First Sunday in Lent, Series B

Sermon on Mark 1:9-15
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
February 26, 2012 (The First Sunday in Lent, Series B)

What is the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer?  “And lead us not into temptation.”  What does this mean?  “God tempts no one.  We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.”  Okay, we can see where Luther got that explanation from the section of James that was read as our Epistle lesson for today.  But what it doesn’t explain is what happened to Abraham and Isaac in our Old Testament reading, or for that matter that it was the Spirit which drove Jesus into the wilderness in order to be tempted.  How can we say that God tempts no one if it was God the Holy Spirit who drove Jesus Himself, God the Son, into the wilderness precisely in order to be tempted?  How can we say that God tempts no one if it was He that put a test on Abraham to see if he would obey God or not?  After all, the Greek and Hebrew words for “tempt” and “test” are actually the same word.  Is it really true, as the Catechism and St. James teach us, that “God tempts no one?”  For that matter, isn’t it supposed to be Satan, not God, who does the tempting?  How can God and Satan be involved in the same activity together?

Let’s bring this a little closer to home.  If God is good, and He is almighty, how is it that we are allowed to wander into situations where sin beckons to us and crouches at our doorstep?  Can’t He stop us from being put into situations where someone has left their belongings unguarded?  Or where we know a bit of juicy gossip about someone that we can hardly resist sharing?  Or where someone else besides the one God has joined us to looks more attractive or even like a better fit than our own spouse?  Or when a loved one is dying and we have prayed with all our might that He would heal them, with seemingly no response, and it looks to us like perhaps God doesn’t even exist?  If God is almighty, can’t He simply prevent us from even experiencing the opportunity for “false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice,” as Luther puts it?

The fact is, however, if we were outwardly sinless and perfect (because temptation simply never came our way) that itself would be a temptation.  For us, the descendants of Adam and Eve, even keeping the Law is itself a form of temptation.  Look how good I’m doing.  Look how righteous I am.  I thank you that I’m not like that tax collector over there.  And instead of praising God, we praise ourselves.  In keeping us completely away from the more obvious temptations, God would then be tempting us with the subtle and most dangerous temptation of all, namely the temptation to put ourselves instead of Him on the throne of our hearts.

The problem of temptation is simply the problem of sin.  It’s not God’s will that sin be in the world in the first place.  It wasn’t His will that Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It’s not His will that we face difficult choices in our lives, in which even though one path is clearly right and the other clearly wrong, the wrong path looks so much easier or more attractive.  It’s not His will that we face those even more difficult choices where both paths involve an element of sin and the only thing we can do is, as Luther put it, “sin boldly.”  None of this was what God created us for.  None of it is what He wanted for us.

But that’s where our Gospel lesson comes in.  It is precisely the sin, the brokenness, the hardship, the helplessness, and the hopelessness of living in a sin-filled world with sin-filled hearts, that our Lord became man in order to take into Himself.  He was tempted precisely because we are tempted.  He who knew no sin became sin for us.  And He won the victory over it.  The small victory he won over Satan in the wilderness foreshadows the much greater victory He won by staying on that cross and giving His life as a ransom for many.  The only way to deal with the problem of sin, and therefore the problem of temptation to sin, was to take it upon Himself.  The only way to deal with Satan was to defeat him so thoroughly that even his worst weapons, the temptation to false belief and despair, are now tools that He uses to bring us closer to Him.  Luther was fond of saying that the devil is now “God’s devil.”  The worst he can throw at us is now a tool God uses to drive us to His Word and Sacraments, to draw us closer to Himself.

And so it’s precisely when Satan tempts us that God is testing our faith, not in order to weaken it, but in order to strengthen it.  It’s precisely when we are given the occasion for false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice that we also have the opportunity to further refine and temper the true faith, trust, and righteousness that is now ours in Christ Jesus.  God doesn’t tempt us, but at the same time He does.  He tests us, not in order to knock us down, but as training so that we learn all the more to lean on Him and His righteousness when we know our own is completely worthless.  It is precisely when we are weak, in other words, that He is strong.  He uses testing to teach us that He is the one who is our strength, and we can’t learn that unless we first see how weak we ourselves really are.

God allows us to be knocked down so that He will be able to raise us up.  God puts Abraham in a no-win situation so that Abraham will rely solely on God’s promises that He will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.  It is precisely when Abraham thinks he has no choice but to murder his own son, that God puts faith in him that even so God will still fulfill His promise to provide the true Lamb who will take away the sins of the world.  It’s possible that he thought Isaac was that Lamb, that Messiah.  But the lamb caught in the undergrowth nearby served as the substitute, just as Jesus is our substitute, the one who undergoes temptation, suffering, and even death in our place.  God did provide the Lamb for the burnt offering.  God did take our place in the trackless desert of temptation, where we can’t find our way and it looks like all paths lead nowhere.  In His stead, then, we receive the straight road that leads to eternity, the road marked not by our own fleeting mirage of victory, but by His cross and seeming defeat.  Does God tempt us?  Did He tempt His Son?  In one sense, yes.  But in view of His ultimate purpose of salvation, no.  He only knocks down so that He can raise up.  He only breaks so that He can heal.  He only kills so that He can make alive.  He doesn’t tempt us for the sake of judgment, but for the sake of fixing our eyes on Jesus who won the victory for us all.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Ash Wednesday, Series B

Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
February 22, 2012 (Ash Wednesday, Series B)

Image is nothing.  Thirst is everything.  Obey your thirst.  This is the slogan of a  television advertising campaign from several years back for Sprite.  The point of the campaign is that the important thing about a soft drink is not the image the soft drink has in people’s minds, and it isn’t whatever special offers or contests go along with buying the soft drink, but whether or not the drink quenches your thirst that is important.  The campaign was aimed at members of “generation X” who have grown up with manipulative advertising campaigns and who have a built in resistance and even hostility toward being manipulated by advertisers or anyone else for that matter.  It’s not the advertising or the image that’s important, it’s whether or not the product does what it’s supposed to.  Of course, by doing this, Sprite is trying to project a “generation X” image for themselves, and so they’re still doing what they criticize.  Such is the way of the world.  But it is common sense.  Products should be evaluated on how well they do their job, not on whether the brand name is popular or by what kinds of gimmicks and contests the company attaches to the product.  Image is nothing.

In today’s text, Jesus is also making the point that image is nothing.  But He isn’t talking about advertising and commercial products.  He is talking about the things that people do in connection with religion.  Too many people do things in connection with the worship of God that aren’t really directed at God at all.  Instead, often people do things to look pious or holy to other people.  They do things like fasting or giving up something for Lent, or even something as simple as going to Church, not because it’s a good thing to do or because it’s a good spiritual discipline, but because they want to be able to say, “Look at me!  Look at how good and holy I am!”  But that’s not the reason to do these things.  We aren’t supposed to be concerned about what others think of us; rather we are to be concerned about our relationship with our Father in heaven.

