in their place. I will become man, taking on their human flesh, and I will live the life they could not, perfectly fulfilling your Law. I will fulfill it in their place, so that it can no longer accuse and condemn them. And if the Law no longer accuses, then there will be no place for the Accuser. I will defeat the evil one, Satan, on their behalf, for their sake I will crush his head just as you promised from the beginning. And finally, I will stand between your wrath and them. Just as I have stood before you and interceded for them, so I will stand before you as the Righteous One, hung upon the tree for the sin of the world, for all of their rebellion, all of their sin, all of their falling into temptation. You are a just God, and so sin must be punished, but you are also a gracious and merciful God, and so you desire not that men die eternally but that they are reconciled to you. On the cross your justice and your mercy will meet, as wrath over sin will be poured out on me so that you can show mercy to your people. Through me you will be reconciled with your people. I willingly do this because I love these people, and you love these people; I love them so that I am willing to face your wrath for their sakes, you love them so much that you are willing to give me up, your only Son, on the altar of the cross.”
God looked in love upon His only begotten Son, the Righteous One, the One whom He loved, and said, “I could not find even ten righteous ones in the city, but for the sake of the one Righteous One, my Son Jesus Christ, I will spare the city. He will put His righteous life in the place of the sinful lives of my created people, and His death will pay for their sin forever. His sacrifice will reconcile me to my people, and I will welcome them to the heavenly banquet forever in the new heavens and the new earth into all eternity. And because He gave Himself up into death in order to conquer death, my Son will not remain in the grave. I will raise Him up on the third day victorious over all that held my beloved people captive. He will rise as the victor over death, so that my people need not fear its sting any longer, but will see it as the door to eternal glory. All who cling to my Son in faith, the faith given through the gifts of my Word and Holy Sacraments, will be delivered. He will come to them and grasp onto them, and no one will snatch them from His hand. Satan will still try to lead them into temptation, but he is a chained lion without fangs; he can no longer accuse them before me, and they can find forgiveness from my overflowing springs each and every time that they fall. When I look at them, I see my Son and His righteousness.”
Our Intercessor, the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Savior then says to us this day: “Behold, now that I have won the victory over sin, death, and the grave through my death and resurrection, I have ascended to the Father’s throne and continue to intercede for you before Him. You can take confidence and great joy in knowing that I am praying for you, praying that your faith may be strengthened and preserved until you join the saints of all ages in eternal glory. And because I now intercede for you, you can in boldness pray to my Father. You can bring any concern before Him, you can cry out to Him for deliverance, but most importantly you can now intercede for others. You can hold others up before your Father’s heavenly throne and know that you are heard, for I have delivered you. They need your prayers, they need your intercession, and here especially on Sunday mornings the entire body of Christ prays on their behalf. That is why I gave to you my prayer, because in those simple words you not only pray for yourself, but you pray for the entire world, and you pray not as strangers, not as those separated from God, but as His dear children. For my sake, you pray ‘Our Father’ until you see your Father face to face in heavenly glory.” Amen.
The intercessor gets right to the point, calling on God’s just character to spare the city. “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked!” He knows who he is dealing with. God is a God of justice, and while justice may mean the punishment of the wicked, it also means the deliverance of the righteous. But God answers, “If I find…fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. But don’t count on it. This people is rebellious and sinful, they do not hallow my Name. My Name is holy because I am holy, but these people use my Name in vain, they dishonor it by the way they live. They do not realize that every moment they bear my Name, and their sin defiles it. But if there are fifty who hallow my Name, the city will be spared.”
The intercessor is a good Old Testament Hebrew; he knows that the highest form of faith is to wrestle with God, to cry out to Him in prayer, and so he boldly pushes the envelope. “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” God wants His people to wrestle with Him in prayer, to bring every request to Him, and so He does not become angry, but answers: “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there. But don’t get your hopes up. This people wants nothing to do with my kingdom, they certainly don’t want it to come. They have things just fine the way they are, with a comfortable life, money, material goods. They don’t see that they have any need for my kingdom to come to them. But yet if there are forty-five who see their need for my just rule, the city will be spared.”
The intercessor knows that God is a god of justice, but He is also a God of grace. He wants to deliver His creation, for He loves all He made. “Again he spoke to Him and said, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’” The Lord of the universe answers, “For the sake of forty I will not do it. But I fear even so few are lacking. No one wants my will to be done, only their own. These people want their own desires fulfilled, they care nothing for my good and gracious will. They trust only in themselves, and have little room in their heart to depend on me. But if forty seek my will, I will spare the city.”
“Then he said, ‘Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” The Lord answers, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there. But there may not be thirty there who seek their daily bread from my gracious and overflowing hand. My people do not realize that I provide every good gift, and so they depend on their own labor to supply their needs. They toil away; they worry constantly about daily bread. They do not realize that I work through my creation to provide for them, they forget that it is their sin that has cursed the ground in the first place. But if thirty seek daily bread from their creator, I will not do it.”
The intercessor is one very bold individual, to bargain with God over the fate of the city. But that is what God desires from those who pray, boldness to bring every request before Him, to ask, seek and knock. And so the intercessor speaks again: “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” The Lord answers, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it. But not even twenty may be found who forgive their neighbor. Instead they hold onto their neighbor’s sin, letting it fester inside, waiting to be used at the worst possible moment. They do not even know how to say ‘I’m sorry,’ and when they do, the answer too often is ‘It’s OK,’ rather than ‘You are forgiven.’ But if twenty forgive their neighbors when they sin against them, I will spare the city.”
The intercessor is persistent with God, but he knows that God loves the persistent prayers of His people, and so he speaks one last time: “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” The Lord has a look of sadness as He answers, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it. But that deceiver, that murderer from the beginning has led all astray into temptation. They have all deserted me, they are all corrupted with sin from their first parents, as my psalmist said, ‘None is righteous, no, not one.’”
The Intercessor is not fazed by this reply, this final striking down of His prayers for the city, for its people, but instead He says, “No, Father, none of these your created people are righteous, but I am righteous, and I will stand in their place. I will become man, taking on their human flesh, and I will live the life they could not, perfectly fulfilling your Law. I will fulfill it in their place, so that it can no longer accuse and condemn them. And if the Law no longer accuses, then there will be no place for the Accuser. I will defeat the evil one, Satan, on their behalf, for their sake I will crush his head just as you promised from the beginning. And finally, I will stand between your wrath and them. Just as I have stood before you and interceded for them, so I will stand before you as the Righteous One, hung upon the tree for the sin of the world, for all of their rebellion, all of their sin, all of their falling into temptation. You are a just God, and so sin must be punished, but you are also a gracious and merciful God, and so you desire not that men die eternally but that they are reconciled to you. On the cross your justice and your mercy will meet, as wrath over sin will be poured out on me so that you can show mercy to your people. Through me you will be reconciled with your people. I willingly do this because I love these people, and you love these people; I love them so that I am willing to face your wrath for their sakes, you love them so much that you are willing to give me up, your only Son, on the altar of the cross.”
God looked in love upon His only begotten Son, the Righteous One, the One whom He loved, and said, “I could not find even ten righteous ones in the city, but for the sake of the one Righteous One, my Son Jesus Christ, I will spare the city. He will put His righteous life in the place of the sinful lives of my created people, and His death will pay for their sin forever. His sacrifice will reconcile me to my people, and I will welcome them to the heavenly banquet forever in the new heavens and the new earth into all eternity. And because He gave Himself up into death in order to conquer death, my Son will not remain in the grave. I will raise Him up on the third day victorious over all that held my beloved people captive. He will rise as the victor over death, so that my people need not fear its sting any longer, but will see it as the door to eternal glory. All who cling to my Son in faith, the faith given through the gifts of my Word and Holy Sacraments, will be delivered. He will come to them and grasp onto them, and no one will snatch them from His hand. Satan will still try to lead them into temptation, but he is a chained lion without fangs; he can no longer accuse them before me, and they can find forgiveness from my overflowing springs each and every time that they fall. When I look at them, I see my Son and His righteousness.”
Our Intercessor, the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Savior then says to us this day: “Behold, now that I have won the victory over sin, death, and the grave through my death and resurrection, I have ascended to the Father’s throne and continue to intercede for you before Him. You can take confidence and great joy in knowing that I am praying for you, praying that your faith may be strengthened and preserved until you join the saints of all ages in eternal glory. And because I now intercede for you, you can in boldness pray to my Father. You can bring any concern before Him, you can cry out to Him for deliverance, but most importantly you can now intercede for others. You can hold others up before your Father’s heavenly throne and know that you are heard, for I have delivered you. They need your prayers, they need your intercession, and here especially on Sunday mornings the entire body of Christ prays on their behalf. That is why I gave to you my prayer, because in those simple words you not only pray for yourself, but you pray for the entire world, and you pray not as strangers, not as those separated from God, but as His dear children. For my sake, you pray ‘Our Father’ until you see your Father face to face in heavenly glory.” Amen.
Proper 11 of Series C (Luke 10:38-42)
“One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ, our Introit for today comes from the longest chapter in the bible, Psalm 119. This psalm is all about the Word of God, more specifically our study of His Word and our meditation upon it. The little snippet we spoke together earlier in the service is so wonderful because it expresses the psalmist’s joy in studying the Word. Hear again what he says: “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” He cannot imagine walking through this dark world without God’s Word to guide him. And listen again to how he concludes: “The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love; teach me your statutes!” He loves the Word of the Lord so much that He cries to his God to give him more, to teach him more. As we read these words, we can feel the joy he receives from every moment spent in the midst of God’s Word.
How about you and me? Do we feel that same joy from hearing or reading God’s Word? Do we cry out to our God with eagerness, “teach me your statutes!” No doubt many of you are thinking, “I do feel that joy! I am excited and eager to learn God’s Word!” Even though I have only been among you for a short time, I have no doubt that this is true, but we should dig a little deeper. Do we always receive God’s Word with joy? Or are there times when the things of this world keep us from hearing God’s Word? We have plenty of distractions in our world today, there are many other things to do rather than read our bible our spend time in prayer. You know what many of these are in your own life. Whether it is the television, the internet, or simply the busyness of life, there is always something waiting to pull us away from God’s Word. Satan has always been a master at distracting us from the study of God’s Word, and with our current technology and busy schedules, he barely has to work at it anymore. He wants us to not have time for God’s Word, because He wants us disconnected from the source of strength and life. He wants us to wither away from a drought of our own creation. And in our text for today, we see that even service can distract us from hearing God’s Word.
This is a dangerous text for a new pastor to preach on. A pastor is supposed to encourage his people to serve, right? And then, on his first Sunday, as he climbs into the pulpit the cruel fate of the lectionary is that he has to preach on the story of Mary and Martha. He has to tell his people, these people whom he barely knows, these people on whom he has to depend to run these churches, that service is a bad thing!? We’ll be lucky if we have coffee after church…or ever. How can service, especially service to Christ, be a negative? When we think about it in these terms, I think we can understand Martha’s dilemma. She welcomed Jesus into her home, and now she thought it was only proper to show Him hospitality. She’s just following the example of Abraham, right? We heard about him in our Old Testament lesson, how he hurried about to prepare a meal for his three angelic visitors. Martha knows what good hospitality entails, and it has nothing to do with sitting in the living room while the Messiah has nothing to eat! That is why she says to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”
The reply of Jesus is striking: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Martha’s service has turned into a distraction, which has then transformed into worry and anxiety. Satan is the master of deception; he is an expert at using even good things to pull us away from God’s Word. I think we all have a little Martha in us, and the danger unfortunately increases the more we are involved in our church and in our communities. We get so wrapped up in serving, in doing the tasks to help our Lord’s Church and our neighbor that we work ourselves into a frenzy, forgetting why we serve in the first place. The church can become a place where people are simply busy, as if busyness was a mark of God’s favor. This can feed into Satan’s greatest lie, that our service is needed to please God, that it is something we do to earn His favor. How often are we tempted to think that our service, our busyness, will earn us God’s grace? Satan wants us to stand before God on the day of judgment with our titles, or a list of all our volunteer hours, depending on them to give us entry into eternal life. That is Martha’s fundamental problem. She thinks that she first has to serve Jesus. She thinks that He has come as a triumphant king to receive glory and honor from all He meets. In order for blessings to come to her, she needs to do something for Jesus.
But that way of thinking is completely backward. Jesus says in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Martha’s problem is that she is trying to serve the One who came to serve! Jesus Christ came into this world not as a triumphant king searching for glory and servants, but instead He came in the form of a servant, and He was on His way to Jerusalem to render the greatest service of all, His very own life for us. He declared to Martha, “One thing is necessary.” We know that in this life plenty of things are necessary. We need food, we need water, we need air and a place to live. But here Jesus says that only one thing is necessary. I can imagine Him pointing at His own chest as He said those words. Jesus is the only necessary thing, and Him alone. All those other necessities pale before Him, because our need for Him was greater than any other need. The same sin that distracts us from God, the same sin that uses even our service to pull us away from Him, left us condemned before Him. All the church titles and all the volunteer hours in the world could not reconcile us to God. We had a need for a Savior, and thanks be to God that our Savior came in the form of a servant.
Jesus Christ came to serve you when He carried your sins to the cross. Jesus Christ came to serve you when He stood in your place before Pilate’s judgment seat. Jesus came to serve you when He faced the wrath of God over your sin and my sin upon that cross. Jesus came to serve you when He crushed Satan’s head by sacrificing Himself in your place, removing the penalty for your sin. Jesus came to serve you when He triumphed over sin, Satan, and the grave by walking out of the empty tomb on the third day. The entire life of Jesus was one of service, service to you, service for your salvation. And because He came not to be served but to serve, you will dwell with Him forever in heaven. Your sins have been washed away by Christ’s sacrificial death and His victorious resurrection. He fulfilled our necessity, He was determined to wipe out our greatest need, and so He willingly offered the greatest service by laying down His life. Rejoice, for we do not have to depend on our service to be reconciled to God, but instead He came to serve us!
You see, Mary had the proper perspective. Listen to how Luke describes her. “And [Martha] had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching.” Although she may not have understood all the details, Mary knew that Jesus had not come to simply receive, but He had first come to give. And thanks be to God that Christ’s service, His giving to His people, did not end with the cross. The salvation He accomplished there He now delivers to us in His Word and His holy sacraments. We gather here each and every week to sit at the feet of Jesus, receiving His gifts from Him again and again. Jesus proclaims His Word to you, His Word of forgiveness, His Word of life. He worked through a pastor to baptize you, bringing you into His kingdom. And on this day, He serves you by giving of Himself. The same body that the Servant bore on the cross, the same blood that He poured out in service to you is given to you this day to eat and to drink. Christ brings His forgiveness near to you, the forgiveness that you need, the forgiveness that He won.
Having received the forgiveness of Christ here in this place, having sat at the feet of Jesus today and every time we are in God’s Word, we then respond with prayer and praise, service to God and service to our neighbor. We experienced the joy of the Gospel each and every time that Christ gives to us His gifts, and then that joy motivates us to serve. We do not, like Martha, first try to serve Christ, but we like Mary first receive from His overflowing hand and then go out and serve. That is why we volunteer our time at our congregations, serving in various capacities. That is why some of you gave generously of your time to serve at Vacation Bible School this week. That is why we are involved in our communities, searching for any opportunity to serve, bringing the love that Christ first showed us to others. That is why we provide a helping hand to friends, family, or coworkers throughout our daily lives. Service is a wonderful and God-pleasing thing! Moreover, our neighbors need that service. Martha’s dilemma is not solved by pitting service and hearing the Word against each other, but by having them in the proper order. Christ serves us, and then we respond in joy to the great things He has done for us.
We go forth in service with a great promise, the same one that Mary and Martha heard in our text for today. “One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Satan wants to pull us away from Christ, but here we have the promise that He will hold tightly onto us, strengthening our faith through His gifts until that day when He brings us to be with Himself forever. He is constantly working to forgive our sins and strengthen our faith through the hearing of His Word and the giving of His Body and Blood to eat and to drink. Come rejoicing, for Christ our servant gives of Himself to you once again on this day, for the forgiveness of your sins and to bring you to eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth. In His name, Amen.
How about you and me? Do we feel that same joy from hearing or reading God’s Word? Do we cry out to our God with eagerness, “teach me your statutes!” No doubt many of you are thinking, “I do feel that joy! I am excited and eager to learn God’s Word!” Even though I have only been among you for a short time, I have no doubt that this is true, but we should dig a little deeper. Do we always receive God’s Word with joy? Or are there times when the things of this world keep us from hearing God’s Word? We have plenty of distractions in our world today, there are many other things to do rather than read our bible our spend time in prayer. You know what many of these are in your own life. Whether it is the television, the internet, or simply the busyness of life, there is always something waiting to pull us away from God’s Word. Satan has always been a master at distracting us from the study of God’s Word, and with our current technology and busy schedules, he barely has to work at it anymore. He wants us to not have time for God’s Word, because He wants us disconnected from the source of strength and life. He wants us to wither away from a drought of our own creation. And in our text for today, we see that even service can distract us from hearing God’s Word.
This is a dangerous text for a new pastor to preach on. A pastor is supposed to encourage his people to serve, right? And then, on his first Sunday, as he climbs into the pulpit the cruel fate of the lectionary is that he has to preach on the story of Mary and Martha. He has to tell his people, these people whom he barely knows, these people on whom he has to depend to run these churches, that service is a bad thing!? We’ll be lucky if we have coffee after church…or ever. How can service, especially service to Christ, be a negative? When we think about it in these terms, I think we can understand Martha’s dilemma. She welcomed Jesus into her home, and now she thought it was only proper to show Him hospitality. She’s just following the example of Abraham, right? We heard about him in our Old Testament lesson, how he hurried about to prepare a meal for his three angelic visitors. Martha knows what good hospitality entails, and it has nothing to do with sitting in the living room while the Messiah has nothing to eat! That is why she says to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”
The reply of Jesus is striking: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Martha’s service has turned into a distraction, which has then transformed into worry and anxiety. Satan is the master of deception; he is an expert at using even good things to pull us away from God’s Word. I think we all have a little Martha in us, and the danger unfortunately increases the more we are involved in our church and in our communities. We get so wrapped up in serving, in doing the tasks to help our Lord’s Church and our neighbor that we work ourselves into a frenzy, forgetting why we serve in the first place. The church can become a place where people are simply busy, as if busyness was a mark of God’s favor. This can feed into Satan’s greatest lie, that our service is needed to please God, that it is something we do to earn His favor. How often are we tempted to think that our service, our busyness, will earn us God’s grace? Satan wants us to stand before God on the day of judgment with our titles, or a list of all our volunteer hours, depending on them to give us entry into eternal life. That is Martha’s fundamental problem. She thinks that she first has to serve Jesus. She thinks that He has come as a triumphant king to receive glory and honor from all He meets. In order for blessings to come to her, she needs to do something for Jesus.