Today is the first day of the season of Lent.  During the next forty days we will be focusing on repentance and renewal of our Christian faith and life.  One way that many Christians do this is to give up something during this season, whether it be desert or smoking or drinking or not eating meat on certain days or whatever it may be.  It might also be that you give a little extra to the Church during this time, and in so doing you have less money for yourself and are able to discipline yourself that way.  All of these different ways of observing lent can be good and beneficial for us as we observe this season.  Unlike certain other denominations the Lutheran Church doesn’t require anyone to give things up for Lent.  It’s up to you what you want to do.  But whatever you do, don’t make a big deal out of it.  Don’t make yourself look like you are suffering in order to make yourself look more holy to other people.  Fasting and giving up things for Lent is something that is done to benefit you in your relationship to God.  It is not something that is done in order to impress other people.  If you do something to impress other people, you are still focused upon this world, and that defeats the purpose.  We give up things in this world to remind ourselves that our true happiness, our true treasure, is in eternal life.

And that’s the point of today’s Gospel lesson, too.  We are not to be concerned about what we look like to other people in this life.  We are not to be concerned with whether or not we have blessings and happiness in this life.  This life is passing away.  We will return to the ashes and dust from which we were made.  That’s why today is known as Ash Wednesday.  Now, at the beginning of Lent, we remind ourselves that no matter how great the blessings we have in this life, we will leave them behind.  Our bodies will return to ashes, and all the blessings of this life will be ashes as far as we are concerned.  Our true treasure is in heaven.  Our true home is in heaven.  You can’t take it with you, the old saying says.  Everything that God has given us on this earth will pass away, and those who we so often try so hard to impress will die just like the rest of humanity.  And so we see that if we focus our attention on this life, if our treasure and our heart is in this world, all we will inherit in the life to come is ashes and dust.

But if we are supposed to have treasure in heaven rather than on the earth, what does that mean?  What is the treasure in heaven?  The treasure we receive in heaven is the fellowship of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Father.  We will eternally be with a God who loves us and cares for us and provides our every need.  He will not allow death or sickness or hunger or pain ever to touch us again.  Even the richest, most content person in this world will be seen as very, very unhappy compared to the person who is living the eternal life with Christ.  We cannot imagine what this will be like for us, but it is there, to eternal life, that our attention and our priorities are focused.

But we’re not just talking about something that’s a long ways off in the future.  The first and foremost blessing of eternal life is being with Christ and His Father.  But our God is already with us even now.  Our heavenly treasure, our heavenly banquet of fellowship with our Creator, is already ours through Baptism, His Word, and His body and blood.  Already now we have the beginning of that eternal life.  We may not be able to see or hear or taste Christ’s Presence among us in His Preaching and His Supper.  But He is here, and He is real.  What we see and hear is the Pastor and his words, the bread, the wine.  These things will pass away.  But the Christ who comes to us through these things is more real than anything that exists in this old sinful world.  In, with, and under earthly things that will be destroyed on the last day, Christ comes to us and gives us a new life, a new reality which will not pass away but will last forever.  Christ has now caused you to hunger and thirst for His own body and blood through the preaching of the Word.  Image is nothing.  Eternal life, for which you hunger and thirst, is everything.  Obey your hunger and thirst.  Receive Christ who is your true heavenly treasure.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Transfiguration, Series B

Sermon on Mark 9:2-9
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
February 19, 2012 (The Transfiguration of our Lord, Series B)

We are a fairly small church.  That goes without saying.  Now, there are advantages to being a small church, such as you get to know everyone better and the congregation is a much more close-knit group.  I personally prefer it that way.  But there is a certain amount of embarrassment that sometimes goes along with being a small church, too.  When you talk to certain church officials and certain pastors of larger churches, there is often an implication that if a congregation isn’t growing by leaps and bounds, that church isn’t doing its job and probably ought to change the way it does things in order to attract more people.  Of course, getting warm bodies in the pews isn’t the point, bringing them Christ is the point, and often what some churches do to attract people, meeting felt needs and so on, focus attention away from Christ and on the people’s own selfish desires and tastes.  But it is tempting to be jealous of their numbers, and to feel shame when the pastors of such churches brag about how “successful” they are, by the world’s terms anyway.  And of course, many of you remember that there have been times when our congregation had considerably more members than she does now.  But in this old sinful world there are good times and bad times, and this congregation has seen its share of both.  Even though we long for a return to the “good old days” when many more people were coming to Church than are right now, we can’t go back in time.  We can only go forward.  We can work to see to it that more people join our congregation; we can confess our faith to our friends and neighbors and invite them to come and see where it is that our faith and confidence in Christ is strengthened and nourished.  But rebuilding the numerical size of a Church in a healthy way is usually a long, slow process, one in which there is no guarantee of success, because only God can turn a person’s heart, and in the meantime our lack of numbers and our lack of growth can sometimes be depressing, especially for those who remember days gone by.

But we see in this text that we need not be depressed or discouraged about our church.  For Christ is with us.  And where Christ is, there are the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  There are more Christians here today than any of us realizes.  In fact, the number of those who worship with us is more than anyone can number.  Even if there were only two of us gathered for worship, myself and one other member, Christ would still be with us, because where two or three are gathered in His name, He is in the midst of them.  And that means that the whole Church and all the hosts of heaven are also with us when we gather around His real presence.

In today’s text, we see Jesus choose His three closest disciples and lead them up onto a mountaintop.  This is the point in Jesus’ ministry when He sets His face toward Jerusalem.  He begins the long, slow journey that will eventually result in His death for our sins.  This journey would be a depressing and confusing one for the disciples, since to them it would seem like their Lord had gone crazy.  He is heading toward the one place where human wisdom and common sense tells them He absolutely must avoid.  He is heading straight for a sure and certain death at the hands of the chief priests and the Roman government, and that’s suicidal madness as far as worldly thinking is concerned.  And so the disciples would be sorely tried and tested over the next months, as they will have to face a series of events that will seem like the defeat and collapse of everything their Master has being doing throughout His ministry.