But that way of thinking is completely backward. Jesus says in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Martha’s problem is that she is trying to serve the One who came to serve! Jesus Christ came into this world not as a triumphant king searching for glory and servants, but instead He came in the form of a servant, and He was on His way to Jerusalem to render the greatest service of all, His very own life for us. He declared to Martha, “One thing is necessary.” We know that in this life plenty of things are necessary. We need food, we need water, we need air and a place to live. But here Jesus says that only one thing is necessary. I can imagine Him pointing at His own chest as He said those words. Jesus is the only necessary thing, and Him alone. All those other necessities pale before Him, because our need for Him was greater than any other need. The same sin that distracts us from God, the same sin that uses even our service to pull us away from Him, left us condemned before Him. All the church titles and all the volunteer hours in the world could not reconcile us to God. We had a need for a Savior, and thanks be to God that our Savior came in the form of a servant.
Jesus Christ came to serve you when He carried your sins to the cross. Jesus Christ came to serve you when He stood in your place before Pilate’s judgment seat. Jesus came to serve you when He faced the wrath of God over your sin and my sin upon that cross. Jesus came to serve you when He crushed Satan’s head by sacrificing Himself in your place, removing the penalty for your sin. Jesus came to serve you when He triumphed over sin, Satan, and the grave by walking out of the empty tomb on the third day. The entire life of Jesus was one of service, service to you, service for your salvation. And because He came not to be served but to serve, you will dwell with Him forever in heaven. Your sins have been washed away by Christ’s sacrificial death and His victorious resurrection. He fulfilled our necessity, He was determined to wipe out our greatest need, and so He willingly offered the greatest service by laying down His life. Rejoice, for we do not have to depend on our service to be reconciled to God, but instead He came to serve us!
You see, Mary had the proper perspective. Listen to how Luke describes her. “And [Martha] had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching.” Although she may not have understood all the details, Mary knew that Jesus had not come to simply receive, but He had first come to give. And thanks be to God that Christ’s service, His giving to His people, did not end with the cross. The salvation He accomplished there He now delivers to us in His Word and His holy sacraments. We gather here each and every week to sit at the feet of Jesus, receiving His gifts from Him again and again. Jesus proclaims His Word to you, His Word of forgiveness, His Word of life. He worked through a pastor to baptize you, bringing you into His kingdom. And on this day, He serves you by giving of Himself. The same body that the Servant bore on the cross, the same blood that He poured out in service to you is given to you this day to eat and to drink. Christ brings His forgiveness near to you, the forgiveness that you need, the forgiveness that He won.
Having received the forgiveness of Christ here in this place, having sat at the feet of Jesus today and every time we are in God’s Word, we then respond with prayer and praise, service to God and service to our neighbor. We experienced the joy of the Gospel each and every time that Christ gives to us His gifts, and then that joy motivates us to serve. We do not, like Martha, first try to serve Christ, but we like Mary first receive from His overflowing hand and then go out and serve. That is why we volunteer our time at our congregations, serving in various capacities. That is why some of you gave generously of your time to serve at Vacation Bible School this week. That is why we are involved in our communities, searching for any opportunity to serve, bringing the love that Christ first showed us to others. That is why we provide a helping hand to friends, family, or coworkers throughout our daily lives. Service is a wonderful and God-pleasing thing! Moreover, our neighbors need that service. Martha’s dilemma is not solved by pitting service and hearing the Word against each other, but by having them in the proper order. Christ serves us, and then we respond in joy to the great things He has done for us.
We go forth in service with a great promise, the same one that Mary and Martha heard in our text for today. “One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Satan wants to pull us away from Christ, but here we have the promise that He will hold tightly onto us, strengthening our faith through His gifts until that day when He brings us to be with Himself forever. He is constantly working to forgive our sins and strengthen our faith through the hearing of His Word and the giving of His Body and Blood to eat and to drink. Come rejoicing, for Christ our servant gives of Himself to you once again on this day, for the forgiveness of your sins and to bring you to eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth. In His name, Amen.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Lent 4 of Series C (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32)
A little late in getting this up, but here it goes. If anyone is still following this blog, I hope to resume posting sermons sometime this summer, as I was assigned as a candidate from the seminary to Faith Lutheran Church in Deloit, IA, and St. John Lutheran Church in Kiron, IA. Once I am going there, expect regular sermon postings, newsletter articles, etc.
“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon today is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ, the Father had two sons. Now these were two pretty ordinary brothers. They grew up in the same home, ate much the same food, watched the same television shows, and played on the same high school football team. They went to their Father’s house on a weekly basis, to receive the gifts that their Father abundantly poured out on them. But the Father didn’t just bless them once a week. By His gracious provision, they did not lack anything to sustain this body and life.
But something changed between the two brothers. The younger brother fell in with a different group of friends, ones that persuaded him that there were far better things to do than visit his Father’s house each week, or follow his Father’s constricting rules. He began to drift farther and farther away from his Father, and he rarely darkened the door of his Father’s house. Finally the day came. In arrogance and pride, the younger son walked into his Father’s house and told him to drop dead. “I am finished being your son, I am finished following your rules, I am finished depending on you!” And you know what? The Father did not stop him. In an act that bordered on insanity, the Father let the younger brother take everything he had given him, indeed his very own life. Why would any Father do such a thing? Well, for this Father, it was part of His character. No one could choose or decide to become His son, but the Father would not stand in the way if someone decided to reject the sonship that had been freely given. To be sure, it saddened Him, but He would not force someone against their will to remain His son.
The younger son left his brother and his hometown and went to the city. There, he indulged his desires in an endless search for pleasure. There is no need for us to go into the dirty details of his life- let’s just say that he lived only for himself, and he used up every gift that his Father had given him. He spent his money, his mind, and his body on sex, on alcohol, on drugs, any quick fix that would satisfy his immediate needs. He rarely felt bad for the parade of women that spent the night at his apartment- they had all been raised on the same television shows, they knew what life was all about. Satisfy your own pleasure, and don’t worry about anyone else, because all those other people are only doing the same. The dim spark of love he held toward his father, indeed toward anything other than himself, soon flickered and died. He was truly as he wanted to be, dead to his Father. But yet, despite this, the Father continued to constantly seek after His lost son.
The older son had watched his brother drift away from their Father. He had seen it happen and had said nothing, he had not attempted to reconcile that broken relationship. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” he told himself. At least he had stayed. He continued to go to his Father’s house every week to receive his Father’s gifts, eventually bringing a wife and a young child along. He was even in his Father’s house a lot during the week, as he served on church council and then as an elder. He and his family were the perfect example of morality and love, and example that may others wished to follow. Sure, he lusted after women and had indecent thoughts, but he never acted on those thoughts. Like many others, he often let a curse word or a dirty joke escape his lips, or he participated in gossip, but those were minor compared to whatever his brother was doing. At least that was how he responded to himself whenever his conscience told him he was not as squeaky clean as he looked- “At least I’m not my brother.” That assertion was the basis of his relationship with his Father- “I’m the loyal son, I’m the good son, you don’t see me wasting your gifts like that brother of mine.”
The younger brother first realized something was wrong when his debit card was rejected at the casino. His account was empty, and as he soon discovered, so was his life. Within weeks, in addition to having no money, he had no friends and no home, and if it was not for the generosity of a downtown soup kitchen, he would’ve had nothing to eat. He began to realize the emptiness of his life, that when you live your life concerned with no one but yourself, you are left with no one but yourself when the bottom falls out. His transgressions of his Father’s commandments had ruined him. And now, how could his Father ever take him back? He deserved death, death forever, for what he had done, and he knew it. He knew that he didn’t deserve to be his Father’s son again, but then a plan formed itself in his mind. He would make amends, he would earn his way back- even if he could not ever receive his sonship back, surely he could earn something more than he had now, right?
And so after years of absence, the younger son traveled back to his Father’s house. He intended to make his bargain as soon as he entered, but on this Friday night, there were people in his Father’s house, and a man in the pulpit preaching. This preacher speaks about his Father, and about his Father’s wrath over rebellion. In agony the younger brother realizes that no amount of bargaining could possibly satisfy that wrath. He is truly done for, without hope. But then the preacher speaks of someone else, he declares that the Father, his Father, sent a Son, one to be our brother, to take upon Himself all of mankind’s rebellion. He quotes from Saint Paul: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This brother of ours, Jesus Christ, had no sin of His own, He was perfect. But in the extraordinary, incredible love of the Father, Jesus Christ took on the sin of all mankind, of you and me, and he bore it to the cross. A tear fell from the younger brother’s eye. How could this possibly be true? The preacher reached the crescendo of his sermon, and he proclaimed to the gathered people: “This Jesus took our sin to the cross, and there He bled, there He died, there He faced the wrath that we deserved. On this Good Friday, He suffered in our place, to deliver you, to deliver me, to grant us the forgiveness we so desperately need.” The younger brother shook his head in amazement and joy. Before he could even begin to bargain with Him, his Father had provided the solution, He had sent a brother to bear his sin along with the sin of all.