To prepare them for this, to strengthen them for this, Jesus undergoes the transfiguration we see in today’s text.  Because to the disciples it will look like their church is falling apart and being destroyed by their leader’s supposed mistake of going to Jerusalem, Jesus strengthens them and reassures them by letting them see the heavenly reality of Who it is that is with them.  He lets them see some measure of what He looks like to those who have been glorified in heaven.  He lets them see two of the saints who are with Him in eternal life, Moses and Elijah.  He does all this because the disciples need to know that there is more going on than what they will see with their own eyes.  They are not being misled or betrayed by Jesus when He gives Himself up into the hands of the authorities.  Instead, all these things are happening according to God the Father’s plan.  Jesus cannot truly be defeated because He is God the Son.  The cross is not a defeat for Christ, even though that is what it looks like.  Instead, death is swallowed up by death.  It’s sting is lost forever.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, it may be tempting for us to be troubled when things aren’t going as well for the Church as we would like.  It may be tempting to feel that God has turned His back on us or that we are somehow doing something wrong in terms of the way we worship or the way we live as Christians.  It can be tempting to think that God has abandoned us.  But make no mistake about it, to think this way is a temptation is from Satan.  No one else but Satan would want us to think that God has abandoned us or is punishing us in some way because our congregation isn’t outwardly as strong or as healthy as we would like.  God has not abandoned us, even if we aren’t where we would like to be as a congregation right now.  He hasn’t abandoned us, any more than He abandoned His disciples.

There is one thing needful in our lives as Christians and as a congregation.  That one thing needful is Jesus Christ.  And with Christ comes a multitude of blessings.  With Christ comes the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation.  Giving us these things is the purpose of the Church, and so if we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation from God here, our church is doing what it is supposed to.  Yes, it would be good to see more people here, especially younger people, and we should all encourage our friends and neighbors to join us here so that more do come to receive God’s salvation.  But if even only one person comes to faith through the preaching of the Word and administration of the Sacraments here—even if only one person is transferred from the realm of eternal death and hell into the blessedness of eternal life, our Church is serving its purpose.  Even if we don’t gain any new members, simply the fact that this Church is helping those members we now have to continue to be strengthened in their faith and kept on the narrow road that leads to the kingdom of God—this fact itself indicates that Christ is present with us and doing His work among us.  And that’s all we need to know.

And as I mentioned before, there are far more here than you can see and count.  The true number of those gathered here today is greater than anyone knows except for God alone.  For where Christ is, there all the saints are present as well.  Where Christ is, there are Moses and Elijah.  Where Christ is, there are Peter, James and John.  Where Christ is, there are Augustine, Luther, and all the other great theologians of Church History.  Where Christ is, there is the incredible number of nameless ordinary Christians who have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith over the course of the centuries.  Where Christ is, there are our own loved ones who have died in the faith.  Where Christ is, there are our loved ones who are still living and continuing in the Christian faith in other places.  Where Christ is, there are the angels and the archangels and all the company of heaven.  And Christ is present among us now, as we have gathered in His name.  He is present not only in His Word but also and especially in His body and His blood.  We gather here to be strengthened by Him in their presence.  We join with them in their songs of “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”  We join them as they celebrate the victory feast of the lamb who was slain.

So, are we a small Church?  I’d say that, no, we aren’t.  For there are thousands upon thousands worshiping with us today.  We all gather around the true altar where the Lamb makes Himself both the host and the meal in the victory banquet which is held in His honor.  This heavenly reality is revealed to us through God’s Word in order to strengthen us as we face the trials of life in this sinful world, where we cannot see or hear this great cloud of witnesses.  Our congregation is nothing less than a visible manifestation of the otherwise invisible one, holy, Christian and apostolic Church which we confess in the Nicene Creed.  Are we a small church?  Of course not!  How can our Church be small, when all the host of heaven can fit in here with us?  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Epiphany 6, Series B

Sermon on Mark 1:40-45, 2:1-12
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
February 12, 2012 (The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Series B)

“Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us.”  These words, known as the Kyrie when they occur in the Divine Service, are a summary of our entire relationship with God.  He is the Giver, we are the receivers.  He is perfect and holy, we are sinful and unclean.  He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and eternal.  We are limited  and finite and mortal.  The only relationship that can exist between us and the almighty God is one that is characterized by mercy on God’s part.  Martin Luther, in the last words he wrote before he died, put it this way: “We are all beggars, this is true.”  We are all beggars when it comes to our relationship to our God.  We cannot do anything for Him or give anything to Him in exchange for what we get from Him.  After all, everything we are and everything we have is His already, so there is nothing we could use to bargain with Him.  Not our time, talents and treasures, not our good works, nothing earns us any consideration at all before God.  Everything we receive from Him is solely the result of His mercy, His charity, His compassion, His love.

In today’s text and in the text for Epiphany 7 (which we don’t celebrate this year because Transfiguration and then Lent come too soon), we see two examples’ of Christ’s mercy toward those who are afflicted with bodily diseases.  The first case, the man with leprosy, reminds us of what the stain of sin has done to all of us as human beings.  Leprosy is contagious, incurable, disgusting to look at, and spreads and grows until it ultimately results in death.  When you put all of these things together, leprosy isolates those who suffer with it from their fellow human beings.  Especially in Jesus’ day lepers were cut off from normal human society, so that they were not able to experience even the normal human compassion that is ordinarily such a comfort to those who are sick and dying.  When you think about it, sin is the same way.  It disfigures a person on the inside, it is contagious, and there is nothing that any human being can do to remove a person.  It results in death.  And worst of all, it causes divisions between persons, so that a person who suffers under the guilt of his sins often suffers alone, cut off by the very offensiveness of his behavior and by his own sense of guilt from those he would ordinarily seek out for comfort.

Sin even causes us to doubt that God is merciful towards us, just as the severity and disgusting nature of leprosy caused the leper in today’s text to doubt whether or not Jesus really wanted to heal him.  But instead of berating the man for his lack of faith in God’s mercy, Jesus simply and clearly proclaims His mercy to the man once again.  “I am willing, be cleansed.”  And that is how God deals with our sin, as well.  That is how He deals with our lack of faith.  Instead of further tearing us down and making us more miserable when we are already tormented and broken by the guilt of our sins, instead of berating us for our lack of faith when we are already feeling guilty and worthless, Jesus simply and clearly proclaims His mercy to us.  “I forgive you all your sins.”  Our sins have been paid for by Christ on the cross; he bore that guilt and that shame for us.  His mercy is unaffected by the severity of our sin, but rather His forgiveness is far more powerful than even our worst and most shameful misdeeds.  His mercy will not fail.

In the second part of our text, we see a different picture of how sin has affected us.  Where leprosy shows us how guilt of sins we have already committed makes us sickly and disgusting to ourselves, and makes us fear that others see us with the same disgust, paralysis shows us the opposite problem.  The fear of doing something wrong often makes us afraid of doing something right.  The knowledge that we are sinners, that we have within us the potential for some pretty horrific and hurtful words and actions toward our fellow men, can make us afraid of doing or saying anything at all.  And this itself is sin, because by going to such great lengths to avoid doing anything bad, we fail to do that which is good, and so we end up committing the very sins we are afraid of, only in reverse.  In the words of the catechism, we may not “hurt or harm our neighbor in his body,” but if we’re paralyzed by the fear of that sin we also don’t “help and support him in every physical need,” either, and so we indirectly hurt him.  We may not “take our neighbor’s money or possessions, or get them in any dishonest way,” but if we are paralyzed we also don’t “help him to improve and protect his possessions and income,” and so we are still indirectly stealing.  We may not “tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation,” but if we are paralyzed we also don’t “defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way,” either, and so whatever lies are being told about our neighbor are still able to hurt him and destroy his reputation.  Paralyzing fear of sin, paradoxically, leads us to commit the very sin that we are afraid of committing.

Even in the midst of this paralysis caused by guilt and fear Jesus comes to us.  After all, if all our sins are forgiven we don’t have to be afraid of what we might do in the future.  While it is true that we shouldn’t use the Gospel as an excuse to continue doing things we know are sinful, on the other hand the Gospel frees us from the fear of falling into sin accidentally when we are trying to do the right thing.  One of my seminary professors, Dr. David Scaer, put it this way in his commentary on the book of James: “Christian freedom means a certain recklessness in doing good.  Without the fear of the Law’s accusation in his life, the Christian becomes uninhibited in accomplishing what God wants done in His Law.”  The paralysis is broken and we are healed.  Absolution applies not only to specific sins in the past, but also to the present and the future.  We can move again because Christ removes the fear of sin which holds us down.

Which is easier to say, “Rise and walk,” or “I forgive you your sins”?  Actually, it’s easier to command the paralyzed man to rise and walk, because that’s a miracle that is temporary, and only removes one physical symptom of the disease of sin.  The miracle of the forgiveness of sins is actually much greater, because that miracle carries with it an eternity of health and prosperity, living together with our God who will provide all our needs before we ever are aware there is a need.  It is the forgiveness of sins that breaks our paralysis, not just in terms of our fear of sinning, but also in terms of our eternal life with Him.  You have the forgiveness of sins.  You need not fear the punishment of the Law.  God has healed you for eternity, and reunited you with Himself.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Epiphany 5, Series B

Sermon on Mark 1:29-39
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
February 5, 2012 (The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Series B)

One thing that is somewhat unique about St. Mark’s Gospel is that he uses the word immediately (well, actually the Greek word that we usually translate as “immediately”) very often to connect one event to the next.  Large chunks of St. Mark took place in only a few days or even a few hours.  The first part of today’s Gospel lesson takes place later on the same Sabbath as last week’s Gospel, in which Jesus cast a demon out of a man right in the middle of the Synagogue service.  Now he heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, and then goes on to heal others and cast out more demons.  These are great and impressive miracles, of course.  Casting out demons, and healing people simply by speaking the Word is certainly not something you see every day.  It is a testimony to just Who Jesus is, that He can do this.

But there’s more to it than just the fact that Jesus is doing miracles.  Remember why it is that people get sick in the first place, and why it is that demons can possess people at all.  The creation itself has been fundamentally corrupted by the sin of its inhabitants.  All disease, hunger, thirst, injury, disaster, and, yes, even demon-possession, are symptoms of the fact that mankind, the crown of creation, is now subject to death, and therefore creation itself is subject to futility, instability, and breakdown.  Jesus’ mother-in-law’s fever, and the possession of various people by fallen angels, are things that are only symptoms of the basic disease of sin that was brought into the world by Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden.

And so, Jesus’ ability to heal people and drive out demons is more than just merely a miraculous demonstration of the fact that He’s God.  It’s more than just a rather dramatic way of proving His claim to be the promised Messiah.  It is, in fact, part and parcel of what He came to do.  He came to put to death the old creation in His own body, and raise up for us a new creation, in which we, cleansed and purified of sin and all its effects, will live forever.  He came, not just to do away with the effects of sin temporarily for a few people back in first-century Palestine, but to do away with sin itself, forever, and restore the creation to what it was originally intended to be.

Now, St. Mark actually hints at this in his choice of words to describe what Jesus does for Peter’s mother-in-law.  He comes to her and “raises her up,” says St. Mark.  Now, that doesn’t mean that she was actually dead and that He resurrected her.  But it is interesting that Mark uses the same word as what is later used to describe Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and our own resurrection.  And then he says that the fever left her.  This one isn’t as easy to see in English, because Mark uses a Greek word that can be translated all sorts of ways, but the verb that is translated “left,” as in “the fever left her,” is actually the same word that is translated “forgive” when the object of the verb is sin.  Forgiveness and raising up go together.  Death is only in the world because of sin, and so the forgiveness of sin (and therefore of death, and therefore of disease that leads to death), results in the raising up, the resurrection, of those who are forgiven.

I mentioned last week, in connection with the fact that Jesus cast out, or exorcised, the demon in the synagogue, that Holy Baptism is actually an exorcism, a casting out of the chief demon himself, Satan, in order to make room for the Holy Spirit.  The same thing is true of Holy Absolution, the preaching of the Gospel, and the Holy Supper.  That which is corrupted, and desecrated by sin is destroyed to make way for the new creation that God will “raise up” to live before Him in righteousness and purity forever.

And I’m not just speaking of purely spiritual things, either.  Peter’s mother-in-law eventually died.  So did everyone else that Jesus healed during His earthly ministry.  But when Jesus forgives us and raises us up, He raises us up not just spiritually, but physically as well.  He makes us part of the new creation, the new heavens and new earth, in which righteousness dwells.  Peter’s mother-in-law, we can assume, was a believer, and so even though she died, yet she lives.  Even though Peter himself was crucified upside down under Roman persecution, he lives in eternity.  You and I also, because our sin has been forgiven, are also raised up.  We will live forever, not just spiritually, but also bodily.  When Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead, we will be raised up from the dead to live forever with Him in the new creation.  Compared to this, the miracles recorded in our text are actually not all that spectacular.  They are merely dim foreshadows of the greater miracle that happens here every Sunday, where your sins are forgiven and you are raised up to eternity.  You become part of the new creation when you eat and drink the first-fruits of that new creation, namely the risen body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Instead of being granted temporary healing, we receive here a new and eternal life where neither sickness nor demons will ever come near us again.  You are forgiven.  You are raised up.  You will live forever with your Creator.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Epiphany 4, Series B

Sermon on Mark 1:21-28
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
January 29, 2012 (The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Series B)

Jesus taught as one who had authority.  Well, I should hope so, considering that He is God, the fount and source of all authority.  When God speaks, reality itself listens.  And not only listens, but His speaking, His Word itself causes what He says to come to pass.  Jesus is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word that is such a perfect expression of what is inside God that it is itself God.  Of course He speaks with authority.