The preacher continued to speak, declaring the results of Jesus’ death. The younger brother heard about how through the cross and empty tomb, Christ’s death and resurrection, we are restored to the Father, how those who were dead in their trespasses and sins are now made alive through Jesus. The younger brother nodded, remembering that while through his rebellion he may have told his Father to drop dead, he was actually the one who died, and he died in the filth of sin. And now the Father, through the work of Jesus Christ, has sought him out when he was lost made him alive again. Through this pastor, the Father had reminded him of his baptismal garments, and had indeed covered the filthy rags of sin with the white robe of Christ’s own righteousness, won on the cross.
The preacher was not surprised to see the young man from the back of the church come running to the altar after the service. He had watched him carefully as he preached, seeing the change of emotion and the tears flow freely as he heard of what Christ had none for him. The younger brother threw himself on the floor before the altar. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” The pastor did not hesitate. “What is impossible for man is possible with God. As a called and ordained servant of the Word, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He lifted him onto his feet. “Welcome back to your Father’s family, those purchased by the blood of the Lamb.”
The older son’s cry of protest boomed out from behind them- “He does not deserve your forgiveness!” The pastor turned and gently said, “None of us do, but the Father continues to give it freely.” The older son came chest to chest with his pastor and pointed an accusing finger at his brother. “You mean that after he has squandered every gift that our Father gave him, after he has turned his back on our Father and no longer wished to be His son or my brother, that he can simply come back and everything is well!? I have served my Father all of these years, and we have never celebrated me! I have followed all of those stupid rules to the letter, I have been a slave to my Father, and this is the reward I get? He cannot be my brother again, he cannot be my Father’s son again!”
The pastor spoke softly. “You have been a child of your Father since that day He claimed you with the waters of Holy Baptism. From that day, He has continued to shower His gifts upon you. He forgives your sins each and every day, but especially at the beginning of the Divine Service each and every Sunday. You have heard from this pulpit God’s Word proclaimed, a Word that declares Christ’s death on your behalf. In just a couple days, you will hear of Christ’s victory over death, as the women came to the tomb on Easter Sunday and found it empty. You have life, just as your brother has life, eternal life, because you are incorporated into Christ’s victory. All of us were lost, all of us are in need of the gifts Christ won. Your sins are forgiven not because they are somehow less worthy of condemnation than your brother’s, but because Jesus Christ shed His blood for them upon the cross. Each and every sin that you have ever committed is covered with Jesus’ blood. Your Father never abandoned your lost brother, but continued to seek him out, for Jesus Christ came to seek sinners and restore them to the Father. You have seen this today with your own eyes. So now, join the feast with your brother, the feast of salvation, the feast of forgiveness, the feast of Christ’s Body and Blood, for Jesus only dines with sinners.” Their Father rejoiced, for His sons were lost and they are now found, they were dead and are now alive.
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.” This feast, this celebration, is for all those who are crushed by their sin and the demands of the Law. This feast is for all those who were lost, for you and me, who have lived in sin and self-righteousness, and have been forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ. Come, for the feast is ready, and all is prepared, celebrate with all the saints the foretaste of the feast to come! Amen.
“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon today is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ, the Father had two sons. Now these were two pretty ordinary brothers. They grew up in the same home, ate much the same food, watched the same television shows, and played on the same high school football team. They went to their Father’s house on a weekly basis, to receive the gifts that their Father abundantly poured out on them. But the Father didn’t just bless them once a week. By His gracious provision, they did not lack anything to sustain this body and life.
But something changed between the two brothers. The younger brother fell in with a different group of friends, ones that persuaded him that there were far better things to do than visit his Father’s house each week, or follow his Father’s constricting rules. He began to drift farther and farther away from his Father, and he rarely darkened the door of his Father’s house. Finally the day came. In arrogance and pride, the younger son walked into his Father’s house and told him to drop dead. “I am finished being your son, I am finished following your rules, I am finished depending on you!” And you know what? The Father did not stop him. In an act that bordered on insanity, the Father let the younger brother take everything he had given him, indeed his very own life. Why would any Father do such a thing? Well, for this Father, it was part of His character. No one could choose or decide to become His son, but the Father would not stand in the way if someone decided to reject the sonship that had been freely given. To be sure, it saddened Him, but He would not force someone against their will to remain His son.
The younger son left his brother and his hometown and went to the city. There, he indulged his desires in an endless search for pleasure. There is no need for us to go into the dirty details of his life- let’s just say that he lived only for himself, and he used up every gift that his Father had given him. He spent his money, his mind, and his body on sex, on alcohol, on drugs, any quick fix that would satisfy his immediate needs. He rarely felt bad for the parade of women that spent the night at his apartment- they had all been raised on the same television shows, they knew what life was all about. Satisfy your own pleasure, and don’t worry about anyone else, because all those other people are only doing the same. The dim spark of love he held toward his father, indeed toward anything other than himself, soon flickered and died. He was truly as he wanted to be, dead to his Father. But yet, despite this, the Father continued to constantly seek after His lost son.
The older son had watched his brother drift away from their Father. He had seen it happen and had said nothing, he had not attempted to reconcile that broken relationship. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” he told himself. At least he had stayed. He continued to go to his Father’s house every week to receive his Father’s gifts, eventually bringing a wife and a young child along. He was even in his Father’s house a lot during the week, as he served on church council and then as an elder. He and his family were the perfect example of morality and love, and example that may others wished to follow. Sure, he lusted after women and had indecent thoughts, but he never acted on those thoughts. Like many others, he often let a curse word or a dirty joke escape his lips, or he participated in gossip, but those were minor compared to whatever his brother was doing. At least that was how he responded to himself whenever his conscience told him he was not as squeaky clean as he looked- “At least I’m not my brother.” That assertion was the basis of his relationship with his Father- “I’m the loyal son, I’m the good son, you don’t see me wasting your gifts like that brother of mine.”
The younger brother first realized something was wrong when his debit card was rejected at the casino. His account was empty, and as he soon discovered, so was his life. Within weeks, in addition to having no money, he had no friends and no home, and if it was not for the generosity of a downtown soup kitchen, he would’ve had nothing to eat. He began to realize the emptiness of his life, that when you live your life concerned with no one but yourself, you are left with no one but yourself when the bottom falls out. His transgressions of his Father’s commandments had ruined him. And now, how could his Father ever take him back? He deserved death, death forever, for what he had done, and he knew it. He knew that he didn’t deserve to be his Father’s son again, but then a plan formed itself in his mind. He would make amends, he would earn his way back- even if he could not ever receive his sonship back, surely he could earn something more than he had now, right?
And so after years of absence, the younger son traveled back to his Father’s house. He intended to make his bargain as soon as he entered, but on this Friday night, there were people in his Father’s house, and a man in the pulpit preaching. This preacher speaks about his Father, and about his Father’s wrath over rebellion. In agony the younger brother realizes that no amount of bargaining could possibly satisfy that wrath. He is truly done for, without hope. But then the preacher speaks of someone else, he declares that the Father, his Father, sent a Son, one to be our brother, to take upon Himself all of mankind’s rebellion. He quotes from Saint Paul: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This brother of ours, Jesus Christ, had no sin of His own, He was perfect. But in the extraordinary, incredible love of the Father, Jesus Christ took on the sin of all mankind, of you and me, and he bore it to the cross. A tear fell from the younger brother’s eye. How could this possibly be true? The preacher reached the crescendo of his sermon, and he proclaimed to the gathered people: “This Jesus took our sin to the cross, and there He bled, there He died, there He faced the wrath that we deserved. On this Good Friday, He suffered in our place, to deliver you, to deliver me, to grant us the forgiveness we so desperately need.” The younger brother shook his head in amazement and joy. Before he could even begin to bargain with Him, his Father had provided the solution, He had sent a brother to bear his sin along with the sin of all.
The preacher continued to speak, declaring the results of Jesus’ death. The younger brother heard about how through the cross and empty tomb, Christ’s death and resurrection, we are restored to the Father, how those who were dead in their trespasses and sins are now made alive through Jesus. The younger brother nodded, remembering that while through his rebellion he may have told his Father to drop dead, he was actually the one who died, and he died in the filth of sin. And now the Father, through the work of Jesus Christ, has sought him out when he was lost made him alive again. Through this pastor, the Father had reminded him of his baptismal garments, and had indeed covered the filthy rags of sin with the white robe of Christ’s own righteousness, won on the cross.
The preacher was not surprised to see the young man from the back of the church come running to the altar after the service. He had watched him carefully as he preached, seeing the change of emotion and the tears flow freely as he heard of what Christ had none for him. The younger brother threw himself on the floor before the altar. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” The pastor did not hesitate. “What is impossible for man is possible with God. As a called and ordained servant of the Word, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He lifted him onto his feet. “Welcome back to your Father’s family, those purchased by the blood of the Lamb.”