However, this is God become man, walking around in human flesh.  That fact by itself might not change things, but from His birth at Bethlehem until His death at Calvary, he’s also in what the theologians call the “state of humiliation,” which means that He did not always or everywhere use His divine power.  And so, even though He is preaching and teaching with authority, in the first part of today’s text we can’t really prove that it’s the divine authority that comes from being the divine Author, or if Jesus’ authority is simply a psychological trick that comes from having a greater-than-average amount of confidence and self-esteem.  After all, there are many false preachers out there who sound like they’re preaching with authority, and many people follow them, too.  It could all be a function of human psychology, or worse yet, a demonic trick.

We do know, from reading the other Gospels, that His teaching included some fairly audacious claims.  Luke tells us that He was kicked out of the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth for saying that He is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah which tells us that Messiah will have the Spirit of the Lord upon Him to release the prisoners of sin, death, and the devil, to open the eyes of the blind, and so on.  That was the sort of authority that Jesus spoke with.  But is it all true?  Or is Jesus simply a madman who is so deluded that He can make these sorts of wild claims with a straight face?  Or, worse, is He a demon who is misleading this synagogue to its own destruction?

Well, as it happens, a demon gives Him a chance to demonstrate His authority.  There was a man in this synagogue who was demon-possessed.  Mark doesn’t tell us for sure whether he was there the whole time or whether he just wandered in off the street at this moment, but the way it is phrased it sounds like he was there the whole time.  It may even be that this man had been there every Sabbath for years, living and working among the people of Capernaum with nobody knowing any different.  You see, just because many of the demons who possessed people in the Gospels acted in some strange, outlandish ways which caused their victims to be shunned by the rest of society, does not mean that they had to do that.  I think it’s entirely possible for a demon-possessed man to act perfectly normally under many circumstances, so as to spread his lies and doubt more effectively.  Satan isn’t nearly as gross and clumsy as we sometimes think he is.  I suspect that the main reason the demons tended to act so bizarrely in the Gospels was because with the Son of God walking around on earth they were in a panic.  This one certainly panics when he hears Jesus’ preaching of Himself as the Messiah, the Savior from sin, death, and the devil.  He panics, and causes a scene.  And in doing so he blurts out the very thing he normally would be trying to hide from those around him, namely that the Savior has come to rescue us from Satan’s kingdom.  Even the demons are forced to preach God’s Word when God Himself is standing before them.  That’s the sort of authority Jesus has.

And so Jesus commands the demon to come out of him, and the demon, rather unwillingly and violently, obeys.  The word for this action of Jesus is “exorcism.”  Jesus commands the demon to come out, and the demon comes out.  Now, a lot of money has been made by Hollywood on some serious and not-so-serious attempts to portray what it is that happens when an exorcism happens, especially when the demon in question is engaged in spooky, unusual, or bizarre behaviors.  We don’t hear about outright demon-possession or haunted buildings all that often in modern society, at least, not in cases that are objectively scientifically provable, but I happen to believe that they can happen.  But did you realize that every one of you has been the object of an exorcism?  That a demon was cast out of every one of you, as well as myself?  You see, Holy Baptism is actually in exorcism.  Modern liturgical books aren’t always explicit about this, though the Lutheran Service Book Agenda does include the option in its baptismal rite of including the words, “Depart, unclean spirit, and make way for the Holy Spirit” immediately before Baptism, a tradition that was universally part of Holy Baptism until the age of rationalism a couple of centuries ago made such explicit exorcism talk sound politically incorrect.

It’s not just those who are outwardly doing strange and demonic things that are part of Satan’s kingdom.  It’s everyone born in the usual way of a man and a woman, going back to Adam and Eve, who is born a subject of the prince of this old world.  That’s part of the reason why original sin is eternally deadly, even in babies who haven’t committed any actual, outward sins yet.  It’s a matter of citizenship.  They’re born under Satan’s dominion, and must be rescued in order to become children of God.  And rescue them God does.  He has given the task today to His messengers, and promised that His authority stands behind them when they speak God’s Word.  Now, like Jesus in His state of humiliation, human pastors and human Christians can be resisted, even when they speak God’s Word with authority.  Some do fall away from the faith, and seven worse demons come back and dwell in them.  But the Word does what it says, even on human lips.  The Word still rescues from death and the devil and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this.

And it’s not like Jesus is absent from the equation, either.  Jesus is just as much present in this room, where at least 2 or 3 are gathered in His name, that is, where His Word is rightly preached and His sacraments rightly administered, as He was in that synagogue in Capernaum.  He is here not only in the preaching of His word, but in His own body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar.  His Word says, “This is My body, this is My blood,” and so it is.  And having that body and blood, risen from the dead and living for all eternity, we too rise from the death of our sins and live the new life that will be seen in us when He comes again in glory.  He says, with authority, “Your sins are forgiven, and you will live with Me forever,” and so it is.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Epiphany 3, Series B

Sermon on Mark 1:14-20
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
January 22, 2012 (The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Series B)

In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus tells Andrew and Peter that He will make them fishers of men.  This text is one that is often referred to when speaking about missions and evangelism, that is, deliberate outreach into the community around us or around the world.  What Jesus is saying is that the Church is to “catch” people into His Kingdom who do not already know Him, and so bring them to the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation that is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard a lot of mission speakers and evangelism experts who use the imagery of fishing to explain how it is we are to go about catching men.  What I’ve often heard is that we are to choose the right “bait,” that is, find a felt need that will draw people’s attention to our church, and use the right marketing techniques (that is, make the bait move in a lifelike way using various techniques with the rod and the fishing line) to draw people in.  There has been a whole movement in American Christianity (including among Missouri Synod Lutherans) that encourages and teaches churches how to do evangelism in this way.  The idea seems to be that if we can meet the needs people already know (or think they know) that they have, they will come to our church and have a chance of hearing about their true need for forgiveness, and how that need is met in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In actual practice, however, it is often the Sunday morning church service itself that ends up being the venue for meeting these various felt needs, and often it’s done in such a way that the true need, forgiveness of sins, and the true solution to that need, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, ends up being crowded out.  Often He ends up being mentioned only as an example of how to follow this or that Biblical principle for the improvement of one’s marriage, one’s finances, one’s relationships in general, or whatever other topic ends up being the focus.