The older son’s cry of protest boomed out from behind them- “He does not deserve your forgiveness!” The pastor turned and gently said, “None of us do, but the Father continues to give it freely.” The older son came chest to chest with his pastor and pointed an accusing finger at his brother. “You mean that after he has squandered every gift that our Father gave him, after he has turned his back on our Father and no longer wished to be His son or my brother, that he can simply come back and everything is well!? I have served my Father all of these years, and we have never celebrated me! I have followed all of those stupid rules to the letter, I have been a slave to my Father, and this is the reward I get? He cannot be my brother again, he cannot be my Father’s son again!”
The pastor spoke softly. “You have been a child of your Father since that day He claimed you with the waters of Holy Baptism. From that day, He has continued to shower His gifts upon you. He forgives your sins each and every day, but especially at the beginning of the Divine Service each and every Sunday. You have heard from this pulpit God’s Word proclaimed, a Word that declares Christ’s death on your behalf. In just a couple days, you will hear of Christ’s victory over death, as the women came to the tomb on Easter Sunday and found it empty. You have life, just as your brother has life, eternal life, because you are incorporated into Christ’s victory. All of us were lost, all of us are in need of the gifts Christ won. Your sins are forgiven not because they are somehow less worthy of condemnation than your brother’s, but because Jesus Christ shed His blood for them upon the cross. Each and every sin that you have ever committed is covered with Jesus’ blood. Your Father never abandoned your lost brother, but continued to seek him out, for Jesus Christ came to seek sinners and restore them to the Father. You have seen this today with your own eyes. So now, join the feast with your brother, the feast of salvation, the feast of forgiveness, the feast of Christ’s Body and Blood, for Jesus only dines with sinners.” Their Father rejoiced, for His sons were lost and they are now found, they were dead and are now alive.
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.” This feast, this celebration, is for all those who are crushed by their sin and the demands of the Law. This feast is for all those who were lost, for you and me, who have lived in sin and self-righteousness, and have been forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ. Come, for the feast is ready, and all is prepared, celebrate with all the saints the foretaste of the feast to come! Amen.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Proper 12 of Series B (Mark 6:45-56)
“But immediately He spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Dear friends in Christ, the disciples were in trouble. Just hours before, they had witnessed one of Jesus’ greatest miracles, the feeding of the five thousand. In fact, He had used them as the instruments of that miracle, as they distributed the bread and fish, then picked up the pieces. But they could not remain on that wonderful hill forever. “Immediately [Jesus] made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd.” They were alone on the sea as Jesus found some much needed rest. “And after He had taken leave of them, He went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and He was alone on the land.” But the sea is not a safe place, in fact it is a place of danger, it is no mistake that many Old Testament passages use the sea as a metaphor for death. The disciples were soon in big trouble. “And He saw that they were making headway painfully.” This verse is translated too softly. Mark tells us that disciples were being tormented, literally tortured by the wind and the waves as they rowed.
This is the same word used in Revelation to describe the torment and torture of hell. Yes, hell. That is not a word that we like to hear, or even think about. Heaven, yes that’s a place we can imagine, but hell? Even many Christians have a hard time believing that such a place even exists. It’s the subject of jokes and cartoon strips, the devil and his dwelling have become a part of pop culture. And like many things in pop culture, the terrible reality behind these images has been lost. Hear what God has to say about this place in His Holy Word: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.” This is no joke, this is a real place, and it is reserved for those who rebel against God, those who have followed Satan in His rebellion. Torment defines it, torment that was only slightly experienced by the disciples in our text. We cannot understand this terrible place rightly until we understand that unless someone acts to deliver us, it is our destination. This torment is the punishment that we deserve for our sin. We are like the disciples on the sea, alone and in need, surrounded by death and tormented by the threat of hell.
But behold, on the horizon a figure is approaching. “And about the fourth watch of the night, He came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them.” Someone is coming, and even though the disciples don’t recognize who it is, Mark tells us. This is God Himself, the second person of the Trinity walking upon the water, walking toward the disciples. Just as God passed by Moses in the cleft of the mountain, showing to Israel’s leader His glory, so Jesus wants to pass by the disciples, showing them His glory, showing them that He is true God. This is not necessarily a good thing. Throughout the Scriptures, God comes near to His people to give His holy Law, to show them and us how far we have fallen from His standards of holiness, to show us our sin. An appearance of the living and just God is not a good thing for sinful people, for those who with their thoughts, words, and actions reject Him and His love for us. In fact, this is a very bad thing, for the justice of God demands that He remove from His presence anything that is unholy. And we know that we are unholy, just as the disciples knew that about themselves.
“When they saw Him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they saw Him and were terrified.” No one who has a body could possibly be walking on the water, so it must be a ghost. Superstitions kick in for the disciples- they are in the middle of the sea, this old enemy and symbol of death. Moreover, they are being tormented by the wind and the waves, which seem to have the very character of hell itself. And now there is a ghost coming!? What response is there other than fear? But they would truly fear the fear of God’s Old Testament people if they realized what they were seeing. A disembodied spirit is terrifying enough, but a disembodied God brings His just judgment for our sin, He brings the Law, His glory is a terrible and terrifying thing for unclean sinners, His rebellious creation.
But this figure, coming to them through the storm, is not God in His naked glory and wrath, instead it has a real, physical, body. For this mysterious figure is God incarnate, God in the flesh, God come to this earth in bodily form. This is no ghost, this is Jesus Christ Himself, the one born of the virgin Mary as a true man, born to dwell among us bodily. This Jesus, true God and yet true man, ate and drank, He slept and went to the bathroom, He laughed and wept. He felt pain and joy, touched and was touched by others. This was no ghost, as the disciples feared, but a physical person, bearing human flesh just like us, for that was essential to what He had come to do. Jesus Christ took on human flesh to deliver us from the wind and waves of death, from the torment of hell. He came to live a perfect life, to dwell in the flesh just like us, yet without sin, as the Father intended for us. And He did this in our place, He did this for us, on our behalf. He lived the perfect life that we could not. And then He died the death we deserved.
He was true God and true man, and so He wept over those who condemned Him to death. He was true God and true man, and so He felt the excruciating pain as the nails pierced His wrists and feet, as He struggled to pull Himself up to breathe. He was true God and true man, and so He endured the tremendous hunger and thirst of crucifixion, His final fast. He was true God and true man, and so He felt the loneliness of God’s abandonment, the very pain and punishment of Hell itself. Hell is not about fire and brimstone, it is about separation from God, and on the cross, Jesus Christ endured in His body the pain and punishment we deserved for our sin. He did this in your place, because He loves you.
He suffered all of this in His body, the body He took on for our salvation. And in that body, that real, physical, human body, He was raised from the dead. “And about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea.” The fourth watch of the night is the final watch, the one during which you see the sun’s light drive the darkness away. In the fourth watch of the night, at the dawn of the first day of the week, Jesus Christ rose victorious over death, the stone was rolled away and the burial cloths were discarded. For Jesus had crossed the waters of death triumphantly, He had tread death underfoot just as He walked on the waters of the Sea of Galilee. And He did this bodily. The resurrected Jesus was no ghost, but instead He was raised up just as He walked this earth: real, physical, whole.
This resurrected, incarnate, bodily Jesus then speaks words of comfort to all people, to you and me, much as He did in our text. “They all saw Him and were terrified. But immediately He spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.’” My friends, these are the most beautiful words that Jesus could speak to anybody. All people, along with you and me, had reason to fear the just judgment of God, we had reason to fear hell. But Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, speaks these words to you: “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” Jesus has taken all fear away, for He has defeated death, He has trampled it under with the power of His resurrection, and He has removed the torment of hell from us. The disciples were in the midst of the sea of death, in torment from terrible forces, and Jesus bodily crossed over those dangerous waters to deliver them with words of absolution. We too were in the midst of death, in danger of spending eternity in torment for our sin, but Jesus bodily crossed over death itself to deliver us with words of absolution. When you read the declaration of the forgiveness of your sins in Holy Scripture, or hear it proclaimed by others, or when the pastor declares absolution in the stead of Christ, Jesus is saying to you: “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.”
But Jesus does not only operate with words. Remember, He is no ghost, but instead has been raised real, physical and whole, and so He comes to us in ways that are physical and bodily. He delivers to us the salvation He won, His victory over sin, death, and hell, in ways that are tangible, that we can see and feel. “And wherever He came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored Him that they might touch even the fringe off His garment. And as many as touched it were made well.” Jesus heals, He forgives, He saves, through a touch. On this very day, our incarnate, bodily risen Lord comes to us in this place in an amazing way. Mark tells us that the disciples “were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” They did not understand the great lesson of the feeding of the five thousand, that God in the flesh was on the scene to provide for His people. But there was an even greater lesson that they would miss until the night of Jesus’ betrayal. For that night Jesus took bread which He declared to be His Body, and a cup that He said now contained His Blood, and gave them to the disciples. What they could not understand about the loaves after Jesus walked on water now became clear. Jesus would be bodily present with His people through the Supper He has established. That would be the means of His physical, tangible presence with the Church until He came again.
Later in this service you will receive Christ’s very Body and Blood with the bread and the wine, the same Blood shed on the cross, the same Body risen from the grave. You will receive it for the forgiveness of sins, in intimate fellowship with your Incarnate, crucified and risen Redeemer and Savior. Through this feast, Jesus says to you: “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” Come to the table, take eat, take drink, for our Lord is here, real, physical, bodily, for your salvation. May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ grant to you the assurance that you have been delivered from sin, death, and hell through His death and resurrection, this day and every day, until that day when you follow Christ’s bodily resurrection with your own, Amen.
This is the same word used in Revelation to describe the torment and torture of hell. Yes, hell. That is not a word that we like to hear, or even think about. Heaven, yes that’s a place we can imagine, but hell? Even many Christians have a hard time believing that such a place even exists. It’s the subject of jokes and cartoon strips, the devil and his dwelling have become a part of pop culture. And like many things in pop culture, the terrible reality behind these images has been lost. Hear what God has to say about this place in His Holy Word: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.” This is no joke, this is a real place, and it is reserved for those who rebel against God, those who have followed Satan in His rebellion. Torment defines it, torment that was only slightly experienced by the disciples in our text. We cannot understand this terrible place rightly until we understand that unless someone acts to deliver us, it is our destination. This torment is the punishment that we deserve for our sin. We are like the disciples on the sea, alone and in need, surrounded by death and tormented by the threat of hell.
But behold, on the horizon a figure is approaching. “And about the fourth watch of the night, He came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them.” Someone is coming, and even though the disciples don’t recognize who it is, Mark tells us. This is God Himself, the second person of the Trinity walking upon the water, walking toward the disciples. Just as God passed by Moses in the cleft of the mountain, showing to Israel’s leader His glory, so Jesus wants to pass by the disciples, showing them His glory, showing them that He is true God. This is not necessarily a good thing. Throughout the Scriptures, God comes near to His people to give His holy Law, to show them and us how far we have fallen from His standards of holiness, to show us our sin. An appearance of the living and just God is not a good thing for sinful people, for those who with their thoughts, words, and actions reject Him and His love for us. In fact, this is a very bad thing, for the justice of God demands that He remove from His presence anything that is unholy. And we know that we are unholy, just as the disciples knew that about themselves.
“When they saw Him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they saw Him and were terrified.” No one who has a body could possibly be walking on the water, so it must be a ghost. Superstitions kick in for the disciples- they are in the middle of the sea, this old enemy and symbol of death. Moreover, they are being tormented by the wind and the waves, which seem to have the very character of hell itself. And now there is a ghost coming!? What response is there other than fear? But they would truly fear the fear of God’s Old Testament people if they realized what they were seeing. A disembodied spirit is terrifying enough, but a disembodied God brings His just judgment for our sin, He brings the Law, His glory is a terrible and terrifying thing for unclean sinners, His rebellious creation.
But this figure, coming to them through the storm, is not God in His naked glory and wrath, instead it has a real, physical, body. For this mysterious figure is God incarnate, God in the flesh, God come to this earth in bodily form. This is no ghost, this is Jesus Christ Himself, the one born of the virgin Mary as a true man, born to dwell among us bodily. This Jesus, true God and yet true man, ate and drank, He slept and went to the bathroom, He laughed and wept. He felt pain and joy, touched and was touched by others. This was no ghost, as the disciples feared, but a physical person, bearing human flesh just like us, for that was essential to what He had come to do. Jesus Christ took on human flesh to deliver us from the wind and waves of death, from the torment of hell. He came to live a perfect life, to dwell in the flesh just like us, yet without sin, as the Father intended for us. And He did this in our place, He did this for us, on our behalf. He lived the perfect life that we could not. And then He died the death we deserved.
He was true God and true man, and so He wept over those who condemned Him to death. He was true God and true man, and so He felt the excruciating pain as the nails pierced His wrists and feet, as He struggled to pull Himself up to breathe. He was true God and true man, and so He endured the tremendous hunger and thirst of crucifixion, His final fast. He was true God and true man, and so He felt the loneliness of God’s abandonment, the very pain and punishment of Hell itself. Hell is not about fire and brimstone, it is about separation from God, and on the cross, Jesus Christ endured in His body the pain and punishment we deserved for our sin. He did this in your place, because He loves you.
He suffered all of this in His body, the body He took on for our salvation. And in that body, that real, physical, human body, He was raised from the dead. “And about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea.” The fourth watch of the night is the final watch, the one during which you see the sun’s light drive the darkness away. In the fourth watch of the night, at the dawn of the first day of the week, Jesus Christ rose victorious over death, the stone was rolled away and the burial cloths were discarded. For Jesus had crossed the waters of death triumphantly, He had tread death underfoot just as He walked on the waters of the Sea of Galilee. And He did this bodily. The resurrected Jesus was no ghost, but instead He was raised up just as He walked this earth: real, physical, whole.
This resurrected, incarnate, bodily Jesus then speaks words of comfort to all people, to you and me, much as He did in our text. “They all saw Him and were terrified. But immediately He spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.’” My friends, these are the most beautiful words that Jesus could speak to anybody. All people, along with you and me, had reason to fear the just judgment of God, we had reason to fear hell. But Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, speaks these words to you: “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” Jesus has taken all fear away, for He has defeated death, He has trampled it under with the power of His resurrection, and He has removed the torment of hell from us. The disciples were in the midst of the sea of death, in torment from terrible forces, and Jesus bodily crossed over those dangerous waters to deliver them with words of absolution. We too were in the midst of death, in danger of spending eternity in torment for our sin, but Jesus bodily crossed over death itself to deliver us with words of absolution. When you read the declaration of the forgiveness of your sins in Holy Scripture, or hear it proclaimed by others, or when the pastor declares absolution in the stead of Christ, Jesus is saying to you: “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.”
But Jesus does not only operate with words. Remember, He is no ghost, but instead has been raised real, physical and whole, and so He comes to us in ways that are physical and bodily. He delivers to us the salvation He won, His victory over sin, death, and hell, in ways that are tangible, that we can see and feel. “And wherever He came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored Him that they might touch even the fringe off His garment. And as many as touched it were made well.” Jesus heals, He forgives, He saves, through a touch. On this very day, our incarnate, bodily risen Lord comes to us in this place in an amazing way. Mark tells us that the disciples “were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” They did not understand the great lesson of the feeding of the five thousand, that God in the flesh was on the scene to provide for His people. But there was an even greater lesson that they would miss until the night of Jesus’ betrayal. For that night Jesus took bread which He declared to be His Body, and a cup that He said now contained His Blood, and gave them to the disciples. What they could not understand about the loaves after Jesus walked on water now became clear. Jesus would be bodily present with His people through the Supper He has established. That would be the means of His physical, tangible presence with the Church until He came again.
Later in this service you will receive Christ’s very Body and Blood with the bread and the wine, the same Blood shed on the cross, the same Body risen from the grave. You will receive it for the forgiveness of sins, in intimate fellowship with your Incarnate, crucified and risen Redeemer and Savior. Through this feast, Jesus says to you: “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.” Come to the table, take eat, take drink, for our Lord is here, real, physical, bodily, for your salvation. May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ grant to you the assurance that you have been delivered from sin, death, and hell through His death and resurrection, this day and every day, until that day when you follow Christ’s bodily resurrection with your own, Amen.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Proper 11 of Series B (Jeremiah 23:1-6)
“In His days Judea will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which He will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon today is from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the twenty-third chapter of the prophet Jeremiah. Dear friends in Christ, the eyes of Jesus see much more than mere human eyes. He had been teaching and performing miracles at a heavy pace for days on end, moreover, He had just received word that His cousin, forerunner, and friend, John the Baptist, had been beheaded. All He wanted was a little rest, some time to mourn and commune with His Father. But the crowds would not let Him. “Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.” When Jesus lifted His eyes, He saw a crowd, five thousand men, as many as 25,000 people, all hungering and thirsting for His words. They were dirty and hungry, poor and rich, the scum of the earth and those high in the estimation of others. But the eyes of Jesus Christ, true God in human flesh, saw much more than that. “When He went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
These are some of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture. But there is little reason to be compassionate to these people. These ‘sheep without a shepherd’ are receiving exactly what they deserve for their sin. Why should rebellious people, why should you and I have faithful shepherds? What have we done to deserve such a gift from God? The entire Old Testament is filled with God’s dealings with His rebellious people. Over and over again they abandon Him and go after other gods, they chase after lust, they are greedy for money. Does that sound familiar? Human nature has hardly changed throughout the centuries. In response to their rebellion, to our rebellion, God declares in Jeremiah chapter nine: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts… I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.” God promises that His wandering people will receive what they deserve- He will use the follies of wicked shepherds to scatter His own people.