Now, to be sure, there is an element of truth in the “felt needs” approach, too.  The fact that human beings have unmet needs at all is a symptom of the problem of original sin, and where the Gospel is preached there God’s people will try to alleviate, as best they can, the needs and the problems that are created by sin in the world, as a way of illustrating eternal life, where sin and its effects won’t bother us at all.  This is why churches have historically been the place of charity.  Many schools, hospitals, nursing homes, soup kitchens, shelters, and other charitable organizations have been founded by churches for precisely this reason.  The problem is not with the idea of meeting people’s needs as such.  The problem is when meeting people’s needs in this life crowds out the true need that lies at the root of all the other problems, namely sin, and thus Jesus becomes not a savior from sin but an example to follow in social ministry.

But when it comes to using today’s Gospel lesson as a proof-text for the “felt needs” approach to evangelism and church growth, I do think many interpreters are missing the point.  Most of the analogy I’ve described up to this point of how fishing is done comes from modern recreational fishing, in which you either go out in a boat or stand on a dock or a pier, and cast bait out using a fishing rod and line, and try to trick the fish into biting by your selection of bait and how you move it through the water.  However, that wasn’t the kind of fishing that Andrew and Peter would have been familiar with.  You see, these men weren’t recreational fishermen.  They didn’t use bait, or fishing lines, or poles.  They didn’t go after their fish one at a time, trying to trick the fish into grabbing the bait and becoming hooked on the line.  Commercial fishermen don’t do that.  What commercial fishermen do (and here the basic technique hasn’t changed in the thousands of years since Jesus spoke these words) is simply run a big net through an area of the water where there is a large school of fish, and draw in all the fish that have unwillingly been caught in the net.  Trying to appeal to the fish in order to draw them into the boat isn’t even a consideration here.  The net simply catches a bunch of fish.  Some escape, some don’t, but it doesn’t matter, because the net is what does the work, and often it’s completely random which fish are caught and which aren’t.

And so, when Jesus told Peter and Andrew that they were going to catch men, He wasn’t telling them they’d be using bait and a hook to draw men into the Church one by one.  He was telling them that they were simply going to put the Word of Law and Gospel out there, and let the Word itself do all the work.  Who is brought to repentance by the preaching of the Law and then brought to faith by the preaching of the Gospel, is something of a random chance as far as we can tell.  God only knows why this one repents and that one escapes the net.  It’s not a matter of technique.  It’s a matter of simply letting down the net and dragging it through the water.  God’s Word does what it says.  It will bear fruit, when, where and as He chooses, and often does in the unlikeliest of places.

And that’s a good thing.  The most unlikeliest of places for God’s Word to bear fruit is the human heart, including yours and mine.  We were born enemies of God, and have no natural ability to believe in Him or come to him.  The Word catches us unwillingly, many of us before we were even aware of it, by means of the Word in and with the Baptismal water.  The Word transforms us, makes us into those who believe in Jesus Christ.  We are drawn into the Church by the power of the Word alone.  It’s not the technique or the skills or the personality of the pastor, or what services and activities are offered by the particular congregation.  It’s the Word itself that does the work.

And work it does.  What the Word says about us is that we are perfect and holy, because Christ was perfect and holy in our place, and when the Father looks at us, He sees us through Christ.  And the Word does what it says.  We are declared forgiven, and a clean heart and right spirit that are without sin really are created in us by that Word.  We are declared to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven, and that’s what we are.  And that’s what we have to declare to those around us.  The Word itself will do the work.  The Word itself will draw those who repent and believe the Gospel into the Church, just as it does for us, Sunday after Sunday.  The Word itself makes them, along with us, citizens of eternity.  The Word Himself feeds us with the food of heaven, and will bring us at last to dwell with Him forever.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Epiphany 2, Series B

Sermon on John 1:43-51
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
January 15, 2012 (The Second Sunday after Epiphany, Series B)

If you ever had any doubts about whether the Gospels are factual history or mythology, today’s Gospel lesson is another one which should convince you that what we are dealing with here is a factual account of what really happened.  Mythological heroes just don’t talk like this.  Nathaniel, one of the twelve apostles, one of the founders of the earliest Christian Church, is here depicted as being sarcastic about Jesus’ home town, and Jesus Himself gives a bit of a wry observation about Nathaniel’s personality.  Nazareth?  Can anything good come from Nazareth?  Might as well ask if anything good can come from Gary, Indiana.  And what Jesus says about Nathaniel, while it is a compliment, is one of those compliments that could be taken as a criticism, too.  “A true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit,” sounds like high praise.  But what Jesus is talking about here is the fact that Nathaniel pretty much says whatever he’s thinking.  He’s incapable of deceit, not because he is any better than anyone else; Nathaniel too was born in sin, a descendant of Adam and Eve.  Rather, he’s incapable of deceit because his mental filters just aren’t that good.  He blurts out what he’s thinking even if what he’s thinking is a bit insulting or impolite, such as his commentary on the town where Jesus grew up.

But it is such imperfect men as Nathaniel that God uses to spread His kingdom here on earth.  Show me a perfect pastor and I’ll show you a faker who probably has more than a few skeletons in his closet.  It is precisely because He’s God and all the glory should go to Him that he uses sinful men as His messengers.  It’s precisely because He’s God and He’s all-powerful that He uses those who aren’t necessarily all that great at public relations, or who easily lose their temper, or are stubborn, or are wishy-washy, or lazy, or any of a thousand other faults, to bring His Word to those who need to hear it.  It is His power, and His power alone, that is at work when the Word is preached.  To make that point, He uses men who just don’t have the talents or the personality to draw a large following, to bring His good news of forgiveness and eternal life to their fellow sinners.  It must be God working, because if it were up to us, we would fail, and fail miserably.

This coming Wednesday is known in the Church year as “The Confession of St. Peter,” and the Gospel lesson we would be reading if we had a service on that day would be the account of Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  What Jesus says to Peter on that occasion also applies to what Nathaniel says this morning as well: “Blessed are you, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”  Nathaniel also confesses who Jesus really is, the long-awaited Messiah, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity in human flesh come down to earth to save us.  But how was that revealed to Nathaniel?  Yes, there was a miracle involved, namely that Jesus saw Nathaniel and knew him when he was in a place where he thought he was alone.  But ultimately it was the Word of God which informed Nathaniel of who Jesus is: the Messiah promised for hundreds of years, going all the way back to the promise in Genesis 3 that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head, and following throughout the Old Testament Scriptures.  That’s partly why Nathaniel believed even though he only saw the one minor miracle: He knew the Scriptures.  The Holy Spirit works through the Word.

But Jesus does promise him that he will see much greater things than this.  The heavens will open, and he will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  It is precisely Jesus who is the ladder of Jacob.  Nathaniel’s ancestor Jacob, also known as Israel, after whom the nation of Israel is named, saw a staircase reaching from heaven to earth, symbolizing that God would come down to us to rescue us from our sin.  Jesus here identifies Himself as that staircase, as well as the man who wrestled with Jacob that same night and renamed him Israel.  To the true Israelite, who cannot deceive because he’s too blunt and even rude, God will show His salvation, His route down from heaven to join us, share in our sufferings, and take us up with Him into glory.

You see, Nathaniel is not the only one in this Gospel lesson who is without deceit.  There is another here who cannot lie.  But Jesus’ truthfulness is different from Nathaniel’s.  Jesus’ truthfulness doesn’t come from a lack of mental filters or a tendency to blurt things out.  But Jesus’ truthfulness doesn’t come from scrupulousness in always speaking true things, either.  Jesus is without deceit simply because He’s God, the Son of the Father, the Word by which the heavens were made.  What He says, is.  Which is why it is by His Word, even when spoken by sinful men, that faith is created in the heart, even the cynical heart which doubts anything good can come from humble beginnings.  The Word does what it says, despite doubt and cynicism.

This Gospel lesson comes from the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel.  Near the very end of that same Gospel, there is an account involving another disciple who confesses Jesus as the Son of God.  Every year on the Sunday after Easter we hear the story of St. Thomas, who claimed he needed to see Jesus to believe in His resurrection.  What Jesus says to Thomas then, is an echo of what happens here in Nathaniel’s case.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.  Which is why God calls preachers.  Which was why Jesus called Nathaniel, and Thomas, and Peter.  All had personality flaws, all had doubts.  All were sinners forgiven for the sake of Jesus’ death on the cross.  It’s the Word itself that does the work.  As we go forth and confess to our friends and neighbors what we’ve heard from God, that’s a comfort for us as well.  The Word itself does the work.  The Word itself comes down to us and gives us eternal life.  The Word Himself comes to us personally to forgive our sins and give us His own body and blood.  It’s all the Word.  It’s all Jesus.  And that’s all that’s necessary.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

Epiphany, Series B

Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
January 8, 2012 (The Epiphany of our Lord – transferred, Series B)

As we heard on Christmas Day, the message of the Savior’s birth was announced first, not to Herod or Caesar or the high priests, but to lowly shepherds out in their fields that night keeping watch over their sheep.  Now finally Herod and the high priests do find out about it, but not directly from God or from His angels; they find out from Gentile scholars from the east who saw a star in the heavens.  Herod, of course, was not exactly a pious Jew and so he couldn’t care less that it was these Gentiles to whom God had announced the Savior’s birth.  All he knew was that a rival to his power had been born and needed to be eliminated as soon as possible.  But the chief priests and the scribes of Jerusalem were probably very upset.  How dare these Gentiles, these pagans, have the privilege of worshiping the Messiah, when we Jews didn’t even know He had come?  We can imagine that if they had heard about the shepherds worshiping Him on the night of His birth these chief priests and scribes would have been even more upset.

So why did God do this?  Why did He send the angels to common ordinary shepherds and not to the religious or political leaders of the day?  Why did he allow these Gentiles, who lived halfway across the known world at that time, to find out about Jesus’ birth and not the Jewish religious leadership?  After all, the Gentiles were not those to whom the promise of a Savior had been given.  They were not God’s holy people.  They were unclean, foreigners, who did not know how to keep the Law God had given His people.  Why should they hear about the Savior before the Jewish leadership did?  It just doesn’t seem right.

But God did this for a very good reason.  Those who first learned about the birth of the Savior were those who were ready to hear about Him.  Herod didn’t want another king to be born.  History shows that he had several of his own sons killed so that they wouldn’t rise up against him and take the throne from him.  The murder of the Holy Innocents, which takes place only a few verses after today’s Gospel lesson, is also completely in character for Herod.  In fact, Herod’s reign was so bloody that most secular historians back then didn’t think that the murder of all the babies in the Bethlehem area was even noteworthy enough to write about.  The Jewish leaders were convinced of their own righteousness as Jews and didn’t particularly think they needed a savior from sin (though a political savior, to get Rome off their backs, might be nice).  It was the people you wouldn’t expect, common people like Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds, as well as these learned foreigners from the east, who were best able to receive the Christ, because they knew that any standing they had before God was not because what they could do or who they were, but solely by a gift of God.  And the infant Jesus Christ is that gift.

What happens in today’s Gospel lesson is foreshadows what will happen to Christ throughout His life.  He will be rejected by the Jewish nation as a whole, though many individuals will believe in Him, and eventually His message will go to the Gentiles.  Jesus ordered His disciples to preach first in Jerusalem, Judea, and then Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth.  Paul, even though he is known as the apostle to the Gentiles, always starts from the local Jewish synagogue when he goes into a town, as we read in the book of Acts.  The Jews were always the first to receive the message of Christ, since it was to them that the promises of Christ’s coming were entrusted.  But so often they rejected the message of Christ, while the foreigners, the pagans, accepted it with joy.  This pattern is first seen here with the visit of the Gentile scholars from the east who humbly worship Christ while the Jewish leaders are upset by His coming.  The Jews tended to think of the Lord as their own private national God, and forgot that He is the Lord of all the earth and the creator of all people.  They forgot that even though it was to Israel that the promise of a Savior had been given, that Savior was for all nations.  His sacrifice would be for the sins of the whole world.

You and I, of course, have benefitted from this fact.  The Gentile court scholars from the east who came to worship the child Jesus and give Him expensive gifts are our predecessors.  If it had not been for the fact that the message about Christ is for all nations, you and I would not be here today.  After all, we are not descended from the Israelites.  We are Gentiles.  It is only because the message about Christ was sent also to the Gentiles that we have come to know Him and have come to receive His gifts and offer our sacrifice of thanksgiving today.  The visit of the magi is the first time that Gentiles came to worship Christ in the flesh.  They are the first of a long, long line of Gentiles who have been grafted into the tree of God’s people, a line which now includes us today.

But in another sense, we need to examine ourselves to be sure that we do not bear more resemblance to the Jewish scribes and chief priests.  Even though none of us has Israelite blood, we are similar in some ways to the people of Judah and Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ birth.  Many of us have had the Holy Scriptures, and the promises of God’s salvation, since childhood.  Even though our nation’s culture is rapidly degenerating, there are still many elements of our national character that come from the fact that Christianity is still the most dominant of any one religion among our people, and that even the large numbers of unchurched people are more likely to be lapsed Christians who are at least aware of some elements of Christian teaching, than former members of any other religion.  We have advantages in our relationship to our God that the Gentiles of those times did not have, although the Jews did.  It is tempting for this reason to regard ourselves as somehow special in our own right, because of the fact that we come from a largely Christian nation, and have been associated with the Church for a long time, just as the Jews tended to think that it was their status as God’s people, in and of itself, which would save them.