God does not make our shepherds wicked and unfaithful, but He instead their sinfulness becomes an instrument of His judgment. Before and after our Old Testament lesson, God condemns the unfaithful shepherds in the secular and spiritual realms, the kings of Judah and the lying prophets. Once again, human nature has hardly changed- we find unfaithful shepherds in both realms still today. But we who are sinful have often caused these problems through our own sin, and in many cases we ourselves are the unfaithful shepherds. We have all been entrusted with the care of others in some capacity, we all have people in our lives who look up to us in some way, and how often have we failed to shepherd them in the way that they should go? How often have we failed to call them to repentance when they sin? How often have we failed to point them to Jesus? How often have we fallen down in the more everyday tasks of providing for their bodily needs? Think through your life- many of you are fathers, mothers, grandparents, or teachers. Those are the obvious ones, but each and every one of us have others entrusted to us by our Lord, even if we don’t realize it. And all of us, from the ones who lead our country to the ones who shepherd God’s Church, to you and me, have fallen in our calling as shepherds.
God’s flock, you and I, might have deserved scattering, but God still declares His anger at those unfaithful shepherds. “‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!’ declares the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: ‘You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds,’ declares the Lord.” Things don’t sound good for the people of Israel or for you and me. Whether we are sheep or shepherds, God has thundered forth judgment. Israel herself is like a ruined tree, chopped down to a stump by God’s wrath, by the mismanagement of her shepherds.
But from that dead stump life will sprout. Isaiah declares in chapter eleven of his prophecy: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” God is more descriptive in our text for today: “Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” From a nation that seemed to be dead, that was carted into exile and dispersed, God would send forth a green shoot, a shoot that would bring salvation to all people, to rebellious sheep and shepherds, to you and me. Jesus Christ was that Branch, He came forth from the line of David, from the house of rebellious Israel, from the dead stump that to our human eyes could bring forth no living thing. But yet Christ came, and He came born of a virgin, born as a man, yet also true God, the only begotten Son of the Father from all eternity.
He stepped into our world and looked around at all of us, rebellious sheep and unfaithful shepherds, those afflicted with the disease and curse of sin, and what did He see? “When He went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” It was precisely this compassion that led Him to take on human flesh in the first place. For God’s love for you and me was so great that even in the midst of words of judgment, He would declare the promise that He would act, that He would bring forth salvation. “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord.”
God’s shepherd, the promised Branch, would be characterized by one word: righteousness. “And this is the name by which He will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.” Jesus is our righteousness. He is our righteousness because He lived a perfect life in our place. He fulfilled the Law where we could not, He was completely and totally without sin. He was the perfect shepherd, the perfect king, the perfect lamb, He was perfectly obedient to the Father. Jesus Christ did not do this simply to show us some grand example of what we can be if we just try hard enough, no, He did this in our place, He did this because we could not. His life is our life, it is given to us because His righteousness extended all the way to a hill outside Jerusalem. On that Good Friday, the only person who ever lived a perfect life, the only person who was truly innocent, God Himself in human flesh, was nailed to a cross. And He was nailed there to fulfill the name that God declared He would bear: “The Lord is our righteousness.” The blood of the Good Shepherd poured forth that day for the sake of wandering sheep and unfaithful shepherds. When Jesus Christ cried out “It is finished!” His righteousness was now ours, for He had died the death and faced the punishment we deserved. He lived and died in our place, to deliver us, to save us, to grant us life. Through His sacrifice Jesus Christ is now your righteousness. Through Baptism His righteousness now covers you like a robe, so that when God looks at you, He sees His Son’s perfect obedience in life and death.
He also sees Christ’s triumph over death, the victory that He won on Easter Sunday. Through His death and resurrection, God is reconciled to us, peace is declared between God and man. We now have forgiveness for when we wander into sin, for when we fail as shepherds, because Jesus Christ took those sins to the cross and there paid the price for them, there He triumphed over them. Therefore our relationship with God is now characterized by peace. Saint Paul boldly declares in our Epistle lesson: “He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
Christ now goes out into the world through His Word proclaimed by His Church to bring that reconciliation near to people, to gather in the lost sheep. The same compassion that led Him to become man, that led Him to face the very punishment of hell on the cross leads Him to claim wandering sheep as His own through the declaration of the forgiveness of sins. “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.” The word used here for ‘fold,’ in the Hebrew, has the sense of the destination of a journey. A shepherd is constantly leading His flock toward green pastures and quiet waters. Despite the dangers and challenges along the way, the shepherd brings his flock to their destination.
The destination of Christ’s flock, the wandering sheep He has gathered in and purchased with His blood, is the heavenly pastures. That is your destination, because Jesus is your righteousness. “In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.” The Hebrew word translated as ‘dwell securely’ has the root meaning of ‘trust.’ Because we trust in a Savior who gave His very life for us, we know that nothing can harm us for all eternity, we have the confidence that we are in His loving arms, that we have forgiveness of all our sins. Isaiah ties together all these themes so beautifully in chapter thirty-two of His prophecy: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” Because Christ is our righteousness, because we have peace with the Father through Him, we can pray in trusting faith with the Psalmist: “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” May the Lord strengthen our faith through His Word and Holy Sacraments so that we may trust in His gracious protection and dwell securely in the heavenly pastures for all eternity, Amen.
These are some of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture. But there is little reason to be compassionate to these people. These ‘sheep without a shepherd’ are receiving exactly what they deserve for their sin. Why should rebellious people, why should you and I have faithful shepherds? What have we done to deserve such a gift from God? The entire Old Testament is filled with God’s dealings with His rebellious people. Over and over again they abandon Him and go after other gods, they chase after lust, they are greedy for money. Does that sound familiar? Human nature has hardly changed throughout the centuries. In response to their rebellion, to our rebellion, God declares in Jeremiah chapter nine: “Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts… I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.” God promises that His wandering people will receive what they deserve- He will use the follies of wicked shepherds to scatter His own people.
God does not make our shepherds wicked and unfaithful, but He instead their sinfulness becomes an instrument of His judgment. Before and after our Old Testament lesson, God condemns the unfaithful shepherds in the secular and spiritual realms, the kings of Judah and the lying prophets. Once again, human nature has hardly changed- we find unfaithful shepherds in both realms still today. But we who are sinful have often caused these problems through our own sin, and in many cases we ourselves are the unfaithful shepherds. We have all been entrusted with the care of others in some capacity, we all have people in our lives who look up to us in some way, and how often have we failed to shepherd them in the way that they should go? How often have we failed to call them to repentance when they sin? How often have we failed to point them to Jesus? How often have we fallen down in the more everyday tasks of providing for their bodily needs? Think through your life- many of you are fathers, mothers, grandparents, or teachers. Those are the obvious ones, but each and every one of us have others entrusted to us by our Lord, even if we don’t realize it. And all of us, from the ones who lead our country to the ones who shepherd God’s Church, to you and me, have fallen in our calling as shepherds.
God’s flock, you and I, might have deserved scattering, but God still declares His anger at those unfaithful shepherds. “‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!’ declares the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: ‘You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds,’ declares the Lord.” Things don’t sound good for the people of Israel or for you and me. Whether we are sheep or shepherds, God has thundered forth judgment. Israel herself is like a ruined tree, chopped down to a stump by God’s wrath, by the mismanagement of her shepherds.
But from that dead stump life will sprout. Isaiah declares in chapter eleven of his prophecy: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” God is more descriptive in our text for today: “Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” From a nation that seemed to be dead, that was carted into exile and dispersed, God would send forth a green shoot, a shoot that would bring salvation to all people, to rebellious sheep and shepherds, to you and me. Jesus Christ was that Branch, He came forth from the line of David, from the house of rebellious Israel, from the dead stump that to our human eyes could bring forth no living thing. But yet Christ came, and He came born of a virgin, born as a man, yet also true God, the only begotten Son of the Father from all eternity.
He stepped into our world and looked around at all of us, rebellious sheep and unfaithful shepherds, those afflicted with the disease and curse of sin, and what did He see? “When He went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” It was precisely this compassion that led Him to take on human flesh in the first place. For God’s love for you and me was so great that even in the midst of words of judgment, He would declare the promise that He would act, that He would bring forth salvation. “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord.”
God’s shepherd, the promised Branch, would be characterized by one word: righteousness. “And this is the name by which He will be called: The Lord is our righteousness.” Jesus is our righteousness. He is our righteousness because He lived a perfect life in our place. He fulfilled the Law where we could not, He was completely and totally without sin. He was the perfect shepherd, the perfect king, the perfect lamb, He was perfectly obedient to the Father. Jesus Christ did not do this simply to show us some grand example of what we can be if we just try hard enough, no, He did this in our place, He did this because we could not. His life is our life, it is given to us because His righteousness extended all the way to a hill outside Jerusalem. On that Good Friday, the only person who ever lived a perfect life, the only person who was truly innocent, God Himself in human flesh, was nailed to a cross. And He was nailed there to fulfill the name that God declared He would bear: “The Lord is our righteousness.” The blood of the Good Shepherd poured forth that day for the sake of wandering sheep and unfaithful shepherds. When Jesus Christ cried out “It is finished!” His righteousness was now ours, for He had died the death and faced the punishment we deserved. He lived and died in our place, to deliver us, to save us, to grant us life. Through His sacrifice Jesus Christ is now your righteousness. Through Baptism His righteousness now covers you like a robe, so that when God looks at you, He sees His Son’s perfect obedience in life and death.
He also sees Christ’s triumph over death, the victory that He won on Easter Sunday. Through His death and resurrection, God is reconciled to us, peace is declared between God and man. We now have forgiveness for when we wander into sin, for when we fail as shepherds, because Jesus Christ took those sins to the cross and there paid the price for them, there He triumphed over them. Therefore our relationship with God is now characterized by peace. Saint Paul boldly declares in our Epistle lesson: “He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
Christ now goes out into the world through His Word proclaimed by His Church to bring that reconciliation near to people, to gather in the lost sheep. The same compassion that led Him to become man, that led Him to face the very punishment of hell on the cross leads Him to claim wandering sheep as His own through the declaration of the forgiveness of sins. “Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.” The word used here for ‘fold,’ in the Hebrew, has the sense of the destination of a journey. A shepherd is constantly leading His flock toward green pastures and quiet waters. Despite the dangers and challenges along the way, the shepherd brings his flock to their destination.
The destination of Christ’s flock, the wandering sheep He has gathered in and purchased with His blood, is the heavenly pastures. That is your destination, because Jesus is your righteousness. “In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.” The Hebrew word translated as ‘dwell securely’ has the root meaning of ‘trust.’ Because we trust in a Savior who gave His very life for us, we know that nothing can harm us for all eternity, we have the confidence that we are in His loving arms, that we have forgiveness of all our sins. Isaiah ties together all these themes so beautifully in chapter thirty-two of His prophecy: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” Because Christ is our righteousness, because we have peace with the Father through Him, we can pray in trusting faith with the Psalmist: “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” May the Lord strengthen our faith through His Word and Holy Sacraments so that we may trust in His gracious protection and dwell securely in the heavenly pastures for all eternity, Amen.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The Historic Liturgy- A Tool for Missions? (Newsletter article for July)
From the Vicar,
Too often in our church body we have this mindset, spoken or unspoken, that we worship the way we do simply because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ We have this picture of ourselves that we are stodgy old Lutherans who don’t want to change, and therefore that is the only reason why our new hymnal has liturgies much the same as the old. My friends, if that is the reason we worship the way we do, then we are missing something. Furthermore, if we follow that line of reasoning, there is no reason why we should continue to worship in that way. I would even go so far as to say that this thought is the first step toward loosing the liturgy. We do not use the historic liturgy simply because it is historic, but because it preaches Christ.
To be sure, antiquity is one of the reasons we have kept the liturgy around, but not in a way you might expect. The service you find in our hymnals (what I will simply call ‘the liturgy’ in this article) has deep roots, roots which reach into the Old Testament. Its foundations are in the worship of the synagogue and the Passover liturgy. This was how Jesus worshipped, and it is how the early Christians worshipped. They took their Old Testament roots and brought in the gifts of Christ. This was very natural, for the gifts that Christ gives have Old Testament roots as well. The Service of the Word has its roots in the worship of the synagogue, while the Service of the Sacrament is rooted in the Passover liturgy. Each and every generation since has focused the liturgy around the two centers of Word and Sacrament. Some have added elements, and some have trimmed away unneeded additions, but throughout the focus has remained on the giving of Christ’s gifts in Word and Sacrament. Each generation has passed on to the next a liturgy that clearly proclaimed Christ and affirmed that He truly is present in our worship. The liturgy we have been given is truly a gift, a legacy that connects us with all who have gone before.
The liturgy has not become obsolete in the past forty years, after having served faithfully as a vehicle for Christ for nearly two thousand. It remains relevant because it proclaims Christ clearly, and Christ is always relevant. The proclamation of sin and salvation, man’s greatest need and God’s even greater Savior, needs to be heard by every person in every place, in every age. This message transforms people, it gives life to those who are dying and forgiveness to those under condemnation for their sin. Therefore, the liturgy, as it proclaims this message, transforms culture, not the other way around. A liturgy that is subject to the whims of culture cannot proclaim the life-changing Gospel clearly, for it has allowed itself to be changed by the world. Our worship is not bound by culture or subject to it, it is not ‘German’ or ‘American,’ it is biblical, transcending culture and time. It in fact creates its own culture, a way of life centered on the reality of Jesus Christ.
The liturgy is relevant because it acknowledges the fact that God incarnate, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is truly present in Word and Sacrament. The very same Body and Blood that was given and shed on the cross is given to us in the Sacrament of the Altar. The liturgy is relevant because it turns our focus away from ourselves, from the individualism that is so rampart today. Instead we receive God’s gifts in community, using a liturgy that connects us with Christians around the world and Christians throughout the centuries. The liturgy is not our unique possession, to do with it what we please, but instead it belongs to the entire Church. Therefore (and this is the greatest asset of what we have been given), the liturgy takes the focus off of ourselves and what we are doing for God, placing it squarely on Christ and what He is giving to us. That is the gift we have been given, a gift that proclaims Christ for us clearly.
Thinking of the liturgy in this way will involve a change of thinking, a change of mindset. Seeing the liturgy as an asset is most definitely thinking ‘outside the box,’ and it is a lonely road, because very few are looking at it in this way. But I would maintain that this is the first step toward becoming a ‘missional’ congregation. Once we see our liturgy as an asset to our proclamation of Christ, as a great gift that has been lovingly bestowed on us by the entire Christian Church, will we be motivated to bring others into contact with Christ’s gifts. Then our worship will be filled with reverence and beauty, joy and enthusiasm. I encourage you to learn more about why we worship the way we do (this article has barely scratched the surface). When we realize what a gift we have, how can we help but share it with others?
In Christ,
Vicar Maronde
Too often in our church body we have this mindset, spoken or unspoken, that we worship the way we do simply because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’ We have this picture of ourselves that we are stodgy old Lutherans who don’t want to change, and therefore that is the only reason why our new hymnal has liturgies much the same as the old. My friends, if that is the reason we worship the way we do, then we are missing something. Furthermore, if we follow that line of reasoning, there is no reason why we should continue to worship in that way. I would even go so far as to say that this thought is the first step toward loosing the liturgy. We do not use the historic liturgy simply because it is historic, but because it preaches Christ.
To be sure, antiquity is one of the reasons we have kept the liturgy around, but not in a way you might expect. The service you find in our hymnals (what I will simply call ‘the liturgy’ in this article) has deep roots, roots which reach into the Old Testament. Its foundations are in the worship of the synagogue and the Passover liturgy. This was how Jesus worshipped, and it is how the early Christians worshipped. They took their Old Testament roots and brought in the gifts of Christ. This was very natural, for the gifts that Christ gives have Old Testament roots as well. The Service of the Word has its roots in the worship of the synagogue, while the Service of the Sacrament is rooted in the Passover liturgy. Each and every generation since has focused the liturgy around the two centers of Word and Sacrament. Some have added elements, and some have trimmed away unneeded additions, but throughout the focus has remained on the giving of Christ’s gifts in Word and Sacrament. Each generation has passed on to the next a liturgy that clearly proclaimed Christ and affirmed that He truly is present in our worship. The liturgy we have been given is truly a gift, a legacy that connects us with all who have gone before.
The liturgy has not become obsolete in the past forty years, after having served faithfully as a vehicle for Christ for nearly two thousand. It remains relevant because it proclaims Christ clearly, and Christ is always relevant. The proclamation of sin and salvation, man’s greatest need and God’s even greater Savior, needs to be heard by every person in every place, in every age. This message transforms people, it gives life to those who are dying and forgiveness to those under condemnation for their sin. Therefore, the liturgy, as it proclaims this message, transforms culture, not the other way around. A liturgy that is subject to the whims of culture cannot proclaim the life-changing Gospel clearly, for it has allowed itself to be changed by the world. Our worship is not bound by culture or subject to it, it is not ‘German’ or ‘American,’ it is biblical, transcending culture and time. It in fact creates its own culture, a way of life centered on the reality of Jesus Christ.
The liturgy is relevant because it acknowledges the fact that God incarnate, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is truly present in Word and Sacrament. The very same Body and Blood that was given and shed on the cross is given to us in the Sacrament of the Altar. The liturgy is relevant because it turns our focus away from ourselves, from the individualism that is so rampart today. Instead we receive God’s gifts in community, using a liturgy that connects us with Christians around the world and Christians throughout the centuries. The liturgy is not our unique possession, to do with it what we please, but instead it belongs to the entire Church. Therefore (and this is the greatest asset of what we have been given), the liturgy takes the focus off of ourselves and what we are doing for God, placing it squarely on Christ and what He is giving to us. That is the gift we have been given, a gift that proclaims Christ for us clearly.
Thinking of the liturgy in this way will involve a change of thinking, a change of mindset. Seeing the liturgy as an asset is most definitely thinking ‘outside the box,’ and it is a lonely road, because very few are looking at it in this way. But I would maintain that this is the first step toward becoming a ‘missional’ congregation. Once we see our liturgy as an asset to our proclamation of Christ, as a great gift that has been lovingly bestowed on us by the entire Christian Church, will we be motivated to bring others into contact with Christ’s gifts. Then our worship will be filled with reverence and beauty, joy and enthusiasm. I encourage you to learn more about why we worship the way we do (this article has barely scratched the surface). When we realize what a gift we have, how can we help but share it with others?
In Christ,
Vicar Maronde
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)