Unfortunately when we begin to think this way we are as wrong as those Jews were.  It is good that we have been granted free and ready access to the Holy Scriptures in our nation; people in some other nations cannot get the Scriptures very easily.  It is good that we have the right to assemble openly as Christians to receive God’s gifts, which is also something that is forbidden in many other places around the world.  But the temptation is there to think that because of our outward association with the Church and being part of an allegedly Christian-dominated nation that we have some special standing before God.  The truth is that our salvation which is given to us in Word and Sacrament is a gift, not something we have earned by our outward association with God’s people.  Today’s Gospel lesson reminds us of this as well, as it was to these sages from the east that the message of Christ was given through the star, and not to the chief priests and the scribes.

Salvation is a free gift from God, and not due to any good works on our part.  This also means that salvation doesn’t come to us as a reward for our association with Christianity.  Salvation comes through God’s Word and Sacraments preached and administered by those He has sent to do so.  This means also that those who have never encountered the Gospel before, those whose nations are still covered completely or mostly in the darkness of paganism, are just as ready to hear the Gospel as we are, and God will save them through it just as readily as He does us.  This is why the Church through the centuries has continuously reached out to those who do not know Christ in order to bring them to the Word and Sacraments through which the Holy Spirit works salvation.  By God’s grace we are involved in this outreach as well through our Synod as well as through our own personal sharing of the Gospel with our friends and neighbors.  Through our efforts and the efforts of many other Christians throughout the world, those who had no previous contact with the Gospel are being incorporated into the Church.  They are receiving the salvation which Christ won by His innocent death and glorious resurrection.  They are receiving Christ Himself through His Word and His body and blood, the same body and blood which Mary cradled and in which the eastern magi worshiped the King of kings.  This same King is present for our salvation too, here, today.  Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +

The Circumcision and Name of Jesus, Series B

Sermon on Luke 2:21
For Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Elmwood Park, WI
January 1, 2012 (The Circumcision and Name of Jesus, Series B)

Today is known in the Church’s calendar as the “Circumcision and Name of Jesus.”  It is the day when the Church remembers the fact that Christ our Lord was circumcised according to the Law of Moses on the eighth day of His life, so that He would be subject to the Law in our behalf.  Now, according to the world’s calendar, this is the last day of the calendar year, and at midnight tonight a new calendar year will begin.  But in the Church, things are a little different.  We aren’t of the world, and so we don’t always do things the way the world does them.  As far as the world is concerned, Christmas is long over.  Both Walgreens and Walmart stopped playing Christmas carols over their speaker systems already on the 26th.  Today is a day for looking forward, for looking at what the new year will bring, for new beginnings.  Looking back even one short week to Christmas, is just not what the world wants to do.  But according to the Church’s calendar the year 2012 started over a month ago, way back on the first Sunday in Advent.  Here in the Church, we are still in the Christmas season.  Today is the eighth day of Christmas.  And since Jesus was, like all Jewish boys, circumcised on the eighth day of his life, as well as officially given His name, we celebrate this fact on the eighth day of Christmas, which happens to be January 1.  We celebrate the fact that He was put into subjection under the Law of Moses so that He could redeem those who were under the Law.  We celebrate the fact that by fulfilling the Law for us He is our Savior, and that is what His name means.

Of course, even though we are not of the world, we still do live in it.  We still use the same banks and cars and roads and post office and water and electricity and everything else that those around us use, and we still are subject to the same government rules and regulations.  And so in our day to day lives, we Christians use the same calendar that worldly people use, especially since even though it has become inaccurate over the centuries, that calendar was originally intended to be based on the date our Savior was born.  I say it’s inaccurate because Christ was most likely born in what according to our current calendar would work out to be 5 B.C., and we’re not exactly sure what day of the year He was born on, either.  But that’s just the way it is.  It’s the calendar that everybody uses, and so we use it too.  We too will be celebrating the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012 tonight, either at parties or at home or whatever our plans may be.  And this causes us to reflect back upon the year that has gone by all too quickly and to look ahead and wonder what the future will bring us.  Economically, we’re still in fairly bad shape, and that affects our lives, both directly and indirectly, in many, many ways.  Prices are going up (I see it happen daily in the meat department at Walmart), while incomes are not.  Politically, 2012 is a Presidential election year, and what that election will bring us, for good or ill, is anybody’s guess.  And each of us has personal problems and difficulties which may affect us in various ways through the year, whether those be financial problems, difficulties with family members or co-workers, health issues, or any of a thousand other things.

But the festival we celebrate in the Church tonight and tomorrow calls us away from all of this gazing into the past or the future and calls us to fix our eyes upon Jesus.  Our Lord Jesus Christ was born into the world to take our place.  We have not fulfilled, and cannot fulfill, the Law of God perfectly.  If it were up to us we would only earn eternal death and damnation by our sins.  But instead, Christ came to take our human nature upon Himself and live a life obedient to the Law so that His innocent death would be the price we deserved.  He came to be our substitute, to fulfill the Law for us.  And tonight we observe the beginnings of that process, as He is subjected to the first ritual that every Jewish boy had to endure according to the Law of Moses.  For Himself, He need not have had to be circumcised, just as for His own sake He did not need John to baptize Him in the Jordan river 30 years later.  But for our sake He did these things so that we might be freed from the curse and the guilty verdict that otherwise would have been handed down against us for our sins against the Law.

This was also when Jewish boys were given their names, just as often we think of a baby’s name becoming truly his name before God when that baby is baptized.  But the name this child was given is Jesus.  Jesus is the Greek way of pronouncing the Hebrew name Y’shua, or Joshua, which means “The Lord Saves.”  The entire identity of Jesus was taken up in His purpose.  Even the name that He took as a human being witnessed to His divine mission.  Even His very name proclaims the blessed Gospel of the forgiveness of sins to us.  You see, saving us wasn’t just something our Lord did.  It is His identity.  He is the Savior.

It is precisely this, His name, and His fulfilling of the Law of God in the stead of us who have not fulfilled, and can never fulfill it, that gives us comfort, even in these troubled times.  Whatever next year brings, whether peace and prosperity or more wars and more economic chaos and scandal, whether sickness or heath, peace or turmoil in our own personal lives, we are comforted by the knowledge that we have a Savior who has won the victory over all these things.  He has given us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.  And because we have these things, none of the world’s continuing death throes can truly harm us.  And so let us enter the new year boldly and confidently, confessing always the name of Jesus, the Savior.  Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +